Pretty Books in the Sun

I thought I would be very bold and recommend some books for summer. They are books both for the armchair reader and the traveler.

Italian Villas and Their Gardens by Edith Wharton with pictures by Maxfield Parrish
West with the Night by Beryl Markham
Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
Anything by E.M. Forster, E.B. White, and James Thurber

What reading do you recommend?

Summer Reading in the Treehouse

This summer when I move to an island to live in a treehouse with shuttered paneless windows and door and a plentiful garden below and the sound of water, I will take two books to read for pleasure. The first is Villette by Charlotte Bronte at 656 pages. I am not acquainted with a soul who has read Villette but according to amazon, some have. It is especially delicious since I know nothing about it.

The second tome will be Middlemarch by George Eliot at 912 pages. I will probably read Villette first, and this second. I know I will enjoy the Eliot. It is some people's favorite book, ever.

I am currently in possession of two lent books from friends: Quentins by Maeve Binchy (who doesn't love to say her name) and Gertrude and Claudius by John Updike. My two library books are An Italian Education by Tim Parks (started last night) and Sing Them Home by Stephanie Kallos (may not get to by the time it's due and it's on hold so I can't renew). It was 90ish at the coast yesterday which is probably why I am making a summer reading list. What's on yours?

Fall Reading List

After a trip to a couple bookstores this week, I am armed and anti-social. My current possession (rented and lent) of books to read is as follows. My request list at the library is as follows. I am greedy for books and wonder if I can possibly get through them. What are you reading??

Current Possession
Terre des Hommes by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Garden Spells by Sarah Addison Allen
A Beautiful Blue Death by Charles Finch
People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks
Guardian of the Dawn by Richard Zimler

Request List
Made in Italy: Food and Stories by Giorgio Locatelli (have been waiting for about 6 months)
Last-minute Patchwork and Quilted Gifts by Joelle Hoverson
Sixty Poems by Charles Simic
Ms. Hempel Chronicles by Sarah Shun-lien Bynum
The Toss of a Lemon by Padma Viswanathan
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows
The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski

A Claim and Honor: A Field of Books

Charlotte's Web by E.B. White was published in 1952. In 1953, the Newbery Medal went to Secret of the Andes by Ann Nolan Clark. Honor (runners-up) books included Charlotte's Web, Moccasin Trail by Eloise Jarvis McGraw, Red Sails to Capri by Ann Weil, The Bears on Hemlock Mountain by Alice Dalgliesh, and Birthdays of Freedom, Vol. 1 by Genevieve Foster. White swimming respectfully in an honored sea of women. And what of the Andean secret? Do you know it?

As you are aware, the Newbery Medal "is awarded annually by the American Library Association for the most distinguished American children's book published the previous year." Named for the eighteenth century bookseller, John Newbery, who perhaps stocked an inordinate number of children's books or perchance fathered 16 children. In either case, it is the first children's book award in the world.

The 1922 Newbery stated aim is threefold:
To encourage original creative work in the field of books for children.
To emphasize to the public that contributions to the literature for children deserve similar recognition to poetry, plays, or novels.
To give those librarians, who make it their life work to serve children's reading interests, an opportunity to encourage good writing in this field.

I find each point bracing in its humanity and shot with sadness. First, the chance to win a medal (i.e., fame, honor, possibly fortune) encourages creativity in books for children. Second, the committee of writers saw fit to publish a statement of human rights: Children's books deserve equality. And last, the interest of loyal librarians plays as cheerleaders in the hometown game. They can enourage good writing! You got to want it to win it and they want it more. I don't know what they are doing mixed up with authors and the creation of literature unless the Newbery people knew that reading would influence the rising generation to write. Charlotte's egg sac.

First Lines

Here is an assortment of story beginnings. For the first who guesses (correct or incorrect) the book titles, there will be a special prize (not a hug, as my nephew offered to give me this week for guessing something incredible). The answers will be posted in several days. Knock yourselves out.

Here they are as found on my bookshelf:

1. On a January evening of the early seventies, Christine Nilsson was singing in Faust at the Academy of Music in New York.
2. It's freezing—an extraordinary 0 degrees Fahrenheit—and it's snowing, and in the language that is no longer mine, the snow is qanik—big, almost weightless crystals falling in clumps and covering the ground with a layer of pulverized white frost.
3. As I take up my pen at leisure and in complete retirement—in good health, furthermore, though tired, so tired that I shall only be able to proceed by short stages and with frequent pauses for rest—as I take up my pen, then, to commit my confessions to this patient paper in my own neat and attractive handwriting, I am assailed by a brief misgiving about the educational background I bring to an intellectual enterprise of this kind.
4. Here they are, two North Americans, a man and a woman just over and just under forty, come to spend their lives in Mexico and already lost as they travel cross-country over the central plateau.
5. Here is James Henry Trotter when he was about four years old.
6. The year began with lunch.
7. I remember the day the Aleut ship came to our island.