Here are six books which I’ve selected to read this January and February. Hopefully, I’ll be able to add to this list, but so far here is how it stands:
I started journaling when I was five. Seriously. The reason I remember it so well is because my grandmother took me on a trip, by train, to Canada. We had a lot of time to sit together and talk. I was writing in one of those little red leather journals with a lock and a key, and I remember her asking me, “Don’t you know how to spell Winnipeg?”
For years, I happily kept a journal. Perhaps my very favorite is written in a yellow Clarefontaine composition notebook from Paris in 1972, when I was eleven. I didn’t have a camera, and so I added detailed sketches to remember what I saw of the cobblestone streets and types of bread.
In high school I was happy with spiral bound notebooks from drugstores. Until they unwound with use and snagged all my sweaters.
In my thirties and forties I was happy with beautifully covered notebooks from the Art Institute of Chicago or stationery stores.
And then? I discovered Traveler’s Factory Notebooks, which used to be called Midori from DesignPhil. It was one of the joys curses from social media. I bought a brown leather regular size notebook in 2016, and I used it for five years, wondering what all the fuss about “planner peace” was about. I had an insert for a calendar, a journal, and a commonplace book; it was great.
I now have seven Traveler Factory’s notebooks, three Paper Republic leather notebooks, five Hobonichi a6 covers, and four Leuchtturm notebooks. I don’t buy a lot of things, I just buy a lot of the same thing.
It’s ridiculous.
When I started looking at the new year to come, I realized it was time for a change. It was time to get the Hell away from social media, which only made me long for what I already have, or worse, question what I don’t. It was time to find peace with a notebook again, to find peace with myself again. It was time to focus on meaning. Time to focus on simplicity.
And that, my friends, is exactly what my word of the year turned out to be. Simplicity.
May you find what you need as you look toward 2024. Be blessed.
I’ve never read anything by Nalini Singh before, although I’ve seen her name plenty of times. When Berkley asked me to be on a blog tour for her latest book, I agreed so that I could discover at least one of her works for myself.
There Should Have Been Eight has a wonderful, gothic setting in New Zealand. Seven old friends have planned to meet for a reunion at the ancestral home of one of them, a home which has been half burned yet still stands in resplendent glory, the setting sun glittering on the intact window panes.
This home offers fantastic photographic opportunities for Luna, another one of the friends, who quickly takes every chance she can to capture the moments of their weekend together. (And, the changing weather outside.) Luna loves her camera, and she realizes that the time she has left, to view the world through its lens, is diminishing as the crystals in her eyes coalesce, which will eventually make her blind.
Luna, her best friend Vansi, Phoenix, Ash, Aaron, and Grace have come to the Shepherd estate at Darcie’s invitation. Their joy at being together, however, is tarnished by Bea’s absence. Bea is Darcie’s sister, who committed suicide from the strains of mental illness which seem to have been handed down from her family.
Things appear to be lovely, at first. There is a massive kitchen, provisions brought in which will be cooked into gourmet feasts, and a fireplace for sitting in front of with the alcohol of one’s choice. Then, things start going badly. Quite badly.
In fact, deadly.
So of course one reads on, discovering fallen characters as quickly as hidden corridors and secret rooms, hoping to find what, exactly, is going on. Or, more specifically, who is causing such harm to a group of supposed friends, and why?
If you like books such as The Hunting Party by Lucy Foley, or The Sanatorium by Sarah Pearce, or any suspense thriller which involves a group of friends manipulated by one from within, There Should Have Been Eight will appeal to you.
Glass Onion meets Lucy Foley in a new locked-room New Zealand noir from New York Times bestselling author Nalini Singh: THERE SHOULD HAVE BEEN EIGHT (Berkley Hardcover; On-sale November 21, 2023).
If you need a new binge-read locked-room Gothic series, Nalini Singh is a must-read.
This November I have turned to Anne Frank, again, for the influence she has had in my life is profound.
My parents took me to The Secret Annexe in Amersterdam when I was eight. Many decades later, when I read a children’s version of her story to my class of eight year olds, one of the parents objected to the children being too young. But, I disagree: it is the perfect age to learn of courage. To learn of thinking beyond one’s self. To learn of the power in self-expression.
I will never forget standing in the room in which Anne once slept, looking at the film stars’ photographs which she had pasted on the wall. They curled at the edges, but they were still there, a vivid reminder of her presence.
I don’t remember if her actual diary was there, in 1969, but I have a clear visual of the pages in my memory. Perhaps it is only from a photograph, or perhaps I looked through a glass display case, but in either instance my life was changed forever. Imagine: preserving your thoughts and feelings on pages of paper in a book.
I have kept a diary ever since.
Oh, so many things bubble up inside me as I lie in bed, having put up with people I’m fed up with, who always misinterpret my intentions. That’s why in the end I always come back to my diary. That’s where I start and finish, because Kitty (her diary) is always patient. I’ll promise her that I shall persevere, in spite of everything, and find my own way through it all, and swallow my tears.”
p. 46
My old biography of Anne Frank bore the phrase “A Portrait in Courage” under her name. For her book is a diary, to be sure, but more than anything else it is an honest account of untold courage.
Find out hostess for Week Two, Volatile Rune, here.
I was so relieved when I came out from under the rock which has been on top of me since July to find you are still here! I spent yesterday looking around, and reacquainting myself with blogs, as well as blogging events. I will be by to leave comments soon.
I have been walking in the glorious autumnal colors with my mother, and that, along with leading a group for Bible Study Fellowship, is the highlight of my Fall. For my husband has still been ill with some gastric thing, and my life has changed as much as his. Or, so it feels. No longer do we dine out; no longer do I freely cook whatever strikes my fancy.
But, I can still read! I am eager to read for both German Literature Month and Novellas in November. They will give me a much needed distraction, as books are always a great comfort to me. (You can find the links, and at least two choices, for these events in my sidebar.)
And you? Are you well? Are you happily ensconced in a chair, within the glow of a soft lamp, now that the days are shorter? November is a glorious month…
Find other entries for Sunday Salon, hosted by Readerbuzz, here.
The Measure of Sorrow is a collection of stories, written by J. Ashley-Smith, which portray the fantastical. The macabre. And, even the horrific supernatural.
“The Further Shore” gives us an underwater world, where Renault swims in a black reef drawn to something that looks very much like a pearl the size of a boulder. His obsession with it grows, as do the obsessions of the others who inhabit a nearby shack with him. They each have a determination to find something…
All believed they would be the first to discover the hidden meaning, to reassemble from those worthless treasures the puzzle pieces of who they had once been. All feared they would never remember. No one dared speculate that there was no meaning.
In the second story, we find a father is taking his children on vacation. They have left the posh mansion, in which they live with their mother, for a more rustic experience with their father. “Isn’t it amazing?” he (Scott, the father) says. “This mechanism they’ve adapted for survival. They can be dead inside and still go on living.” He is speaking of trees, for the benefit of his children traveling in the car with him. But, perhaps he is speaking for himself, as he fears his offspring’s alienation. They drive to a picnic site, but it is badly scorched, burned really, from a fire that has recently devoured much of the area. “The Old Growth” may be what looks like the face of a tree. Or, it may be the father who is encased inside one while looking for his son who has gone off to explore and become frightened.
“The Moth Tapes” relate to Maria Galen’s audio journal, a collection of Dictaphone cassettes which tell of her experience moving into a new home which is flooded with black water. It flows from a steady stream, down from the mountain above, and nothing she does will rid the house of water. Her clothes mold, her towels, and her books are sodden messes. Worse yet, is the incessant beating of the moths, giant moths, against her window. They shower everything with gold and silver dust and seem to call her up the mountain.
All the way our sisters will dance about us in shimmering clouds, leading, tugging, drawing us ever up, even as they drop from exhaustion and cold and the sacrifice they have made to bring us home. And when we find the opening, then we shall descend into this blood-warm waters, the moist tunnel walls glistening with the dawn we are leaving behind.
It seems to me a fantastical way to describe birth, for Maria is pregnant with a child to whom she speaks throughout the story. One could easily interpret this story as though she is turning into a moth herself, but I see it as a transition into motherhood. Especially from the last line of the quote above.
These are the first three stories, in a collection of ten, set in Australia. They are each compelling and strange, not easily categorized into a predictable compartment such as many American short stories are. Meerkat Press describes the book as such:
“Shirley Jackson Award-winning author J. Ashley-Smith’s first collection, The Measure of Sorrow, draws together ten new and previously acclaimed stories of dark speculative fiction. In these pages a black reef holds the secret to an interminable coastal limbo; a father struggles to relate to his estranged children in a post-bushfire wilderness; an artist records her last days in conversation with her unborn child; a brother and sister are abandoned to the manifestations of their uncle’s insanity; a suburban neighborhood succumbs to an indescribable malaise; teenage ravers fall in with an eldritch crowd; a sensitive New Age guy commits a terminal act of passive-aggression; a plane crash opens the door to the Garden of Eden; the new boy in the village falls victim to a fatal ruse; and a husband’s unexpressed grief is embodied in the shadows of a crumbling country barn. Intelligent and emotionally complex, the stories in The Measure of Sorrow elude easy classification, lifting the veil on the wonder and horror of a world just out of true.“
I am reminded of the unusual stories of Haruki Murakami’s where not everything is as it seems. This type of writing is my favorite, for J. Ashley-Smith leads me into a labyrinth of wonder, too, where I know that in each rereading I could derive a new insight, or a fresh interpretation. His stories are marvelous things.
Many thanks to Meerkat Press for the opportunity to read The Measure of Sorrow and participate in their blog tour.
Hello. I’m back. My visit to Blogger lasted one month; it wasn’t working very well. I won’t go into all the reasons, but to say that most of you know me here. Also, all my posts since 2006 are here. So, I’m here again.
Sometimes, old things are the best. This is a stone bench that was built along the path I cycle in Pioneer Park. It has been here since my father was a boy, one of the original parts of our town which is quickly evolving into a bigger, louder, more materialistic place.
I like simplicity. I like familiar. I like discussing books, and life, with you. Shall we continue?
Mark and Walter. Pitbull. But, mostly Danny and Rico. These are the mates who grow up in Leipzig, Germany, after the Zone. We see them as Pioneers; we see them as young men. But, we always see them as rebellious and daring, stubborn and wounded.
Their fathers drink, or beat them, or both. Their mothers cry, with their heads lowered on the kitchen table. Their teachers admonish, but never make any difference in these boys’ lives.
While We Were Dreaming takes us back and forth, from their ages of eleven to eighteen, never quickly revealing why they are suddenly locked up or at a funeral. We keep reading to find out who has died. Who has been burned in a stolen car driven too fast. Whose father threw his beloved dog out the window where it died in the street.
I would have thought it would be too troubling to keep on reading, but I was mesmerized. Just as I experienced while reading The Birthday Party, I could not tear myself away from the intensity of what was happening. Nor did I want to.
This will not come as a surprise to anyone who knows me: if I had not committed to reading the International Booker Prize 2023 long list, I wouldn’t have read more than 50 pages of The Gospel According to the New World.
Condé does a marvelous job of giving us the Caribbean in the cadence of a skilled storyteller. But, she does an abysmal job in creating a Christ figure who is independent from the one I’ve read about in the Bible. Why does His story need to be rewritten?
She draws parallels between Jesus Christ, and her lead character, Pascal (Easter), as if they both comprised the essence of the New Testament. Pascal is born of a Spaniard, who has disappeared from the cruise ship in which he bed Pascal’s mother, Maya…she leaves the baby in a shed between the hooves of a donkey for warmth.
Many other “parallels” between Jesus and Pascal occur, such as finding twelve fishermen, multiplying the braided loaves, turning the Rialto into a den of thieves, raising Lazare from the dead…
Yet, there is also a strong representation of today’s issues. Condé addresses prejudice, wealth, and gender in her novel, for who could leave those alone in 2023?
An unknown visitor arrives for Pascal’s christening. He brings a flower, in an earthen vase, that Pascal’s mother had never seen before. “This flower’s name is Tete Negresse,” the new arrival explained. “It is designed to erase the Song of Solomon from our memory. You recall those shocking words, I am Black but I am beautiful. These words must never be pronounced again.” (p. 32)
The bride in the Song of Solomon has no case for Black or White; the girl laments that she has been darkened by the sun, mistreated by her brothers:
5 Dark am I, yet lovely, daughters of Jerusalem, dark like the tents of Kedar, like the tent curtains of Solomon. 6 Do not stare at me because I am dark, because I am darkened by the sun. My mother’s sons were angry with me and made me take care of the vineyards; my own vineyard I had to neglect
Song of Solomon 1:5-6 (NIV)
I never took this passage to mean anything racial, or prejudicial; more than anything, it points to the cruelty of her siblings, as well as her hard work under the sun.
Then there is the statement against the middle class, as if it is despicable. “He (Pascal) argued that he was going to be twenty and was perfectly capable of deciding his future on his own. Moreover, they knew full well that he had never liked the bourgeois milieu they had forced him to accept, particularly its arrogance and selfish indifference towards everything that didn’t concern it directly.” (p. 44)
Shall we take care about whom we lump together? Not all poor are lazy. Not all middle class are indifferent to others. Not all rich are unlawful…
I found myself becoming more troubled with each page that I read. My interpretation is that Maryse Condé speaks with great irreverence about God’s Son, in whom I believe with all my heart. Quite possibly this is a book which many will enjoy, but for me, I could not accept the scornful way she seemed to mock the Word made flesh in her characterization of Pascal. The Gospel According to the New World is not for me, and it will be near the bottom of my list for the International Booker Prize this year.
Find a review from my fellow Shadow Panel Jurist, David, here,
The story starts out as perhaps many parent-child relationships do. Johanna is disgruntled with her mother, and feels shunned for the choices she made which were contrary to her parents’ wishes: leaving her husband, moving from Norway to Utah, changing from a career in law to become an artist. Even though I was a child who sought to make her parents proud, I can understand a child’s rebellion as well as desire to forge her own separate path.
But, then her behavior gets weird.
Johanna returns to Oslo, and starts stalking her mother. Her paranoid thoughts escalate with an alarming rate, as she wonders about her mother’s well being, and spends days watching her mother’s home in Arne Bruns gate 22 from within her parked car; then she makes a hiding place for herself in the cedar hedge which borders the neighboring building so she can watch more closely.
I find a suitable spot and set up camp, I spread out my rug and curl up on it. I can’t unlock the silence, I have to unlock the silence, I can’t attack it, I have to attack it. I belong in these bushes, I can smell childhood and the earth, I have found the best place to hide and no one will ever find me, I hibernate and experience time like someone in the process of leaving this world, behind me time is suspended and I lie homeless in my home, rooted in a state of stagnation.
p. 129
Well, this doesn’t sound normal. I am worried that I am reading the voice of someone who is not mentally well, for she sounds almost delusional.
And then, we wonder who is the emotionally unstable one? For when Johanna summons the courage to knock on her mother’s door, her mother opens it with terrorized eyes, and then it is shut in Johanna’s face. Later, her sister texts her that she must not try to contact their mother again, or there will be consequences.
I found this novel to be a painful reflection on what it means to be a child, and what it means to be a parent. Johanna looks at herself, looks at her mother, and then looks at her own son, John, with bewilderment and yearning.
From when I was very young I had an open wound and an open door over which I had no control, and Mum entered and infected me with her misery, and don’t all children have that and don’t all mothers do that, myself included?
p. 254
What a powerful, exquisitely written book this is. It holds universal questions, and truths, for all of us have been children. All of us have searched for what only perfect people could give us, and must come to accept the parents we have been given: flawed, as we ourselves are flawed.
Dolce Bellezza 