Author Topic: The Library (Read 2591049 times)

PatH · « **Reply #14960 on:** April 09, 2015, 04:26:56 PM »

The Library

Our library cafe is open 24/7, the welcome mat is always out.
Do come in from daily chores and spend some time with us.

We look forward to hearing from you, about you and the books you are enjoying (or not).

Let the book talk begin here!

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PatH · « **Reply #14961 on:** April 09, 2015, 04:27:33 PM »

Goodness. I can hardly wait to see HRH's work.

Maybe JoanK and I should publish the Greek play we wrote when we were 10.

PatH · « **Reply #14962 on:** April 09, 2015, 08:12:58 PM »

For the next book discussion, if we get enough people, I propose to discuss the first book of Sigrid Undset’s great trilogy, Kristin Lavransdatter. If you’re interested, come and tell us HERE

If you’re not sure, come on over and watch, and we’ll talk you into it. It’s a really good read.

Steph · « **Reply #14963 on:** April 10, 2015, 08:28:30 AM »

I do read some foreign authors and like them, but if the culture is too different from what I like, I tend to not like the book or be puzzled by it. I have read several Japanese translations, they were quite poetic, but the drama is so different from ours.

PatH · « **Reply #14964 on:** April 10, 2015, 10:48:25 AM »

If the cultural assumptions are too different, one misses some of the point of a book. If it's manageable, it can be interesting to live with that different viewpoint for a while.

I've read some Japanese books I like. Yukio Mishima's The Sound of Waves, for instance is a gentle, low-key love story, unlike the harshness of the other books of his I've bogged down in.

Jonathan · « **Reply #14965 on:** April 10, 2015, 03:03:32 PM »

The Adventures of Alice Laselles. Who would have thought that the future queen had writtten a book of adventures at the age of ten.

I'm reading a book that has a footnote on Queen Victoria that I felt was almost lèse majesté. Surely this can't be true about her. The book tells about Isaac Van Amburgh, 'a glamorous, Kentucky-born daredevil animal trainer, who wrestled with lions, leopards, and tigers, who took his show to London and so delighted the young queen that she saw his show seven times in six weeks.'

The footnote: 'When the queen requested a private audience with the lions the rumor spread that she was sleeping with the trainer. Victoria was quintessentially Victorian in her escapist tastes; she was particularly fond of French drama and Italian opera, though she also loved a trashy farce, a spectacular pantomime or circus act, a historical romance or a gory melodrama. Her absolute favorites were gory French romantic historical melodramas. She took equal delight in lowbrow sensations like the six-year-old General Tom Thumb, whom P.T.Barnum brought to Buckingham Palace three times in 1844. Altogether, Victoria was not helpful to Macready's mission to restore dignity to the English stage. In one year the queen attended the theater forty-nine times: she saw thirty-two operas and fourteen French plays, and the nearest she came to English drama was the last act of a piece by an Irish-born writer. For six years she managed to avoid seeing a single Shakespeare play. Macready was not alone in complaining that her tastes were too lowbrow and foreign: the newspapers regularly attacked her for neglecting the native drama.'

Can one believe that? Queen Victoria? Slumming culturally? Macready was the great English Shakesperean and theater manger, a good friend of Dickens. He took his act to the U.S.A. and got into a heap trouble. His American opposite, playing Shakespeare in a different way, was Edwin Forrest. His Shakespeare, it was felt, was the Voice of America.

The book is: The Shakespeare Riots: Revenge, Drama, and Death in Nineteenth-Century America. By Nigel Clift. Very entertaining.

MaryPage · « **Reply #14966 on:** April 11, 2015, 08:45:10 AM »

That is a new one to me, but were there not terrible rumors about her with a Scot in her employ? I seem to recall both a book and a movie, and what is more, I think I saw the movie. Mrs. Brown, the public called her, did they not?

Steph · « **Reply #14967 on:** April 11, 2015, 08:52:41 AM »

How fascinating. The Victorians though were much rougher than we think of them.. Still I thought the Queen was sort of a stick in the mud. Not so.. I am glad, Makes her more interesting to me. I would have loved to meet a lion trainer any time..

ginny · « **Reply #14968 on:** April 11, 2015, 10:16:13 AM »

The Shakespeare Riota sounds like a wonderful book, Jonathan! Thank you for mentioning it, I am going to look for it.

I came in to say I am so taken with the choice of Kristin Lavransdatter for the May Book Club Online!

I had never heard of it, until one day I was reading here in the Library and people were going on and on about it, was it a couple of years ago? People were really raving about it.

I just love that choice for several reasons. We used to say read with us for a year in our book club, and you'll be exposed to things and ideas that perhaps you never would have thought of in your own enjoyable reading: authors, experiences that perhaps you would not have chosen for yourself (which really is what a book club is for, nu?) and great conversation or something like that. Of course that was 1996. We first did the new book Snow Falling on Cedars and we did next The Odyssey. A Year of Reading.

Lot of water under or over the dam since then depending on how you look at it.

I looked up this book which is so far out of my experience zone in topic, setting, and theme, and the new translation of same. Norway in the Middle Ages. Wow. And on Amazon you can turn the page, so I did. Wow again. The illustration, oh wow...oh.... it's Medieval...in Norway? Really? And then the first chapter came up and the first paragraph in that olde type print and my heart actually lept up, physically, just like Wordsworth said, (whom I am finally beginning to appreciate)..amazing.

Amazon says in a small blurb that that is NOT the book typeset one will be getting, but one ordered it anyway, and one wants that type, too, so one will keep looking. One really wants to immerse self in what this appears to promise. I can't wait. This is what a good "book club" does, in my opinion and here online we can talk to and benefit from the ideas of people we'd never had had the pleasure of having in our own living rooms because they don't live near us.

I think it's such an exciting opportunity. Thank you PatH!

bellamarie · « **Reply #14969 on:** April 12, 2015, 01:48:41 AM »

Jonathan, What juicy gossip, on the Royals. tsk tsk I dare say.

Ginny, I am excited as well to begin Kristin Lavransdatter The Wreath, the first in the trilogy. If we are willing and lucky, we just might go on to the next two books.

I want to take the opportunity to thank everyone who expressed well wishes to me on my retirement. I am at the end of the first full week, although it was an actual scheduled spring break, before I had to decide to close my daycare, but regardless, I spent the entire week sick with ear infections. I am feeling much better after 5 days of antibiotics. I appreciated all the kind words.

Steph · « **Reply #14970 on:** April 12, 2015, 09:26:55 AM »

Busy weekend, but I did get a couple of household things done that I cannot reach safely, when my younger son was here. Hooray.

PatH · « **Reply #14971 on:** April 13, 2015, 11:04:52 AM »

We just lost author Ivan Doig, whose book Dancing at the Rascal Fair we read here a few years ago. He gave a vivid picture of life during the settling of Montana.

BarbStAubrey · « **Reply #14972 on:** April 13, 2015, 11:16:18 AM »

Yes and I see we also lost Gunter Grass - I guess we are at that age in life - $:-\$ it is what it is...

PatH · « **Reply #14973 on:** April 13, 2015, 12:40:23 PM »

You're quick on the draw, Barb; Grass just died today. My husband used to read him in German, but I found him heavy going even in English, and the only book of his I ever finished was Cat and Mouse, probably his shortest and easiest. After a lifetime of calling on Germans to face up to their Nazi past, Grass finally revealed that he himself had been in the SS. He was just a kid, and apparently didn't actually get into action, but it caused people to rethink him.

BarbStAubrey · « **Reply #14974 on:** April 13, 2015, 01:29:20 PM »

too bad folks have to relive the sins of their youth - but we do have this need for revenge...

Jonathan · « **Reply #14975 on:** April 13, 2015, 03:05:06 PM »

Surely it wasn't the sinister SS gang that Gunther Grass got involved with. I thought you must be mistaken about that affiliation, Pat, but you're not. The dust jacket on my book has him 'drafted and assigned to the Waffen-SS as a tank gunner, and sent to the Eastern Front in the spring of 1945.' At 18 years of age. Perhaps the time has come to read Peeling The Onion. But I've got such a backlog of books on the Nazi legacy, I'm not sure where to begin. Just the other day I picked up Exorcising Hitler: The Occupation and Denazification of Germany, by Frederick Taylor. Or maybe I should start with Making Friends With Hitler: Lord Londonderry, the Nazis and the Road to War, by Ian Kershaw. I also have Royals and the Reich: The Princes von Hessen in Nazi Germany, by Jonathan Petropoulos. Perhaps I'll start with Diana Mosley: Mitford Beauty, British Fascist, Hitler's Angel, by Anne de Courcy.

Anybody know a good exorcist?

bellamarie · « **Reply #14976 on:** April 13, 2015, 04:01:05 PM »

I just can't bring myself to read too much on Hitler. His sick mind, and atrocities don't deserve my time or attention. It is interesting PatH., about the author, Grass.

Quote

finally revealed that he himself had been in the SS. He was just a kid, and apparently didn't actually get into action, but it caused people to rethink him.

Imagine all the young eighteen year olds who were drafted, all those years we were at war, and they had to deal with it years later.

I have a friend who was drafted during the Vietnam war. Years later he helped form a group called the D.O.V.E., Fund. a non profit corporation, it is an acronym that stands for Development Of Vietnam Endeavors." He wrote a book called, The Ghost Closet Return to Vietnam on the Wings of D.O.V.E. by Tom Treece. It's about how he became involved in this corporation when approached by former Vietnam vets, and Ohio Congresswoman, Marcy Kaptur. They have built medical clinics, and schools in Vietnam. He revisited Vietnam for the first time in 2001, and shares in his book his work and feelings of being there. It's a short book, but worth the read.

It is very difficult for me to hold these young men and women accountable, for their being drafted into the military, and having to defend their country. Our very own Secretary of State John Kerry, came home with bitter feelings, and sympathy toward Vietnam. I suppose when you are young, and don't know all the politics that incite war, you learn later in life how insight and wisdom, can give you a different outlook on things.

PatH · « **Reply #14977 on:** April 13, 2015, 04:10:21 PM »

I think there's a limit to what you can read into what happened to an 18 year old in a country with universal conscription, but it's interesting that he felt he had to hide it. He felt people would have discounted his message, and he was probably right.

Diana Mosley would certainly be the most amusing of those books, Jonathan; she was a pretty kooky character. I tend to ration my reading on Hitler pretty severely, though a little while back a book discussion prompted me to try to read a little of Mein Kampf. I couldn't take it for long--the thing is horribly insane.

PatH · « **Reply #14978 on:** April 13, 2015, 04:12:18 PM »

Bellamarie, you were posting while I was writing.

jane · « **Reply #14979 on:** April 13, 2015, 05:10:56 PM »

For all of us who remember our Discussion Leader, Joan Grimes; she passed away Feb. 26. Here's a link to her obituary.

http://obits.al.com/obituaries/birmingham/obituary.aspx?pid=174272983#sthash.zZ9ysvos.dpuf

BarbStAubrey · « **Reply #14980 on:** April 13, 2015, 05:22:58 PM »

Thanks Joan - I remember Joan from Chicago and Theron as well.

MaryPage · « **Reply #14981 on:** April 13, 2015, 09:01:35 PM »

I met Joan and Theron in Williamsport, Pennsylvania at the October 2001 SeniorNet Bash there.

Yes, Jonathan: The book about Diana Mitford Mosley is the one. I have a life long fascination with the Mitford sisters. The last of the six died just months ago in England. She was the Dowager Duchess of Devonshire!

All six were fascinating from childhood. Diana was the most beautiful of them all. I have purchased nearly every book ever written by or about them. Nancy and Jessica were fine writers, and Deborah (the Duchess) was very good. I have always felt it was a bit over the top that the Brits put Diana in jail during the war. Great Britain is fairly well populated today with the descendants of these six aristocratic sisters!

bellamarie · « **Reply #14982 on:** April 14, 2015, 12:08:15 AM »

Thank you PatH., for the obit on Joan. I do remember her in many of our discussions. She will be sadly missed.

You all are peaking my curiosity of Mitford sisters. I will have to go check them out.

PatH · « **Reply #14983 on:** April 14, 2015, 07:46:50 AM »

It was Jane who posted the obit. Joan Grimes had been sick for some time, hadn't come in here for about 4 years, but she had been a vibrant presence here. I never met her, only knew her from this site.

The Mitford sisters were quite a varied crew.

Steph · « **Reply #14984 on:** April 14, 2015, 08:50:52 AM »

Ah, The Mitford sisters, I adored them and have read so many books. Diana and Was it Unity?? who were Hitler fanatics.. I stay away from Hitler in person, but last year I got interested in the French and what and how they did during the war and did quite a bit of reading. They got away with a lot after the war. DEGaulle was quite a strong human being and buffaloed most of the rest of the leaders.
Joan.. Oh me, Our beach trip, I was her roommate and Theron had just died. She was so brave to come with us and was so very sad.. She adored her second husband.. A funny very very bright woman.

MaryPage · « **Reply #14985 on:** April 14, 2015, 10:09:22 AM »

And Jessica, who was a communist! She became an American, lived in California, and wrote constantly. One of her best sellers is still a classic: The American Way of Death, I believe it was. Quite an expose! The family all always called her Decca.

I liked Nancy's books the best, and adored her sense of humor. But if I had to BE a Mitford, I would choose to be Debo, the youngest of the clan. Wasn't it Decca and Debo who had a private language all of their own in order to escape the rest of the family? Debo, who became, quite by accident of World War II and the heir being a casualty, a duchess!

MaryPage · « **Reply #14986 on:** April 14, 2015, 10:29:50 AM »

One thing that has always struck me rather forcibly about these Mitford sisters is the fact they had no education to speak of. Remember? They were quite, relatively speaking, impoverished aristocrats, and the father was pretty adamant that only the one boy deserved the expenditure required. So the girls were pretty much left to their own devices, yet they were BRILLIANT! I cannot help but think their genes were triumphant in this case study, albeit they could have done with a little tutoring in the matter of exercising good judgment.

PatH · « **Reply #14987 on:** April 14, 2015, 10:42:02 AM »

I think Nancy wrote the most--novels, biographies, and many articles. One article that caused a big stir described how to tell a (British) person's social class by their use or pronunciation of certain key words. When I got to one word, where the key point was whether it was pronounced to rhyme with "pass" or "gas", I realize that much was going to be lost on this yankee.

PatH · « **Reply #14988 on:** April 14, 2015, 10:43:15 AM »

Quote from: MaryPage on April 14, 2015, 10:29:50 AM

albeit they could have done with a little tutoring in the matter of exercising good judgment.

Indeed

jane · « **Reply #14989 on:** April 14, 2015, 11:12:36 AM »

I've put together a Remembrance page for Joan Grimes.

Please come share your memories of her

http://seniorlearn.org/forum/index.php?topic=4671.0

MaryPage · « **Reply #14990 on:** April 14, 2015, 11:26:48 AM »

http://www.nancymitford.com/books/

https://www.goodreads.com/author/list/24401.Jessica_Mitford

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/25/world/europe/duchess-deborah-cavendish-dies.html?_r=0

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diana_Mitford

I thought ALL of their books most awfully good and interesting. Diana was a good writer, too. I don't believe Pam ever wrote a book, and I know Unity did not. But 4 excellent writers out of a half dozen sisters raised without formal education is pretty stunning stuff.

bellamarie · « **Reply #14991 on:** April 14, 2015, 01:15:47 PM »

I was searching around about the books the Mitford sisters have written and I came across one that piqued my interest.

The Mitfords Letters Between Six Sisters

Have you read this book MaryPage, and where would you recommend a first time reader to begin with their books? Thank you for the links.

MaryPage · « **Reply #14992 on:** April 14, 2015, 02:45:38 PM »

I have that book, and it is lovely and over 800 pages of the letters. However, I think the book is really for someone who is already well acquainted with the Mitfords. While I still have this book in my library, plus quite a few other books of, about and by them, I have given probably more than half away to my history teaching granddaughter, Paige. So I am sort of scratching my head as to where to begin. By the way, the letters were gathered together for publishing by Diana Mitford Guinness (yes, the bazillionaire stout & ale people) Mosley's daughter in law, her son Max's wife.

You have to start with a book that tells all about the whole family. The Mitford Girls by Mary S. Lovell would be a good start, and it was most excellent reading. I started way, way before that came out, but actually I think it was Nancy's Love In A Cold Climate back around 1950 or so that got me started. Read that, then go on to read Jessica's book Hons & Rebels. Once you have read the Lovell book, plus the Cold Climate & the Hons, you will be well on your way to an utter fascination. Or not. THEN you might be ready to appreciate the Letters. My point being, by that time you would know each girl intimately enough to get what they are saying to one another in those letters.

Love In A Cold Climate is a very famous book, a disguised (and not very well) autobiography. They also made a film of that book, and I have the DVD. It is terribly funny. So is Hons & Rebels, which tells all about their childhood. Hons is for Honorables, which they were due to their father's title.

I honestly think this is the way you should start, but please, anyone else pitch in here with YOUR ideas! I am certain that Steph, having owned her very own book store, could do better by you.

bellamarie · « **Reply #14993 on:** April 14, 2015, 05:15:08 PM »

Thanks MaryPage for your suggestions. I will look for The Mitford Girls by Mary S. Lovell, and the others you mention.

I have read only a few pages of the forward, and am already anxious to get to know these sisters. I have five sisters, and one brother, had a mother who was strict, and grew up with no demonstrative affection, so I can already relate to this family!

I am planning a trip to our main library on Thursday, so will take a list of these titles along with me.

Jonathan · « **Reply #14994 on:** April 14, 2015, 05:40:42 PM »

I share your enthusiasm, MaryPage, for anything by or about the beautiful Mitford sisters. From Nancy's Talent to Annoy, to Jessica's A Fine Old Conflict, to Deborah's In Tearing Haste, the letters between her and Patrick Leigh Fermor. And the Letters Between Six Sisters are the liveliest letters one could ever find. Just opening it at random I find Nancy writing to Deborah: " I hear that in a list of pornographic books at the Cairo museum is 'How To Make Love in the Cold' by N.M." And Nancy to Jessica on Dec 18, 1961: Darling Soo, Our fast young sister went over that ocean & had long loving tete a tetes with your ruler. Andrew says Kennedy is doing for sex what Eisenhower did for golf....Marie has just gone off to confess for Xmas. What ever can she have to say? As she's a saint. Somebody asked the priest at Fontaines what Mme Costa confessed (84 & as good as gold), C'est toujours la meme chose, elle dit "j'ai ete odieuse avec les invites." ' ('It's always the same thing, "I have been odious to the guests." ' And Unity writing to Jessica in 1937, from Munich: 'I met the Fuhrer by great good luck last Tuesday, I was driving along in my car & met him at a street corner driving in his car, he hadn't known I was back & seemed very pleased to see me & got out into the street to speak to me & everyone rushed from all directions shouting 'Heil!' when they saw him. He asked me to go back to tea with him & I followed his cars to his flat & sat with him for 2 and1/2 hours alone chatting....'

etc, etc, etc

MaryPage · « **Reply #14995 on:** April 14, 2015, 08:40:10 PM »

Jonathan, I think readers about the Mitfords who did not live back in the decades when they were young women would find it very hard to understand how it could be that one was an avowed communist and two were attracted to fascism. I remember well the Spanish Civil War and everyone taking sides around the dinner table here and all over Europe. The history books are telling new generations that it was just republicans versus nationalists, but that is not how we spoke of it back in the day. We called one side the Fascists (Franco, the Catholic Church, and the Nationalists) and the other side the Communists (the Republicans; isn't that a hoot!). I swear we did. Constantly and every day. And many a young man got his dander up and went to join one side or the other, including young Americans. Thus it was that Jessica followed her young lover to Spain when he was fighting on the side of the communists, and she became one. She was always devoted to England and then to America, and her politics had nothing whatsoever to do with Russia and their communism. The same with Diana, who fell in love with the leading British fascist, and Unity who sided with the fascists and then was flattered up a storm by Hitler because she was from the British aristocracy. Unity obviously did not believe for a minute that Hitler would go to war against her country, and so she shot herself in the head when he did! Diana was never a threat to England in the war, but her own sister, as was discovered after the fact and much later, Nancy reported her to the authorities as a threat!
Bottom line, I tell you, you could NOT make that stuff up! And yes, those letters are beyond fascinating, but don't you agree that you could well lose a lot if you don't know all the people by their nicknames and have the ability to reference what in the world they are talking about so glibly by reading some of the many, many books about the family prior to diving into those letters?
But to get back to the Spanish Civil War; as I say, everyone took sides. I was very young at the time, not yet 10 years old, and I rooted for the communists. Those were the choices: fascist or communist! Well, they lost! It is kind of fun now to go back and work out how different many things would have been had the communists defeated Franco! C'est la vie, indeed!

MaryPage · « **Reply #14996 on:** April 14, 2015, 10:17:33 PM »

Jonathan, your reference to a letter Nancy wrote to Jessica to the effect that Deborah went to Washington and had dinner with the Kennedys is yet another example of why it is so much better to know the family history. The Kennedys and the Cavendishes were related by marriage! Remember the Protestant lad Kathleen Kennedy married in England and Rose had a fit and would have none of it? Well, he was the HEIR to the Duke of Devonshire. And Deborah Mitford married his younger brother, "the spare."
So Debo was Kick Kennedy's sister in law. Then the heir was killed in the war. Plane crash, I believe. Suddenly, Debo's husband was the heir, and Kathleen the beloved widow. Later, Kathleen also died in a plane crash; but the Kennedys and the Cavendishes remained friends and family forever. They really did.
Deborah was also very close to the royal family. In true Mitford style, she had nicknames for each, one presumes so that only her intimates would know of whom she wrote or spoke. You have to read the books about her to get most of the translations, as she never told. I can remember that the Queen Mother was "cake" and Prince Charles was "friend." She was very much pro Charles and anti Diana during the divorce.

bellamarie · « **Reply #14997 on:** April 14, 2015, 11:09:27 PM »

Wow! That was a lot of info to learn. Anyone, Pro Charles, and anti Diana is not going to rate too high with me. But....I will hold out and give her a fair chance. Now, did I read this correctly, one of the sisters committ suicide? I might want to hold off reading any more posts until I can begin reading the earlier books.

In the Mitford letters of six sisters the author shows a pic of each sister, a bio, and a complete list of all the people and nicknames to reference to. He also gives an intro to the girls and their family.

I have always been a huge Kennedy fan, and loved Princess Diana. I actually have a Diana doll collection, and a replica of her beautiful ring my husband gave to me for an Anniversary a few years ago. Now I follow Prince William and Kate. I have read so many books on the Royal family, and the Kennedy family. The Kennedy Camelot, and Royalty has always captured my interest.

Steph · « **Reply #14998 on:** April 15, 2015, 08:52:55 AM »

Love in a Cold Climate was my first introduction. I dived in and learned everyones nickname. They had no education to speak of. I think possibly a Nanny.. But oh, they had fun and loved to swank around on each other.. The American Way of Death was and is a powerful book. Changed my mind about a lot of things all those years ago and I note that it is in print and people still read it.
I have not read the letters, but am putting it on my.. lets find it list.

MaryPage · « **Reply #14999 on:** April 15, 2015, 09:22:43 AM »

Steph, the Letters were published in 2007, so you should not have a problem getting hold of a copy. Charlotte Mosley arranged them by time sent, which seems much the best choice to me.
Seems you and I started our Mitford journey with the same book.

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Author Topic: The Library (Read 2591049 times)