July 30-comparing two favorite characters

This month I read both a mystery by J.D. Robb and a novel by Jacqueline Winspear, two of the series that I have discovered recently and I’m trying to catch up on.  Although they are completely different types of stories I have a good time comparing Maisie Dobbs with Eve Dallas-in some ways the antithesis of each other and yet some similarities at the core.  Both had difficult childhoods and both have suffered a traumatic experience with which they have to deal.  Both investigate mysteries:  Maisie as a private investigator and psychologist who has incredible intuition and an ability to read people; and Eve as a homicide detective for the New York City police.  Both are passionate about their jobs, Maisie with not only solving the “mystery” but helping all concerned deal with the aftermath and Eve with standing as Justice for the victim making sure the perpetrator pays for the crime.  Both are strong females that work at managing their vulnerability.    I like both of these characters and, especially in the J.D. Robb series, it s one of the main reasons that I keep going back to the series.

Unfortunately, I may never meet anyone who reads both so I can discuss this idea-unless I can convince Mary to read the Maisie Dobbs series.  I’m amazed that she likes the Eve Dallas series; I think she might like Maisie even better.  Diana doesn’t like Eve and I suspect Melinda wouldn’t, either-too gritty, and too futuristic-but they both like Maisie.

Winspear’s series is clearly better literature with each one being well crafted and historically researched.  So far there are five books in the series.  I found book five in hardcover on a sale table at B&N last week so sometime in the next few weeks I will be caught up and anxiously awaiting another installment.  Robb churns out her series at the rate of two a year in addition to all the books she cranks out under the Nora Roberts name.  I’ve read the first twelve plus two others out of order; in November she will publish number 27.  It will take me quite a while to catch up.  One thing that helps with the catching up is that these are very fast reads, a maximum of two easy nights reading assuming I’m smart and go to bed on time and don’t stay up to finish it! Let’s face it.  I like the Eve Dallas series because it’s chick fantasy!   Much of the attraction of the Maisie Dobbs series is its historical accuracy as well as appealing continuing characters you care about.

July 31-2008 goals and plans for the blog

I’ve been so busy trying to set up my new book blog that I’ve only had time to make one daily note-which may be defeating the purpose of the blog, which is to share my thoughts on reading.   In fact, I found I was also neglecting my reading.  I had set a goal of trying to read a minimum of six books a month for this year and I had to stay up late tonight to finish my 6^th book for July.  However, I’m still well ahead for the year since in the first six months I averaged nearly 9 books a month-53 books completed by the end of June.

My goal for the second six months is to read at least one classic book every month as well as to continue reading at least six books each month.  Luckily, in July my classic book was a short one.  If I decide to tackle Anna Karenina this year I may be glad I’m so far ahead in my total book tally!  In addition to having had a desire for many years to read that novel, it has the added bonus of giving me a big boost toward my goal of 10,000 pages from my personal library in 2008.  I have just a little over 2,000 pages more to reach my goal and Anna would be about half of the amount I have left.  Since all my classics will be from my personal library this year I have a good chance to exceed that goal, also.

However, first I must finish setting up the blog.  I planned to have the blog “start” with January of this year as I can draw from this journal to fill in the first six months.  I think I have May, June and the rest of July to catch up.  When reading I often make connections to other books I’ve read so I may go back to previous journals when I find a relationship between a current book and one I’ve read previously.  I also tend to read “series” books-especially mysteries-so I will use the earlier journals to fill in there, also.  One important thing I must learn next is how to make internal links when I want to refer to a book I’ve already read so the reader of the blog can just click a link to go to than review.

Crane, Stephen:  The Red Badge of Courage

I’m not sure how I managed to miss reading this for so many years because it is one of the most well known American classics about the Civil War.  It was never a reading assignment for me in school for which I am now glad because I’m sure I enjoyed it more as an adult than I would have as a student.

This is an “interior” novel that emphasizes the thoughts and emotions of a young, idealistic boy who enlists in the Union army against his mother’s advice and prayers.  He goes off with ideas of the glory of battle after reading such classic accounts of war for which the ancient Greeks were renowned.  He quickly learns that the reality is nothing like the ideal of the classic wars.  Crane does a good job of giving us the ups and downs of the daily life of a foot soldier and excellent descriptions of battles.  However, the focus of the novel is Henry Fielding’s (often referred to merely as “the youth”) adolescent perceptions and reactions to the daily grind of the soldier and to his concerns about how he appears to the other soldiers.   This is a coming of age novel that takes place in the hellish conditions of armed conflict.  It deserves its classic designation but if it is assigned to students it should be read and discussed in small doses.  There is essentially no plot to keep a young person’s interest but it could make a great discussion book about dealing with the ups and downs of adolescent emotions.

While reading this book I also started reading a book of Walt Whitman’s Complete Poems.  I know he had written poems about the Civil War so I looked up some of them.  After reading this very realistic novel most of them seemed to me to be a too romanticized look at the war.  However, one of them captured well the feel of a scene described by Crane early in the book.  I know Crane never witnessed anything of the civil War; I wonder if Whitman did.

CALVALRY CROSSING A FORD

A line in long array where they wind betwixt green islands,

They take a serpentine course, their arms flash in the sun-

hark to the musical clank,

Behold the silvery river, in it the splashing horses loitering

stop to drink,

Behold the brown-faced men, each group, each person a

picture, the negligent rest on the saddles,

Some emerge on the opposite bank, others are just entering

the ford-while,

Scarlet and blue and snowy white,

The guidon flags flutter gaily in the wind.

(Walt Whitman)

Winspear, Jacqueline:  Messenger of Truth

I’m having a dilemma and so is my public library system about how to classify the Maisie Dobbs series.  Some of the local libraries, including mine, are putting these novels in the adult fiction area while others are classifying them as adult mystery (at least there is no doubt that they are “adult”).   Although I filed the previous reviews I’ve done on this series under mysteries, I have decided that they really do belong in general fiction.  The plots are more complex than most mysteries and involve more than one plot thread; although sometimes these threads overlap, they are not neatly tied into a tidy package at the end and usually there are things to ponder when the last page is read.  The “mystery” in each novel is not a puzzle to be solved but a story to be unraveled so that one or more characters can go on with his/her life.  There is character development within each story and not only with continuing series characters. One of the chief delights of the series is how Winspear takes us back to an historical time, the period between to two World Wars of the 20^th century in England.  We get to see the effects of this period across the entire social strata from the poor struggling to survive to the “last hurrah” of the peers of the realm who have no clue what is happening in the lower levels of society.

This entry in the series concerns the death of a famous artist on the eve of the opening of his largest exhibition.  While working on how he will exhibit his largest masterpiece, which no one has ever seen nor knows what it consists of, he accidentally falls to his death from the scaffold on which he is working.   His twin sister is not satisfied with the explanation of the police about his death and goes to Maisie Dobbs to have her investigate not only the death but what happened to the missing masterpiece.  Because the artist was a “war artist” there are memories of the war revived, in addition to a portrait of a once wealthy landed family dealing with not only artistic temperament but also how to cope with straitened circumstances.  Both Maisie and her aide, Billy, also have problems with which Maisie must deal.  This is a very satisfying if somewhat sobering story.  I highly recommend this series.

To me an interesting connection between this story and The Red Badge of Courage, which I also read this month, is that both novels have a scene where a cease fire is called so that the warring armies can go out on the battlefield to remove their wounded and bury their dead.  In Winspear’s novel there is poignant description of a meeting between soldiers from opposite sides who accidentally meet face to face amid the carnage and hug each other as they shed tears for their dead comrades.   This is followed by a horrifying account of what happens to one of the soldiers when he returns behind his own army’s line.

Brand, Christianna:  Green for Danger

Last month as one of my Book Challenge selections I read the short story collection English Country House Murders edited by Thomas Godfrey. (See Review in June) The story by Christianna Brand caught my attention and the blurb at the beginning mentioned that she had been a contemporary of the Golden Age of mystery writers (e.g. Christie, Marsh, Tey, and Sayers), had written several mystery novels featuring a detective named Cockrell, and was still very popular in England and on the continent. He suggested Green for Danger as her best one. This is definitely a classic mystery although in the way she develops her characters and handles her plot I think her style resembles Josephine Tey more than Agatha Christie. The setting is during the Blitz in a military hospital in a heavily bombed area that is forced to take in civilian casualties. Although it takes place in a hospital it still has the feel of a Country House Mystery because besides the victims we are only concerned with the six suspects, three doctors and three nurses, and the detective, Cockrell. The environs are the hospital, the grounds and the lodge house where the three women reside when not on duty. The motive for 2 of the murders is part of the mystery, for the characters as well as the reader. This mystery has interesting characters, gives an historically accurate picture of what was happening in England during the blitz and also a great description of medical practices at that time, some very suspenseful moments that are psychologically created rather than “chase related”and a very clever puzzle which keeps you guessing.

There were two things that made this book particularly appealing to me. I found the historical part of the book interesting because this was written in 1944 when the WWII era would have been fresh in Brand’s mind, up close and personal. I enjoyed comparing her descriptions with Jaqueline Winspear’s account in Maisie Dobbs, which is a 21^st century novel cum mystery set during and after the WWI era. I was especially tickled to spot a reference to the feathers that are the crux of Winspear’s second Maisie Dobbs novel, Birds of a Feather. I wonder if they did the same thing during WWII as they did in WWI or is it merely an anomaly. I will have to research that again. The other appealing aspect of this novel is that Brand fooled me in her solution to the mystery while completely playing fair. This does not happen to me very often. How much fun I had remembering the important clues that I had noticed but ignored because she hid them in plain sight so well. Classic mystry buffs should love this book!

Spencer-Fleming, Julia:  A Fountain Filled with Blood

Spencer-Fleming’s second cozy-cum-thriller to feature the Reverend Clare Fergusson, an ex-army helicopter pilot turned Anglican priest, is every bit as riveting as her first, In the Bleak Midwinter (2002). A series of gay bashings, the discovery of PCBs in a local elementary school playground and a brutal murder has Millers Kill, N.Y. in a turmoil that ends in murder. Clare, rector of St. Alban’s Episcopal Church, and the married police Chief Russ Van Alstyne, have spent the last six months avoiding each other in hopes of dispelling their mutual attraction. Now they find themselves working together on a murder investigation. The reflections of Clare and Russ as they examine their own hearts and struggle with their feelings never detract from the crime solving.  We see Clare as a unique person, whether daring to drive a sports car instead of a safer four-wheel-drive vehicle or claming herself by donning her vestments to perform an  unscheduled evening service of Compline in an empty church lit with candles.

I enjoyed this second novel in the series featuring Reverend Clare Fergusson, an ex-army helicopter pilot turned Anglican priest and Chief of Police Russ Van Alstyne, but this one left me with mixed feelings-not surprisingly the reviews I read on Amazon.com were very mixed, also.  Claire pulls a very reckless and dangerous stunt when she gets intoxicated at a party-which made me question how mature she is supposed to be.  I did enjoy the action of the helicopter episode (which some of the reviewers didn’t like, but I thought fit her character well)-but I had already guessed what would happen.  In this instance I was surprised that neither Russ nor Claire was suspicious enough of the circumstances to be more alert.  I thought the Gay issue in the plot was handled well.  Although S-F and I are at opposite ends of the political spectrum I liked the low keyed way she developed her theme of tolerance and made her characters 3 dimensional-not stereo-types.  The tension between Claire and Russ is increasing and in this book we meet Russ’s mother.  She is delightful.   I’m looking forward to reading the next book to how the soap opera unfolds. Luckily I got a late start on this series so I won’t have to wait long to continue it.

Buzbee, Lewis:  The Yellow Lighted Bookshop

Buzbee talks about his life with books as a book seller in independent bookstores, mainly in the Bay Area of Northern California, as a book rep for publishers and as one who lusts after books and unique bookstores.  Along the way he sprinkles in various tidbits of the history of books and book selling from ancient times to the 21^st century both in Eastern and Western cultures.  His book is charming and fun, although I didn’t find is as compelling or interesting as the best Nicholas Basbanes or Alberto Manguel books.  However as I mentioned in my journal he taught me something about myself, that I am a “book snoop”.

This is a book I enjoyed but I’m not sorry I borrowed it rather than bought it.  He calls it a memoir/history but it often reads more like listening to a person talk informally about his love for books and bookstores.  Some of his topics would have been more interesting and more memorable if he had taken the time to dig a little deeper and write an Anne Fadiman type personal essay developing his topic around a theme.  However, it was a great book to relax with just before bedtime-it was very conducive to going to sleep.  (That is not meant as a criticism, rather just an observation.)