Paris in July: Secrets of the Flesh: A Life of Colette

Colette's 'virile' genius . . . justified the excesses of her life. "Let us give her the complete freedom of her actions," Rachilde exclaimed. "She is is one of those who would shake the stars while falling from the skies into the mud of our poor earth."

I'd only heard of Colette as the author of Gigi and Cheri -- I'd never actually watched either of the movies, nor heard of the Claudine novels until about a year ago, when I watched the film starring Keira Knightley based on this biography. I actually saw the film in a tiny movie theater in Nice, France, while spending a long weekend while we lived in Germany; normally,  I wouldn't spend precious holiday time watching a movie, but the theater was less than five minutes' walk from my hotel, and there was a late showing. And how cool is it that I saw a movie (albeit in English) about a French writer while in France?

So, naturally, I had to order Colette's biography Secrets of the Flesh as soon as I returned home. I didn't get around to it at the time, but it's a perfect summer read, for Paris in July and also the Big Book Summer Challenge. I'm always interested in the lives of writers, but I had no idea how scandalous and groundbreaking her life was. Considered the greatest woman writer of France, she wrote 30 books, plus plays, essays, screenplays, and published hundreds of articles and reviews as a journalist. She acted on stage and was notorious for her affairs with both men and women, and married three times. 

If you haven't seen the film, Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette (1873-1954) married the writer/publisher Henry Gauthier-Villars (known as Willy), 14 years her senior, when she was just 20. Willy published a lot of books written by ghostwriters, and when the couple was in need of cash, he took Colette's notebooks, loosely based on her childhood, and published the first story (under his own name) as Claudine at School, the story of a spunky and scandalous girl growing up in a country town. It became an instant success, and three more Claudine novels followed. Colette and Willy became a celebrated couple in intellectual and literary circles. 

Keira Knightley as Colette and Dominic West as her husband Willy

They also had a troubled marriage plagued by affairs on both sides (once with the same woman!) and eventually split. (It didn't help that in 1907 Colette discovered he'd sold the copyright to her Claudine novels for a pittance). Colette scandalized society by acting on the stage, sometimes semi-nude, and was publicly out as a bisexual. In one production, she caused a near-riot by kissing her female lover onstage. 

Like the Claudine stories, much of her work was semi-autobiographical, before or after the fact. Echoing the plot of Cheri, Claudine had an affair with her stepson Bertrand de Jouvenel from her second marriage (the half-brother of her only child) when he was only sixteen, and she was in her late 40s. The scandal was one of the factors for her second divorce. But the marriage to her third husband Maurice Goudeket (16 years younger than Colette) lasted until her death at age 81.

Colette's career spanned the Belle Epoque, World War I, the 1920s, the rise of Nazism, and World War II. Weirdly, she wrote for a pro-Nazi newspaper during the War, and her last novel has some seriously anti-Semitic overtones -- though her last husband was Jewish and was actually imprisoned by the Gestapo for a few months (he was only released due to the intervention of the French wife of the German ambassador. Maurice spent the rest of the war in Paris but the couple was always in fear of a second arrest).

Colette c. 1896 painted by Jacques Humbert

I don't think Colette is someone I would have liked to meet in real life -- she sounds very self-absorbed, probably narcissistic, and some of her actions were really questionable. She was a real paradox -- she didn't believe in feminism but she wanted to work; she was bisexual but didn't approve of her daughter's homosexuality; she wrote for an anti-Semitic paper, yet her husband was Jewish. Maybe she believed that she should be the exception? 

However, she did lead a fascinating life. I found it so interesting how she was able to make a career for herself as a writer and celebrity for more than fifty years, especially as a woman in that time period -- she wrote about 30 novels, plus plays, essays, and countless articles and reviews. It's very impressive for a woman to have been such a prolific writer in the first half of the 20th century, especially in France where women couldn't even vote until 1944. It's a really interesting look at life at the time period. Even though I've still only read one of her novels I found it an absorbing piece of social history. 

I do want to finish the Claudine novels (I have the Complete Claudine edition) and eventually Gigi and Cheri. I've also checked out the film version of Gigi from the library and hope to get to it by the end of the month. How's everyone else doing with Paris in July and the Big Book Summer Challenge?

Georgette Heyer: Biography of a Bestseller by Jennifer Kloester

I'm not much of romance reader, but back when I lived in Texas I read The Grand Sophy for my Jane Austen book club and was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed it. Georgette Heyer wrote 50 novels, mostly historical. They're rather light and fluffy, but mostly great fun and they're very well researched. I was poking around Half-Price Books in San Antonio and found this biography, so I thought it would be a good addition to my TBR Pile Challenge list. Georgette Heyer wrote 50 novels. in 72 years. Starting when she was just 17, she published a book nearly every year of her life, sometimes more. Most of them were romances and historical fiction, but she also wrote mysteries and a few contemporary novels, and nearly all of them are still in print. 

Heyer's first novel, The Black Moth, began as a story she made up to amuse her younger brother, who suffered from hemophilia. She continued writing after her marriage to a mining engineer, with whom she moved to Tanganyika (now Tanzania) and Macedonia. They moved back to the UK and Heyer mostly supported the family with her writing while her husband made some career changes (he and her son both became lawyers). Heyer's commitment to research and her literary output are pretty astonishing -- her historical novel An Infamous Army is now considered one of the best historical works on the battle of Waterloo. And once she had completed the research and settled on the plot and characters, she could write a book in a matter of weeks. 

Though she's now best known for her historical romances set in the Regency period, she actually only wrote one (Regency Buck) before WWII. Her most successful novel before that time was about the Napoleonic Wars, but she couldn't bear to write a war novel during the Blitz. Heyer was afraid that it was frivolous to write a light historical romance, but she needed a distraction and wrote a Regency novel, Faro's Child. It was just what the public wanted and was a huge success. Thereafter she continued with mostly Regency novels until her death. 

This book is very fact-heavy, especially on issues of publication and tax payments -- often she would write a book specifically to pay off a debt. She also sometimes made unwise decisions to sell off the rights to books for what now seems a pittance. I would have loved to read more about her creative process, but Georgette Heyer was an extremely private person and gave almost no interviews, so Kloester had to rely on letter and papers. However, I found it an extremely fast read. There were some surprises, like the fact that Heyer's publishers did essentially no editing -- she would just send them the title and some basic information, then her manuscript would arrive and that was pretty much it! She did have some fights with printers who would take it upon themselves to change spelling without consulting her -- then had the nerve to charge her! 

Even if you're not a fan of Heyer's romances, this is an extremely interesting look at the life of a prolific writer (it also inspired me to read two more of her books while I was reading this one!) I still  have literary biographies and memoirs of three other writers on my TBR Pile Challenge list: Margaret Mitchell, Edith Wharton, and Elizabeth Jane Howard. Bloggers, which should I read next?

This is my second book for the TBR Pile Challenge 2019. Only ten left to go!

A Roundup of Victorian Mini-Reviews

Or more precisely, a round up of mini-reviews of Victorian and Victorian-related works. (I like my title better). Anyway, I'm making really great progress on my Victorian Reading Challenge -- so far I've finished 16 of the 31 categories I want to complete and written reviews for nearly all of them. However, I've gotten behind on posts for the past few weeks and since three of them seem to go together, I thought I'd write up some mini-reviews and get on with it. 

Three Men on the Bummel by Jerome K. Jerome. This sequel to the beloved Three Men in a Boat has J and his friends George and Harris reunited for a summer bicycling tour through Germany. A good chunk of the book is devoted to the preparations for the trip (made more complicated by the wives and children of the three, who are not joining the party) and the usual funny asides when an incident reminds J of a funny story. Though not quite as fun as the original, this book has some great moments. It's pointless to describe them, so I'll just include one of my favorite passages. Sadly, the dog Montmorency isn't included in this story, but I had to include this bit which does include dogs.

This quote is a bit long, but it's one of my favorites from the whole book:

. . . in Germany most human faults and follies sink into comparative insignificance beside the enormity of walking on the grass.  Nowhere, and under no circumstances, may you at any time in Germany walk on the grass.  Grass in Germany is quite a fetish.  To put your foot on German grass would be as great a sacrilege as to dance a hornpipe on a Mohammedan’s praying-mat.  The very dogs respect German grass; no German dog would dream of putting a paw on it.  If you see a dog scampering across the grass in Germany, you may know for certain that it is the dog of some unholy foreigner.  

In England, when we want to keep dogs out of places, we put up wire netting, six feet high, supported by buttresses, and defended on the top by spikes.  In Germany, they put a notice-board in the middle of the place, “Hunden verboten,” and a dog that has German blood in its veins looks at that notice-board and walks away.  In a German park I have seen a gardener step gingerly with felt boots on to grass-plot, and removing therefrom a beetle, place it gravely but firmly on the gravel; which done, he stood sternly watching the beetle, to see that it did not try to get back on the grass; and the beetle, looking utterly ashamed of itself, walked hurriedly down the gutter, and turned up the path marked “Ausgang.”

As I'm currently living in Germany, I found this very amusing. Germany is a nation that takes rules and regulations extremely seriously. 

I'm counting this as my New To You Book by a Favorite Author.

Victoria: The Queen by Julia Baird. I was inspired to read this after finally watching the new Masterpiece production of Victoria, which had a lot of comments on one of my favorite non-book blogs, Frock Flicks, at which historical costume experts discuss (and sometimes destroy) historical film and TV adaptations. Yes, Lord Melbourne wasn't nearly as dishy as Rufus Sewell, but Queen Victoria was a little bit in love with him. Overall the book is well-written and engrossing, but I got a little bored with Victoria's life towards the end, but maybe there really wasn't that much to say; at that point I think the lives of her children are more interesting -- I recommend Victoria's Daughters by Jerrold M. Packer, which I reviewed a few years ago.

I'm counting this as my Book About Queen Victoria (fiction or non-fiction).

A Woman of No Importance by Oscar Wilde. Another drawing room comedy, but with more dramatic elements. Taking place over just a couple of days at a country house party, young George Arbuthnot has just landed a plum job with the worldly and sophisticated Lord Illingworth. His mother is dead set against him taking the job, because she has a Deep Dark Secret. The third play I've read by Wilde,  and though it has some witty moments, it's my least favorite so far. Here are a few of his trademark bons mots:

“One should never trust a woman who tells one her real age. A woman who would tell one that, would tell one anything.”

“After a good dinner one can forgive anybody, even one’s own relations.”

“To get into the best society, nowadays, one has either to feed people, amuse people, or shock people - that is all!”

I'm counting this as my Play or Book of Short Stories for the Victorian Reading Challenge.

Doctor Thorne by Anthony Trollope. Third in the Barchester Chronicles, it's the story of Mary Thorne, the relatively poor niece of a country village doctor, and Frank Gresham, eldest son of the local squire whose family is pressuring him to marry for money. I was looking for a good audiobook and realized I could get Doctor Thorne (probably my favorite Trollope novel) via digital download from my library; also, I got my hands on a copy of the Andrew Davies TV adaptation and wanted to refresh my memory before watching the DVD -- I hope that wasn't a mistake! Nevertheless, I loved it nearly as much as when I read it the first time -- I did get a little disgusted by the snobbery and hypocrisy of the Greshams and their wealthy cousins, the DeCourcys, who believe that family connections are everything until they need a massive infusion of cash. A great story, though.

I'm counting this as my Victorian Re-Read.

So -- four more Victorians crossed off the list, only 15 left to go!

Victoria's Daughters by Jerrold M. Packer

My fascination with Victorian writers has expanded to overlap with my love of non-fiction -- I find it so interesting to read the actual history that was going on during my favorite literary period.  I found Victoria's Daughters at one of the library sales a couple of years ago for a mere $1.  After the debacle of my last so-called nonfiction read, I needed some actual history to cleanse my reading palate.  Though it isn't nearly as scholarly as I expected, it was still a fascinating read. 

Queen Victoria had nine children over a period of seventeen years, and five of them were girls: Victoria, the Princess Royal (known as Vicky), Alice, Helena (known as Lenchen), Louise, and Beatrice (she eventually had forty grandchildren).  Though not nearly as well documented as their famous mother, this is still a very interesting insight into the lives of the Queen's household, how European royalty was intertwined through marriage, and the transition from the 19th century to the 20th. 

There are also some hints about the background of World War I, since Victoria's oldest daughter (also named Victoria and known as Vicky) married the oldest son of the German Emperor, and was the mother of William the Second of Germany, also known as Kaiser Wilhelm.  When Germany and England were at war, royal cousins were fighting on both sides.  

Basically, it was the duty of Queen Victoria's daughters to make brilliant marriages:  her second daughter Alice also married a German prince, Louis of Hesse (her daughter Alix married Nicholas of Russia, the final Tsar); her fourth daughter Louise married a future Scottish Duke; the other two daughters, Helen and Beatrice, also married minor German princes.  Well, the youngest daughter finally married at 28, even though Victoria was initially furious at the idea of her youngest daughter marrying at all -- it was her duty to stay with her mother for her entire life.  Beatrice was 17 years younger than Victoria and only four years old when her father Prince Albert died, so Beatrice spent her entire life taking care of her mother.  Eventually Queen Victoria agreed to her marriage, but only on the condition that Beatrice and her husband live with the Queen and Beatrice continue to act as her unofficial secretary.  

Princess Beatrice, the youngest daughter, in her wedding dress.

This was a really interesting book -- lots of history, several scandals, and much of it was quite tragic.  Hemophilia ran in the family, and besides Queen Victoria's son Leopold, some of the grandsons were also hemophiliac and died young.  The second daughter, Alice, died of diphtheria which she contracted while nursing her own children, one of whom had also just died during the same outbreak.

Princess Alice, the second of Queen Victoria's daughters.

I did have a few quibbles -- there weren't nearly enough photos, considering how many people are included in the book.  Also, though there's an excellent chart showing the immediate family tree (which runs horizontally across a two-page spread, so I was constantly turning the book sideways) I really wish the author had included a map or two.  There are a lot of references to various royal houses, palaces, and castles, and I'm a visual person, so I would have liked some geographical layout.  Also, a map of all the German kingdoms of the time would have been helpful -- four of the daughters married German princes, and there was a lot of traveling in the book back and forth between England and Germany.  

The writing in this book was pretty accessible, though a bit clunky at times.  Packard has this tendency to end sections with heavy foreshadowing and dramatic flourish, as though he were writing cliffhangers.  A lot.  For example:

From those earliest years, the little girl stored up constant approbation, in reserve for the day when she would turn it disastrously loose in her adult life.  (Cue ominous music).  Or how about:

Only a fiend could have predicted that such bliss would, starting in a few weeks, begin to turn to choking dust.

I also noticed that Packard had a tendency to editorialize instead of just presenting the facts and allowing the reader to form an opinion.  For example, after the death of Beatrice's husband, there was a rift between Beatrice and her sister Louise: 

Probably no family row would have occurred if [Louise] hadn't let her mouth get ahead of her brain when Liko's death was reported while the family was at Osborne. . . . It was a stupid and careless thing for one sister to tell another under the circumstances, and understandably, for a time it badly strained relations between Louise and Beatrice.

I'm sure that after spending years researching a subject for a book, a writer couldn't help but form opinions about them one way or another, but I did find a few of the comments a bit over the top.  Perhaps by merely including a quote the reader can come to his or her own conclusion about the stupid things that siblings say to each other.  

Overall, though, I really enjoyed this book.  I also have several other books about Victorian history on the to-read pile, and some more royal biographies.  My book group is reading Helen Rappaport's The Romanov Sisters in a few months, and I'm also really looking forward to that one.  Bloggers, which books about Victorian history do you recommend?  Which royal biographies? 

The Sisters: The Saga of the Mitford Family by Mary S. Lovell

Sometimes when I read books off my TBR Pile Challenge list, it's kind of a slog, and I wonder why I bothered keeping this book around.  However, more often than not, I've been so pleasantly surprised by a book I'm annoyed at myself for waiting so long to read it.  The Sisters: The Saga of the Mitford Family is the second type of book -- a sheer delight and one that I couldn't stop reading.  

I'd never heard of the Mitfords until I watched the BBC adaptation of Love in a Cold Climate around 2006.  I was so enchanted by the story that I quickly bought the book (a combined volume with The Pursuit of Love.)  I loved them both so I was delighted to find The Sisters, which I promptly put on my to-read shelf and then ignored, though I moved it from house to house.  I'm really glad I finally read it -- it's both a chatty tell-all and a fascinating biography of a the intertwining lives of six sisters from an eccentric aristocratic English family.  

This is one of those stories that is truly stranger than fiction.  The eldest sister, Nancy, became a bestselling author; the third sister Diana was a reowned Society beauty who married an heir to the Guinness fortune and then left him for Oswald Mosley, a right-wing politician who became an infamous Fascist (both were imprisoned without trial for three years during WWII); another sister, Unity, was one of Hitler's groupies and was rumoured to have been his lover.  The next-to-last sister, Jessica (nicknamed "Decca") eloped with a distant cousin Edmond Romilly, a nephew by marriage to Winston Churchill.  Romilly had fought against fascism in Spain and they were both Marxists.  The youngest sister, Deborah, became Duchess of Devonshire.  So, you can just imagine that this book is just packed with interesting characters and history, mostly set during my favorite period, the inter-war years in England.  I will note that there's quite a focus on Unity's friendship with Hitler, which is really quite creepy.  There's also a lot of discussion as to whether or not some of the sisters were anti-Semitic. I know that this wasn't uncommon among the upper-class British at the time, but it sometimes makes for some uncomfortable reading. 

All of the sisters (with the possible exception of Pamela, the second sister) were real characters, and they were all smart and witty -- sadly, they had very little formal education (some of the sisters never forgave their parents for denying them higher education).  Most of them had writing talent, and besides Nancy, Decca and Deborah also published books -- Deborah published a memoir called Wait For Me! back in 2010.  

I really enjoyed this book -- it's just chatty and gossipy enough to be fun, and includes enough history and politics to be informative, without getting bogged down in too much politics and jargon.  And I was surprised that I never had any trouble distinguishing between all six of them -- they had such distinct personalities.  I only had a few quibbles with the book -- there's not much about the second sister, Pamela, for one thing; also, I did have trouble keeping track of all the many houses the families lived in -- a map would have been incredibly useful, to go along with the family tree and extensive endnotes.  

Overall, though, it's a great biography and I'm very interest to read more of Lovell's books.  She also wrote a biography of Beryl Markham called Straight on Till Morning; The Churchills: In Love and War, plus several others.   The book has really piqued my interest about the Mitfords.  My TBR shelves still include  Hons and Rebels, Decca's memoir; Nancy's book Wigs on the Green, a satire about the fascist sister Unity; and a 700-page volume of Decca's letters.  Hopefully I'll get to some of them before the end of the year.  And now I'm halfway through my TBR Pile Challenge -- I've finished six books in six months, so I'm right on track. 

Marie Antoinette: The Journey by Antonia Fraser

Because I've committed to only reading books from my own shelves until March, I've been really strict with myself and only allowed exceptions for books for my book group (of which I am the moderator, so I can't wiggle out of reading them).  This includes audiobooks -- I nearly always have one in progress in the car, because the radio in my area is just dire.  Since I only actually own audiobooks by Jane Austen, I'm forced to search my library's catalog for audiobook editions of books on my TBR shelves which can be challenging.  Not many audiobooks by Trollope in the library collection! 

However, I did find one last, lone audio copy of Marie Antoinette: The Journey by Antonia Fraser, which has been on my nonfiction shelf for a couple of years (picked it up for a mere $1 at the Friends of the Library sale).  I've been really interested in historical biographies since I read and loved Catherine the Great by Robert K. Massie last year.  The story of Marie Antoinette really intrigued me since Massie mentions how shocked Catherine was at the death of MA during the French Revolution (hopefully, that isn't a spoiler for anyone!). 

Before I began this book, I knew next to nothing about her life, except that she lost hear head during the French Revolution and her infamous line, "Let them eat cake," (which she never actually said -- that line had been attributed to a lot of disliked princesses years before she'd ever married Louis).   I didn't know much about the history of France or the Revolution either.

So, this is Marie's life story, beginning with her childhood as one of EIGHTEEN children borne by Maria Theresa, the Hapsburg Empress of Austria.  Marie's marriage to the Dauphin Louis, the future King Louis XVII of France, was merely a political move by the Hapsburgs to try and solidify an alliance with France.  The Austrians hoped that Marie would someday be able to influence the French to their advantage, but basically, this set up young Marie for failure for the rest of her life.  

Kirstin Dunst as Marie Antoinette in the film adaptation

She was married at 14 to Louis, who was shy and indecisive, which set HIM up for failure as a King, given the historic circumstances of his reign.  They weren't bad people, just mediocre rulers at a time when the wealthy excesses of the royals at a time when common people were demanding more rights and equality, taxes were high and finally, bad weather and poor harvests drove food prices sky-high.  A war with Austro-Hungary was the last straw.  The French people essentially never forgave Marie for being Austrian, and made her the scapegoat for everything -- she was just crucified in the press and libeled for being spendthrift, a lesbian, promiscuous, and manipulative, most of which wasn't true.  She was pretty much doomed from the start.  I'm sure Marie Antoinette wasn't perfect, but her life was pretty tragic.  She certainly didn't deserve execution.

This book was very well-written and interesting, but since I don't know that much about the history of France and the Revolution, I can't compare it to anything else.  I'm not sure if Marie was really just misunderstood or if Fraser is leaving out anything negative about Marie.  I'm going to have to read more about French history to get another side of the story.  The basic facts behind the Revolution are mostly mentioned in passing, only in relation to what happens to Marie.  I wish Fraser had included more of that background, it was so focused on how it really related to the royal family.  The rest of France seems to be glossed over.

However, this book was extremely enjoyable, and I listened to it almost on audio because of the excellent narration by Donada Peters.  Normally, when I have an audiobook, I read ahead in the print copy, to make it go faster.  Peters' posh accent and beautiful pronunciation of all the French names was so good that reading it myself just didn't do the narration justice, no matter how I tried to imagine her voice in my head (does anyone else do that?).  So I listened to nearly the entire story, which is rare for me, especially since this book was more than 20 hours of audio on 17 discs -- it took me about five weeks, and I'm normally not that patient. 

I'm currently taking a break from France for a bit, but I think after this I'm going to revisit France and read The Debacle by Emile Zola, his best-selling novel from about the Franco-Prussian War.  What other books about France should I read?  And which other royal biographies do you recommend? 

The Duchess by Amanda Foreman

After completing Wild Swans, I was inspired to tackle more nonfiction (specifically, book #11 for the TBR Pile Challenge.)  I'd seen the movie adaptation of The Duchess a couple of years ago, but never got around to reading the book which I'd picked up for a paltry $1 at the library Friends sale.  It was also one of the reading selections from our Jane Austen book group that I never read.

Anyhow, once I finally started reading this, I quite liked it.  Georgiana was a really interesting woman.  I mostly think of 17th century women as standing around in giant dresses with enormous powdered wigs, but she was actually a political powerhouse.  Georgiana Spencer (great-great-I-forgot-how-many-times-great aunt of Lady Diana Spencer, yes, THAT Diana Spencer) was 17 when she married the Duke of Devonshire, uniting two rich and powerful British families in the late 1700s.  Most of what I know about 18th century history is about the American Revolution; this book is about what was happening politically on the other side of the Atlantic around that time.  Her marriage to the Duke was troubled, yet she became involved in politics and was incredibly influential with the Whig party.  She was also a close confidante of famous politicians like James Fox and the Prince Regent (and all you Jane Austen fans know exactly who that is).

Of course this book talks about Georgiana's difficult marriage and home life, and her complicated relationship with the Duke, and her best friend Elizabeth Foster, who lived with them for years and  was also her husband's off and on mistress!  Complicated is putting it mildly.  However, there was much more politics than I was expecting.  I liked it but I did have trouble sometimes keeping all the politicians straight.

And to make matters even worse, Georgiana had a serious gambling problem.  Gambling was to the rich as gin was to the poor, the book notes.  She racked up seriously jaw-dropping debts, literally millions in today's dollars.   Plus she had at least one lover and illegitimate child, and the story there is really heart-breaking.  Not really a role model, but a very complicated and interesting woman. 

So -- I've now completed eleven of the twelve books for my TBR Pile Challenge!  I have three left on my original pile (since I also read my two optional books already).   How's everyone else doing with this challenge?  Have you finished, or are you close to completing it?  Which books have you liked best? 

Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman by Robert K. Massie

I think 2013 is going to be The Year of the Great Nonfiction Reads for me.  I keep finding more and more nonfiction I want to read.  Seriously, I'll bet I could read nothing but nonfiction for the rest of the year and never finish all the books on my list.

I was looking for a great biography for my library book group and this kept popping up on the radar, and after narrowing the selection down to three or four books, I took them all out to lunch with me.  After a few pages of this one, I was hooked, and would have kept right on reading it except I try very hard to wait until the month before to start it.  Normally, I allow even less time, since I like to keep the book fresh in my mind for the discussion.  This time I let myself start it a month early because it's about 600 pages long.

I never really knew very much about European history during the 18th century -- I've read War and Peace (though I've forgotten most of it) and I remember some stuff I've read about the French kings and the Revolution, but that's pretty much it.  All the 18th century history I remember is mostly about the American Revolution.  For example, I had no idea that both Catherine AND her husband Peter were actually German -- Catherine (born Sophia) was a minor German princess whose mother's brother had originally been engaged to Empress Elizabeth, though he died while they were still betrothed.  Elizabeth never married and after she seized power years later, she decided to that her heir, her nephew Peter (grandson of Peter the Great) should marry Catherine, his cousin, so they could produce an heir and ensure that Peter's lineage would continue.  Catherine embraced the Russian language and culture though Peter always hated it and wanted to return to Germany.

Basically, Catherine was AWESOME.  This is in the 1700s, when doctors thought it was still an good idea to drain your blood when you were sick, America hadn't even signed the Declaration of Independence, and a huge percentage of the Russian population was poor or even serfs.  Meanwhile, Catherine was educated and enlightened -- she corresponded regularly with Voltaire and Diderot; spent two years trying to create an enlightened system of government, with a document called the Nakaz, (which ultimately failed) -- even before the Americans wrote the Constitution; she even had herself inoculated against smallpox in 1780, to show that it was safe.  By 1800, more than 2 million Russians had been inoculated as well.

If this sounds dry, and boring, well, it wasn't.  I probably should have waited until nearer the discussion because it was an absolute page-turner.  Intrigues, scandals, plotting -- seriously, parts of this book are like an 18th-century version of Game of Thrones, but without the dragons.  Catherine's husband definitely reminded me the vile Prince Joffrey, and Catherine the Great is just as clever as Margaery Tyrell.   Lord Vaerys and some the other King's Landing courtiers would have fit right in the palaces in Moscow and St. Petersburg, if they had warmer costumes.

Margaery and Joffrey aka Catherine the Great and Peter

This book has really spurred my interest in royal biographies -- I still have The Duchess by Amanda Foreman and Marie Antoinette: The Journey by Antonia Fraser on the TBR shelf, so I'm ready to tackle those.  And Massie's other books about the Russian royalty are definitely going on my to-read list.  I haven't decided if I should go backward in time and read his biography of Peter the Great, or skip forward and read about the Romanovs.  I'm also thinking about reading some Russian lit this summer, probably Dead Souls by Gogol.

Has anyone else read Robert Massie's books?  Which did you like best?  And what about Russian lit?  I'm a little scared off since I read Anna Karenina, but if Gogol goes well I might even try Dostoevsky!

Charles Dickens: A Life by Claire Tomalin

Last year was the bicentenary of Dickens' birth, and there were a slew of books published about Dickens -- I can't remember how many I added to my to-read list, but still haven't read (I did celebrate Dickens by completing three of his works in 2012:  Martin Chuzzlewit, Our Mutual Friend, and Barnaby Rudge.)

I bought this book just after Christmas, but kept avoiding it.  Big fat nonfiction books tend to scare me, which is a little stupid.  Some of my favorite reads last year were nonfiction, and one of my favorites was a biography, Becoming Queen Victoria by Kate Williams.  However, I realized it was available in audiobook format, and last year I submitted it to the "Suggest A Purchase" feature on the library's website.  They did buy it, and after months of waiting, it finally arrived in January.

I really, really enjoyed this book -- I used to think biographies were dry and boring, but either I was reading the wrong books, or they've gotten much better lately.  This was fascinating stuff.  I knew the basics about Dickens' life from bits and pieces I'd picked up after reading his books, but to learn about his life from start to finish was quite fascinating.  Of course, many readers know now that he was forced to work in a blacking factory as a child after his father was sent to debtor's prison, the inspiration for his favorite novel, David Copperfield.

I loved learning about Dickens, and having read most of the novels, it was interesting to place them into the context of his life.   Though I've enjoyed most of his books, and absolutely love some of them, I learned some things about him that I didn't like very much.  He was a complicated person.  His childhood was difficult, his father was terrible with money, and even though Dickens seemed to work tirelessly, he was constantly faced with demands for financial support from his father, his brothers, and his own children, most of whom were not terribly successful.

Dickens definitely had faults -- his now-famous liaison with a much-younger actress Nelly Ternan is pretty scandalous, and it seems like he was pretty cruel to his wife, and sometimes his children.  But Tomalin obviously did amazing research and puts it all together in a way that's easy to follow.  Just reading his handwriting alone is a triumph -- I've seen some Dickens' original letters and manuscripts in exhibits, and he's nearly indecipherable.

I think listening to something challenging makes it a little bit easier.  For me, it's a little less intimidating if I start with an audio of a book that scares me.  I can take it in bits and pieces, and then I'm not as scared to tackle the print copy.  In this case, I listened to it a little bit every day while driving to and from work in the car, and I really enjoyed it.  I always try to have an audiobook in the car because the radio here in my city is just dreadful.  (I like NPR but I can't listen to the news too much because I find it too depressing).   Also, I usually have a print copy so I can read the book at home (and sometimes a second library copy at work) -- otherwise I'd sit in the driveway listening!   However, then I find it takes me forever to find my place in the audio when I get back in the car.  This time I resisted because I was really enjoying the audio version.  I listened to almost the entire book, except when I got to the end of the three-week checkout period and I couldn't renew it because there were holds on it.

Anyway, I was sorry when it ended and now I want to read lots more biographies, more books about Dickens, and most importantly, I'm determined to finish the rest of Dickens' novels.  I have three left:
The Pickwick Papers, The Old Curiosity Shop, and The Mystery of Edwin Drood.  Which one should I read next?  Which other books about Dickens are must-reads?  And how do you feel about audiobooks?

Flush by Virginia Woolf

I'd been planning for weeks to start reading Flush, and finally it was time.  It's in the Persephone catalog, so it was top on my TBR list for that reason; also, Amanda from The Zen Leaf chose it for me last year in our first-ever Reading Swap.  And it's been sitting around on my TBR shelf for a couple of years now, so my timing was perfect. 

Now that it is time to put words on the blog I find I'm at a bit of a loss.  This is a short little book about a dog written by Virginia Woolf; specifically, Elizabeth Barrett Browning's dog.  Ostensibly, it is a biography, but is it about a dog or a poet?  Or is it just an excuse to start reading Virginia Woolf, who scares me?


Flush is not a hard read, and I suppose it's not one of the Woolfs that is studied and discussed and analyzed extensively by the literati.  (Which I am not, believe me!)  It begins when young Flush is given as a gift by his owner to Ms. Barrett (not yet Mrs. Browning), an invalid.  He must give up his days of sniffing and running and exploring the outdoors to be the indoor companion of this bedridden poet.  He loves her and becomes extremely protective and suspicious of Mr. Browning, and he is along for the ride during their elopement and marriage and journeys to Italy and back.  The story moves back and forth in places between his point of view and that of his owner.  

I know next to nothing about Elizabeth Barrett Browning but now I am intrigued by her life as well.  I do remember Browning and Flush are included in a book called Shaggy Muses, which is a nonfiction work about the lives of several women writers and their pets.

Like the life of a dog, Flush is sadly short.  This was the first of Woolf's fiction that I really liked, and I wish I'd had more of it to read.  I am glad, however, that the ending wasn't terribly sad -- there are so many tearjerking stories about beloved pets these days, I really did not want to cry at the end of this book.

Virginia Woolf seems to be all over the blogs the past couple of weeks.  My good friend Amanda was baffled by Orlando; Carolyn at A Few of My Favorite Books brought To the Lighthouse to Florida for a beach read!  To the Lighthouse has been sitting on my shelves unread as long as Flush, but it scares me -- it's such a short little book but I've heard it's challenging.  Stream-of-consciousness is not really my thing.  

The endpapers from the Persephone edition of Flush

I did read Mrs. Dalloway and was underwhelmed, but that was a few years ago when I had just started reading classics.  Maybe I didn't know enough about her work to appreciate it.  Last year, my classics book group at the library read A Room of One's Own, which I quite liked, but that's really a long essay, so I don't know I'd like her fiction.


This probably isn't the best review I've written, but I feel like I don't know enough about Woolf or her writing to think of something clever and insightful.  I would love to hear other people's thoughts -- how does this compare to other works by Virginia Woolf?  Should I take the plunge and read To the Lighthouse or start with something a little easier?

This is my third book for Persephone Reading Weekend, hosted by Verity and Claire.  Check out their blog links for more thoughts on Persephone books!

The Man Who Invented Christmas by Les Standiford

This book is not very timely -- who wants to read about Christmas in July?  Well, it's usually mighty hot here in Texas, and every summer I like to fantasize about snow, wearing wool sweaters and drinking hot beverages next to a roaring fire, when in fact I am huddled under an air conditioner with a sweaty glass of lemonade, looking longingly at my yard and wishing it were 20 degrees cooler so I could sit outside and enjoy it. 

So Dickens and Christmas is just about as opposite of a Texas summer as I can imagine.  This book is a short biography of Dickens, focusing on how and why he wrote his most beloved work, A Christmas Carol, and its huge impact on Western culture, specifically how most people celebrate or imagine Christmas. 

It begins with Dickens reading in Manchester for a charity fundraiser.  He was at a tough place in his current work, Martin Chuzzlewit, and facing personal and financial difficulties.  Like today, most writers are only as popular as their last work.  Dickens was in debt and needed something inspirational -- his previous work, American Notes for General Circulation, was not well received, and Chuzzlewit, his latest serial publication wasn't nearly as popular as the books that made him famous. 

The book includes a short background of Dickens' career before A Christmas Carol, and gives quite a lot of detail about his publishing history.  it's pretty depressing that one of the world's most beloved writers made so little money from his own works, since countries didn't recognize international copyrights.  There were bootleg versions and lousy knockoffs published in England as well -- at one point, he sues a publisher for a cheap imitation of his work.  He won the lawsuit, but the publisher declared bankruptcy, so Dickens wound up having to pay court costs for himself and the defendant as well!  Talk about adding insult to injury! (He did put this experience to good use as material for Bleak House).

There's also a lot of background about how the Christmas holidays had fallen out of favor and were barely celebrated in the manner that most people imagine. Dickens himself was writing about an idealized holiday. The popularity of this book inspired people to decorate and start buying more Christmas turkeys, which quickly surpassed the popularity of the traditional Christmas goose. (I've tasted roast goose, it was pretty dry; I'm not surprised that most people prefer turkey). Prince Albert also contributed Christmas traditions, popularizing Christmas trees.


I don't know that this book has anything particular insightful or groundbreaking.  If you're a Dickens fan you probably know all about his sad childhood, how he skyrocketed to fame with The Pickwick Papers, and his unhappy marriage and divorce.  It does help give some context and background, and there's some interesting background about 19th century publishing.  Standiford recommends Peter Ackroyd's biography of Dickens, (about 1200 pages!) which is sadly out of print, but I was intrigued enough to check it out of the library despite its length.

I'm also hoping that this book will inspire me to return to Dickens.  Reading his entire works is one of my lifelong goals, but I got discouraged with my most recent attempt, The Old Curiosity Shop, which I haven't touched in weeks. I started it and I found Quilp so repulsive I haven't picked it up again. 

This is book #9 for Our Mutual Read Challenge.