Tag Archives: Colin Firth

7 Books and Counting

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Yes, I am still reading.  A few quick notes on some of the books:

Recent Publications

9780062469687_p0_v1_s192x300  The Hearts of Men by Nickolas Butler

If there is an opposite to chick lit, this is it.  A story about men, boys, Boy Scouts, coming of age, growing old – all men, but focused on a few – Wilbur, the Scout Master, who saves Nelson, the upright nerd, and Jonathan, an older boy who wavers between being the cool dude he wants to be and the righteous man of goodwill he tries not to be. A good story across generations with friendship among men as the angle.    And the author has the hallowed credential of the Iowa Writer’s Workshop.

 Unknown-4  Swimming Lessons by Claire Fuller

So – is Ingrid, the mother, still alive?  Did she find the courage to swim away from her philandering husband who betrayed her with her best friend?  Did she leave the old coot English professor who used her secret fantasies to finally write his best seller?  Did she start a new life or end a desperate one? You decide.

Classics I Finally Got Around to:

Unknown-1  Remembering Laughter by Wallace Stegner

Reading Wallace Stegner’s first novel – Remembering Laughter – reminded me of how great an author he is.  The poignant story of two women continuing to live together after the younger one has an affair and gets pregnant with her sister’s husband.  Though short, the story had the same impact on me as his famous Crossing to Safety.  If you have never read Stegner, this is a good place to start.   If you know him, the reissue of his first book is a gift.

0031398233688_p0_v1_s192x300   Unknown-2 Genius and Look Homeward Angel by Thomas Wolfe

In the movie “Genius” with Colin Firth and Nicole Kidman, the editor Maxwell Perkins gleans the best from Thomas Wolfe’s manuscripts to produce the first two of his lengthy novels.  Jude Law plays the writer, Thomas Wolfe, but his contemporaries are just as fascinating – a clever F. Scott Fitzgerald moping over his wife’s debilitating depression and his subsequent inability to write, and Ernest Hemingway, gloriously manly as he is about to go off to war.  Maxwell Perkins was editor to them all.  I had read Ftizgerald and Hemingway, but never Thomas Wolfe and Perkins was a stranger to me.   Inspired by the movie, I am reading Look Homeward Angel with a long introduction by Maxwell Perkins.  Only ten pages into the 508 of the story, I am convinced Wolfe is the genius portrayed.

 

Mrs. Bridge by Evan S. Connell

Poor Mrs. Bridge – she lived in her insular world, not knowing or caring to know what happened around her.  Republished in paperback to celebrate its fiftieth anniversary, Connell’s depiction of a privileged white woman in the nineteen thirties has notes of women in the fifties, but sadly, her plight could be applied to some women today.  Written in short paragraphs and chapters, Mrs. Bridge slowly evolves but never really grows.  Pathetic in her ignorance, she protects herself from the world, sometimes wondering about issues she is never curious enough to pursue – lest they disturb her bubble.  Of course she is sad and unfulfilled, yet she never realizes she could do something about her life – why would she?

Now Reading

Unknown-5   The Horse Dancer by Jojo Moyes

9780385316576_p0_v2_s192x300   Follow Your Heart by Susanna Tamaro

 

 

 

Death Comes to Pemberly

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P.D. James is still very much alive at 91 years old, but her writing style in Death Comes to Pemberley is eerily Jane Austen. If you are a fan of Pride and Prejudice, you will recognize all the 19th century characters, and comfortably fall into the rhythm of silver polishing, gossip, and courtships. If you are missing Downton Abbey, the upstairs/downstairs references at Pemberley, Darcy’s elaborate estate, will sooth you – but not for long – this is a murder mystery.

For those who have never read Austen’s classic (or seen the movie adaptations), James reminds readers of the storyline in her prologue, and continues to educate readers of the characters’ backstories throughout the plot, and at times, offering her own insights into the characters’ motivations.

A proper after-dinner gathering at the Pemberley estate is abruptly interrupted by Lydia, Elizabeth’s erstwhile sister now married to that rogue Wickham, screaming that someone has been shot in the nearby woods. A search through the dense fog uncovers the body and a bloody drunken companion.

As the plot slowly develops with a number of clever red herrings, P.D. James inserts humorous observations worthy of Jane Austen…

“It is generally accepted that divine service affords a legitimate opportunity for the congregation to assess not only the appearance, deportment, elegance, and possible wealth of new arrivals to the parish, but the demeanour of any of their neighbours known to be in an interesting situation…A brutal murder on one’s own property…will produce a large congregation, including some well-known invalids whose prolonged indisposition had prohibited them from the rigours of church attendance for many years.”

James mentions that a few of the jurors during the trial testimony of the accused murderer seem to have dozed off; you might feel the same – until James jolts you back into the action with another dead body, and has you fastracking to the whodunit – with a few embellishments before the drama is over.

An Agatha Christie mystery with last-minute revelations in Jane Austen language, Death at Pemberley is an easy fun read, with so many references to Pride and Prejudice that you won’t mind tripping over a few dead bodies.