The Case of the Elusive Bombay Duck, Tarquin Hall

 

Varanasi artist, Painted frontispiece of The Queen’ s Travels in Scotland and Ireland, 1875

(May 15)

North Woods, Daniel Mason

 

Eric Sloane, Axes, from A Museum of Early American Tools, 1964

(January 24)

Big Swiss, Jen Beagin

 

Roy Kanwit, An Egyptian God and Mother Gaia, 1996

(December 4, 2024) 

Margo's Got Money Troubles, Rufi Thorpe

Kotaro Hoshiyama, Blue Smile, 2021

(October 15)

All Fours, Miranda July

John Clark, Figure on All Fours, 2020

(October 5)

The Pisces, Melissa Broder

Paul Klee, Fish Magic, 1925

(January 12)

Giovanni's Room, James Baldwin

Beauford Delaney, Untitled (Village Street Scene), 1948

(November 19)

Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times, Katherine May

 

William H. Hays, Winter Light, 2015

(May 23) 

My Year of Living Spiritually: From Woo-woo to Wonderful: One Woman's Secular Quest for a More Soulful Life, Anne Bokma

Sandro Botticelli, Primavera (detail: one of the Three Graces), late 1470s /early 1480s

(July 14)

Normal People, Sally Rooney

Tina Berning, Illustration for the New York Times, 2016

(December 14, 2019) I liked Conversations With Friends so much I couldn’t wait to get my hands on this, Sally Rooney’s latest book. As with the other, I mowed it down pretty quickly. There is just something so engaging about her people -- which are the same people as before, really, just in slightly different circumstances, and this is third-person narration. However, we’ve got the bright, quirky, naive girl who is smitten with the adorable but indecisive man who is equally smitten but can’t commit. 

It’s the weirdest love-story situation in the history of love-story situations, but I have enjoyed it twice now because of Rooney’s.... way.

Sometimes while reading it (them) I wonder if I’m charmed mostly by the lack of quotation marks, which sometimes makes it unclear exactly what people are saying aloud and what they are thinking to themselves or simply doing in the third-person narration. You can reread a passage and take a slightly different interpretation sometimes for the lack of quotation marks.

This is a darker version of the first relationship; there are some wrenching motivations behind some of the behaviours (whereas in Conversations With Friends it was all pure quirk and naiveté).

I know that these people and these relationships have existed in real life because Rooney is reconjuring a strong experience like Van Gogh painted sunflowers.

For all the reasons I liked Conversations With Friends, same here.

Very Nice, Marcy Dermansky

T.S. Harris, Watery Bliss, 2016

(November 14) I really liked this -- inhaled it in one sitting -- and was struck by how much it was like Conversations With Friends: the characters are all associated with the literary world and the main character has a very flat affect.

It was highly recommended by Goop and there was a long queue for it at the library, two pretty good signs for a work of fiction.

And I think it’s a good novel, charming and absorbing, with the summer-fall romance ending up not so implausible (this trope usually beggars belief so I was wary). The original Goop description made it all extremely seductive too because of their excitement over the ending. After a few pages with these characters you realize the ending could be almost anything -- and because there are a lot of Trump-horror-show allusions, to classism, racism, and violence, you realize any ending could be really nightmarish. The tension builds all right.

An interesting feature of this novel is that there are quite a few first-person narrators handling the story and I love the dimensions this provides.

Did I like it as much as Conversations With Friends??? I think so.

A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose, Eckhart Tolle

Lawren Harris, Morning Lake Superior, 1921

(November 11) I really liked this book… it inspired me… in ways different from the Abraham-Hicks philosophy, although it seems to mesh with A-H stuff quite nicely. In fact, it made me think that A-H is offering the paint-by-numbers model of attaining joy in the present, in order to attract and convert the greatest numbers. Eckhart Tolle shows you what that fucking ego is doing and so it is a more intellectual but probably more thorough approach, but it is so hard to maintain. My ego is huge and mighty, and it is my ego that is saying this now.

Anyway, I liked this book so much I bought it… I feel I need to reread it many times.

Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear, Elizabeth Gilbert

Elisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun, Self-Portrait, 1790

(September 22) I’ll never forget how much I liked Eat, Love, Pray, mostly because I went into it thinking I would be sneering and catcalling the whole way. But it was great, and I loved EG’s writing style.

Nevertheless, I forgot all about her for about six years, till a week or two ago when there stories about her interesting relationship with Rayya Elias.

Two recent Gilbert titles mentioned in these stories, The Signature of All Things and Big Magic, came to me from the library almost immediately; I started reading Big Magic first, and just inhaled it, finishing it off in two and half days.

I liked this book a lot because it is about the writing process, and EG likes thinking about the writing process as much as I do.

She has a really interesting theory about creativity and inspiration that I’m not sure I buy into totally, but what’s enchanting about it is that it’s compatible with Abraham-Hicks doctrine and even kind of supports A-H stuff in little micro ways that give me shivers when I see them from this perspective.

She is giving advice to would-be writers, and you can see the genesis of the book -- “Hey, Liz, you’re a big mega-successful writer now -- how about a how-to guide for the jillions of people who think they could have a career like yours???”

And she probably said -- YASSSSSS! ...because it’s obvious she likes this topic and she probably felt she had a lot of new stuff to add to it, because she really does.

The artwork above is meant to illustrate a talented Elizsabeth demonstrating what she does in the form she uses to do it.

Why Not Me?, Mindy Kaling

Raja Ravi Varma, The Goddess Saraswathi, 1896

(December 17, 2015) I loved this book as much as or more than her first one… just so great.

I laughed out loud so much.

Pages 47-48: laughed out loud then choked up within the space of a half-page:

One very gratifying compliment I sometimes hear is that women want to be my best friend. This endlessly amuses my actual best friend, Jocelyn, because in her estimation I’m “a good friend, but not that great” 

... And all that stuff I do to “appear” better has actually made me a better person. I wish I had always acted like I was a little bit famous.

P. 116:

The Emmy announcements take place at 5:30 a.m., Pacific Standard Time, because when we are finding out the top six contenders for best miniseries, movie, or dramatic special, it’s important that the whole nation watch as one.

So many lines like that throughout … this is her comedic specialty.

It was interesting that on p. 123 she alluded to Catcher in the Rye, because she does sound exactly like Holden Caulfield sometimes … and she is making fun of her own pretentiousness … but, in fact, she does have the kind of wisdom you find in literary works.

No One Belongs Here More Than You, Miranda July

Tina Mammoser, Intertidal, 2014

(June 22) Funny -- I heh-heh’d aloud throughout as I did through the novel (The First Bad Man).

So interesting -- many of the same themes as TFBM -- love, female identity, language jokes: “the dynamic had moved down the block and was serving others” is one of many, many, funny little metaphors… I could quote every page.

Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns), Mindy Kaling

Aurora Starita, Mindy Kaling, 2012

(December 18)

Dear Mindy Kaling,

I love your book and I wish to ask you for its hand in marriage.

Sincerely, Susan W.

Gone Girl, Gillian Flynn

Buddy Nestor, Jana Brike, 2010

(September 30) So, so good. Inhaled this. First book I’ve read in a long time that made me want to call in sick to work in order to stay home and read it.

Very twisty and turny, not unlike Fingersmith -- but here the pleasure was in knowing that a surprise was coming ...or many surprises were coming... or maybe they weren’t! It was that kind of clever book. The hints that cast suspicions are so broad that you know there will be some kind of undercutting of that.... but there could also very well not be!

Psychological thriller, though, rather than just con-man gaming, as with Fingersmith.

Such acute observations of the difficulties that can arise in marriage.

I loved it but then read reviews at the Jezebel book club and had to agree that the last part is not as satisfying as the first... possibly because Flynn could not devote a proportionate amount to time to the denouement as she did to the set-up. Most everyone can come up with an ending clever enough to match the beginning, so Flynn could have, too... but she probably didn’t want to waste two brilliant ideas on only one novel.

But I really loved it and (maybe until I read the negative reviews) I was willing to forgive Flynn for copping out a bit on the ending.

I want to read more Flynn... apparently, there are two others: Sharp Objects and Dark Places.

Letters From Egypt, Lucie Duff Gordon (edited by Gordon Waterfield)

Henry Wyndham Phillips, Lucie, Lady Duff Gordon, 1851

(October 23, 2012) This was just delightful -- to experience Egypt through Duff Gordon’s eyes -- to learn to share her love of Arabs... I loved the charming, charming Arabs and now want them to rule the world.

Lucie Duff Gordon herself seems to have been wonderful -- everyone about her clearly loved her (except for her stupid-seeming husband. Very odd.).

Strange disorientation arises because this was written in Victorian times and is exotically located: sometimes LDG will tell a story and make a comment and you don’t get it at all. You can’t tell whether she’s being humorous, insightful, reproving or what. It’s cultural disorientation, I guess, and the very Victorian style.

Took me a long time to read this, possibly because unconsciously I wanted to defer the conclusion... obviously, the further you went in the book, the closer to LDG’s death you were.

This made me want to read more about and by Caroline Norton, and LDG’s Amber Witch.

Winter's Bone, Daniel Woodrell

Paul Murray, Cutshin Creek, 2008

(July 19) Really gripping. At first, I thought, “Oh, no, a raw, earthy conflict... somebody’s gonna get raped or brutally killed, or I am gonna be horrified in some unknown way.” Yet such is the talent of the writer that I couldn’t stop reading anyway. And things were a bit brutal. It’s modern hillbillies, running meth and other drugs instead of moonshine, and with all their crazy codes of honour and toughness. But again, it’s love that drives them onward and to do good and evil, and it’s their love that makes me want to keep reading about them. Also, the whole thing was like a trip to an exotic world.

Bossypants, Tina Fey

Jason Mecier, Tina Fey, 2010

(June 29) I heh'd at least once per paragraph and laughed out loud numerous times reading this. Very entertaining observations. I felt that I might be missing out on even more jokes because, though of course I know who she is, I never watched her on SNL or 30 Rock. Still was very entertained.

Not absolutely sure why she called it "Bossypants" since it's kind of an autobiography.

Some funny quotes:

I should have known he and I weren't going to make it when for my seventeenth birthday he gave me a box of microwave popcorn and a used battery tester. You know, to test batteries before I put them in my Walkman. Like you give someone when you're in love.

There are a lot of different opinions as to how long one should breast-feed. The World Health Organization says six months. The American Association of Pediatrics says one year is ideal. Mothering magazine suggests you nurse the child until just before his rehearsal dinner.

I have one top-notch baby with whom I am in love. It's a head-over-heels "first love" kind of thing, because I pay for everything and all we do is hold hands.

[W]henever someone says to me, "Jerry Lewis says women aren’t funny," or "Christopher Hitchens says women aren’t funny," or "Rick Fenderman says women aren’t funny... ", [I say m]y hat goes off to them. It is an impressively arrogant move to conclude that just because you don't like something, it is empirically not good. I don't like Chinese food, but I don't write articles trying to prove it doesn't exist.