Category Archives: Books, Reviews, and Reading

84, Charing Cross Road

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003It’s not often I say of books I’ve read that I wish they were longer. But that is exactly what I have to say about 84, Charing Cross Road. In this too-slim volume are the letters Helene Hanff, a struggling playwright in New York City, wrote to the Marks & Co. bookshop located at 84, Charing Cross Road in London, and the bookshop’s responses, mostly from one of their employees, Frank Doel.

What starts as a business correspondence in 1949 grows into a real friendship, as Helene’s wit and enthusiasm eventually overcome Mr. Doel’s British reserve and politeness. When Helene hears (through her upstairs neighbor’s boyfriend) of the rationing still going on after World War II in Britain, she starts sending the occasional care package of food for all the employees of the shop, which leads to some quite funny exchanges.

If you love books at all, it’s impossible not to appreciate Helene’s enthusiasm as she speaks of being “afraid to handle such soft vellum and heavy cream-colored pages” of some of the beautiful used books Marks & Co. sent to her, and how they shame her orange-crate bookshelves. Or how she was refusing to return her library’s copy of Pride and Prejudice until the bookshop could find copies for her.

This book made me long for an age when retrieving one’s post meant more than getting a stack of credit card applications, catalogs, and adverts placed almost directly in the recycle or trash bins. So many of us have given up writing letters, instead relying on social media platforms to keep us in touch with our friends, and frankly, this book filled me with a sense of what we’ve lost. There’s so much we can say with the space and time of a letter that 140 character limits and internet attention spans deprive us of.

Bottom line? I think you should read this book. You’ll laugh out loud, and I cried, too. And then maybe you should go write a friend a real letter.

Post-Holiday Updates and a Brand New Year

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Petits fours: Round 1.

Petits fours: Round 1.

You guys! I totally cooked Christmas dinner!! And by “totally cooked Christmas dinner”, I mean that I sat back, sometimes stirred potatoes, opened the windows to air out the smell of the delicious-but-odoriferous balsamic reduction, and ate many of the petits fours that my grandmother brought over before dinner, while my sister, my brother in law, and my dad cooked like the superstars they are.

I feel compelled to note that my real contribution to Christmas Day feasting was breakfast. That’s right, I made coffee for everyone. Second coffee, that is, since everyone made their first cups themselves.

Also I made the Barefoot Contessa’s apple turnovers, mostly myself, which, well, it’s kind of a big deal.

You might remember that my mom had some surgery in December? Which led to some apprehension on my part about my sister and I cooking Christmas dinner together, since she doubts my abilities, and despite the possible wisdom of her doubt, that never fails to irritate me? Well, all that worrying was for naught, because they left me absolutely nothing to do but eat! And clean up. I wasn’t going to mention it, but…

I hope each of you had wonderful holidays with your loved ones.

I love giving presents (I love receiving them too) and this year, the present I was most excited to give were booklists for everyone in my family. I put my librarian skills to work on them all year, building a list of possibilities for everyone, and then choosing the twelve books that I thought were most likely to succeed in pleasing the recipient, making it into a little “book of the month club” booklet. Pictures would be included, but…*

For everyone except my brother in law, I had far more than twelve books to choose from, but my brother-in-law reads mostly nonfiction. And often (so I understand) non-narrative nonfiction…and not books of essays, either. I’m all about the narratives, personally, and our war interests don’t even coincide: while I went through a deeply earnest World War II obsession in my early teens that lingers today, my brother in law (so I understand) is interested in the Civil War. So I ended up having to stretch his recommendations to make twelve months. Thankfully two of the books on his list were super long, so I figured it’s possible that they will take two months each to read. It still kind of feels like a cop-out though.

But that does bring me around to my 2013 reading resolutions. (I use the word “resolution” loosely.) In no particular order, they are:

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  • Read at least one nonfiction book. I give myself a pass on the non-narrative portion, but ideally one I think my brother in law would read and enjoy.
  • Middlemarch. I will finish it or give up entirely before I turn 30, so help me!
  • See if we can’t get a long-distance book club off the ground in 2013 (this means you, E and M!).
  • And, after reading this article in The Guardian online, read at least one book in 2013 that was translated from a language other than English.

What about you? Did you make any reading resolutions for 2013?

* As the girl who left all her Christmas crafting to the last possible moment, pictures didn’t happen before the booklists were slid into stockings. And frankly, my blog resolution for 2013 is not to hold up posts for more than a day because of a lack of pertinent photographs, since my thankless family hasn’t responded to my plea for photographs with actual photographs. Perhaps they’ve thrown the booklists away and just don’t want me to know.

A Book for All Seasons

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About a year ago, my mom sent me an email about a book she had just read and really enjoyed, and so I downloaded it for my Kindle, and I finally got around to starting reading it a few weeks ago. It is a book about three very different sisters who make very different choices, and how their lives turn out, and frankly it was just a little heavy going for me, at least for right now.

cover art by Charles Robinson

So I read something else, something that turned out to be the perfect book to read when the book your mother recommends to you is just too depressing, or when you miss your far-away friends, or when it’s an election year, or when there is weather of any kind, or, really, pretty much any time. Have you ever read Once on a Time, by A. A. Milne? If not, I think the time is now.

As a little girl I was delighted by Milne’s Winnie the Pooh books. As an adult (and still delighted), I attribute it to a long-standing appreciation for nonsense. Looking back on it now, there was a certain something in the narrator’s voice, something I responded to and trusted, something that said, “Listen, I am going to tell you a story,” in such a way that I had to keep reading.

Once on a Time has just that same quality about it. It is the story of the King of Euralia, his daughter Princess Hyacinth, and their friend the Countess Belvane. One day, the King and Princess Hyacinth are interrupted at breakfast when the king of a neighboring kingdom flies overhead in his magic boots. War ensues. Power struggles, princely quests, damsels in distress (maybe)…all told with supreme wit and in highly engaging style. For example:

“I am alone,” she said. “Dare I soliloquize? I will. It is a thing I have not done for weeks. ‘Oh, what a –’” She got up quickly. “Nobody could soliloquize on a log like that,” she said crossly. She decided she could do it just as effectively when standing. With one pale hand raised to the skies she began again.

Another favorite:

…they set out with no luggage and no clear idea of where they were going to sleep at night. This after all, is the best spirit in which to start a journey. It is the Gladstone bag which has killed romance.

So great was my enjoyment of this little slice of fairy tale nonsense that, laughing in bed while reading, I forced house-guests to listen to my reading aloud from it with my nightguard in. (Which, if you knew my propensity to gag if attempting to speak clearly with my nightguard in, you would interpret as a gesture indicative of my great enthusiasm. Now, having shared that delightful detail about myself, you know.)

In the preface, Milne explains that he wrote Once on a Time to amuse his wife and himself in 1915, “at a time when life was not very amusing”. If you, like me, have lately found yourself in need of a little escape from oneself and/or the world at large, this little overlooked gem of a story might be just the ticket.

A Quote to Start October

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I’m a big fan of the blog Letters of Note, described as “correspondence deserving of a wider audience” and curated by Shaun Usher. It’s a great place to while away some time reading other people’s stories. And there are so many great letters out there (some of my favorites: from F. Scott Fitzgerald, from John Steinbeck, from Harper Lee, from J. R. R. Tolkien).

Yesterday Letters of Note posted a letter written by Lafcadio Hearn to one of his editors, in which he rhapsodizes eloquently about the beauty of words. It’s too great not to share again.

For me words have colour, form, character; they have faces, ports, manners, gesticulations; they have moods, humours, eccentricities;—they have tints, tones, personalities…Surely I have never yet made, and never expect to make any money. Neither do I expect to write ever for the multitude. I write for beloved friends who can see colour in words, can smell the perfume of syllables in blossom, can be shocked with the fine elfish electricity of words.

May your October be full of syllables that blossom in perfume.