TWO STRIKES

Just a short report on a couple of book disappointments.  Yes, I have them - and these two were especially disappointing to me because I have loved the authors' previous work so much.  Elizabeth Berg wrote what I still consider to be the best book on women's friendships:  Talk Before Sleep.  She's written many other novels, and some short stories.  I've loved all of her books.  So I was eagerly anticipating her latest one, especially after hearing her interviewed on the Diane Rehm show on NPR.  This one is called The Year of Pleasures, and unlike any of her other books, it often felt false and forced.  It's the story of a recently widowed woman of fifty-five and the year she spends after her husband dies, seeking a new life.  The title may seem odd, given that short synopsis - but it will make sense if you read it.  And it's probably worth reading, it's just not up to Berg's usual standards.

The second book was an even greater disappointment.  I can't tell you how much I loved Sue Monk Kidd's The Secret Life of Bees, her first novel.  I gave it to everyone for gifts, I dreamed about it, I still remember whole chunks of it.  It was a wonder of mystery and blessing, love, spirit, heart and soul.  So, for months now I've been waiting for The Mermaid Chair, her new book.  I was on a long list at the library, but last week it was finally my turn.  Maybe it's bad to have such high expectations for a second novel.  In any case, it certainly fell far short.  The story is basically banal, despite a lovely setting and a few mystical trappings, an affair between a married woman and a monk just short of taking his final vows.  A lot of background tragedy in their lives, a lot of religious angst, but...it's the story of an affair.  The writing is not what I remember from Secret Life, either - it seemed plodding and tedious in places, never the untrodden path that the first book set before me.

I haven't read any reviews of either book - so I'd love to hear from anyone who has read either or both of these.  What did you think - have I just become old and jaded? 

WE'LL MAP MANHATTAN

Thanks to my friend Duane, over at SottoVoce, I have this fun map and article from the NYT to share with you.  The article is "We Mapped Manhattan," and the project is one I wish I'd known about from the start.  But, as the writers themselves say:

"Mapmaking is a process of omission -- if it were not, a map of the United States would be 3,000 miles wide. Our design allowed the display of only 49 books, plus a very nice epigraph from Melville (with thanks to Rob Tally of Durham, N.C.). In deciding what to include, we wanted to represent many genres and many eras, and to be guided by reader preferences. The triage was painful, necessarily excluding many wonderful books and authors."

I'm sure my submissions would have been the same as many others  - Catcher in the Rye, the Eloise books, The Great Gatsby, Stuart Little, Time and Again.  There are many on the list, however, that I haven't read - it makes a nice list of things to look for. 

The resultant map is an interactive toy, you can go from location to location, seeing the actual mise en scène of each book or poem. It is a map of Literary Manhattan..."a place where imaginary New Yorkers lived, worked, played, drank, walked and looked at ducks."  You may need to sign in to access the article and map, but heavens - who among us is not registered online with the NYT? 

PS - I just checked, and you do have to sign in for the article, but you can access the map just from my link, without registering or signing in.

FIRST LOVES

What were your favorite books when you were a youngster? Your really really favorites, the ones you will never forget? What I'm talking about are books you read yourself, or chapter books that were read to you, rather than small children's picture books, though of course many of those are now among the books I adore and give as gifts. I'd love to hear from people of different ages on this question - as I think that might make a big difference.

It's hard for me to pare the list down to a reasonable number, as I was a voracious reader from the moment I cracked the code. The first book I remember loving was The Secret Garden, by Frances Hodgson Burnett. I read it over and over, mesmerized by the strangeness of India, then by the romantic mystery of the English moors, the walled garden, the group of misfit children deeply involved in a secret project.

Another book I loved was Roller Skates, by Ruth Sawyer. I don't know if this book still captivates girls, but it certainly did me. It's the story, apparently autobiographical, of a ten-year-old's life in New York City during the year her parents go abroad and leave her with a guardian. She travels all over the city on her skates, making friends and having adventures. I haven't read this book in years, but it's still in the bookcase we keep full of kids' books, for the grandchildren, nieces and nephews who come to visit.

A lifelong fascination with anything miniature may have begun with Mary Norton’s Borrowers series, all of them. I wanted there to be an unending number of these books, adventures of the tiny people continuing in every possible environment. Something of the same magic was in P.L. Travers Mary Poppins series, all of which I loved – I wanted to be Mary Poppins, to have those magical abilities totranscend this humdrum world the way she could. P.L. Travers was a student of mythology and religions; she used to be the editor of Parabola in the days when I subscribed to that magazine. There is more than one doctoral thesis in the Mary Poppins books, though I don’t know if any have actually been written.

Mary Poppins could talk to the animals and birds, and it was a power I so longed to have.  The talking animals of The Wind in the Willows enchanted me for years.  They still enchant me.  I can read that book over and over, pick it up and start at any place it opens.  It is full of wonder and wisdom and poetry, much of my love of nature began with the animals and their environments in that book.

Even before I lost my heart to Little Women, Louisa May Alcott's eternal story of a family of four girls and their beloved Marmee, I had fallen in love with the All of a Kind Family, by Sydney Taylor. One reason is that it was a family of five little girls, and I myself was the oldest of a family of five little girls – and one brother. Taylor’s is a Jewish immigrant family on the Lower East Side of New York, and much of my early learning about Judaism, and fascination with it, came from these books. The first book has several sequels, all of which I loved.

I have been unable to interest any of the current children in my life in a book which I adored, Hitty, Her First Hundred Years, by Rachel Field, and I’m not sure why. It does seem rather dense on first glance, and the language is not contemporary – but, oh, the story! A hundred years of history and adventure in this autobiography of a wooden doll. There is a new edition, reworked by two very fine children’s authors and illustrators, Rosemary Wells and Susan Jeffers. But I still treasure my copy of the original, and think maybe I need to read it again soon.

There are many more children’s books that I’ve discovered as an adult – I’m a great fan of kids’ books – but this is a short list of some I experienced as a real child, on real summer days when I used to take a book up into the branches of a tree and spend as long there as I could, lost in dreams, stories, adventures, discovering worlds within worlds, learning the power and wonder of words.