Paris in July 2022

It's July already, the year is half over -- how did this happen? But for me July will always include the Paris in July reading challenge hosted by Thyme for Tea. I started participating in this event back in 2011 and I've posted my Francophile book reviews nearly every year since! 

As always, I'm trying to read mostly from my own shelves in my never-ending quest to empty the TBR shelves. Some of these can also count for the Back to the Classics and TBR Pile Challenges, and from my Classics Club List. I'm sure I won't finish all of them but reading goals are always good, right? 

First, the French books in translation: 

• Claudine Married by Colette. The second novella in the Claudine omnibus; I'm sure I won't finish the entire series this month.
• The Mystery of Henri Pick by David Foenkinos. Found this whilst browsing in the library and it looked interesting (and short!). 
• Maman, What Are We Called Now? by Jacqueline Mesnil-Amar. 
• Renoir, My Father by Jean Renoir
• A Fine of Two Hundred Francs by Elsa Triolet
• The Bright Side of Life by Emile Zola

Books originally written in English but set in France: 

• The Loved and Envied by Enid Bagnold
• Greengage Summer by Rumer Godden
• Martha in Paris by Margery Sharp
• The Golden Lion of Granpere by Anthony Trollope
• Summer Will Show by Sylvia Townsend Warner

So - mostly fiction and fairly short books - more than half of them are under 300 pages and a couple are under 200! The longest is the Renoir biography (not counting the Claudine omnibus but all three of the remaining novellas are under 200 pages). I wonder if I could actually finish the entire list? 

Bloggers, have you read any of these? Which are your favorites and should be read first? And what else do you recommend for Paris in July?

The Feast by Margaret Kennedy

Cover of a 1969 reprint. This one is pretty much perfect.

So, how is everyone's summer reading going? Anyone in the mood for a beach read that turns out to be full of death and destruction? The Feast by Margaret Kennedy was reprinted last summer and WOW. I put it on my Christmas list last year and saved it to read until this summer. If you're looking for a summer read that packs a real punch, this is it. 

Published in 1949, this is basically a morality tale that tells you upfront that people are going to die -- this is NOT a spoiler, it's the setup. The book begins a prologue: the annual meeting of two friends, a minister in Cornwall and his summer visitor (they're hardly in the book, so their names are not really important). They normally begin the visit with an evening of chess, but the host needs to put off their game in order to finish a sermon for the following day -- a eulogy for a group of people who tragically perished when a cliff collapses on top of a summer resort, leaving nothing but a massive pile of rubble. 

However, we do know that there were some survivors among the resort's guests -- but who? 

The copy of my edition.
Nice, but I don't think it really reflects the setting of the book. 

The book then jumps back seven days and describes the final week of the resort and its inhabitants. Set in 1947, the Siddal family are struggling to make ends meet in their ancestral home on the Cornish coast and have converted it to a boarding house, not so much a hotel. Mrs. Siddal is trying to make a go of it but her husband has mentally checked out and doesn't lift a finger, hiding in a room under the stairs. Her three grown sons help but are ready to leave the nest. There are also some servants including Miss Ellis, a snobbish, gossipy housekeeper and Nancibel, the loyal housemaid. Then there are the guests, including two families, the wealthy Gifford family with four children; the Coves, with three; an unhappy couple, the Paleys, who are grieving for their dead daughter; plus an obnoxious clergyman, his put-upon daughter Evangeline; and a late arrival, a bestselling author and her chauffeur. It's almost like an Agatha Christie novel, but instead of a murder, it's a natural disaster, and the reader has to work out who will live and who will die. 

The original 1949 cover. Good, but I like the 1969 cover better. 

This book took a bit for me to get into, but after the first few pages, I was hooked. It's divided up by the seven days of the final week for the resort, and each has many short sections (too short to really call chapters) covering the many characters in the book. And there are a LOT of characters, more than twenty. Some of the children are really minor characters, but it didn't take long to keep everyone straight. They're mostly really well developed and the plot got me completely engrossed, so I was able to speed through it quickly -- it's more than 400 pages long, and the last day I read almost the last hundred pages in a single sitting. It is THAT GOOD. 

A French edition from 1956

Towards the end I began to have a terrible sense of foreboding -- of course the reader already knows that disaster is looming but there is a lot of foreshadowing. I absolutely had favorite characters and I was dreading the end because I'm always worried if someone I like will be killed off. If you want hints about the plot and the outcome, feel free to read the introduction which gives some very strong hints. I have given up reading introductions because of spoilers so I was blown away by the ending. I am glad that I did go back and read it because there was some subtext that I had definitely missed. 

A new French reprint. Good, but a little too cheerful for what's inside the book.

This is an absolutely brilliant book and I know it will be one of my top reads of the summer, if not the entire year. I've only read one other book by Margaret Kennedy, Troy Chimneys, which is also good but very different from this one. Several of her other books are still in print including her other most famous book, The Constant Nymph, which I also own and will definitely move up on the to-read pile. 

I'm counting this as my Classic Set In A Place You'd Like To Visit for the Back to the Classics Challenge. It's also the first read for my Big Book Summer Reading Challenge.

Big Book Summer Reading Challenge 2022

Time for another Big Book Summer Reading Challenge hosted by Suzan at Book by Book! Alas, I still have too many unread books. Let's see if I can shrink the pile just a little this summer. Here is my stack of hopeful reads: 

1. They Were Counted by Miklos Banffy (624 pp)
2. The Deepening Stream by Dorothy Canfield Fisher (616 pp)
3. Night Falls on the City by Sarah Gainham (632 pp)
4. Long Live Great Bardfield by Tirzah Garwood (495 pp)
5. My American by Stella Gibbons (480 pp)
6. A London Family by Molly Hughes (600 pp)
7. The Feast by Margaret Kennedy (448 pp)
8. Renoir, My Father by Jean Renoir (456 pp)
9. The Gods Arrive by Edith Wharton (454 pp)
10. The Most of P. G. Wodehouse (701 pp)

Nearly all of them count for other challenges -- Back to the Classics, the TBR Pile Challenge, and the European Reading Challenge. I'm cheating a little this year by choosing mostly fiction which are normally much quicker than nonfiction. I do love a great big fat biography but since I'm so far behind this year I'm going for more novels instead; only three of this list are nonfiction and one volume is (mostly) short stories.  I'm hoping that most of them are fast reads. I know I won't finish them all but we can dream, right?

Which one should I read first -- and are there any I should just donate to my Little Free Library? Please let me know in the comments! And what's on your list for the Big Book Summer Reading Challenge?

Big Book Summer Challenge 2021

Time for another Big Book Summer Challenge! I was so happy to find Suzan's challenge last year -- I finished ten big fat books, eight of which were from my own shelves. I've been trying to whittle away at the longest books at my TBR shelves. I'm down to about 25, and if all goes as planned I'll have finished half of them by the end of the summer. Here's what I have left to read:

Nonfiction: (11)

The Art of Eating by M. F. K. Fisher (749 pp)

Our Hidden Lives: The Remarkable Diaries of Postwar Britain by Simon Garfield (544 pp)
Long Live Great Bardfield by Tirzah Garwood (495 pp)
Trollope by Victoria Glendinning (551 pp)
Slipstream: A Memoir by Elizabeth Jane Howard (528 pp)
A London Family, 1870-1900 by Molly Hughes (600 pp)
Edith Wharton by Hermione Lee (869 pp)
Decca: The Letters of Jessica Mitford (744 pp)

Millions Like Us: Women's Lives in War and Peace, 1939-1949 by Virginia Nicholson (508 pp)

The Gray Notebook by Josep Pla (638 pp) [library book]
Charles Dickens by Michael Slater (696 pp)

Novels: (8)

We Were Counted by Miklos Banffy (596 pp)

The Complete Claudine by Collette (656 pp)
Painting the Darkness by Robert Goddard (608 pp)
Bella Poldark by Winston Graham (688 pp)
Penmarric by Susan Howatch (735 pp)

The Kellys and the O'Kellys by Anthony Trollope (537 pp)

Ralph the Heir by Anthony Trollope (770 pp)
Marcella by Mrs. Humphrey Ward (560 pp)


Short Story Collections: (7)

Sketches by Boz by Charles Dickens (680 pp)

The World Over: The Collected Stories of W. Somerset Maugham, Vol. II (681 pp)
The Portable Dorothy Parker (626 pp)
The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter (495 pp)
The Complete Stories of Evelyn Waugh (640 pp)
The Collected Stories of Edith Wharton (640 pp)
The Most of P. G. Wodehouse (701 pp)

I'd love to finish at least ten this summer --  I've already started The Art of Eating by M. F. K. Fisher, though it won't count for the challenge since I've been reading it off and on for a couple of months. My goal is to read at least three from each list. Last year I finished ten, but half of them were fiction, which is faster for me than nonfiction. I also ended up reading two books that weren't on my original list. Top of my list this year include Bella Poldark (final novel in the Poldark series), Edith Wharton's biography, the Maugham stories, and the Wodehouse stories.

Bloggers, which of these should I read first? And is there anything I should skip reading and just donate to my local Little Free Library? What big fat books are on your reading list this summer?

Big Book Summer Wrap-Up

Summer is officially over, and so is the Big Book Summer Challenge hosted by Suzan at Book By Book. I'm very pleased because I finished ten very long books this summer! Eight were from my original list, and two were e-books that I'd been wanting to read. Here's what I read: 

Altogether I finished ten big fat books, seven in print, two on e-book, and one (mostly) audiobook: 

Nonfiction: (3)

Secrets of the Flesh: A Life of Colette by Judith Thurman (592 pp)
Roughing It by Mark Twain (592 pp)
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson (622 pp)

Fiction:(5)

Imperial Palace by Arnold Bennett (769 pp)
The Twisted Sword by Winston Graham (646 pp)

The Eighth Life by Nino Haratischvili (944 pp)
Temptation by Janos Szekeley (685 pp)
John Caldigate by Anthony Trollope (656 pp)
The Fruit of the Tree by Edith Wharton (652 pp)

Short Stories: (1)

East and West: The Collected Stories of W. Somerset Maugham, Vol. I (955 pp)

Of course, some of these books were actually not as long as expected, due to margins, font size, illustrations, etc. The nonfiction books also had indices and appendices. 

The longest book was The Collected Stories of W. Somerset Maugham, and the shortest was actually The Fruit of the Tree, though it doesn't look it.  Altogether, my total number of pages read for this challenge:  7,113!  (I also read some shorter books this summer to break it up). 

I enjoyed all the books for the most part. I think my least favorite was Roughing It and my favorites were Temptation, The Warmth of Other Suns, and Imperial Palace. I still love big fat books and plant to keep reading them -- there's still almost 30 books left on my original list! I have some other challenges coming up this fall and hope to finish some more by the end of the year -- and some shorter books too. 

Bloggers, how was your summer of reading? Did you finish any great big books, and what's on the horizon for your fall reading plans? And thanks again to Suzan for hosting, I hope we'll do it again next year!

John Caldigate: Trollope goes to Australia!

Not a great cover image, but the only OUP edition I could find online.
Strangely, my copy has a different cover.

'People who read no books are always fools to those who do read.'

Last week was particularly stressful -- the news is so dire and it only seems to get worse -- so it was time to turn to one of my favorite comfort authors, Anthony Trollope. I still have several of his novels unread on the shelves, and three of them were long enough to qualify for my Big Book Summer Challenge. I chose the shortest of the lot, John Caldigate, because the eponymous character travels to Australia, and it sounded like some nice armchair travel since I won't be going anywhere for a while.

Published in 1979, John Caldigate is one of Trollope's lesser-known works, and a standalone novel. It's the story of young Mr. Caldigate, heir to the estate of Folking in Cambridgeshire. His mother and sisters died years ago, but sadly, John's father was mourning and distant while he was a boy, so he mostly grew up on his cousin's estate. Now in his early 20s, John has left Cambridge, and is saddled with numerous gambling debts. The estate is entailed upon him, but his father has decided to disinherit him in favor of a cousin, and John takes a buyout from his father, pays off the debt, and books passage Australia with a classmate, Dick Shand, where they hope to make their fortune in the gold mines. While meeting with his father's banker Mr. Bolton, John spies his teenaged daughter Hester, and is struck by her beauty.

Anthony Trollope

Before his boat sails, John goes to say goodbye to his cousins, where his aunt pressures him to marry his oldest cousin Julia. John refuses to get himself engaged, and hightails it to the boat with his friend Dick, where they travel second-class, despite being gentlemen. On the voyage, John strikes up a friendship with a pretty actress, a widow known as Mrs. Smith. It's a long voyage and tongues start wagging, and it seems like everyone on board is aghast, including the ship's captain, and they all try to warn him off, but John is undeterred and declares himself engaged to her.

John and Dick stake a claim and start looking for gold, and after a detailed description of gold mining, he makes a trip back to Melbourne to look up Mrs. Smith. Then the story jumps forward in time several years. John is back in England, having made a fortune of £60,000. His father has missed him dreadfully and John pays off the mortgage on the estate, reinstating himself as heir. And now it's time to find himself a wife. John never forgot the beautiful Hester Bolton, now 20, and begins to court her, to the chagrin of her mother, a religious fanatic. She opposes the marriage from the beginning, but she can't stop it. All seems well until about a year later when some unsavory characters from Australia arrive, and John's world is turned upside down as he faces extortion and bigamy charges. 

I assumed this would be the standard Trollope comfort read, but elements of the plot went dark pretty quickly; particularly, Trollope's depiction of Mrs. Bolton's religious mania, (much of which I skimmed over). After John is charged with bigamy, the Boltons do something really despicable to Hester, which I would have found unforgivable. I was also distressed by some of John's relatives, especially his Aunt Polly who tries to snare him into marriage with his oldest cousin Julia. Some of Hester's relatives are pretty awful as well. 

I did enjoy Trollope's description of the sea voyage to Australia and the courtroom and trial details. There's also a pivotal side character who is a postal employee which I found delightful. Trollope worked as a postal employee for more than 20 years, so he must have really enjoyed including his detailed knowledge of stamps and postmarks into one of his novels. (Fun fact: Trollope invented the British post-box). 

This was a fast read, and a solid Trollope story. He doesn't get nearly the love of Dickens or Hardy, and of John Caldigate is definitely one of his more obscure novels -- there are hardly any editions and very few cover images. However, while searching online, I discovered that in 2015 John Caldigate was adapted into a graphic novel called Dispossession, by Simon Grennan. As far as I know, it's the only Trollope novel adapted, and it's an interesting choice because it's such an obscure novel. And I'm curious about how he condensed a 600 page Victorian chunkster into less than 100 pages. 

So -- one more Big Fat Book crossed off my summer reading list, and I've now read 34 of his 47 novels! Only 13 left to go -- I'll be sad when I'm done. I guess I'll just have to go back to the beginning and start again!

Big Book Summer Challenge

What's better than a reading challenge to inspire another list? Hosted by Suzan at Book by Book, I hope this challenge will help me to clear off all those enormous books I still have on my shelves. According to my Goodreads list, I still have more than 30 books on my owned-and-unread shelves that I consider Big Fat Books, i.e., more than 500 pages long (or thereabouts). I've divided them into categories. 

Nonfiction:

Our Hidden Lives: The Remarkable Diaries of Postwar Britain by Simon Garfield (544 pp)
Long Live Great Bardfield by Tirzah Garwood (495 pp)
Trollope by Victoria Glendinning (551 pp)
Slipstream: A Memoir by Elizabeth Jane Howard (528 pp)
A London Family, 1870-1900 by Molly Hughes (600 pp)
Edith Wharton by Hermione Lee (869 pp)
Decca: The Letters of Jessica Mitford (744 pp)
Charles Dickens by Michael Slater (696 pp)
Secrets of the Flesh: A Life of Colette by Judith Thurman (592 pp)
Roughing It by Mark Twain (592 pp)

Fiction: 

Imperial Palace by Arnold Bennett (769 pp)
T. Tembarom by Frances Hodgson Burnett (518 pp)
The Complete Claudine by Collette (656 pp)
Sketches by Boz by Charles Dickens (680 pp)
Painting the Darkness by Robert Goddard (608 pp)
Green Dolphin Street by Elizabeth Goudge (571 pp)
The Twisted Sword by Winston Graham (544 pp)
Bella Poldark by Winston Graham (688 pp)
Penmarric by Susan Howatch (735 pp)
Madame Solario by Gladys Huntington (493 pp)
The Little Ottleys by Ada Leverson (543 pp)
. . . And Ladies of the Club by Helen Santmyer (1176 pp)
Temptation by Janos Szekeley (685 pp)
John Caldigate by Anthony Trollope (656 pp)
Ralph the Heir by Anthony Trollope (770 pp)
Marcella by Mrs. Humphrey Ward (560 pp)
The Fruit of the Tree by Edith Wharton (652 pp)
Hudson River Bracketed by Edith Wharton (547 pp)
La Debacle by Emile Zola (536 pp)

Short Stories:

East and West: The Collected Stories of W. Somerset Maugham, Vol. I (955 pp)
The World Over: The Collected Stories of W. Somerset Maugham, Vol. II (681 pp)
The Portable Dorothy Parker (626 pp)
The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter (495 pp)
The Complete Stories of Evelyn Waugh (640 pp)
The Collected Stories of Edith Wharton (640 pp)
The Most of P. G. Wodehouse (701 pp)
The Collected Stories of Stephan Zweig (720 pp)


By my count, that's 37 books, and I don't even want to do the math to think of how many pages that is -- it could be an entire year's reading for me! I could just concentrate on reading long books all summer, but I still want to make my goal of 100 books, and I'm exactly on track right now. 

There are about 15 weeks this summer, if you count it as the period from Memorial Day to Labor Day (Memorial Day is early this year, and Labor Day is late, not until September 7). In theory I could probably finish one per week, if that's all I was reading, but I know that'll never happen! And I know that some of them will be much slower than others, like the Wharton biography which is more than 800 pages of tiny print, not including endnotes and the index -- it's a dense read. I can probably knock off most of the fiction books within a week each, but the nonfiction and short stories will be harder, especially since I tend to dip in and out of them, alternating with fiction. 

I'm not going to commit to any particular list at the moment, since I know I'll never stick to it. The only book I'm definitely going to read is Temptation by Janos Szekely -- it was a Mother's Day gift and I've already read a few pages, I'm already hooked and plant to dive into as soon as I finish my current read). So I guess my goal will be to simply read as many as possible, at least one from each category -- a lot of these books have been hanging around my TBR shelves forever and I should just suck it up and read them, or at least attempt -- if I'm not enjoying them, I'll donate them to the Little Free Library down the block, since the library is still closed. 

Bloggers, what do you suggest from my list of Big Fat Books? Do you have any enormous books you've been putting off forever? And do you have any reading goals this summer? 

Fifteen Books of Summer

There's a meme going around for 20 books of summer, but when I started compiling this list I realized some of mine are real whoppers, so I'm cutting it back to fifteen. I'm not usually good at finishing specific lists, unless it's for a challenge, but I wrote a post a couple of months ago of the Top Ten Books on my Spring TBR List, and I'm happy to say that I've finished eight of them so far and started the ninth. Who knows, maybe I'll actually succeed with this list as well.

A detailed list:

1. Heat Lightning by Helen Hull. A Persephone I received as a Mother's Day gift a few years ago, it's on my TBR Pile Challenge List; also, there's a mini Persephone Readathon this weekend so I really want to finish it in time.

2. The Magician's Assistant by Ann Patchett. I bought this at a library sale about 10 years ago, it is probably one of the books I've had owned and unread the longest. I downloaded the audio from the San Antonio Public Library and I need to finish it before my library card expires! (It's not pictured because I can't actually find my print copy -- could I have donated it to the library before we moved two years ago?)

3. My Name is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout. For my book group that meets next week before we break for the summer. Luckily  it's quite short, under 200 pages (which is why we chose it.) Highly recommended by Simon from Stuck in a Book.

4. London War Notes by Mollie Panter-Downes. Already started, but it's 450 pages of biweekly essays written for the New Yorker magazine. Not like I can zip through it. It's on my TBR Pile Challenge list, I'm making good progress this year.

5. Testament of Youth by Vera Brittain. Also on my TBR Pile Challenge list -- it's almost 700 pages long! But I've heard it's amazing and there's a readlong that starts June 1.

4. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky. One of my daughter's favorites, I've been putting it off forever because I am afraid of Dostoevsky. There's a new translation which I will try to get from the library. I can also use this for the Back to the Classics Challenge.

5. Pomfret Towers by Angela Thirkell. Book #6 in the Barsetshire series (I've actually skipped #3, The Demon in the House, but I'm told you can skip around the series).

6. In Confidence by Irene Nemirovsky. I thought her short story collection Dimanche and Other Stories was absolutely brilliant, so when I saw this new collection on a blog, I ordered it immediately. More than a year ago! It's quite short so I should be able to finish it quickly.

7. The New Moon with the Old by Dodie Smith. Published in 1963, it's by the author of I Capture the Castle, one of my favorites. I love mid-century fiction and I was actually able to get it from the library!

8. Tom Tiddler's Ground by Ursula Orange. This was a birthday gift -- a year ago, and I still haven't read it. It's a Furrowed Middlebrow reprint by Dean Street Press, highly recommended by Simon and Rachel in the Tea or Books? podcast.

11. An Old Man's Love by Anthony Trollope. Also available on audio from the library. Trollope is tough to find on audio, especially the standalone novels, so I was delighted to find this on OneClick Digital for download.

12. Barmy in Wonderland by P. G. Wodehouse. Because Wodehouse is the perfect summer read.

13. Bond Street Story by Norman Collins -- because I loved London Belongs to Me (and also recommend by Rachel from Booksnob. It's another doorstopper, almost 500 pages and also oddly oversized.

14. The Day of the Scorpion by Paul Scott. (Not pictured). Second in the Raj Quartet series, it's only on audio download from the library -- but, luckily, the library card that isn't expiring! I have a year left if I want to finish the series before we move back to the U. S. (though of course I can find in a library when I return).

15. Troy Chimneys by Margaret Kennedy. Bought last year in a secondhand shop in Charing Cross Road on a trip to London.

Let's see if I can finish all of these by Labor Day which is September 3. Bloggers, which are your favorites? And what's on your summer reading list?

London Belongs to Me is Incredibly Long But Worth It

I love a big fat book. I love to sink into the story and get completely engrossed in the characters. I also love British books, and books set during World War II. I especially love books about the War at Home -- I'm far more interested about how the war affected people's everyday lives than battles and military maneuvers. In short, Norman Collins' London Belongs to Me basically ticks off every box for my literary love. It took me almost a month to finish it since I was reading other books as well, but I loved every minute of it.

First published in 1945, this story starts in 1938 and spans about two years in the lives of the residents of #10, Dulcimer Street, in Kennington, London, a working-class neighborhood south of the Thames river (not to be confused with the much posher Kensington). The story begins just before Christmas, when one of the residents, Mr. Jossor, leaves his last day of work at an accounting firm upon his retirement and returns home to his flat. Mr. Josser lives with his wife and adult daughter Doris, who's ready to fly the nest and share a flat with another girl, much to her mother's chagrin. Other residents of the building include Connie, a failed middle-aged actress who's barely scraping by as a coat-check girl; the adenoidal Mr. Puddy, who can hardly hold down a job as a night watchman and is hoarding canned goods for the onset of war; Mrs. Boon and her son Percy, a mechanic who's tempted by a life of crime; the widowed landlady Mrs. Vizzard; and the mysterious new lodger Mr. Squales.

This is a novel in which for most of the characters, not much happens and yet everything happens. Over 738 pages, we follow the lives of the residents as they fall in and out of love, find jobs, have dreams and aspirations, and sometimes even land in jail. They're a disparate group but ultimately, they're like a family. I love books in which a lot of personalities are thrown together and this is exactly that sort of group. It reminded me a little bit of Patrick Hamilton's The Slaves of Solitude which I read and loved a few years ago.

This book is long and sprawling, with very thin pages and tiny print, yet I was sorry that it ended. The writing isn't particularly flowery or descriptive, but Collins made me feel as though I were right there, living in the same building, and all the characters were incredibly real. There's a short epilogue that takes place at Christmas 1940 which gives a quick update, but I can only imagine what happened to all the characters during and after the war. I wish there were a sequel, but sadly, there isn't. However, thanks to Rachel at Book Snob (who raved about this book), I discovered that it was made into a film which you can watch online at YouTube (though I cannot imagine how they condensed this doorstopper into a film less than two hours long.)

Collins also wrote several other books and I've already got Bond Street Story which is also available from Penguin, though it's surprisingly expensive for a paperback (luckily I received a copy as a Mother's Day gift). It's also quite long, but not as long as London Belongs to Me. This book is my idea of perfect summer reading and I'm sure it will be on my list of favorites at the end of the year.

Arsene Lupin, Gentleman Thief by Maurice Leblanc

What is it about mysteries that makes them such perfect summertime reading?  I was looking for a fun, quick read for the holiday weekend, and I put Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Thief into my carryon bag.  I could not have chosen a better book -- short stories are perfect vacation reads, especially when traveling (since one is so often interrupted by those pesky airport and in-flight announcements); also, this book had the added advantage of being on the TBR shelf and a book translated from French, so I can use it for the Paris in July event.

So.  Arsene Lupin is a dashing, debonair gentleman thief -- he steals from the rich (but doesn't give to the poor); first published in 1907, he's a bit like the French version of Sherlock Holmes -- but if Sherlock were the criminal mastermind, instead of the detective.

Arsene Lupin himself is a mix of James Bond, Robin Hood, and Hercule Poirot.  He's suave and sophisticated, the ladies all swoon over him, and he's so brilliant that he always outsmarts the police, especially his nemesis, the detective Ganimard.

This edition includes thirteen short stories, all of which were delightful, if not always strictly believable.  Lupin is a brilliant master of disguise, despite the fact that his photograph is published in newspapers, he's able to fool even the police; he always manages to escape the worst situations; and he's so brilliant he can steal the unstealable, and break into any building, no matter how impenetrable and well-guarded.  He can also solve the crimes of other perpetrators.  In short, he's rather over the top, but the stories are light-hearted and full of witty banter, so it's hard to take them too seriously and judge them too harshly. They're a really fun alternative to Sherlock Holmes, plus they're French, so what is not to like?

A Whale of a Read-Along: Moby Dick

The commenters have spoken!!  I have taken the plunge and signed up for Adam's Whale of a Read-Along event at Roof Beam Reader.  Our goal:  to finish Herman Melville's most famous work, Moby-Dick.  If you're interested in reading more about it, or signing up, here's a link to Adam's post.  

I'm pretty scared, but Adam has created a schedule that sounds pretty manageable, only 15 pages per day, about 20 chapters total per week.  How bad could that be?  And I have not one but TWO audiobook versions checked out from the library.  I'll listen to a little of each and decide which one I prefer.

Anyone else interested?  Or has everyone else finished Moby-Dick already?  Did you love it or hate it?   I'll post updates as the readalong progresses.  Wish me luck!!

Summer by Edith Wharton

This book was a bit of a bummer.  Summer has been on my to-read shelf for several years (I bought this edition specially because I loved the cover; the original painting is at the Smithsonian), but other books kept shoving out of its place in line.  But lately I've been sneaky and now I only nominate books for my face to face discussion groups if they are sitting on my to-read shelf.  Basically, I want to force other people to read what I want. Anyhow, Wendy, the librarian who coordinates the group, appropriately chose this for our August read, and we had a great discussion this week.

Summer is the tenth novel I've read by Edith Wharton, and I must say I was a little disappointed. I've been a huge Wharton fan since I read House of Mirth several years ago, but somehow this book just didn't do it for me.  I was so hoping I'd love it as much as Ethan Frome, but it was not to be.

I should back up and include a quick synopsis here:  Published in 1917, this is the story of Charity Royall, a 17 year old girl living in a small town in western Massachusetts, probably near the Berkshires.  Charity is the foster child of Mr. Royall, a respected lawyer in the town.  He's now a widower and he and Charity have something of an awkward relationship.  Meanwhile, a young architect from Boston, Lucius (note the similarity to the name Lucifer!) has come to town to study some of the old houses, and Charity falls in love with him.  This being an Edith Wharton novel, things do not bode well for Charity's romance.

Years ago, Mr. Royall brought Charity down from "the Mountain," a nearby community full of rogues and lawless folks, to be brought up in a better place.  However, Charity isn't particularly grateful.  She's been brought up her entire life knowing she somehow isn't as good as everyone else because of her parents and where she came from, and she's pretty resentful.  She doesn't have much education or interest in intellectual pursuits.  I should have known Charity was going to annoy me from the very beginning -- when the story begin she's been skiving off her job at the library, and she has absolutely no interest in reading what's in "those dusty old books." !!!  I should have just shut the book aside right then and there, and just admired the pretty picture on the cover.  But I persevered.

Sadly, I didn't like Charity much more by the end of the book, but I did feel sorry for her situation.  Once again, Wharton focused on how few choices women had in the early 20th century, and the double standards women to which women are held.  I think I would have liked this book a lot more if Charity had been a more sympathetic character.  In a way I pitied her because she's really just a teenager and made a lot of bad choices, plus teenagers tend to be pretty self-centered.  However, she doesn't really show any kindness or sensitivity to anyone other than Lucius, and she's very attracted to him, so she has ulterior motives.

Wharton described this book as her "hot Ethan," comparing it to Ethan Frome, one of her most famous works, and one of my favorites.  However, I was so much more sympathetic to Ethan -- he had far more redeeming qualities than Charity.  He didn't want to hurt anybody, but he was trapped in an unhappy life and a miserable marriage.  He'd always wanted an education and couldn't get it because of his obligations.  Charity, on the other hand, has no interest in improving herself, even though she seems fairly bright.  We did have an interesting discussion about whether she has unselfish or selfish motives at the end.  It is possible Charity made a good decision at the end, the best possible decision given her situation, but I just thought it was sad.  Some of Wharton's books are beautiful and tragic, but this one just made me depressed.  Still, I'm glad I read it.

Other reviews of Summer by Edith Wharton:

• The Zen Leaf
• A Striped Armchair
• Sparks' Notes

If you've reviewed this book and would like me to link to your blog, please leave a comment and I'll add a link. 

Vacation Reading: The Results

Back from vacation, and I am exhausted!  Having fun is work.  Seriously, I have no right to complain -- ten days in Southern California!  Boo hoo!  I spent a lot of time with my brother and sister-in-law and their baby Luca, who is seven months old and in the running for the title of Cutest Baby On the Planet.  I also went to the San Diego Zoo, Coronado, and two days at Disneyland. Woo hoo!

In between all this excitement, I actually got a lot of reading done:  I ended up bringing seven books with me, three library books and four of my own, and I finished six of them!  I know, I swore I was only bringing owned-and-unread books, but in the end I caved, as all three of the library books were very thin paperbacks. 

Just for fun I decided to total the page numbers:  approximately 1,475 pages read!  Here's a list of the books I completed (reviews to follow shortly):

1. Witch Week by Diana Wynne Jones

2. Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne

3. Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day by Winifred Watson

4. Summer by Edith Wharton

5. Mixed Magics by Diana Wynne Jones

6. The Apprentice: My Life in the Kitchen by Jacques Pepin

Looking back at the list, I just realized how well this list represents most of my favorite genres:  children's fantasy, classics, and food writing.  (No mysteries this time around -- well, there's always next year). 

I also broke my resolution to stop buying books -- Puffin Children's Classics were on special at Barnes & Noble, three for the price of two!  And I found a really cool book at the Hotel Del Coronado bookstore that I just could not resist:  Novel Destinations: Literary Landmarks from Jane Austen's Bath to Ernest Hemingway's Key West.  Time to plan some literary pilgrimages!

I had almost no time to blog or comment on other blogger's postings, so I apologize.  However, I'd like to thank Jane at Reading, Writing, Working, Playing for a Versatile Blogger Award -- thank you so much!   According to Jane, I must now share seven things about myself and then pass the award to more bloggers (it's supposed to be 15, but I need to start writing those book reviews so I'm limiting it to seven, which has a nice symmetry). 


Seven things about myself, some of which are pretty random:  


1.  I've visited 39 states in the U.S., and lived in five: Michigan, Illinois, Florida, Nebraska, and Texas.
2.  I've visited 14 foreign countries and lived in Japan.  
3.  I have a journalism degree, a culinary certificate, and a Master's in Library Science.
4.  I love period movies, i.e., costume dramas.
5.  I've eaten some really unusual foods, including ostrich, emu, kangaroo, and crocodile.  Probably the most unusual food I ever ate was deep-fried duck hearts.  We were in Beijing and it was the appetizer course at a Peking duck restaurant.  I was a little squeamish but I was starving.  They were delicious.
6.  I'm a lifetime member of the Jane Austen Society of North America.
7.  In 2008 I went on 14 zip lines in one day in the mountains of Costa Rica.  I felt like Spiderwoman.


Now -- time to pass the awards forward!  I read quite a few blogs, and here are some of my favorites (in no particular order):


1.  The Zen Leaf
2.  Lakeside Musings
3.  Book Lust
4.  Things Mean a Lot
5.  Jenny's Books
6.  Rebecca Reads
7.  Pining for the West


Well -- time to start writing up all those reviews. 


PS -- I apologize for the tiny font size.  Somehow the whole thing has shrunk and I can't get it back to normal.