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Charming Weekend Reading: Ruth Adam’s “A House in the Country” – Thornfield Hall
After a brisk working week, I plan to curl up with tea and a charming old English novel. And if you're looking for charm, I recommend Ruth Adam’s delightful novel, A House in the Country (1957), published in the Furrowed Middlebrow series by Dean Street Press. I adored this little book, which will appeal to…
A Witty Debut Novel: Elizabeth Harris’s “How to Sleep at Night” – Thornfield Hall
Elizabeth Harris’s witty first novel, How to Sleep at Night, has an irresistibly funny premise: Ethan and Gabe, a smart couple with a five-year-old daughter, have a peaceful life in a New Jersey suburb until Ethan announces he wants to run for Congress. This would be fine, since Gabe is a supportive spouse, except for…
When a Commenter Gets Abusive… – Thornfield Hall
In our part of the blogosphere, people are civilized. “Have you ever read Flaccus Valerius?” we might ask. But my readers and I much prefer Emily Dickinson and can recite one or two of her poems. We are also enthusiastic about Lawrence Durrell: members of the International Lawrence Durrell Society generously left long informative comments,…
Angels of Books: Dixon, Haslett, & Zola – Thornfield Hall
1Photo by Debrocke/ClassicStock/Getty Images “How I would love to be an angel of books!” I love the sound of the word angel – from the Greek angelos (messenger) - and to an extent I am a "messenger" of books. I admit, I do not keep up with the latest books. I am bewildered by the…
Travels with Kat: The Bodyguard and Beyond – Thornfield Hall
If you watch The Great British Baking Show, you know that Paul Hollywood, the acclaimed bread baker and baking judge, has a reputation for toughness. Prue, his fellow judge, a mellow woman who wears multi-colored glasses, is the nice one. But even she has her limits On Season 7 of The Great American Baking Show,…
Feeling Exhausted? Try Long Short Stories – Thornfield Hall
"I'm not a blooming suffragette." - Mabel in Miss Browne's Friend No one knows how much I hate the cold. Proust may or may not have worn his fur-lined overcoat when he wrote in bed; I imitate his spirit if not his style. When it’s -2 degrees, I wear improvised ski gear, a puffy vest…
Wintry Weekend Reading in the Nineteenth Century – Thornfield Hall
Some years ago I designed a winter survival kit for subzero days indoors. If we'd had a fireplace, we'd have burned fragrant apple wood or beech, but instead we huddled under blankets and sipped hot beverages. We also read many flamboyant old books, most of them novels. My pile of books is ready for the…
A Middlebrow Classic: Elizabeth Goudge’s “The Dean’s Watch” – Thornfield Hall
The original American cover 'Elizabeth Goudge’s novels have been a source of delight in my life. The enthusiasm began with the discovery of Green Dolphin Street, which won the Literary Guild Award in 1944 and was also made into a film. But my favorite of Goudge's books is The Dean’s Watch (1960), a historical novel…
Where’s Our Space Car? – Thornfield Hall
“Meet George Jetson!” – from The Jetsons theme song The Jetsons had a flying car. Imagine a young couple driving in a blizzard. The car has no heat – there may even be a mat over a hole in the floor (though perhaps that was another car) – and there is zero visibility. My boyfriend…
“OPERATION HEARTBREAK”: A HEARTBREAKING WAR NOVEL – Thornfield Hall
“He was not a fellow of whom I thought very highly. But I suppose there was no harm in him.” – Operation Heartbreak, by Duff Cooper After weeping over this sad, ironic little novel. I returned to the prologue, which is not just sad but cruel. One doesn’t understand it fully until the end of…
ALIAS 68: LIVING IN A COLD HOUSE – Thornfield Hall
“Baby, it’s cold outside.” – Song by Frank Loesser Nobody likes a cold house. Correction: I do not like a cold house. Our thermostat is a liar: it says 68, but feels like 60. When the temperature drops below zero outside, I add an afghan to my excessively sweater-ish ensemble. I wrap it cocoon-meets-shawl-style, inspired…
Pat Barker’s “The Voyage Home”: A New Take on the Cassandra Myth – Thornfield Hall
Last year, the Booker Prize dominated my reading of new books. And I only read four! The truth is, I read very little 21st-century literature. But I recently read Pat Barker’s new novel, The Voyage Home, the third in her Women of Troy series, and felt obligated to review it. It is the reflex of…
Lists & Stats: Why Do We Love Book Journals? – Thornfield Hall
I’m not the kind of gal who keeps a regular book journal. In 2004 I bought an inexpensive notebook at Walmart (not a Moleskine) and listed the books I read, that is, when I remembered. I got up to 50 books, then got bored, then lost the notebook. For a while I revived the list…
Tolstoy on New Year’s Day: “War and Peace” – Thornfield Hall
Rosemary Edmonds' translation Traditionally, I read Tolstoy's War and Peace on New Year’s Day. I always look forward to attending Princess Anna Pavlovna Scherer’s glittering reception, where she and her aristocratic friends will discuss their enemy Bonaparte (“the anti-Christ’) and the greatness of their own Prince Alexander. Through the refined, if occasionally playful, conversations at…
New Year’s Eve: Friends Recommend Favorite Books of ‘24 – Thornfield Hall
A few days ago I had a brilliant idea. Why not invite a few friends, bloggers, and commenters to recommend their favorite books of the year? And I am absolutely fascinated by their responses: some of these books I am barely familiar with; others are now at the top of the TBR list. By the…
A Year in Reading: SF, A Victorian Novella, Who Will Inherit Carlice Abbey?, & the Price of “Pride and Prejudice” – Thornfield Hall
Books don’t let you down, people let you down. And that’s why books are important. Forget AI: who needs that when we have books? Deeply flawed human beings moonlight as poets, playwrights, and novelists, and sibyl-like fall into a trance to chart the nuances of our changing culture. They mourn or satirize the economy, waste…
Dead or Alive: What Makes a Good Reading Year? – Thornfield Hall
Was 2024 a good reading year? Every year is a good reading year because I am picky-picky-picky. I don’t finish a book unless it is (a) fascinating, (b) well-written, and (c) works some kind of spell on me. You know, Girls just want to have fun! But we also are earnest. I don’t care if…
A Comic Masterpiece : Kingsley Amis’s “Difficulties with Girls” – Thornfield Hall
Kingsley Amis’s Lucky Jim may be the greatest academic satire of all time, and he won the Booker Prize in 1986 for The Old Devils. I recently discovered his 1988 comic classic, Difficulties with Girls, another splendid showcase for his mordant wit. This loosely-structured satire skewers the publishing business, modern poetry, marriage, adultery, psychiatry, and…
Editor vs. Editor: “Office Politics,” by Wilfrid Sheed – Thornfield Hall
First, let me say that I never worked for a radical magazine like The Outsider, which, according to Gerald Howard in his preface to Wilfrid Sheed’s comic novel, Office Politics, is based on magazines such as The Nation, Dissent, and The New York Review of Books. When I worked in an office, I never noticed…
Great Reads of 2024: Something for Everybody – Thornfield Hall
I have read many remarkable books this year, too many to list, but here are five favorites. At our house we find NYRB Classics irresistible. I belong to the NYRB Classics Book Club, which sends me a new book every month. Talk about great 20th century literature: I really enjoyed Dino Buzzati’s The Singularity, and…
Dreaming in Latin, 2: Why We Need New Translations – Thornfield Hall
There is nothing like an obscure Roman poet to curl up with on a dark winter day. I have been reading Valerius Flaccus, a poet seldom read even by Latinists. Very little is known about Valerius Flaccus. Quintilian mentions a writer of that name who died in 95 CE. He writes, "We have recently lost…
Dreaming in Latin – Thornfield Hall
If you dream in Latin, it means (a) you have memorized too much Virgil, (b) you fell asleep over Robert Harris’s Imperium, the first novel in a trilogy about Cicero, or (c) you are almost ill over the violence in an obscure epic poem by Valerius Flaccus, I was lucky to find a Latin copy…
Does Gender Matter? And The Strangest Book I’ve Read This Year – Thornfield Hall
Change is inevitable. So they say. At this point, near the winter solstice, on a cold, gloomy, short day, tucked under a quilt, I look over my book journal and make a discovery: I no longer care about the writer’s gender. Gender was an important literary issue before women busted into the canon in the…
Goats & Things: Christmas Gifts on the Wild Side – Thornfield Hall
Goats for Christmas? The year we did not receive our Harry & David’s Tower of Treats for Christmas we were disappointed and dumbfounded. That year, our friend decided to buy us a goat, maybe two goats, for a family in Africa, for just pennies, in our name. I believe the concomitant catalogue said the goats…
Don’t Think Twice: Hapless in Paradise – Thornfield Hall
“If I have my books and records, I’ll be all right.” I said with a lopsided smile. I was telling the optimistic side of the story. The pessimistic version was that I cried every night because I couldn’t sleep. In photos the right side of my mouth smiled higher than the left. I tried to…
“The End of the Dream”: Philip Wylie, Literary Witness of Climate Change – Thornfield Hall
Philip Wiley Philip Wylie’s last science fiction novel, The End of the Dream (1972), ought to be a cult classic. On the other hand, if the book had attracted more readers, he might have been arrested. He was put under house arrest in 1945 after the publication of his short story, “The Paradise Crater” (1945),…
What the Freaks Gave Us: Classics, Criticism & Ecology – Thornfield Hall
Here’s what you do not know about the 1960s: no one used the word "hippie." It was meaningless, it was very TV. This media-generated term first appeared in The San Francisco Examiner in 1965 and should have evaporated. Never in conversation did anyone say “hippie.” Never did anyone identify herself as a "hippie." Some called…
The Community Center Dad – Thornfield Hall
Avoid stress by celebrating the holiday at home! In a tiny midwestern town we strolled to the community center to play ping pong after Christmas lunch. The women were cleaning up, but I followed my dad out the door. The brick building was shabby, the kind of place that does become a community center in…
Great Reads of 2024: Something for Everybody – Thornfield Hall
I have read many remarkable books this year, too many to list, but here are five favorites. At our house we find NYRB Classics irresistible. I belong to the NYRB Classics Book Club, which sends me a new book every month. Talk about great 20th century literature: I really enjoyed Dino Buzzati’s The Singularity, and…
Don’t Think Twice: Hapless in Paradise – Thornfield Hall
“If I have my books and records, I’ll be all right.” I said with a lopsided smile. I was telling the optimistic side of the story. The pessimistic version was that I cried every night because I couldn’t sleep. In photos the right side of my mouth smiled higher than the left. I tried to…
Does Gender Matter? And The Strangest Book I’ve Read This Year – Thornfield Hall
Change is inevitable. So they say. At this point, near the winter solstice, on a cold, gloomy, short day, tucked under a quilt, I look over my book journal and make a discovery: I no longer care about the writer’s gender. Gender was an important literary issue before women busted into the canon in the…
The Community Center Dad – Thornfield Hall
Avoid stress by celebrating the holiday at home! In a tiny midwestern town we strolled to the community center to play ping pong after Christmas lunch. The women were cleaning up, but I followed my dad out the door. The brick building was shabby, the kind of place that does become a community center in…
Goats & Things: Christmas Gifts on the Wild Side – Thornfield Hall
Goats for Christmas? The year we did not receive our Harry & David’s Tower of Treats for Christmas we were disappointed and dumbfounded. That year, our friend decided to buy us a goat, maybe two goats, for a family in Africa, for just pennies, in our name. I believe the concomitant catalogue said the goats…
What the Freaks Gave Us: Classics, Criticism & Ecology – Thornfield Hall
Here’s what you do not know about the 1960s: no one used the word "hippie." It was meaningless, it was very TV. This media-generated term first appeared in The San Francisco Examiner in 1965 and should have evaporated. Never in conversation did anyone say “hippie.” Never did anyone identify herself as a "hippie." Some called…
Editor vs. Editor: “Office Politics,” by Wilfrid Sheed – Thornfield Hall
First, let me say that I never worked for a radical magazine like The Outsider, which, according to Gerald Howard in his preface to Wilfrid Sheed’s comic novel, Office Politics, is based on magazines such as The Nation, Dissent, and The New York Review of Books. When I worked in an office, I never noticed…
Dreaming in Latin, 2: Why We Need New Translations – Thornfield Hall
There is nothing like an obscure Roman poet to curl up with on a dark winter day. I have been reading Valerius Flaccus, a poet seldom read even by Latinists. Very little is known about Valerius Flaccus. Quintilian mentions a writer of that name who died in 95 CE. He writes, "We have recently lost…
“The End of the Dream”: Philip Wylie, Literary Witness of Climate Change – Thornfield Hall
Philip Wiley Philip Wylie’s last science fiction novel, The End of the Dream (1972), ought to be a cult classic. On the other hand, if the book had attracted more readers, he might have been arrested. He was put under house arrest in 1945 after the publication of his short story, “The Paradise Crater” (1945),…
Dreaming in Latin – Thornfield Hall
If you dream in Latin, it means (a) you have memorized too much Virgil, (b) you fell asleep over Robert Harris’s Imperium, the first novel in a trilogy about Cicero, or (c) you are almost ill over the violence in an obscure epic poem by Valerius Flaccus, I was lucky to find a Latin copy…
A Father’s Cruelty: Dickens’s “Dombey and Son” – Thornfield Hall
“My dear Paul! He’s quite a Dombey!” I love Dickens's seventh novel, Dombey and Son, an inter-class portrait of characters connected, however distantly, to Mr. Dombey, the rich, glacially-cold owner of Dombey and Son. Dickens’ wit and satire radiate from the axis of Mr. Dombey’s draconian manners. Dombey is one of Dickens's most misogynist characters,…
A White Thanksgiving – Thornfield Hall
Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday, and a lovely snowfall enhances it, but even white Christmases are rare. In December, there used to be heaps of snow dumped at intersections by snowplows. Not till January nowadays. Still, I remember one “white Thanksgiving” when there was a foot of snow. The sky was beautifully white, nature in…