A Girl Walks Into a Bookstore...

Pages: 667 Original date of publication: 2011 My copy:   2011 (Oxford University Press) Why I decided to read: How I acquired my copy: Amazon.com, April 2013 This is a compilation of many of Jane Austen’s letters, most of them sent to her sister Cassandra between 1796 and 1817, the year of her death. Although many of Austen’s letters were destroyed by her sister in order to preserve the family reputation, the collection contains over 160 letters in which Austen gives her sister details about her life in Chawton—as well as giving us a tantalizing glimpse of what was going through her mind as she was writing her novels (especially the novel that was to become Pride and Prejudice , First Impressions ). There are other letters here, too, giving advice to her niece and professional correspondence to publishers—as well as a couple of letters that were written by Cassandra Austen after Jane’s death. To the sisters, the letters acted in the way that phone calls do toda...

Pages: 259 Original date of publication: 2013 My copy: 2013 (Penguin) Why I decided to read: How I acquired my copy: Phoenix bookstore, May 2013 In January 1937, the body of a young British girl, Pamela Werner, was found near Peking’s Fox Tower. Although two detectives, one British and the other Chinese, spent months on the case, the case was never solved completely, and the case was forgotten in the wake of the invasion of the Japanese. Frustrated, Pamela’s father, a former diplomat, tried to solve the crime. His investigation took him into the underbelly of Peking society and uncovered a secret that was worse than anything he could have imagined. At first, I thought that this would be a pretty straightforward retelling of a true crime, but what Paul French (who spent seven years researching the story) reveals in this book is much more than that. Foreign society in Peking in the 1930s was stratified, with the British colonials at the top and the White Russian refu...

Pages: 383 Original date of publication: 1865 My copy: 1986 (Virago) Why I decided to read: How I acquired my copy: Ebay, February 2011 A friend to George Meredith, Thackeray, and other notables of that time, Lucie Duff Gordon (1821-1969) was raised in a radical, intellectual family and imbued with a sense of adventure; her imagination roamed father than the usual Grand Tour. In 1862, she took a tour to South Africa, attempting to recover from tuberculosis; when that didn’t succeed, she went to Egypt, where her son-in-law was a banker. Although her daughter and son-in-law lived in Alexandria, Gordon spent much of her time in Luxor, living in a ruined house above a temple. Her letters were alternately written to her husband, Sir Alexander Duff Gordon; her mother; and her daughter. Gordon’s letters reveal someone with a high amount of inquisitiveness and cultural sensitivity; Gordon frees herself from the usual ways that other Europeans stereotyped Egyptians at the t...

Pages: 318 Original date of publication: 2008 My copy: 2008 (WW Norton) Why I decided to read: saw Mary Roach speak at a conference How I acquired my copy: Denver airport bookstore, October 2012 In Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers , Roach explored the topic of the human cadaver and how it’s used in science. In Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex , she does pretty much the same thing, except with sex and sexuality. Roach wanders out into the fringes of scientific exploration in her books, into the areas that aren’t considered “typical,” and she writes her books with a liberal amount of humor. Roach traveled all over the world to witness—and even participate in—clinical trials involving sex. Every now and then she footnotes her writing with random stuff, including a note about who Millard Filmore’s running mate was (trick question!). From start to finish, Bonk is an entertaining read—even if I did get a few odd looks as I was reading it in public....

Pages: 626 Original date of publication: 1944 (original collection; additions made to later editions) My copy: 2006 (Penguin) Why I decided to read: How I acquired my copy: Phoenix airport bookstore, December 2012 Dorothy Parker was famous for her satirical wit, a founding member of the Algonquin Round Table, and one of the earliest writers for the New Yorker. She was once arrested for protesting the execution of the murderers Sacco and Vanzetti. Later, she pursued screenwriting in Hollywood and was later blacklisted there for her involvement in left-wing politics. She was married three times, twice to the same man; and had four suicide attempts, none successful. After her death, her ashes lay for 21 years on a shelf at a funeral home and then in the office of a Wall Street law firm, before she was finally buried at the headquarters of the NAACP. Parker loved one-liners and word play, and this is a compilation of short stories, magazine articles, letters, interviews, b...

Pages: 302 Original date of publication: 1932 My edition: 2000 (NYRB Classics) Why I decided to read: How I acquired my copy: Joseph Fox Books, Philadelphia, January 2012 Hindoo Holiday is an account of the time that the author, JR Ackerley, spent in india working as a secretary to the Maharajah of Chhatapur (jokingly changed to Chhokrapur, apparently meaning “City of the Boys,” for this book). The Maharajah is an eccentric old man who enjoys riddling conversations and the company of boy actors. The setting is the British Raj, when Indian rulers had a fair amount of autonomy—but in the wake of peace, there was very little that the Maharajahs could actually do. So, in possession of vast amounts of wealth, according to the introduction to this book, these rulers spent their money on untold luxury. It was amidst this environment that this book is set, and the Maharajah Sahib of Chhokrapur is one of these. The diary covers roughly six months in 1923 and 1924; appa...

Pages: 303 Original date of publication: 2003 My edition: 2003 (Norton) Why I decided to read: saw the author speak at a conference How I acquired my copy: Denver airport, October 2012 I saw Mary Roach speak at the annual meeting of the American Medical Writers Association in Sacramento at the beginning of October, where she was presented with an award at a luncheon I attended. Her talk was so humorous and interesting that on my way home I was able to find copies of her books in a (gasp!) real bookstore in the Denver airport (I saw Flaubert lurking behind the counter along with Jane Eyre ). For Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers , Roach harangued everyone from morticians to doctors to body farm personnel others whose work brings them in proximity to cadavers. In this book we see how cadavers are used for everything from medical student anatomy lessons to crash test dummies (the impact that cars have on cadavers is more realistic than if they were to use cra...

Pages: 430 Original date of publication: 1982 My edition: 2010 Why I decided to read: How I acquired my copy: September 2011, Persephone shop I’ve been putting off and putting off writing a review of An Interrupted Life , mostly because I wanted everything to sink in and also because I really didn’t know what to say about this wonderful, albeit heartbreaking book. There I go again, using clichés to describe this book, but I loved it from start to finish. Etty Hillesum was born in January 1914 in Holland and lived in Amsterdam working as a translator of Russian and Russian teacher. Even still she aspired to be a writer, and kept a journal to that effect during WWII. As a Jew, Etty’s life became increasingly circumscribed by the restrictions placed upon her; she was later given a job as a typist in the Jewish Council, an organization that sought to mediate between the Nazis and Dutch Jews. Etty later volunteered to help accompany Jews to Westerbork, a detention camp ...

Pages: Original date of publication: 1959 My edition: 2002 (Vintage) Why I decided to read: How I acquired my copy: Waterstone’s Piccadilly, London, September 2011 Laurie Lee was a journalist, writer, scriptwriter, and poet, who also spent some time volunteering in the Spanish Civil War. Later, he worked with a team of documentary filmmakers, among them Emma Smith , author of Persephone’s The Far Cry . At the time, Cider with Rosie was an idea that Lee had, but Emma Smith encouraged him to finish writing it. Cider With Rosie is considered a children’s book, but even as an adult, I enjoyed it. Cider With Rosie is the first in a trilogy of memoirs that Lee wrote about his childhood and young adulthood. This installment in the trilogy focuses on the war and early-interwar years, when Lee was roughly between the ages of 4 and teenage, and it is often hailed as a classic in describing scenes from a provincial childhood, much like Lark Rise to Candleford .   Th...

Pages: 361 Original date of publication: 2007 My edition: 2008 (Anchor Books) Why I decided to read: How I acquired my copy: LibraryThing Secret Santa, December 2010 Elizabeth Marsh was truly an interesting and remarkable woman. Conceived in Jamaica and born in 1735, Marsh literally traveled from the time she was in the womb. She visited Morocco, the Mediterranean, Florida, and India. The books covers not only Elizabeth’s story, but her family’s and, by extension, world history. Because her father and grandfather were shipbuilders, Marsh’s life was linked to the English Royal Navy and the world of the British Empire. It was a time when there was a growing awareness of and connections between various cultures of the world, and Marsh’s story in some part personalizes that experience. In some ways, her life and adventures were similar to those of Eliza Fay, who wrote her “Letters” from India roughly a generation later. Both were lower-middle class (if you could use th...

Pages: 236 Original date of publication: 1970 My edition: 2007 (NYRB Classics) Why I decided to read: How I acquired my copy: Joseph Fox bookstore, Philadelphia, February 2012 In 1928, a young Canadian named John Glassco set out for Paris with his best friend. The two set out to explore all that the city had to offer: the cafes, bars, and brasseries that the Americans of the Lost Generation would have been familiar with as well. Glassco set out to have a literary career and along the way rubbed shoulders with some of the greats (at one point in this memoir a man walks into a bar and someone calls him “Ernie;” it took me a while to realize that yes, it was that Ernie). Glassco wrote this memoir as truth, although it’s not completely factual. For example, Kay Boyle and Djuna Barnes, both important figures of the literary expatriates of Paris at the time, receive new names; and there is a certain sense of scintillism to Glassco’s account—probably because the author w...

Pages: 429 Original date of publication: 1944 My edition: 1988 (Virago Travellers) Why I decided to read: How I acquired my copy: Ebay, November 2011 Emily Hahn was an American who spent 9 years living in China as a journalist, starting in 1935. She lived first in Shanghai, where she had a common-law marriage with a native Chinese and owned a couple of gibbons. During WWII, she lived in Chungking, where she met her future husband Charles Boxer. I first ran into the prose of this author about a year ago when I read the Virago Book of Women Travellers , in which another essay of Hahn’s is excerpted. The first line of that essay goes: Though I had always wanted to be an opium addict, I can’t claim that as the reason I went to China. The opium ambition dates back to that obscure period of childhood when I wanted to be a lot of other things, too—the greatest expert on ghosts, the world’s best ice skater, the champion lion tamer, you know the kind of thing. But by the time I went to China I ...

Pages: 294 Original date of publication: 2012 My edition: 2012 (Bloomsbury) Why I decided to read: Offered through the Amazon Vine program How I acquired my copy: Amazon Vine, April 2012 Isabella Robinson was a housewife in the mid-19th century. Her husband moved her and their family to Edinburgh, where she met Edward Lane, a doctor who specialized in hydrotherapy (Charles Darwin was one of his patients and supporters later on). Although Dr. Lane was married, Isabella began spending a lot of time with him. She began keeping a diary, detailing her friendship/relationship (real or imagined) with him. When Isabella fell ill, her husband found her diary and began divorce proceedings against her. The diaries were nearly pornographic in nature (the women in the courtroom had to be cleared out before the diaries were read) and indicate a woman who was caught up in her emotions as well as had a strong sex drive. These are the broad strokes of a fascinating incident—almost a blip in history, bu...

Pages: 256 Original date of publication: 2012 My edition: 2012 (Public Affairs) Why I decided to read: offered through the LTER program How I acquired my copy: review copy from LTER, April 2012 “A woman’s reputation depends on not being talked about.” So went the first line of Hortense Mazarin’s memoirs, belying the fact that much of her life, and that of her sister, Marie Mancini, was lived in the public eye, talked about and written about in the public gazettes. Both sisters bucked the traditions of the time by running away and seeking divorces from their husbands. The nieces of Cardinal Mazarin, Hortense and Marie made an impact early on at the French court, where Marie had a love affair with the King. A review of the book in a blurb on the back from Kirkus Reviews compares the two sisters to the Kardashians—a not unfair comparison. I think it would be a cliché to say that a work of nonfiction is written as though it’s fiction, but the story of Marie and Hortense is written in an ea...

Pages: 295 Original date of publication: 1960 My edition: 2006 (Virago) Why I decided to read: How I acquired my copy: Amazon, October 2011 The Infernal World of Branwell Bronte is a brief biography of the least-known of the Bronte siblings: Charlotte, Emily, and Anne’s brother Branwell, believed by his sisters to be the most brilliant of all the siblings. Born the only boy in a family of girls, a lot was expected of Branwell; but tied down by his imagination, which he fueled into the fictional world of Angria, a lack of job prospects, a disastrous affair, and a drug addiction, he died at the young age of 31 and was eventually eclipsed by his sisters. Yet Branwell was a moderately good poet and artist. In this short biography, Du Maurier draws from Branwell’s poems, prose, and letters to giver her reader more of an idea of what he was like. And yet, it’s hard to know, trapped as he was in his own “infernal world,” a phrase that Du Maurier uses way too many times in the book but which ...

Pages: 370 Original date of publication: 2010 My edition: 2010 (John Murray) Why I decided to read: I was in the mood to read something Mitford How I acquired my copy: Waterstone’s, York, UK, September 2011 Deborah Devonshire was the youngest of the famous Mitford sisters—last in line after Nancy, Pam, Diana, Unity, and Jessica. In 1941 she married Andrew Cavendish, son of the Duke of Devonshire, and eventually became the Duchess of Devonshire. Deborah helped turn Chatsworth into a popular tourist destination and is the author of several books. She also knew, literally, everyone, as seen from the impressive number of names she drops in this memoir. The memoir is arranged more by subject matter than chronological; a chapter on the Kennedys (who Deborah was related to distantly through marriage; Andrew’s brother was married to Kathleen Kennedy, sister of John F. Kennedy) is followed by a chapter on Deborah’s involvement in public life. It’s a good way to organize the book considering how...

Pages: 182 Original date of publication: 2012 My edition: 2012 (Random House) Why I decided to read: it was offered through Amazon Vine How I acquired my copy: Amazon Vine, February 2012 Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake is a series of essays, really, about being in one’s fifties. She covers topics such as owning “stuff,” having girlfriends, marriage, having grown children, and aging. Although I couldn’t really relate personally to a lot of what Anna Quindlen talks about, reading Anna Quindlen’s book (and this really goes for all of her books) is kind of like talking to your mother. And there are similarities to my own mom that are eerie! (“I have needlepoint pillows everywhere: camels, chicks, cats, houses, barns, libraries, roses, daisies, pansies. I needlepoint while I watch television. I have a vision of my children, after I’m gone, looking around and saying, ‘What are we going to do with all these pillows?’”). As I’ve said, there’s not a lot in this book I can actually relate to, s...

Pages: 285 Original date of publication: 1817 My edition: 2010 (NYRB Classics) Why I decided to read: it’s an NYRB Classic How I acquired my copy: Joseph Fox Bookshop, Philadelphia, January 2012 Eliza Fay was 23 when she accompanied her husband Anthony Fay, a lawyer, to India in 1779. Not much is known about her early life, but her editor, EM Forster, surmises that her father might have been a sailor. On her first journey out to India, she traveled through France and Egypt, and she and her husband were imprisoned when they arrived in Calcutta. Due to Anthony Fay’s mismanagement of money and infidelity, Eliza Fay split from her husband a few years later, and set herself up briefly as a milliner. Over the next 30 years she was to travel to India a few more times, and each time she traveled, she kept a journal of her journey. It was a time when the British turned from mere merchants and traders in India to a major imperial power. Eliza Fay wasn’t of the wealthiest class, but she nonethele...

Pages: 105 Original date of publication: 1919 My edition: 2000 Why I decided to read: Read it for a class I’m taking How I acquired my copy: Amazon.com, January 2012 Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style , is a short, concise guide to effective writing. This short guide covers everything from basic grammatical usage to composition, but it is more than just a guide to good writing. The book is filled with provocative axioms to keep in mind while writing. Because writing is a form of communication, a hallmark of it is to be succinct. There is an overwhelming emphasis in this guide on clear, concise writing. “When a sentence is made stronger, it usually becomes shorter. Thus, brevity is a by-product of vigor.” (p. 19). The best-known writers—Homer, Dante, and Shakespeare are mentioned—grab the reader’s attention by being “specific, definite, and concrete” and use words to create pictures (p. 21) in order to create impactful writing. It is always important to use the active voice in wri...

Pages: 320 Original date of publication: My edition: 2006 (Profile Books) Why I decided to read: Amazon.com recommendation How I acquired my copy: Waterstones, Piccadilly, London, September 2011 Nella Last’s War is a compilation of diary entries that Nella Last, a middle-aged housewife, write for the Mass Observation Project during WWII. In her diary, which she later continued on after the war and into the 1950s, Nella chronicles her everyday life, living in Barrow-in-Furness. The diary starts in September 1939 and continues through VE Day. Although Nella meticulously describes the minutiae of her every day life, her story never gets boring. I think one of the hallmarks of good writing in personal nonfiction (diaries, letters, memoirs, etc.) is finding one’s voice, and Nella certainly did in her diary. She’s an optimistic woman and very, very sweet—although slightly neurotic. She takes pleasure in the small things, even with shortages of food and everything else. One thing that comes ...