Bitter is the New Black

Finished Bitter is the New Black: Confessions of a Condescending, Egomaniacal, Self-Centered Smartass, Or, Why You Should Never Carry a Prada Bag to the Unemployment Office by Jen Lancaster. Not my usual cup of tea reading-wise, but very entertaining. This is a cautionary tale of a successful young woman whose life changes drastically after she is laid off. For those who think they are indispensable in the work place and that "it cold never happen to me," think again. While her situation becomes more and more dire, Lancaster approaches the challenges with determination, creativity and tremendous humor. I really enjoyed this book.

Our Mutual Friend

Finished Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens. I really enjoyed this book. There is the usual unwieldy cast of characters, including several villains and more than one hero. As always, one character in particular captured my fancy. This time it was Jenny Wren.

Jenny is crippled with a bad back. Like a wren she is quite small. She seems very bird-like to me. According to Wikipedia, "Most wrens are small and rather inconspicuous, except for their loud and often complex songs." Jenny is very sharp and observant. She tells of dreams and visions of long rows of children in white coming to comfort her in her pain. She works as a doll's dressmaker, hobbling about town with her crutch, observing ladies' fashions and taking the images home to recreate for her inanimate clients.

Jenny is a deeply loyal person. She discovers Fledgeby's villainy towards her friends Lizzie and Mr. Riah. After he has been flogged by an associate, Jenny endeavors to give him the assistance he requests. He asks her to soak strips of brown paper in vinegar and plaster them to his smarting back. She feels he would benefit from additional punishment and so sprinkles the plasters with pepper before applying them. Later, when she realizes just how evil he is, she wishes in retrospect that she had used cayenne instead of black pepper.

Paul McCartney wrote a song about Jenny Wren for his 2005 album Caos and Creation in the Back Yard.

Walden

Finally finished Walden by Henry David Thoreau. I have tried to read it many times, but just could not get interested in it. This last time I decided to ration myself to four pages a day and this is what got me through. John Updike said "...the book risks being as revered and unread as The Bible." I think he's right. How I got through private school in Massachusetts without reading it is beyond me. I am interested in the Transcendentalists, via the Alcotts, and have long been aware of the importance of this work. Once I got used to the tone and the rhythm of the prose, Thoreau seemed pretty familiar. My disinterest in non-fiction was certainly part of my original problem with reading it, but his honest, grounded, even innocent observations are charming. Referring to some stumps removed from his bean field he said, "...they warmed me twice, once while I was splitting them, and again when they were on the fire, so that no fuel could give out more heat."

Tender Is the Night

Finished Tender Is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Set in the south of France and Switzerland, it is the story of Dick Diver, a promising and attractive young American psychiatrist who befriends Nicole, a rich, young American mental patient, and eventually marries her. In his careful keeping of Nicole, Dick deeply immerses himself. Over the years as she grows stronger, Dick encounters several personal crises which manifest a downturn in his career and overall character. This is a quietly painful portrait of a marriage as it dissolves. It's been a long time since I read Fitzgerald. I'd forgotten the high quality of his prose.

The Magic Finger

Finished The Magic Finger by Roald Dahl. Published in 1966, it is the story of a girl who possesses the power to teach people a lesson by pointing her magic finger at them. After that, strange, unlikely things happen to convince people of their wrong-doing. The child put into a position of power is a common theme in Dahl's work. This was a very short book. The edition I read had excellent illustrations by Quentin Blake.

Thimble Summer

Finished Thimble Summer by Elizabeth Enright. It won the Newbery Medal in 1939. Set in 1930s Wisconsin, it is the story of Garnet, a girl who lives on her family's farm. Garnet longs for adventure and worries about the family's finances. One afternoon while bathing in the river with her brother Jay, she finds a silver thimble in the mud along the shore. Wonderful things begin to happen. The long drought ends, her family takes in an orphan who becomes another brother and Garnet's pig wins the blue ribbon at the fair. Garnet herself gets into numerous scrapes and even runs away from home, hitchhiking to a nearby town. The story of this particular summer is original and laced with wonderful detail concerning farm life. Other girls in the story are named Ruby and Citronella.

The book is illustrated by Enright who was originally trained as an illustrator. The story is based on summers she spent at her uncle Frank Lloyd Wright's farm in Wisconsin. Enright also won the Newbery Honor Medal in 1958 for Gone-Away Lake.

Jane and Prudence

Finished Jane and Prudence by Barbara Pym. This is Pym's third novel, published in 1953. Jane is the wife of a clergyman. Her younger friend Prudence is an independent, unmarried woman who works for a publisher. Jane lives in a country village. Prudence lives in London. Their lives could not be more different.

Jane is a rather dotty woman who often speaks before she thinks. While she means well, she is often misunderstood by others. She worries about her friend Prudence and wants to see her happily settled. Thus, she embarks on a matchmaking scheme that mirrors those of Emma Woodhouse. She even compared herself at one point to Austen's Emma. Much like Emma's efforts, hers is misguided.

Pym is so very good at minute observations. As a reader I felt very close to all the characters. There is a brief mention of Mildred Lathbury, the heroine of Pym's previous novel, Excellent Women. We are informed that Mildred has married the anthropologist Mr. Bone. This news was both satisfying and hilarious to me.

London Snow: A Christmas Story

Finished London Snow: A Christmas Story, written by Paul Theroux and illustrated by John Lawrence. This is a very slender volume. Two children live with their mother, Mrs. Mutterance, above their sweet shop in London. Just before Christmas, their cruel and miserly landlord, who lives upstairs, tells them he is planning to evict them and turn the shop into a launderette. The next morning they awake to a city blanketed in snow, into which their landlord disappears. The children say good riddance, but Mrs. Mutterance does not want him on their conscience and institutes a search. This was a quick and intriguing read. The wood cut illustrations are wonderfully detailed and add to the mysterious mood of the book.

Storm in the Village

Finished Storm in the Village by Miss Read, published in 1958. This is the third book in her Fairacre series of life in a small English village. There is a lot of worry and upheaval over the proposed building of a housing estate for workers from the nearby atomic plant. The site for the project is Hundred Acre Field, a beloved and rich bit of local farmland which has been featured in numerous paintings by local artist Dan Crockford. The project would involve many changes for the inhabitants of Fairacre, Beech Green and Caxley, including higher rates, larger congregations and the re-organization of Miss Read's school. Mrs. Pringle with her limp of disapproval and the Vicar with his shedding leopard skin gloves reappear, as well as other charming characters. This book, even more than the first two, reminds me of Jan Karon's Mitford series. I always like to curl up with a Miss Read novel around Christmastime.

The White Stag

Finished The White Stag, written and illustrated by Kate Seredy. It won the Newbery Medal in 1938. This is a tale of Atilla the Hun, from his birth to his finding a homeland for his people in what is now Hungary. The story is epic. The drawings are sensitively rendered and the prose is thoughtfully written. I couldn't quite get myself to enjoy this book. Perhaps it's the subject matter. Perhaps it's my lack of interest in anything that happened before 1600.

Seredy won two Newbery Honor Medals as well for The Good Master (1936) and The Singing Tree (1940). She also won for her illustrations in Ruth Sawyers The Christmas Anna Angel in 1945.

The Phantom Tollbooth

Finished The Phantom Tollbooth written by Norton Juster and illustrated by Jules Fieffer, published in 1961. In elementary school in the 70s I felt like this book was always around, hovering at the edges of things. Maybe because it looked like a boy's book, or maybe because it seemed too science fictiony, I always avoided it and never actually read it until now. It's so wonderfully clever and original. Like the C.S. Lewis' wardrobe, the tollbooth is the gateway to a magical world where so much seems to take place, but when a child returns to their own world, very little time has passed. When it was published there was concern that the book was too smart, too challenging for children to grasp. I think it would be interesting to read it as a child and then revisit it as an adult to compare the two reading experiences. Juster is also the author of the charming The Dot and the Line: A Romance in Lower Mathematics. I remember seeing the film version of this in math class numerous times.

I found a wonderful interview with Juster on Salon.com.

The Mindful Way Through Depression

Finished The Mindful Way Through Depression by Mark Williams, John Teasdale, Zindel Segal and Jon Kabat-Zinn. This book was assigned reading for me. My therapist felt that the techniques taught throughout would be useful for dealing with chronic anxiety. I'll admit that I was skeptical at first, but having read the whole book and used the accompanying meditation CD, I can say that it has some excellent points.

Many of us speed through our days on a sort of frantic autopilot, not experiencing life as it happens. The authors explain that this is the work of the "doing mind." I myself spend a lot of time ruminating, rehashing old, stressful conversations or events and even imagining new non-existent ones. The techniques of mindfulness help the reader to redirect the mind from these patterns to experience what is actually happening at that moment. You have to retrain your brain. It's challenging if this is an old habit for you, but definitely worthwhile. Many breathing and meditation exercises are also suggested.

Four Gardens

Finished Four Gardens By Margery Sharp. This is Sharp's fifth novel, published in 1935. It tells the story of Caroline, a kind and mild woman, from her girlhood into late middle age. Each section of the book, and her life, features a different garden. It has the usual Sharp charm and attention to detail. Something about this book reminded me of Barbara Pym's writing, probably the character of Caroline herself.

This was an interlibrary loan from the Flint Public Library. The book had several stamps inside indicating that it had been decomisioned and was probably in storage when I asked for it. I'm very happy to have been able to give it a proper airing.

Lady Windermere's Fan

Finished Lady Windermere's Fan by Oscar Wilde. This comedic send-up of Victorian morals is not only humorous, but suspenseful as well. A quick and enjoyable read. It's been years since I read any Wilde.

The Return of the Native

Finished The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy. A seemingly bucolic novel, typical of Hardy, turns dark and tragic when several of its characters allow misunderstanding to rule their decision-making. Much like Tess of the d'urbervilles, an important letter goes unread and leads to disaster.

Hardy's prose is rich with both negative, "All the shallower ponds had decreased to a vaporous mud amid which the maggoty shapes of innumerable obscure creatures could be indistinctly seen, heaving and wallowing with enjoyment." and positive descriptions "Winter again came round, with its winds, frosts, tame robins, and sparkling starlight." I always like to start a Hardy novel in mid-summer and finish it in the fall. This is my 200th blog post.