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Thornfield Hall | A Book Blog - Books & Literature
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How Liberal Are We? The “Anti-Mass” Culture – Thornfield Hall
"How liberal are we?" I wondered on the bus as I read Anti-Mass, a how-to guide to organizing collectives published in underground newspapers in the 1970s. The attack on wicked mass culture made me realize how much I enjoyed mass culture. I wanted to be bourgeois, to live in a nice house, preferably in the…
Free Reading: The Pros and Cons of the TBR – Thornfield Hall
Someone's TBR! I do not have a TBR (To Be Read list). Of course I talk about it, because all bloggers do, but I don’t have a list. I walk around my bookcases, which are a bit like a TBR, and choose a book. It’s what I call free reading. Yet the TBR fascinates me. …
When the Pages Crumble: Thomas Hardy’s “Selected Poems” – Thornfield Hall
I was reading Thomas Hardy’s Selected Poems when a page began to crumble. It flew out of the book like an Origami bird. I felt like a haunted character in a ghost story. What was I reading that Thomas Hardy came down from the sky and took away the page? Do you suppose Hardy manifested…
Trollope’s Portrait of a Middle-Aged Woman: Lady Carbury, Hustler & Writer – Thornfield Hall
I often forget about Anthony Trollope. It is not that he is a bad writer, and it is not that I do not love his work, but simply because he does not have a distinctive Victorian voice. Think of Dickens with his rhetorical repetitions and figures of speech; Charlotte Bronte with her gloomy imagery and…
On Vacation with Evelyn Waugh – Thornfield Hall
Vacation reading I am treating myself to 20th-century novels after my marathon of Greek tragedy last spring. I am still haunted by Medea's strikingly feminist quote, “I would rather stand in front of the shield three times than give birth once.” But it foreshadows the horror ahead. And so I am relaxing with Evelyn Waugh’s…
Why We Loved the 1980s – Thornfield Hall
“You must be joking. You liked the ‘80s?” When I say I loved the '80s, people assume I’m thinking about Ronald Reagan (our first actor president), Nicaragua, punk rock, Pac-man, and yuppiebacks. I ignored politics and "pop" but I was a fan of the yuppieback. And if you don’t know what yuppiebacks are, you missed…
Raised on 19th-Century Literature – Thornfield Hall
Esther in Bleak House My fried Hen and I left our jobs at the same time. We didn’t dislike the work, and no doubt would have become Ms. Chips if we’d stayed, but you have no idea how exhausted we were, how little we liked the administration, and how bored we were by James Hilton’s…
The Way We Live Now – Thornfield Hall
Last week we reorganized our books. We have over 1,000 books, distributed in bookcases throughout the house. Most of them are in alphabetical order, but we now have a Jane Austen section, a Bronte section, a Conrad section, and a Dickens section. Most of these books have introductions, but not all have footnotes. (That’s why…
Banned Books & MeToo in Evelyn Waugh’s “Vile Bodies” – Thornfield Hall
“Too, too sick-making,” said Miss Runcible, with one of her rare flashes of accuracy. – "Vile Bodies," by Evelyn Waugh It is difficult to pick my favorite Evelyn Waugh satire. I am fond of Scoop and The Loved One, which are less dark than my other favorite, A Handful of Dust. But I just reread…
Dusty Books: Revising One’s TBR List – Thornfield Hall
What do you do when the TBR shelf is dusty? Do you casually apply a fluffy duster, or do you use Goo Gone and a microfiber cloth? After researching the cleaning of books, I began my late Spring Cleaning. First, I took all the books off the shelves. The living room was soon carpeted with…
Fairies, Changelings, & Ghosts: Sylvia Townsend Warner’s “Kingdoms of Elfin” – Thornfield Hall
Upper-class fairies don’t fly. It's considered déclassé. When they do fly, they are discreet. In this whimsical collection of short stories, Sylvia Townsend Warner invents a world that is comical, fantastic, and macabre. In the 1970s William Maxwell, her editor at The New Yorker, published 14 of the stories. Then Mr. Shawn decided he had…
On the Transformative Power of Zoom – Thornfield Hall
My expectations of Zoom were too high. “Where is the raised-hand icon?” several disheveled women typed to the leader of a book chat one Sunday morning. Not only did I not have the icon, there was no keyboard, either. I had expected a free-for-all conversation, but it was strictly one-on-one. And then someone's microphone wasn't on.…
Dearest Diary… – Thornfield Hall
People are mad about diaries. They read them, write them, and secretly read their spouses' journals. One of my friends didn’t stop at her husband’s diary; she also read his business letters. The diary was a record of his golf scores; the letters documented his clients’ investments. “This guy bought a minor league hockey team,” she…
Summer Reading: “Vertigo” & “Army without Banners” – Thornfield Hall
The summer began on Memorial Day. We sat at a picnic table wearing a vintage Chairman Mao cap (Chinese Revolution chic?), a Don’t Fall Run t-shirt, and yellow denim capris (the latter a “fashion-don’t”). We were swilling iced tea and making a summer reading list. I hope to read comedies and satires after devoting the…
The Zoom Tapes – Thornfield Hall
Is that woman ranting about Zoom again? At least I’m not ranting on Zoom! I don't attend “live” Zoom events. I see my photo in the margin of the screen and gasp. I call on the goddess of cold cream. Goddess, where’s my cold cream? No, get that stuff in the tube. The expensive stuff. …
Euripides’ Medea: Eloquent Heroine or Monster? – Thornfield Hall
“We women are the most unfortunate creatures.” - Euripides’ The Medea, translated by Rex Warner No tragic heroine is more vengeful than Medea. I had a sinking feeling as I reread Euripides’ Medea. No, no, this is too much. That gruesome scene where she sends gifts to Jason’s new wife, Glauce, the princess of Corinth,…
The State of My Weekend Reading: Maria Edgeworth’s “Belinda” & Rebecca Romney’s “Jane Austen’s Bookshelf” – Thornfield Hall
I have never been in a reading slump. Other bloggers have complained of it. I am, however, existing in a weird alternate world where I am reading several excellent books not entirely to my taste. And yet they all sound like my kind of book. I expected great things from Rebecca Romney’s Jane Austen’s Bookshelf: A…
Medea and Her Women Friends – Thornfield Hall
“O your heart must have been made of rock or steel…” Chorus of Corinthian women, Euripides’ Medea Daniel Mendelsohn’s fascinating analysis of Medea’s rhetoric and the relationship of language to reality sent me scurrying back to Euripides’ tragedy. This manipulative witch shapes the rhetorical style of her speeches to appeal to different audiences, most of…
Summer Reading: Greek Poetry, Medusa, & Retold Myths – Thornfield Hall
Medusa My portal to classics was ancient Greek. I have a greater affinity with the Romans, but I began with Greek. It started with a Classical literature in translation class. I loved Homer’s epics in Richmond Lattimore’s translation, Greek tragedy in the University of Chicago editions (edited by Lattimore and Grene), Rex Warner’s translations of…
Greek Tragedy, Phaedra & Censorship in Western Culture – Thornfield Hall
The thing that astonishes me about Euripides’ tragedy Hippolytus is Phaedra’s virtue. Though she has fallen scandalously in love with her stepson Hippolytus, her behavior is decorous. She has neither flirted nor made sexual advances. Pining away of love, she confides in the nurse and the chorus, displaying a Trollopian enthusiasm for the hunt, never adverse…
Don’t Let Your Family Read Your Writing! – Thornfield Hall
At a writers’ conference, the writer-teacher warned us not to let our families read our work. “They will not like it,” he explained. “Your wife won’t like it. Your husband won’t like it. Your mother won’t like it. Your daughters won’t like it. Your stepson won’t like it.” It was like stand-up. But there was…
Books in Progress (BIP): “Emma,” “The Horse’s Mouth,” & “My Summer in a Garden” – Thornfield Hall
I love TBR lists. I love saying, "It's on my TBR." The list is always in progress. Today I found a Yugoslavian book with Cat in the title. It is now on my (mostly) imaginary TBR. I do keep track of my BIP (Books in Progress), though. Those books are "in progress." I hope you enjoy…
A Danish SF-ish Novel: “On the Calculation of Volume I” – Thornfield Hall
"Time is relative." - Albert Einstein Is time a social construct? Does a watched pot boil? Solvej Balle's spare, elegant novel, On the Calculation of Volume I, turns into a temporal nightmare. At first everything is idyllic. The narrator, Tara Selter, is an antiquarian bookseller, and her mellow husband, Thomas, is her business partner. She…
A Classic Mystery: Ross MacDonald’s “The Underground Man” – Thornfield Hall
This month I discovered Ross MacDonald’s mystery classic, The Underground Man. For years I’d heard of his Lew Archer series, but it sounded too hard-boiled for me. (I mostly read Golden Age mysteries.) I have enjoyed some of his wife Margaret Millar’s thrillers so I finally broke down and read this stunning novel. It is…
The Picture of Dorian Gray: Is That My Photo Album? – Thornfield Hall
Is "The Picture of Dorian Gray" a Selfie? In the 21st century, we are under surveillance or self-surveillance: snapping selfies, video chatting, attending Zoom events, and approving or rejecting AI-monitored medical apps. What happens to the billions of images floating in cyberspace? Are they deleted, or stored forever on servers in anonymous Google and Microsoft…
Not Quite Cozy: Robert Seethaler’s “The Café with No Name” – Thornfield Hall
The Austrian writer Robert Seethaler, whose novel A Whole Life was a Man Booker International finalist in 2017, takes a different turn in The Café with No Name, an urban novel set in the Carmelite Market Square in Vienna. The hard work of the quiet protagonist, Robert Simon, who, in 1966, after 10 years of…
The Novelists’ Gender Divide – Thornfield Hall
“Do We Need More Male Novelists?” asks a headline at The Guardian. The question startled me, but I'm not distressed that Jude Cook, an English writer, founded a press to publish mostly male novelists. We need more novelists, whatever their sex, race, or creed. But I get exasperated by all the labels. Am I the…
Dandelion Wine & Rereading “Persuasion” – Thornfield Hall
I have never made dandelion wine, but I read part of Ray Bradbury's Dandelion Wine years ago. (I was a fan of The Martian Chronicles and disappointed that DW wasn't science fiction.) The dandelions are blooming here and I wondered whether you use the flowers or the stems. However, I’m not sanguine about boiling dandelions…
Older Men and Younger Women: Pamela Hansford Johnson’s “An Impossible Marriage,” “Jane Eyre,” & Jane Austen – Thornfield Hall
“If he’s going to make you miserable over trifles, your marriage will be quite impossible.” - Pamelas Hansford Johnson’s An Impossible Marriage An old friend used to say, "Some marriages are made in hell." Pamela Hansford Johnson knew it. Her heroines know it, too. And with a title like An Impossible Marriage, the reader knows…
To Teach or Not to Teach – Thornfield Hall
We did not worry about the future. The ideal would be to join the Peace Corps; the practical would be to work on a doctorate… forever. And then there was a third option. “Oh, God, will we have to be teachers?” A friend in Michigan taught Latin at a Catholic boys’ school. She wrote that…
Living off the Grid: Annika Norling’s “The Colony” – Thornfield Hall
"Here’s the thing. I don’t even like nature. I don’t like being outdoors." – Emilie in “The Colony” Annika Norling’s The Colony, translated from the Swedish by Alice E. Olsson, is one of my favorite novels so far this year. Norling explores the dynamics and isolation of a small community of outcasts living on a…
Jocasta’s Wisdom in Sophocles’ “Oedipus Rex” – Thornfield Hall
THIS ISN'T A POST, SO MUCH AS NOTES After shuddering through the first half of Sophocles' gory tragedy, I thanked the gods for the appearance of Jocasta, the most sensible character in Oedipus Rex. In case you are unfamiliar with Oedipus, he fled his hometown because of a prophecy that he would kill his father…
Why We Live in Flyover Country – Thornfield Hall
Fargo: classic flyover country For most of my life, I have lived in cities. Not New York, not London, not Seattle, not Houston: those places are too large and sophisticated for me. I live in flyover country. You know these cities, or do not. Some have gutted-out centers and a pinwheel of thriving suburbs; in…
A Short Masterpiece: Henry James’s “Washington Square” – Thornfield Hall
“Will a wrong motive always do wrong?” Cynthia Ozick in the introduction to James’s Washington Square (Modern Library, 2002) When I first read Washington Square decades ago, it seemed one of Henry James’s simpler books. Now I’ve changed my mind. The twist of the plot leaves the reader breathless. In James’s fictional universe, fortune hunters…
Nobody Likes a Bacchante – Thornfield Hall
I have been reading about the Bacchantes. And a long, strange trip it’s been, as the Grateful Dead said. I’ve never come across a scarier bunch. If they show up at your Quaker meeting, change churches. In Ovid’s Metamorphoses and Euripides’s The Bacchae, all of the Bacchantes are women. As I vaguely understand it, they…
Defying the State: Antigone As Heroine – Thornfield Hall
Perhaps it was because I first read Sophoces while a war raged that Antigone is my favorite Greek tragedy; perhaps it is Antigone’s passion for justice. Some regard Antigone as a heroine, others are less enthusiastic. Determined to honor her brother Polynices with burial rites, she breaks the law. The new king, Creon, also her…
“Superbloom,” Influencers, and Too Many Books – Thornfield Hall
Nicholas Carr, author of Superbloom: How Technologies of Connection Tear Us Apart, begins with an alarming anecdote. Jaci Marie Smith, an influencer with a YouTube channel and Instagram account, took a selfie in Walker Canyon among the masses of flowers during poppy season. Only it wasn’t a normal poppy season: heavy rains had caused a…
Stage-Managed Conversations & Targeted Listeners – Thornfield Hall
In The New York Times Book Review (April 13, 2025), Dan Piepenbring reviews a book about the art of conversation. Actually, it is about the science of conversation. This quirky book is called Talk: The Science of Conversation and the Art of Being Ourselves, by Alison Wood Brook, a professor at the Harvard Business School.…
Excuse Me, Jane Austen, and Rediscovering “The Bertrams” – Thornfield Hall
“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a woman in possession of a computer, needs to spend less screen time.” Excuse me, Jane Austen. I NEED TO BREAK UP WITH THE INTERNET. And so I curled up in a cozy chair with a neglected Trollope novel, The Bertrams. I’m not sure anyone reads The Bertrams…
DENIED ACCESS: A Zoom Story – Thornfield Hall
A few months ago I attended a Zoom book chat. Hope for the best, expect the worst. It did not go well. I was overwhelmed. There was too much going on visually: tiny pictures of 60 or 70 people (mostly Women of a Certain Age) at the top of the screen, several of them typing…