I simply cannot NOT recommend Miss Hargreaves. Especially if you are prone to making up cockamamie stories about people who don't exist. I myself have a weakness for dreaming up characters so elaborate I often cannot remember if I'm remembering a book, a movie, an old friend, or the inside of my own mind. Norman Huntley has the exact same problem. And her name is Miss Hargreaves!
Written in 1940, by Frank Baker (author of The Birds!) the language of Miss Hargreaves is delightful. The walls of Moss Cottage were shaking with laughter as I read parts of the dialogue aloud. to. myself. It's that funny.
I cannot remember now when or where that was. My memory-alas!-works spasmodically in this the evening of my days. But what an evening! Oh, yes! It is no use disguising the fact; I am no longer young. She leant forward across the table, tapped me on the chest with a silver pencil suspended from a chain round her neck. 'Eighty-three, Norman; eighty-three! Five reigns. And yet I feel as though I had been born last week! Youth – she declaimed, touching her heart – lives here.
then…
"I am not accustomed to being spoken to in this manner," she said sharply. She went towards the door. "Kindly move, sir! Kindly move! Make way! I wish to descend!"
After my vintage reading tangent, I've landed back in the 21st century with a companion book to the beloved Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry. Yes, you "heard" me right! How glad I was not to have to hunt very long for my next book. Sometimes the search is a real pain in the tuchus. Ya know?
I'm only 30 pages in and I'm already charmed.
Blah blah blah…. I'll have to insist you spill the beans on what you're reading. At once!
Miss Hazel and the Rosa Parks League by Jonathan Odell
Thank you for recommending The Orchardist, I can’t put it down. I am halfway through.
All The Light We Cannot See by Doerr is stunning.
Just finished A Spool of Blue Thread by Anne Tyler, but didn’t care for it all that much. Now I’m reading What Alice Forgot by Liane Moriarty and am really enjoying it. I have read a few of her books (The Husband’s Secret, Little Big Lies) and she never disappoints.
Have you read “The Ladies of Miissalonghi” by Colleen McCulloch? Just found it decluttering my bookcase last week. I’ve read it several times and always enjoy it!
I just wrapped up Bulletproof Vest: The Ballad of an Outlaw and His Daughter
by Maria Venegas and it was a surprising feast! I loved the Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry. Thank you for the recommendation!
cortney…is the falls about a couple who get married by the falls and one of them dies? i have a vague recollection and feel like i’ve read it!! some bit also about someone going over the falls in a barrel..? too lazy to google it so i may be way off base. i do love JCO!!! Dead Wake?! sounds good. will investigate…thanks!!
Books! How we love our books. If you like the wild west and the troubled south, and are ok with a few very graphic and unsettling scenes, The Son by Philipp Meyer and The Secret Wisdom of the Earth by Christopher Scotton are very absorbing reads. If a story is rough going at some points, I need redemption in the mix, and these have it. I’ve just started Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Buried Giant. Don’t know yet how that’s going to pan out, but it looks like a departure in setting for him, but not theme.
Arm sufficiently twisted.
I’m reading The Falls by Joyce Carol Oates. It’s rich, and engrossing. Takes place at Niagra Falls. And the characters!!! They are 3-dimensional, flawed and fractured. It was published about 20 yrs ago, so not quite vintage, but oh so JCO.
In the wings await two new books! Dead Wake (about the last crossing if the Lucitania) by Erik Lawson (have you read his Devil in the White City?) and Being Mortal by Atul Gawande. I suspect they will both be fascinating reads in their own ways.
And for book group: The Dovekeepers by Alice Hoffman.
Happy Thursday!
I loved the Harold Fry book, so I’ll be heading to the library for the Queen Hennessy book. I’ve been in a reading drought for months so having something yummy to look forward to is a good thing.
I love memoirs and am reading ‘Then Again’ by Diane Keaton. Well written nd interesting as it intertwines her memories and the journals and memories kept by her mother, a strong creative woman as well.
Happy Spring!
Gabrielle
hi linda!
frank baker’s “the birds” was the book that led to alfred hitchcocks film by the same name.
i love time travel so i think i better check out “tale for the time being”! thanks for the tip!!
Hi Mary Ann, I was surprised by the book author Frank Baker writing The Birds. I have also read a book by Daphne duMaurier titled The Birds. I think they might have made a movies based on the Baker book. His book looks like it came first and she published hers in 1952 and it is set in Cornwall. Just an interesting side. I just finished Ruth Ozeke’s A Tale for the Time Being. Mystery a bit and time travel(?). Interesting and odd.
Thanks for posting about books and other’s comments. So many books!
Some Luck by Jane Smiley. Each chapter is headed by a year – starting in 1928 (?)- in the life of a farm family headed by Rosanna and Walter. Not sure what year it ends as I’m not done yet; I’m up to 1942. It’s a good read!
Right now, I’m finishing up No Place Like Home by Mary Higgins Clark. So-so. But my last novel was an old l927 story by Mary Roberts Rinehart. Lost Ecstasy. She’s good!
I’m currently in deep with Rebecca Solnit’s ‘Field Guide To Getting Lost’ a lovely book of thoughts/essays on the virtues of getting lost and traveling. I’m finding her insights to be delightfully true and at times, butt-kickingly honest. It’s going to be a quick read.
While here in Boston I’m reading ‘Lie in the Dark’ by Dan Fesperman, a detective story set in Sarajevo during the Balkans war. I just finished ‘The Comforts of a Muddy Saturday’ a nice bit of fluff by Alexander McCall Smith. This is a good balance to Sarajevo. I recently read book #1 of the Lewis trilogy, rather gentle crime novels set on the Isle of Lewis, ‘The Black House’ by Peter May. A really good feel for the place and people. Book #2 awaits me on return to MD!
I love a good reading recommendation so many thanks! I recently finished 2 novels by Jennifer Robson: Somewhere in France and After the War is Over (which takes the lesser known characters in the first book and expounds on their stories). Loved both and so have my reading friends. I’m currently reading The Mask Carver’s Son by Alyson Richman which I am so glad I found. She speaks so eloquently to the artist’s eye and need to create that I think you would eat it up (unless you already have). Enjoy!