Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days – Arnold Bennett (1908)

It’s been a long while since I have leisurely browsed the library shelves, and so I happened to wander over to the B section just to see what was there on offer. I came across a few copies of Arnold Bennett’s writing, and since I really enjoyed “The Wives’ Tale” a while back, I saw this one and checked it out. It was an older book edition, it had yellowing pages and the font was perfect so if it ended up being a good story to boot, then it was win-win-win.

Bennett was a prolific writer and wrote everything from novels to self-help so there is a lot to choose from (on-line). The pickings at our library were slim, but not everyone is quite the fan of writers such as Bennett and I get that. I was not familiar with this title, but felt comfortable checking it out after reading the jacket, and so I settled down one rare rainy Saturday last weekend for a good read. The Superhero was out of town, it was cool and damp, and there were no pressing items on the to-do list. It was pretty much a “perfect read for a perfect time” type of situation which ended up being…perfect! Ha.

Written as satire, Buried Alive is a shortish novel that focuses on Priam Farll, a world famous painter who is very shy and happiest out of the limelight. When Henry Leek, the painter’s valet, dies unexpectedly, Priam seizes the opportunity to change identities with his unknown (and now dead) assistant and retreat to a much valued quiet life. At first, it was just an impulsive lark to do so, but as time continues and events start to get more complicated, the story picks up speed.

World-famous as painter Priam Farll is, his face is not well known due to his reclusive life (although this lifestyle was becoming hard to maintain as more and more people wanted to meet him and his social requirements picked up). As he becomes more famous, more was expected of him, and so when Henry Leek, the butler dies in bed one day, it’s a decision of a moment for Priam to assume his identity (and his quieter life) – and thus Priam’s life changes for ever.

This is a quick read and a light-hearted novel focusing on the old standby of mistaken identity, dead bodies and turnkey moments in someone’s life. And yet, trite as that may sound, this was also a great read – it’s not a demanding narrative, but if you’re just looking for a solidly good read that’s hard to put down, then you’ll be happy with Buried Alive. It’s not deep; it’s not provocative; it’s not packed with lots of big words, but it is an enjoyable way to spend some time.

Proof that it really rained water from the sky last week or so…

More Poe Humor…

Source: Unknown.

 

 

Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal – Mary Roach (2013)

“People are surprised to learn: They are a big pipe with a little bit around it.”

- Ton van Vliet

 

As high as the bar had been set with Mary Roach’s previous books, this one reached it (if not higher). Roach is a smart, funny and good science writer who seems to ask the same weird questions of her experts that I would want to ask – she actually does though which elevates her to Superstar status in my eyes.

After having covered large nebulous topics before, Roach’s decision to look in-depth at the human (and other animal’s) digestive system from top to bottom is perfectly done. I know I might be crossing the line here in Fangirl raving, but she is that good. Honestly.

Gulp, her latest release, covers digestion from taste buds to umm… fecal matter, and everything in between in a meandering twisting manner that takes the reader down numerous rabbit holes, but not in a digressive manner – only in a natural trailing way so that you too end up as curious as she is about things you hadn’t really thought about. Who knew that people were paid to taste pet food to make sure it’s palatable and matches the description on the tin? (I didn’t.) Once I’d read the lists of strange things that people have swallowed (on one end) and have inserted into themselves (at the other end), you start to realize the plain fact that humans are odd. No way around that, I’m afraid.

Chapters cover everything from the mechanism of swallowing to fecal matter transplants (an important medical treatment for some cases) and none of it seems irrelevant. It’s all sewn into the content of the book in a seamless manner and when you add in the wit that Roach has with her writing, it’s fascinating. Even if you didn’t really like Elvis that much, he’s got a mention here – next time I see him, I will immediately think of his bowel problems, no doubt about it. It’s thought that he died of a medical issue that was not recognized at the time as it was quite rare – megacolon. Honest. You need to read the book to find out more.

(Speaking of Elvis, the washing machine repair man who visited the other day to fix ours happened to be a competitive Elvis impersonator. That was one fascinating conversation. Seriously. I had little idea about that world…)

I love Mary Roach’s writing, and I wish that we were friends (although that might sound somewhat creepy). She is one of the funniest and smartest science writers around, and whichever Roach title you end up picking, you’ll have an entertaining journey into a topic that you had no idea you were so interested in.

Highly recommended.

(Mary Roach is also hilarious in real life when we were lucky enough to catch her on an author visit to campus. Some authors need to never read their work (as they are dreadful speakers), but Roach does everything right when she presents her writing.)

And if you don’t believe how awesome Mary Roach is, here is an NPR interview which will prove it for you.

Humor…

Source unknown.

New TBR Pile for Summer Days

• Dancing Girls – Margaret Atwood (short stories) (F)
• Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome (F)
• The Lizard Cage – Karen Connelly (F)
• August – Gerard Woodward (F)
• Bitchfest – anthology (excerpts from decade of Bitch magazine)
• Methland: The Death and Life of an American Small Town – Nick Reding (how meth affected one small community in US)
• Sea of Poppies – Amitav Ghosh (F)
• A Passage to India – Forster (F)
• The Devil’s Highway – Luis Alberto Urrea (issue of illegal immigration)
• Maphead – Ken Jennings (the lure of maps)
• Classics for Pleasure – Michael Dirda (book about books)
• Going to Extremes – Joe McGiniss (Alaska travel)
• The Bite of the Mango – Mariatu Kamara/Susan McClelland (NF about refugee from African nation rife with instability)
• The Social Animal – David Brooks (sociology/anthro) – Reading this right now
• Like One of the Family – Childress (Af-Am domestic history)
• Coasting – Jonathon Raban (UK travel by boat)
• Wesley the Owl – Stacey O’Brian
• The Sex Lives of Cannibals – J. Maarten Troost (travel narrative)
• Color: A Natural History of the Palette – Victoria Finlay
• Foreign Friends – Jojo Moyes (F)

So – that should set me up for the next month or three…

The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner – Alan Sillitoe (1959)

This collection of spare short stories was really good, although not quite what I was expecting (although I’m not sure what exactly I was expecting if you ask me). Apart from being this surprise read, I really enjoyed Sillitoe’s early work and have ordered his debut novel (from 1958) called Saturday Nights, Sunday Mornings as it sounded so good.

Sillitoe is usually considered to be one of the earliest members of the “Angry Young Men”* movement in England during the 1950’s which embodied the feeling of disillusionment stemming from the hardships of WWII that were still ongoing years later. Industry had not really recovered since the war, unemployment and poverty were rife (especially for the working class in the Northern part of England), and so conditions were tough for a lot of people. It’s from this perspective that the stories are shown – of working class lads living working class lives facing common life problems.

The title story, The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, is the one that I have heard of before although, for many years, I thought it was about marathon running (haha). It does concern running, but it’s much more literary-minded than that.

It’s from the PoV of a young lad who has been sentenced to some time in Borstal, a youth detention center across the country (in England) usually set in barren and removed environments such as the moors etc. It’s a tough place and its inmates end up tough (if they’re not already), and for the protagonist of this particular tale, his is not a life he cares that much about. When he is selected from amongst his fellow inmates to run long-distance for the Borstal team, the act of running takes on much more meaning than his supervisors realize.  In running, this boy has his freedom when he has none otherwise, and so at the end, when he asserts his choice, it’s a way of reclaiming his independence. It’s really an excellent read.

The other stories were along those same lines, although very different. They each have working class protagonists living in industrial cities and in close densely populated neighborhoods of families who have similar problems and ideas stemming from their experience. They vary in age, but the stories usually revolve around relationships (ranging from friends, boyfriend/girlfriend and family of origin to work relations), and it’s obvious that Sillitoe has lived what he writes here. (He did – he had to leave school when he was 14 to work in a Raleigh factory in Nottingham.)

When Sillitoe was actually writing these stories, Wikipedia has an interesting theory (true? I don’t know…) about how the Labour Party (political party) continued to want power distributed among the wealthy and elite more than the working class (perhaps in case of uprising), but it knew it needed to keep the lower classes happy. So the welfare state was created and strengthened without assigning much political power to its beneficiaries and the Angry Young Men movement was born.

There was political and philosophical debate (according to the author of this Wiki) about whether the state was trying to help the working classes or “keep them down” as the saying goes. I imagine it depends on which side of the divide you are as to how you felt, and clearly, this issue continues to be timely. (Again, not sure how true this Wiki theory is, but I thought it was an interesting viewpoint nevertheless.)

• The Angry Young Men (who were sometimes called the Angries :-) ) were a group of mostly working and middle class playwrights and authors (including Kingsley Amis, Alan Sillitoe and Philip Larkin) who rose to fame during the 1950’s in the UK and were characterized by disillusionment with traditional English class-riddled society. As time went on, the Angry Young Men group became less unified and many of the authors who were classed as such dismissed the idea and were not happy with being bunched together. (Can’t blame them – it seems to me that they were such a varied lot that lumping them all in one group would have been nonsensical.) It’s really interesting to read about and there’s loads on-line about this if you’d like to travel further down the particular rabbit hole.

Catch-Up Time

So, it’s time to catch up with some things… I’ve been having some good reading lately, but only a few have been stand-out titles which trigger big and deep thoughts (as evidenced in my posts. HA!) Thus, some micro-reviews are in order:

Blueprint for Disaster: Get Fuzzy – Darby Conley

A collection of strip cartoons (or sequential art if you want to be posh) about a mixed species household of human Rob Wilco, a bachelor who shares his space with Bucky Katt (a smarty-pants Siamese cat) and Satchel, a sweet mix of Shar-Pei and Labrador. Drawn by Darby Conley (and probably lived by him as well), this cartoon was syndicated in the late 1990’s, and no wonder as it is spot on its depictions of life with feline and canine pets. Satchel the dog is really sweet but not.. umm… very *quick* (shall we say?) and roommate Bucky Katt is fast thinking and quick witted, but with a slightly naughty streak in him. This combination leads to some very entertaining reading. It’s been a long time since I’ve indulged in some Get Fuzzy, and it’s still as funny and on target as it was during the 1990’s when I first read it. It just makes me smile.

And then we have this funny read (the Get Fuzzy) compared with the rather harrowing short stories of Alan Sillitoe in “The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner”. More on this later, but great contrast between Get Fuzzy and the protagonists of Sillitoe’s stories, along with lots to think about.

And then I emerged myself for the first time in Agatha Christie. Don’t have a lot of experience in the mystery genre, so just picked a random title off the Agatha Christie shelf at the library (“4:50 from Paddington”) which I loved, and so then exchanged that title with another one (can’t remember which one right now). Looking forward to more Miss Marple, but will need to research whether they need to be read in a particular order or if they are stand-alones. (I know about the two series of Miss Marple and Poirot, but not the details.)

Mary Roach is one of my writing heroes (and I wish we could be friends) – she has a new release out now called “Gulp: An Adventure down the Alimentary Canal” which is hysterically funny and smart. (Thus the dream that we could be friends.) Roach is a science writer with a great sense of humor and I have enjoyed all that she has written. This is another good one, and will have its own post in time. Just saying.

And then watched a couple of really good movies (been lucky):  one was a psychological thriller called “Fallen” which has an ending which will make you fall out of your chair. (Good boy movie if you need one.)

The other was “Robot and Frank”  about a retired cat burglar who is getting ill with Alzheimer’s so his caring family get him a robot butler to help with his life… Very good. And at the real-life movies, looking forward to Ironman 3 (in Imax) and also The Great Gatsby. I have a feeling that the film will be better than the book… for once!

PLUS – I am found out that I am not going to be laid off from my job so that helps to make everything good!

Spring TBR Pile Update

• Logavina Street – Barbara Demick (NF) – READ (link)
• Living Dolls: The Return of Sexism  – Natasha Walter (NF)
• The Campaign for Domestic Happiness – Isabel Beeton (NF)
• The Short Life and Long Times of Mrs. Beeton – Kathryn Hughes (NF bio)
• Neverland: J. M. Barrie, the du Mauriers, and the Dark Side of Peter Pan – Piers Dudgeon (NF)
• Time was Soft There (book about the Shakespeare Co. book shop in Paris) – Jeremy Mercer (NF) DNF
• Helen Keller: The Story of my Life – Helen Keller (NF autobio)  - READ
• Level 4: Virus Hunters of the CDC – Joseph McCormick and Susan Fisher-Hoch (NF)
• The Devil’s Highway – Luis Alberto Urea (NF)
• As For Me and My House – Sinclair Ross (Canadian F) – READ
• Be the Pack Leader – Cesar Milan (NF)
• Methland – The Death and Life of an American Small Town – Nick Reding (NF)
• Becoming Queen Victoria – Kate Williams (you know Victoria would slip in there somewhere…) (NF)
• Charles Dickens (bio) – Clare Tomalin (NF)
• Chasing the Monsoon – Alexander Frater (NF) – READ
• Going to Extremes – Joe McGinnis (NF) – Alaska armchair travel
• The Secret Life of Bletchley Park – Sinclair Mckay (NF)
• The Grandmothers – Doris Lessing (F) READ
• Strength in What Remains – Tracy Kidder (NF)
• The Marie Curie Complex – Julie des Jardins (NF)
• The Best American Sci and Nature Writing 2006 – Brian Greene (ed.) (NF) – in process
• Oryx and Crake – Margaret Atwood (F)  READ – link

Books from own TBR so far this 2013 – 16 (out of total of 48).  Four from the TBR out of nine total titles for this month – almost half so not too shabby. Seven titles from Spring TBR pile (compiled in January 2013). Might be time to switch the titles up and get a new set of TBRs with which to guilt myself (I mean “from which to choose”)… J

Coming Up: the new Summer 2013 TBR Pile…

How to Make an American Quilt – Whitney Otto (1991)

I just loved this short read. I hadn’t read it for years, and was curious if the reread would be as good. Would it hold up? Why yes, Virginia, it did, and with the experience of older age comes a different reading.

The book is from the PoV of an adult granddaughter who is visiting her grandma one summer just before she (the granddaughter) gets married. As they while away the long hot days in this small Northern California town, there are lots of observations drawn about people and life through the quilting bee that meets regularly at the grandma’s house.

The book is structured with alternate chapters, one chapter being more or less straight narrative about one of the women friends and their relationships, and then the next chapter being a “how to” quilt instructive chapter, but with a lot more to it. The how-to chapters progress from how to start making a quilt to how to store one at the end, and mirror the growth of a relationship, regardless of whether that is a familial one or one that is more romantic in nature. It’s really well done – subtle and understated.

As others have previously noted, the book structure is a patchwork pattern that echoes the regularity of a more traditional quilt pattern, and although it’s probably been done before, this was done very well. Finn Bennett-Dodd, the visiting granddaughter, is one of the quilting bee that summer, and as the heat of the sun is repeated every day that endless summer, so are the stories of the circle of friends – the wrenching heartbreak, the stitching together of friendship, and (you know I can’t resist the ongoing metaphor) the tapestry of life.

This is a quick summery read, but not without its depth. One of the characters loves swimming and diving and that is similar to how this reading experience was for me – you jump up off the diving platform and then you sink in the story as you’re engulfed into the water, not coming up until it’s the end and you have to breathe.

For a slightly different take on quilts (this time more of a fiber art take), check out these quilts (and the fascinating backstory) of the quilters of Gees Bend, a small African-American hamlet in Alabama whose innovative quilt designs have been displayed at prestigious venues and various art places around the world. (Article from Smithsonian magazine.)

April 2013 Reading Summary and Other Nerdy Bits…

First things first: Happy Birthday to my faraway and lovely mum!

I read the following titles during the weeks of April (with links to blog posts about said book where there is one):

Parnassus on Wheels – Christopher Morley

Just William – Richmal Compton

The Grandmothers – Doris Lessing

The Brandons – Angela Thirkell (no blog post)

Some Experiences of the Irish R. M. – E. O Somerville and Martin Ross

Tim Gunn’s Fashion Bible – Tim Gunn (NF)

The Doll’s House – Henrik Ibsen (post to come)

Undress Me in the Temple of Heaven – Susan Jane Gilman (NF)

The Making of an American Quilt – Whitney Otto (post to come)

Venus with Biceps – David Chapman and Patricia Vertinksy (NF)

DNF:

…And Ladies of the Club – Helen Hoover Santmyer

Heidi – Johanna Spyri

Time was Soft There – Jeremy Mercer

Total number of books read in April: 10

Fiction/Non-Fiction: 7 fiction /  3 non-fiction

Library books vs. books I owned (and thus removed from the home abode): 5 library books and 5 owned books. I also read 5 electronic books.  (These are higher numbers as they include the DNFs.)

And new statistic for this year – Total number of pages read this month: 2,362 (av. 262).

Thank you, also, to the various incarnations of Project Gutenberg around the world, and the volunteers who spend countless hours typing these books for us to read. Noted and appreciated.

And Scary Big Books (SBB) Update:

…And Ladies of the Club got off to a strong start out of the gate, but stumbled at the first fence and fell at the second. Dropped out of the race after that, but a close competitor in the SBB project is…. Norman Collins’ London Belongs to Me (published 1945).  Updates as warranted.

And then I happen to adore this quotation from Richard Feynman:

 “Nobody ever figures out what life is all about, and it doesn’t matter. Explore the world. Nearly everything is really interesting if you go into it deeply enough. Work as hard and as much as you want to on the things you like to do the best. Don’t think about what to you want to be, but what you want to do. Keep up some kind of minimum with other things so that society doesn’t stop you from doing anything at all.”