Looking Back... In an effort to transfer my book journal entries over to this blog, I'm going to attempt to post (in chronological order) an entry every Friday. I may or may not add extra commentary to what I jotted down in these journals.
The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street by Helene Hanff
Nonfiction - Memoir
1995 Moyer Bell (First published in 1973)
Finished in December 1996
Rating: 4.5/5 (Terrific!)
Publisher's Blurb:
When she’s invited to London for the English publication of her wildly successful book, 84 Charing Cross Road—in which she shares two decades of correspondence with Frank Doel, a British bookseller who became a dear friend—New York writer Helene Hanff is thrilled to realize a lifelong dream. The trip will be bittersweet, because she can’t help wishing Frank was still alive, but she’s determined to capture every moment of the journey.
Helene’s time in London exceeds her wildest expectations. She visits landmarks like Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle; explores Shakespeare’s favorite pub, Dickens’s house, and the Oxford University courtyard where John Donne used to walk; and makes a host of new friends from all walks of life, who take her to the theater, introduce her to institutions like Harrod’s, and share with her their favorite corners of countryside.
A love letter to England and its literary heritage, written by a Manhattanite who isn’t afraid to speak her mind (or tell a British barman how to make a real American martini), The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street is an endearing account of two wildly different worlds colliding; it’s an outsider’s witty, vibrant portrait of idiosyncratic British culture at its best, as well as a profound commentary about the written word’s power to sustain us, transport us, and unite us.
My Original Notes (1996):
Just as good as 84, Charing Cross Road. I would love to see it as a movie! A wonderful way to see London again [I had recently visited England]. Helene Hanff has a wonderful sense of humor. Both books would make a great gift set for anyone who loves England, books or romance! Should be read at least once a year.
My Current Thoughts:
Well, I must have loaned my copy out, because I can't locate it anywhere and I know I loved it. Darn it!
Highly recommend.
Looking Back... In an effort to transfer my book journal entries over to this blog, I'm going to attempt to post (in chronological order) an entry every Friday. I may or may not add extra commentary to what I jotted down in these journals.
84, Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff
Nonfiction
1990 Penguin Books (First published in 1970)
Finished in December 1996
Rating: 5/5 (Terrific!)
Publisher's Blurb:
This charming classic, first published in 1970, brings together twenty years of correspondence between Helene Hanff, a freelance writer living in New York City, and a used-book dealer in London. Through the years, though never meeting and separated both geographically and culturally, they share a winsome, sentimental friendship based on their common love for books. Their relationship, captured so acutely in these letters, is one that will grab your heart and not let go.
My Original Notes (1996):
One of my all-time favorite books ever read!! I loved it! I feel as if I know Helene and all her friends at Marks & Co. How heartbreaking that she never did meet Frank Doel. I saw the movie before reading the book and they were both equally wonderful. Ann Bancroft and Anthony Hopkins play Helene and Frank. A wonderful romance. Now I want to go back to London!
My Current Thoughts:
I've read this lovely gem of a book at least three times and it never fails to entertain and touch me. It's been ages since I watched the movie (which I'm sure I've seen at least twice), so maybe I'll add it to my Netflix queue and watch it later this winter.
Highly recommend to all lovers of books and bookstores!
I love the cover art for the different editions of this book. I've also included a couple of images from the movie.
Looking Back... In an effort to transfer my book journal entries over to this blog, I'm going to attempt to post (in chronological order) an entry every Friday. I may or may not add extra commentary to what I jotted down in these journals.
Range of Motion by Elizabeth Berg
Fiction
1995 Random House
Finished in December 1996
Rating: 4/5 (Very Good)
Publisher's Blurb:
"I can tell you how it happened. It's easy to say how it happened. He walked past a building, and a huge chunk of ice fell of the roof, and it hit him in the head. This is Chaplinesque, right? This is kind of funny. People start to laugh when I tell them. I see the start of their hand to their mouth, their poor disguise. I laughed when I heard. I thought after the doctor told me what happened that Jay would get on the phone and say, 'Jeez, Lainey, come and get me. I've got a goose egg the size of the world. Come take me home.' Only what happened wasn't like Chaplin: Jay didn't land on his butt with his legs sticking out at chopstick angles, twitch his mustache, get back up and walk away. He landed on his side, and stayed there."
And so begins this exquisite new novel by Elizabeth Berg, one of America's most beloved fiction writers. As in her best-selling Talk Before Sleep, Berg creates in Range of Motion a deeply satisfying novel about the power of hope, the bonds of love, and the enduring balm of friendship.
As Jay lies in a coma, his young wife, Lainey, is the only one who believes he will ever recover. When his doctors try to reach him, Jay does not respond. Yet Lainey believes he knows when she is there, and is stimulated by the gifts of ordinary life she brings him: sweet-smelling flowers, his children's drawings, his own softly textured shirt. As Lainey struggles to keep believing and to keep the family going, she goes deeper into herself, looking for solace, for strength, and for understanding. Overburdened, distracted, depressed yet determined, she feels desperate only at those times when her faith falters.
It is then that she is sustained by her friendships. Alice, her next-door neighbor, is strong when Lainey cannot be, though she has problems and secret fears of her own. And the spirit of Evie, a woman from the1940s who used to live in Lainey's house, now takes up a kind of residence again, offering advice and philosophy from a simpler time.
A superb novel filled with beautiful writing and truth about life, Range of Motion is hard to put down, and impossible to forget.
My Original Notes (1996):
Very good, but not as good as Talk Before Sleep. Light entertainment with a happy ending. Interesting touch of conversations with a ghost. Somewhat mystical.
My Current Thoughts:
I have no recollection of this book, but I loved Elizabeth Berg's early novels and own well over a dozen. I look forward to reading this again. I wonder if I'll still think it's as good as I did 20 years ago.
Nine o'clock. Sarah is in her bed, bedside lamp on, engrossed in a new book that is lying against her raised knees. She won't break the spine of a book, even a cheap paperback. She cradles her books in her lap like she's found the Grail. I don't argue against such reverence. I think it's right. When I was her age and finished a book I liked, I used to pet it, stroke the front cover, then the back; and then I'd kiss it.
Looking Back... In an effort to transfer my book journal entries over to this blog, I'm going to attempt to post (in chronological order) an entry every Friday. I may or may not add extra commentary to what I jotted down in these journals.
The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje
Fiction
1993 Vintage (first published in 1992)
Finished in December 1996
Rating: 1/5 (Poor)
Publisher's Blurb:
With ravishing beauty and unsettling intelligence, Michael Ondaatje's Booker Prize-winning novel traces the intersection of four damaged lives in an Italian villa at the end of World War II. Hana, the exhausted nurse; the maimed thief, Caravaggio; the wary sapper, Kip: each is haunted by the riddle of the English patient, the nameless, burned man who lies in an upstairs room and whose memories of passion, betrayal, and rescue illuminate this book like flashes of heat lightning.
My Original Notes (1996):
What a struggle this was to read! I'm still not sure if I can even say that I liked it. It was a very strange story and I'm sure there was more to it than I got. I'd like to see the movie now. Maybe it will help clarify the book.
My Current Thoughts:
I did go on to watch the movie and was still just as confused as when I finished the novel! I haven't read anything else by Ondaatje and doubt I ever will, as none of his books appeal to me at all.
Looking Back... In an effort to transfer my book journal entries over to this blog, I'm going to attempt to post (in chronological order) an entry every Friday. I may or may not add extra commentary to what I jotted down in these journals.
Neanderthal by John Darnton
Fiction
1996 Random House
Finished on December 5, 1996
Rating: 3/5 (Good)
Publisher's Blurb:
Not since Jurassic Park has a novel so enthralled readers everywhere. Now, enter the world of Neanderthal...
The expedition of the century...uncovers the find of the millennium...Neanderthal.
In the remote mountains of central Asia, an eminent Harvard archeologist discovers something extraordinary. He sends a cryptic message to two colleagues. But then, he disappears.
Matt Mattison and Susan Arnot-- once lovers, now academic rivals-- are going where few humans have ever walked, looking for a relic band of creatures that have existed for over 40,000 years, that possess powers man can only imagine, and that are about to change the face of civilization forever.
My Original Notes (1996):
Should make a great movie! I had a little trouble getting into the book, but stuck with it. The last third was the most interesting and suspenseful. Reminded me a bit of Jurassic Park.
My Current Thoughts:
I only have a very vague recollection of this thriller, and since I no longer own a copy and it's not a title we carry in the store, I won't be able to thumb through it to refresh my memory.
Looking Back... In an effort to transfer my book journal entries over to this blog, I'm going to attempt to post (in chronological order) an entry every Friday. I may or may not add extra commentary to what I jotted down in these journals.
Where Love Goes by Joyce Maynard
Fiction
1993 Vintage
Finished on November 20, 1996
Rating: 4/5 (Very Good)
Publisher's Blurb:
From the author of To Die For comes this poignant, stirring, and occasionally hilarious story of a woman's attempt to remake her life after a searing divorce. Maynard's novel captures love as one approaches middle age in contemporary America.
My Original Notes (1996):
Very good, but depressing! I wonder how much of the details are autobiographical. I read Joyce Maynard's newsletter and a lot of what she's written (about her family and her divorce) sounds familiar in the plot of this book. I couldn't put the book down!
"A splendid, heartfelt novel... real enough to live in." ~ Pat Conroy
I could relate to a lot of what Maynard described, with regard to divorce and blended families.
My Current Thoughts:
I've written about Joyce Maynard here and here and loved both of those novels even more than this one. I still have an ARC of After Her on my TBR shelf and hope to get to it in the coming year or so. I no longer have a copy of Where Love Goes, but in spite of enjoying it so well in 1996, I doubt I'd read it again. Reading about divorce and step-parenting isn't high on my list at this point in my life. The book probably validated a lot of my own feelings 20 years ago, but I don't feel the need to seek out affirmation of those feelings or attitudes any longer.
Looking Back... In an effort to transfer my book journal entries over to this blog, I'm going to attempt to post (in chronological order) an entry every Friday. I may or may not add extra commentary to what I jotted down in these journals.
Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson
Fiction
1995 Vintage Contemporaries
Finished on November 15, 1996
Rating: 4.5/5 (Terrific!)
Publisher's Blurb:
San Piedro Island, north of Puget Sound, is a place so isolated that no one who lives there can afford to make enemies. But in 1954 a local fisherman is found suspiciously drowned, and a Japanese American named Kabuo Miyamoto is charged with his murder.
In the course of the ensuing trial, it becomes clear that what is at stake is more than one man's guilt. For on San Piedro, memory grows as thickly as cedar trees and the fields of ripe strawberries--memories of a charmed love affair between a white boy and the Japanese girl who grew up to become Kabuo's wife; memories of land desired, paid for, and lost. Above all, San Piedro is haunted by the memory of what happened to its Japanese residents during World War II, when an entire community was sent into exile while its neighbors watched. Gripping, tragic, and densely atmospheric, Snow Falling on Cedars is a masterpiece of suspense--but one that leaves us shaken and changed.
My Original Notes (1996):
Great novel! I couldn't put it down, once I got into it. At first I didn't care for it because it jumps around quite a bit. After I got used to the style, it was much easier to make the mental transition in time. Very enlightening to the Japanese-American experience during World War II. The murder mystery and courtroom suspense were well done. The descriptions of the geography and nautical lifestyle very also very interesting.
I chose this book for our reading group and am curious to hear how the others liked it. I bought a copy to give to my dad for Christmas. I thought he'd enjoy the nautical details, as well as the local interest (Puget Sound/Seattle).
My Current Thoughts:
Oh, this was such a good book! I'm pretty sure that I've read it more than just once and I know that I've seen the movie, although I don't remember too many details about the film other than I think it followed the book quite well. I love the Pacific Northwest and plan to read this again since I'm more familiar with the area than I was 20 years ago. Also, the details about the murder mystery are long forgotten, so it will almost feel like I'm reading a new book. :)
Final Thoughts:
Part historical fiction, part mystery with a strong sense of place, this one's a winner! Putting my copy back on my "keeper" shelf!
Looking Back... In an effort to transfer my book journal entries over to this blog, I'm going to attempt to post (in chronological order) an entry every Friday. I may or may not add extra commentary to what I jotted down in these journals.
Leaving Cold Sassy by Olive Ann Burns and Katrina Kenison
Fiction
1994 Delta (First published in 1992)
Finished on November 2, 1996
Rating: 2/5 (So-so)
Publisher's Blurb:
Cold Sassy Tree, Olive Ann Burns' unforgettable story of a Georgia town at the turn of the century, has captivated millions of readers with its tale of Grandpa Blakeslee, his young bride Miss Love, and the irrepressible fifteen-year-old Will Tweedy. Throughout her long battle with cancer, Olive Ann Burns worked passionately on a sequel to this magical book. Only during her final days did she realize she wouldn't complete it, dictating from her hospital bed her wishes that the finished chapters be published.
The result is Leaving Cold Sassy - a portrait of the grown-up Will Tweedy; of the feisty young schoolteacher who captures his heart; of the town that has claimed a place in the American imagination; and, in a fascinating reminiscence by her editor, of Olive Ann Burns, a writer who didn't get a chance to finish her extraordinary tale.
Complete with Olive Ann Burns' notes for later scenes and chapters exactly as she wrote them, Leaving Cold Sassy is a final, loving goodbye to Cold Sassy, Georgia.
My Original Notes (1996):
So-so. Not nearly as good as Cold Sassy Tree. I'm sure that has a lot to do with the fact the author wrote this as she lay dying of cancer. The working title was Time, Dirt, and Money and was intended to be a sequel to Cold Sassy Tree. Unfortunately, the characters and storyline are very thin/superficial. I was really disappointed. Olive Ann Burns didn't finish the book before her death, but her editor included Olive's notes for the remaining chapters, as well as a reminiscence by the editor. The family photos were a nice touch, too. I didn't realize that the characters were based on Olive Burns' family (particularly her parents).
This sequel wasn't very good, but the biography by the editor was wonderful! Very sad and moving. Feels like I know Olive Ann and her husband Andy, who also died of cancer. I'm glad I kept reading.
My Current Thoughts:
I wrote about Cold Sassy Tree a couple of weeks ago and I'm a little surprised that I read this sequel so soon after finishing the first book, but back in the late '90s, I didn't have a huge TBR stack (if any at all!), so I probably went straight to the bookstore and bought this book to read right away. As much as I love having a lot of books to choose from here in my house, there's something refreshing about the idea of going out to buy a book as soon as I hear about it and actually reading it right away rather than letting it languish on a shelf for years. Ah, the good old days! :) But I digress.
I no longer have a copy of Leaving Cold Sassy and if I did, I'm pretty sure it would go in the donation box, as I don't plan to read it a second time. However, I do plan to read Cold Sassy Tree sometime in the near future.
Looking Back... In an effort to transfer my book journal entries over to this blog, I'm going to attempt to post (in chronological order) an entry every Friday. I may or may not add extra commentary to what I jotted down in these journals.
A White Bird Flying by Bess Streeter Aldrich
Deal Family #2
Fiction
1988 University of Nebraska Press (first published in 1931)
Finished on October 30, 1996
Rating: 4/5 (Very Good!)
"Miss Aldrich has recreated the spirit of the descendants of the early Scotch and German settlers of the great Nebraskan plains, the spirit of healthy morality and calm contentment that is characteristic of these people" ~ New York Times
Publisher's Blurb:
Abbie Deal, the matriarch of a pioneer Nebraska family, has died at the beginning of A White Bird Flying, leaving her china and heavy furniture to others and to her granddaughter Laura the secret of her dream of finer things. Grandma Deal's literary aspirations had been thwarted by the hard circumstances of her life, but Laura vows that nothing, no one, will deter her from a successful writing career. Childhood passes, and the more she repeats her vow the more life intervenes. Laura is at the center of a new generation of Deals in Bess Streeter Aldrich's worthy sequel to A Lantern in Her Hand.
My Original Notes (1996):
What a marvelous author! I loved this book just as much as A Lantern in Her Hand. I love to read about historical Nebraska; the area and points of interest are so familiar. The countryside descriptions, especially those of the grasses and trees (cottonwoods!) are so accurate. And what a good sequel. Having gotten to know Abbie Deal's family in A Lantern in Her Hand, it was wonderful to find out what happened next. I'm ready to buy all of Aldrich's remaining books! She reminds me a bit of Laura Ingalls Wilder.
Great story!!
My Current Thoughts:
A Lantern in Her Hand was my first exposure to Nebraska literature. I hadn't discovered Willa Cather at this point and I fell in love with Bess Streeter Aldrich's depiction of the area I had recently moved to after living in San Diego for 20 years. Aldrich could have easily been writing about the acreage my husband and I had purchased, her details were all so recognizable. I really need to go back and re-read these two novels, although I wonder if they'll still have the same impact on me now that I've been in Nebraska for almost 25 years!
Looking Back... In an effort to transfer my book journal entries over to this blog, I'm going to attempt to post (in chronological order) an entry every Friday. I may or may not add extra commentary to what I jotted down in these journals.
Cold Sassy Tree by Olive Ann Burns
Fiction
1984 Delta
Finished in October 1996
Rating: 4/5 (Very Good!)
Publisher's Blurb:
The one thing you can depend on in Cold Sassy, Georgia, is that word gets around - fast. When Grandpa E. Rucker Blakeslee announces one July morning in 1906 that he's aiming to marry the young and freckledy milliner, Miss Love Simpson - a bare three weeks after Granny Blakeslee has gone to her reward - the news is served up all over town with that afternoon's dinner. And young Will Tweedy suddenly finds himself eyewitness to a major scandal. Boggled by the sheer audacity of it all, and not a little jealous of his grandpa's new wife, Will nevertheless approves of this May-December match and follows its progress with just a smidgen of youthful prurience. As the newlyweds' chaperone, conspirator, and confidant, Will is privy to his one-armed, renegade grandfather's second adolescence; meanwhile, he does some growing up of his own. He gets run over by a train and lives to tell about it; he kisses his first girl, and survives that too. Olive Ann Burns has given us a timeless, funny, resplendent novel - about a romance that rocks an entire town, about a boy's passage through the momentous but elusive year when childhood melts into adolescence, and about just how people lived and died in a small Southern town at the turn of the century. Inhabited by characters who are wise and loony, unimpeachably pious and deliciously irreverent, Cold Sassy, Georgia, is the perfect setting for the debut of a storyteller of rare brio, exuberance, and style.
My Original Notes (1996):
Great book! Very entertaining. I felt like I knew the characters and cried when one died. It was heartbreaking. It took me a few chapters to really get involved in the book, but once I did I couldn't put it down. The ending was so emotional that I rushed out to buy the sequel, so I could find out what happened next. The author never finished the second book, though. She died of cancer, but part of the book was published. I'm going to read it next, I think.
"Rich with emotion, humor and tenderness... a novel about an old man growing young, a young man growing up, and the modern age coming to a small southern town." ~ The Washington Post Book World
It was humorous. I laughed out loud quite a few times!
My Current Thoughts:
I remember how much I enjoyed this book and how disappointed I was when I read the sequel. I still have a copy, so I think I'll hang on to it and read it when I'm in need of a good laugh.
Have you read either of Olive Ann Burn's novels? What did you think?
About the Author:
Olive Ann Burns was born in Banks County, Georgia, in 1924. Because she made her appearance before her doctor made his, her father delivered her and placed her on a newspaper, so the printed word was literally her first contact with the world. After graduating from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a degree in journalism, she wrote for The Atlanta Journal Sunday Magazine. In 1976 Burns was diagnosed as having an unexpected illness, and she decided she would write a novel. The idea for Cold Sassy Tree grew from a family history she was working on with her sisters for their children. Burns collected stories of her father's, most of which focused on his grandfather, who owned a store in Commerce, Georgia, the model for Cold Sassy. The highly acclaimed sequel to Cold Sassy Tree, Leaving Cold Sassy, was Burns's final work before her death in 1990.
Update (11/10/17) - I just finished rereading this collection of essays and want to include the following passage on this post:
Every one of us is called upon, probably many times, to start a new life. A frightening diagnosis, a marriage, a move, loss of a job or a limb or a loved one, a graduation, bringing a new baby home:
it's impossible to think at first how this all will be possible. Eventually, what moves it all forward is the subterranean ebb and flow of being alive among the living.
In my own worst seasons I've come back from the colorless world of despair by forcing myself to look hard, for a long time, at a single glorious thing: a flame of red geranium outside my bedroom window. And then another: my daughter in a yellow dress. And another: the perfect outline of a full, dark sphere behind the crescent moon. Until I learned to be in love with my life again. Like a stroke victim retraining new parts of the brain to grasp lost skills, I have taught myself joy, over and over again.
Looking Back... In an effort to transfer my book journal entries over to this blog, I'm going to attempt to post (in chronological order) an entry every Friday. I may or may not add extra commentary to what I jotted down in these journals.
High Tide in Tucson by Barbara Kingsolver
Nonfiction - Essays
1995 HarperPerennial
Finished in September 1996
Rating: 4.5/5 (Excellent!)
Publisher's Blurb:
In these twenty-five newly conceived essays, Barbara Kingsolver once again turns to her favored literary terrain to explore themes of family, community, and the natural world. With the eyes of a scientist and the vision of a poet, Kingsolver writes about notions as diverse as modern motherhood, the history of private property, and the suspended citizenship of humans in the animal kingdom. Kingsolver's canny pursuit of meaning from an inscrutable world compels us to find instructions for life in surprising places: a museum of atomic bomb relics, a West African voodoo love charm, an iconographic family of paper dolls, the ethics of a wild pig who persistently invades a garden, a battle of wills with a two-year-old, or a troop of oysters who observe high tide in the middle of Illinois. In sharing her thoughts about the urgent business of being alive, Kingsolver the essayist employs the same keen eyes, persuasive tongue, and understanding heart that characterize her acclaimed fiction. In High Tide in Tucson, Kingsolver is defiant, funny, and courageously honest.
"Barbara Kingsolver's essays should be savored like quiet afternoons with a friend.... [She] speaks in a language rich with music and replete with good sense." ~ New York Times Book Review
My Original Notes (1996):
Excellent! A variety of essays (25) exploring "themes of family, community, and the natural world." I especially enjoyed the essay about Kingsolver playing keyboard in a band with Stephen King, Amy Tan and Dave Barry. I know someone who saw them perform at ABA in Anaheim a few years ago.
Definitely a book to re-read. She sounds like a woman I'd like to have for a neighbor. I even considered sending her a fan letter... maybe I will. [I didn't.] I bought two copies of the book to give as gifts. I wonder if my friends will enjoy it as much as I did.
My Current Thoughts:
I have read (and loved) all but two of Kingsolvers' books. I still need to get a copy of Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, as well as The Lacuna. I'm not sure why I've held off reading those... She is such a marvelous writer! With that said, I didn't care for her other collection of essays (Small Wonder) nearly as much as this book. I've had this one on my "keeper shelf" for a future re-read for 20 years and I plan to read it in 2017. I hope it lives up to my memory!
Thumbing through my dog-eared copy of High Tide in Tucson, I came across several passages that I will share when I read and review the book for a second time, but this one in particular caught my eye, particularly since I marked it with an ink pen and not a removable Post-It flag. (Gasp!) And since one of my earlier "Looking Back" posts is about Beloved, I thought it especially important to share it now rather than later:
I know, for example, that slavery was heinous, but the fate of sixty million slaves is too big a thing for a heart to understand. So it was not until I read Toni Morrison's Beloved that I honestly felt that truth. When Sethe killed her children rather than have them grow up in slavery, I was so far from my sheltered self I knew the horror that could make infanticide an act of love. Morrison carved the tragedy of those sixty million, to whom the book is dedicated, into something small and dense and real enough to fit through the door, get in my heart, and explode. This is how a novel can be more true than a newspaper.
I think what I love about a collection of good essays is that sense of validation of a particular belief or idea. It's nice to have someone share the same sentiments and express them in a literary or inspiring fashion.
Are you a Kingsolver fan? Which is your favorite book? I don't think I could pick just one!
