Queenan Country: A Reluctant Anglophile's Pilgrimage to the Mother Country by Joe Queenan
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
"This book is an attempt to make clear that there are things about Britain that delight me (Chelsea Pensioners, cows on the commons, Edward VII, Keith Richards), things that appall me (Chelsea football supporters, cows on canvases, Edward VIII, Cliff Richard), and things that mystify me (why anyone would listen to English morning radio, the House of Lords, the way people dress once they turn thirty, basically, the entire society). For the truth is, the Brits have always baffled me."
"One semitropical Fourth of July, Joe Queenan's English wife suggested that the family might like a chicken tikka masala in lieu of the customary barbecue. It was this pitiless act of gastronomic cultural oppression,coupled with the dread of the fearsome Christmas pudding that awaited him for dessert, that inspired the author to make a solitary pilgrimage to Great Britain. Freed from the obligation to visit an unending procession of Aunty Margarets and Cousin Robins, as he had done for the first twenty-six years of their marriage, Queenan decided that he would not come back from Albion until he had finally penetrated the heart of limey darkness.
"His trip was not in vain. Crisscrossing Old Blightly like Cromwell hunting Papists, Queenan finally came to terms with the choochiness, squiffiness,ponciness,and sticky wicketness that lie at the heart of the British character. Here he is trying to find out whose idea it was to impale King Edward II on a red-hot poker -- and what this says about English sexual politics. Here he is in an Edinburgh pub, seeking to pinpoint the connection between Edward I's pitiless 1297 invasion of Scotland and Paul McCartney's pitiless 1977 recording of 'Mull of Kintyre.' And here he is, trapped in a Gloustershire concert hall with an Eagles tribute band named Talon who secretly resent that they are nowhere near as famous as their evil nemeses, the Illegal Eagles. At the end of his epic adventure, the author returns chastened,non the wiser, but encouraged that his wife is actually as sane as she is, all things considered."
~~front & back flaps
It started out innocently enough, but then rapidly deteriorated into the sort of book you want to throw against the wall. (I didn't, because I want to trade it in, and my local USB has an intransigent attitude towards books in pieces.) The author was snide, snarky and snotty about most everything he came across, and most of the people as well. I hope he kept his opinions to himself while he was there, or else US/UK relations were set back an untold number of years, and new meaning given to the concept "Ugly American".
I was firmly intending to give this book no stars at all, since there is no star designating "HATED it!" And then I came to the final pages:
"... there is a personal Albion that belongs tome that no English citizen born in more recent times can ever know. I remember Stonehenge before the fence got put up around it, when you could simply drive up in the middle of the night and stand speechless before the mysterious monoliths. I remember the miner's strikes that caused Edward Heath's government to collapse. ... I remember that Carmella's Place in Nailsworth used to be called Tubby's, and that the plumbing didn't work under that name either. I remember stone pubs in Paganhill that were so frigid you had to already be drunk just to stay warm enough to take off your gloves and pay for your next drink ... I remember a pub in Dursley with a ceiling so low that my dart once deflected off the roof into the bull's-eye, much to my brother-in-law's disgust. I remember another freezing pub in Paganhill where my brother-in-law and I got doused in ice cold water by a drunken prankster who claimed to be aiming at somebody else, but Tony insisted on finishing our game of cribbage with the soaking cards because he four fives and a queen with two kings in the box and wasn't likely to get another hand like that for the rest of his life. ...
"Much of the Britain I love has disappeared. Edwardian pubs have been torn apart and remodeled to look Tudor; even in the dainty Cotswolds people rarely say things like 'Excuse me, old cock, could I borrow that stool?' anymore. But enough of the old Britain remains. ...
"There isn't anything in the world better than riding a London double-decker bus. There isn't a more beautiful place in the world than the Embankment at sunset. There is nothing more stirring than the Houses of Parliament illuminated at midnight... I have often said that if I had to pick a city to live in the rest of my life it would be Paris, but if I had to pick a city in which to spend the last day of my life it would be London. One chilly evening, I called a friend in New York to gloat that I was standing in the shadow of Nelson's statue in front of the National Gallery right beside St. Martin-in-the-Fields as Big Ben struck midnight, and he had the misfortune to be elsewhere. You cannot put a price on these things, and if you did, it would not be nearly high enough.
"I left London for New York the day after the Queen Mother's funeral. Hundreds of thousands of ordinary people lined the streets. The service was broadcast over enormous speakers lining St. James Park; the silence was breathtakingly visceral. People were not afraid to weep openly ... After the funeral, the Queen herself motored past; it was the second time I had seen her in the past month. She had just lost a sister, now her mother. ... At the very end of the service, the Coldstream Guards, the Highlanders, and all the rest marched past in their amazing, resplendent, and very strange costumes. There were kilts, bagpipes, massive furry hats, battered tiger skins ... The British may have lost their empire, but they still know how to put on an impressive show. The ancient pipes filled the air with the tunes that had petrified enemies from Bunker Hill to Bengal. The pipes sported the very stiffest of upper lips. ... I did not want to be anywhere but Britain.
"As the last of the pipers disappeared toward their headquarters near Buckingham Palace, and I gazed over the sea of teary-eyed Brits, I felt the same way I did whenever I heard Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, that it was hard to believe that I had been lucky enough to live in the same solar system as such a remarkable human being. The English inspired a similar sense of affection and awe. They were, by turns, mad, hilarious, exasperating, unpredictable, peculiar, courageous, thrilling. The Brits were the very best mankind had to offer; if the planet was ever to host a more fascinating race, then the rest of us were in for a real treat. ... Standing in the park as the drone of the bagpipes receded into the distance, I was reassured by the though that there would always be Highlanders, there would always be Coldstream Guards, there would always be the queen, there would always be an England.
"The alternative was simply not acceptable."
Impossible to read that with a tug on your heartstrings. And it certainly redeemed the book.
(Q authors aren't that easy to come by, which explains how this book wound up in my TBR pile.)
Scar Across The Heart by Robert Prouty
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
"If you enjoyed Bob Prouty's book Mission: Africa, touted as the best mission story of the decade, you will enjoy this sequel. The author has an inimitable and captivating style of writing that sets his books apart as special."
~~back cover
Slim volume, easily read. A series of vignettes of life and mission work in Africa. Nicely written, with obvious affection for the land and the people. And fortunately, not overtly religious.
I have no idea why this book was in my TBR stack, but it satisfied the requirement for an P author, and was quickly read.
The Hangman's Row Enquiry by Ann Purser
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
"Ivy Beasley may have been moved to assisted living,but she has more interest in assisting her new partners in a amateur-sleuth business. She teams up with Gus, a mysterious newcomer who can't resist a little excitement even as he strives to keep his past secret, and her own cousin, a widow with time on her hands and money in her purse. Together they're determined to solve a local murder ...
"In one of the houses on Hangman's Row, Gus's elderly neighbor has been found with a bread knife sticking out of her chest. Local gossip has it that there was no love lost between the victim and her daughter, but Ivy and her fellow sleuths soon discover no shortage of suspects -- or secrets-- in the small English village of Barrington ..."
~~back cover
Nice little mystery: interesting characters, nice plot, etc. Unfortunately, although I liked it, it wasn't a great read. A little overdramatization of Ivy's character -- curmudgeonlyness goes a long way very fast. I might read others in the series if I came across them at a garage sale, but I'm not going to hunt for them.
The Bolter: Edwardian Heartbreak and High Society Scandal in Kenya by Frances Osborne
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
"In 1934 Idina Sackville met the son she had last seen fifteen yars earlier when she shocked high society by running off to Africa with a near-penniless man, abandoning him, his brother and their father.
"So scandalous was Idina's life -- she was said to have had 'lovers without number' -- that it was kept a secret from her great-granddaughter, Frances Osborne. Now Osborne explores her moving tale of betrayal and heartbreak."
~~back cover
I was prepared to thoroughly dislike Idina. She's famous as The Bolter, immortalized in Nancy Mitford's books, among others. A woman who abandons her family, simply for lust? How could I like her? But as I read more and more, I became more & more sympathetic to her. Betrayed by a philandering husband (with ample help from her sister!), Idina chose to end a marriage that had become a sham, and walk away to look elsewhere for happiness. And those were the days when mothers didn't get custody of the children -- the husbands did. The upper class ones, at any rate.
Idina marries again and again, searching for love and stability, which proved elusive. And as a woman ages, love and stability grow more elusive than ever, and women do more and more desperate things in their frantic search for it. In the end, I felt sorry for her more than I condemned her. She was a product of her age, and her options for dealing with the degeneration of her marriage were extremely limited. The disclaimer "She did the best she could with what she knew at the time" sums it up nicely for me.
I was also prepared not to like the book itself. Biographies are generally not my chosen genre. But this book is fascinating. The author pulls together details and background superbly, and you feel as though you're there, watching her life unfold on a movie screen. An excellent book -- well written, charming, devastatingly truthful.
The Perfect Summer England 1911, Just Before the Storm by Juliet Nicolson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
"The Perfect Summer chronicles a glorious English summer a century ago, when the world was on the cusp of irrevocable change. In the summer of 1911 a new kind was crowned and the aristocracy was at play, bounding from one house party to the next. At a debutante charity ball where the other girls came dressed as as white swans, the striking Diana Manners made a late appearance as a black swan. The Ballets Russes arrived in London for the first time and people swarmed to Covent Garden to see Nijinsky's gravity-defying leaps. But cracks in the social fabric had begun to show. The country was brought to a standstill by industrial strikes; led by the charismatic Ben Tillett, the Southampton Dockers' Union paralyzed shipping in the south, causing food shortages. The young Home Secretary Winston Churchill worried in his diary that 'all the world is changing at once.'
"Through the tight lens of four months, Juliet Nicolson brings that portentous summer into crisp focus. Drawing on material from intimate and rarely seen sources, The Perfect Summer is a vividly rendered story of how, day by cloudless day, a nation began to lose its innocence."
~~back cover
This was indeed a "brilliant, lucid, entertaining and fascinating" book. Like Eminent Dogs, Dangerous Men, I had expected this book to be a somewhat dry recital of facts and figures, slightly boring -- a book to be waded through rather than read. Instead, I could hardly put it down. It's not fiction, but it reads as easily and charmingly as good fiction does. The author cleverly selected people and events to give an accurate picture of the end of the Edwardian age, juxtapositioning them for the most contrast and continuity.
In many ways, these times are a mirror of those we live in today--the poor working long hours at menial jobs and unable to make enough to live on; the rich living lives of unbridled luxury and frivolousness. We can but wonder whether the Occupy movement will ever gain enough support to compel changes, as the 1911 strikes did.
Eminent Dogs, Dangerous Men: Seeking Through Scotland for a Border Collie by Donald McCaig
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
"A splendid journey through rural Scotland, where champion Border Collies and the shepherds who raise them demonstrate how the relationship between man and animal can ennoble both.
"When the author searches Scotland for just the right sheepdog to bring back to his farm in America, the result is not simply a vivid and pleasurable journey through the Highlands. It is also a serious exploration of the ancient,extraordinary pact between man and dog.
"The characters here, both human and animal, are unforgettable. The landscape resonates with legends, from the bloody tale of Bonnie Prince Charlie to stories about heroic sheepdogs of the past. Bred by humble shepherds since the seventeenth century, the Border Collie is a brilliant animal with a great heart. Its history is the history of the Highlands themselves.
"A good dog must be able to direct sheep both at a handler's commands and on his own, often under taxing conditions. To do so he must have more than courage and skill -- she must also be a shrewd strategist and honest to the bone. Here is a man-beast relationship that illuminates intense moral and esthetic concerns: deep communication, exquisite control, pure faith.
"McCaig tells the story of this exceptional breed as he travels the rugged, beautiful land of his ancestors and comes to know the local heroes who are among the world's most dangerous competitors in dog trialing. He takes us from demanding field work to the great International Sheepdog Trials, possibly the most difficult test of an animal ever developed.
"A stirring book not only for dog lovers, but for all who are fascinated by our desire, human and animal, to hear and respond to each other."
~~front flap
I disagree with some of that -- I don't think the book goes into the aspect of man-dog communication all that much. It's much more about the people who inhabit the world of Border Collies, working and trialing. I agree that it's fascinating -- I had expected the book to be rather dry and instead I could hardly put it down.
The Landscaping Ideas of Jays: A Natural History of the Backyard Restoration Garden by Judith Larner Lowry
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
"Elegantly organized by season, this lyrical yet practical guide to backyard restoration gardening celebrates the beauty, the challenges and the rewards of growing native plants at home. Judith Larner Lowry,winner or the prestigious John Burroughs award, here builds on themes from her best-selling Gardening With a Wild Heart, which introduced restoration gardening as a new way of thinking about land and people. Drawing on experiences from her own garden, Lowry offers guidance on how to plan a landscape with birds, plants, and insects in mind: how to shape it with trees and shrubs, paths and trails, ponds, and other features and how to cultivate, maintain,and harvest seeds and food from a diverse array of native annuals and perennials. Along the way, she exposes us to information and insights from indigenous traditions, ethnobotany, local history, ornithology, entomology, and restoration ecology."
~~back cover
Sounds pretty dull and dry, doesn't it? But it's not -- it's an enchanting book, and one that made me start thinking about the "web of life": how the loss of native plants dooms the animals and insects and birds that depend on those plants for food, shelter, reproduction, etc. It's made me itchy to try to restore my suburban yard, something I never thought I'd be at all anxious to do.
The Dogs Of Windcutter Down by David Kennard
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
"There is no good flock without a good shepherd, and no good shepherd without good dogs."
"These age-old words of wisdom have always guided Devon sheep farmer David Kennard. But as her battles to save his farm from extinction, they resonate more loudly -- and unexpectedly -- than ever. David knows he will be able to rely, as always, on his faithful sheepdogs Greg,Swift, Gail, Fern and Ernie. But even he is surprised when the dogs -- aided and abetted by eccentric newcomer Jake -- prove to be Borough Farm's secret weapon."
~~back cover
Lovely book about the perils and the joys of sheep farming, training border collies, and the seasonal round of sheep. I enjoyed it thoroughly, but then I adore border collies, and only wish I could have one. They're not happy unless they're herding sheep, and how many sheep can I get in my suburban back yard?
Miss Peabody's Inheritance by Elizabeth Jolley
My rating: 1 of 5 stars
"Caring for her demanding, bedridden mother and confined to a dreary clerical job, Dorothy Peabody has few pleasures to sustain her until she begins a correspondence with the novelist Diana Hopewell. In this delightful story-within-a-story, the letters between a lonely, middle-aged Englishwoman and an Australian writer become a moving novel of love and the need to create. As the correspondence progresses, Miss Peabody becomes completely absorbed in the fictional travels of Hopewell's heroine, the headmistress Arabella Thorne, and her various students and companions. She discovers that the world of storytelling provides escape, but that the surprises of fiction are nothing compared to what real life has to offer."
~~ back cover
I think what turned me off of this book was the turn of both stories (the story, and the story-within-a-story) into lesbianism -- almost as if to say that no other form of love is available to women who lead sequestered lives. The admiration, friendship and attachment Miss Peabody came to feel for Diana Hopewell could have remained at that level, without beginning to explore anything further. Likewise, I found the basis for Miss Thorne's gallivantings around the Continent with a student and two women teachers in tow odd, and disturbing. Miss Thorne comes quite close to seducing the student, and the student is eager to be seduced -- being the stereotypical schoolgirl at a girl's boarding school, and thus prone to crushes on her teachers. I kept waiting for the shoe to drop -- for Miss Thorne and her particular friend to wind up in bed, and of course they do, only to be discovered by the schoolgirl, whose rosy picture of life is thus burst.
In my opinion, there were myriad other ways to explore the questions of love and the need to create, rather than the ways the author selected. They detracted from the discussion, rather than enhancing it.
Bushwhacked: Life in George W. Bush's America by Molly Ivins
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
WARNING: political content ahead. Read at your own risk!
"For years, bestselling political commentator Molly Ivins has been sounding the alarm about George W. Bush. In Shrub, her 2000 skewering of presidential candidate Bush, the inimitable Ivins, with co-author Lou Dubose, offered a devastating expose of Dubya's career and abysmal record as governor of Texas. Now, in their second book on our current White House occupant, Ivins and Dubose take the wire brush to the Bush presidency and show how he has applied the same flawed strategies he used in governing Texas to running the largest superpower in the world.
"Bushwhacked brings to light the horrendous legacy of the Bush tax cut, his increasingly appalling environmental record, his administration's involvement in the Enron scandal, and the real Bush foreign policy -- botched nation building in Kabul and Baghdad, alienation of former allies-- and, unfortunately, much more. Ivins and Dubose go beyond the too frequently soft media coverage of Bush to show us just how damaging his policies have been to ordinary Americans -- "The Doug Jones Average" rather than the Dow Jones Average. Bushwhacked is filled with sharp observation, humor, and compassion for the people often ignored by the federal government and the Washington press corps.
"With the war on terrorism posing unprecedented challenges to our civil liberties, it is high time for a close look at the state of our Union. Molly Ivins and Lou Dubose provide just that in Bushwhacked -- an incisive, entertaining, and damning indictment of the Bush presidency."
~~front flap
I love Molly Ivins. She was extremely politically astute, and always presented her opinions wrapped in generous doses of humor. I often laughed out loud at her wry twists of language, all the while admiring her courage in "telling it like it is". She was Toto, a small dog drawing back the curtain that hid the charlatan, in order to show her friends the way smoke and mirrors were being used to distort reality.
It took me a long time to read this book. Bushwhacked is very different than her other books -- her sly sense of humor is conspicuous by its absence, and the chapters are filled with facts and statistics, and stories about the people that Dubya's policies have hurt. It's gut-wrenching to read this book, to be face-to-face with just how much his government is not "by the people or for the people." I knew most of this prior to reading the book, but it was still excruciating to read it again, all neatly packaged and no holds barred.
And as always when I read anything she wrote, I wonder what she would be saying about the current political scene. She'd be having a field day with the Republican wannabes, don't you think? Just as she'd be skewering the failings of the current White House occupant.
Where are you Molly, now that we need you!
