11/21/20 Sitting outside in the cold and rain is not exactly conducive to a book discussion. Sitting close together inside doesn’t feel safe. Zoom it is. Since our group loved Moon Tiger, the three of us decided to try Penelope Lively’s first novel, The Road to Lichfield.
It was interesting to see the seeds of the mature work in this earlier attempt. She explores how memory affects our present behavior and how present knowledge affects our memories of the past. This pleasant easy to read novel isn’t as powerful as Moon Tiger but brings up a subject worth thinking about.
11/18/20 When riding up and down the freeway, which we do on a regular basis, I’ve gotten in the habit of writing haikus. Here is one I played around with after a few hours of watching the roadside scenery on a recent trip.
Gold leaves turning brown; Gray fog obscures the hill tops; November drifts in.
Around lunch time we stopped to charge our electric car. Although it was my birthday, the prime consideration was something quick and safe, not fancy, and McDonald’s it was.
Big Mac, fries, and coke; Seagulls in the parking lot; 78 years!
11/24/20 Getting books for our book group isn’t as easy as we are accustomed to. Because of Covid, our libraries are closed or on limited hours. Holds are not promptly transported among libraries. We request books we want to discuss two weeks from now and they don’t even come for two weeks. So – in addition to electronic visits on Zoom, we are getting used to ebooks and audio books. This leads to interesting challenges. How can we decide what page to read up to when there are no page numbers? How can we point out a beautiful description on page so and so? Where is the map?
This is our current situation. We are not reading from books. All three of us are reading or listening on our devices. We all complain about how we miss actual books. Nonetheless – all three of us have been able to get the same novel from our libraries at the same time. We are reading To The Bright Edge of the World by Eowyn Ivey, an excellent choice for the start of winter. This is one of those dual time books – in the present and the 1850’s – that is filled with lush descriptions of ice and frozen landscapes in Alaska in the early days of American exploration. There are several story lines here, and I especially liked that of the second main character, Sophie, the wife. She is unable to join the adventurer husband so fills her time waiting for him by learning to photograph birds.
My art loving friends will appreciate her comment: “…a sculpture does something words cannot, and…so too a photograph” Pretty good description of art in general, I would say.
11/26/20 Thanksgiving dinner in the garage was memorable! We invited good friends, set up bistro tables properly distanced, carried out the living room rug, took out pumpkins and lights, turned on the heaters, and opened the door. Good wine and a turkey dinner helped us feel festive. Luckily the weather cooperated and we had a fun two hours.
Here’s another thought-provoking idea from Ackerman’s Bird Way. She explores the many stories that suggest birds, not humans, might be the original fire makers. Certain kinds of raptors have long been observed picking up burning sticks from the edge of a fire and dropping them into nearby grasslands, thus causing the fire to spread. They then feast on the small insects, animals, etc escaping the fire. That myth about Prometheus, fire, and the eagle may have a wholly unexpected layer of meaning.
As a member of “the other” book group, I have taken to purchasing more books from our local bookstore to compensate for the reduced library access. And then I can loan them out to friends, who can further benefit from our list of thoughtfully chosen books.
And thanks for the interesting story of the fire spreading birds from Jennifer Ackerman’s newest book, I’ll have to add that book to my list.
Yes, and when you buy a book, it is available for rereading!
Very meaty entry, Diane! Thanks. I love the Hiaku entries! I’d love it if our “other” book group did more with poetry; I find much of what I see to be very inaccessible, but then maybe that’s because of my sources: The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books and The London Review of Books. Challenging is an understatement!
Yes to your ideas about poetry. Often, even if I go back to a poem several times over the course of a week, I still don’t get the point. We may have to work on that! But I am finding Louise Gluck’s Faithful and Virtuous Night collection quite accessible and lovely. There is also the poem in Nabokov’s Pale Fire, which I’ll be posting about soon.
I too loved Sophie in To the Bright Edge of the World, but more for her grit and independence. It never ceases to amaze me how women in throughout Western history bought into the male idea of weakness and meekness. Sophie is able to follow her interests and maintain her independence from the other company wives.
But I think my favorite parts were about the explorer and his relations with the Natives and their culture. So I guess this book is a study in culture clashes!!
As for the weakness of women – it took strength to get food on the table three times a day, every day. No microwave and no Door Dash. I guess people do start to believe what they are consistently told if even if it is contrary to what is right before their eyes.
Merrily forwarded your first three blog entries to me today and I love them. I sent on your link to four good friends ( all of us old ladies who read!) and I hope they enjoy it too. Thanks and applause from the East Coast!
Susan Baker
Instagram: shbakerstudio
Thanks Susan. Glad to have some East Coasters! I was a New Jersey gal for the first 21 years.