What People Said They Would Be Reading

Day 116 of the "What are you reading, and why?" project. Phyllis, who (Day 114, at the end) is reading I, Claudius, by Robert Graves, and who had just finished Hester when I asked the question at Facebook, said she had True Blue, by David Baldacci, waiting in the wings.

I see there's a Hester with a snowy mountain on the cover by Margaret Oliphant Oliphant (yes, that's what it says, aka Mrs. Oliphant) at Amazon, a reproduction of a historical work, but I'm thinking Phyllis read Hester: The Missing Years of the Scarlet Letter, by Paula Reed, an intertextual re-seeing kind of novel (like Wide Sargasso Sea, by Jean Rhys, which re-sees Jane Eyre by way of a prequel with Bertha in the West Indies).

In this Hester, we follow Hester back to England, with her daughter Pearl, and they get mixed up in the lives of Oliver Cromwell. (Having read The Scarlet Letter again recently, for Great Books Chicago, I am imagining a different life for Hester and Pearl....)

True Blue is a cop mystery, with female protagonists, set in D. C.

Bob, who had just finished Everything Must Change, by Brian McLaren, previously mentioned in this blog, was about to begin Reaching the Animal Mind, by Karen Pryor. This is, as the subtitle tells us, about Clicker Training and What it Teaches Us About All Animals. I am afraid to ask what a "clicker" is.

Upstairs, on a bookshelf, I have The Buccaneers, by Edith Wharton, an unfinished novel by Edith Wharton, finished by Marion Mainwaring. I think that ties in here because of the intertextuality and because I'm sure I said I would be reading that someday. And writers who are rewriting, re-seeing, or finishing the works of other writers are somehow also "reaching the animal mind," though without the help of clickers? Help!

Cemetery of Forgotten Books

Day 114 of the "What are you reading, and why?" project, and David, with whom I will be swimming soon in the early mornings, is reading "the next Zafon novel." Because David is a Spanish teacher, he may be reading it in the original Spanish, but I would need to read these novels by Carlos Ruiz Zafon in the translations by Lucia Graves.*

And it looks like I will need to, because they are about books! Or this one is, anyway:

The Shadow of the Wind is about a boy named Daniel whose father is a bookseller. He takes Daniel to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books (were Barbara Pym's books there for those 20 years she went out of style?!--see yesterday's entry...), where he chooses, yes, The Shadow of the Wind, by Julian Carax. And now I know I will get confused by the many character names, and lost in the "Borgesian labyrinth" as Richard Eder calls it in his New York Times review. Let's just say the Devil makes an appearance.

(Which reminds me of one of my favorite books ever, The Master and Margarita, by Mikhail Bulgakov. Anybody reading that right now?)

The Shadow of the Wind takes place just after the Spanish Civil War, in Barcelona. And now the lovely, funny song "Barcelona," from the musical Company, will be playing in my head for the rest of the day. As will one of my favorite lines of dialogue, ever--forgive me: "I'm a living thing, too, you shithead." Oh, my whimsical mind, God help me. (God has surely averted his/her/its eyes from my book blog, and yet will also forgive me.)

Anyway, Wikipedia informs me that Zafon was controversial in Spain for writing his novels in Spanish rather than Catalan. And that the follow up novel to Shadow of the Wind is actually a prequel, The Angel's Game. And, in another attack of whimsy, I keep hearing the author's name in my head as "saffron," an expensive yellow spice. Hence, today's picture of a saffron crocus.

*Translator Lucia Graves is the daughter of Robert Graves. Phyllis is reading I, Claudius, a perennial favorite, by Robert Graves! And Phyllis is an excellent cook, who probably has some saffron in her spice cabinet.

(They are going to bury me in the Cemetery of Forgot What I Was Writing About.)