Emile Zola

The Ladies' Paradise by Émile Zola

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"The Ladies' Paradise recounts the spectacular development of the modern department store in late nineteenth-century Paris. The store is a symbol of capitalism, of the modern city, and of the bourgeois family; it is emblematic of consumer culture and the changes in sexual attitudes and class relations taking place at the time.

"Octave Mouret, the store's owner-manager, masterfully exploits the desires of his female customers. In his private life too he is the great seducer. But when he falls in love with the innocent Denise Baudu, he discovers she is the only one of the salesgirls who refuses to be commodified.

"This new translation of the eleventh book in the Rougon-Macquart cycle captures the spirit of one of Zola's greatest novels of the modern city."

~~back cover

A fascinating book! Definitely a morality play of the 1% and how the majority of people think only of what they want to buy, and whether they can get it more cheaply. The rousing success of The Ladies' Paradise is vividly contrasted with the owners and workers in the small shops surrounding the new behemoth. They are slowly being run out of business, ground into poverty and failure, the loss of second and third generation family businesses. Mass production and quantity driving quality and pride of craftsmanship into futility.

I was amazed at how much this aspect of the book resonated with the current economic situation, and how difficult it was to be aligned with the small shopkeepers who stubbornly clung to their old ways, and ineffectively cursed the new way of business that was driving them to ruin. Unlike Dickens, who also railed against the rich who ground the poor to oblivion, Zola paints the new regime with bright hues as opposed to the surrounding dirty, dark, damp, squalid shops -- making the new store seem gay, modern, luxurious and infinitely more advantageous. The new employees are not treated badly by management, but spend a good deal of their energy and efforts at sabotaging each other to try to further their own status. The foibles and greed of the middle class customers are presented for ridicule and dismay, further underlining the inherent amorality of the new burgeoning capitalism.

Zola excels in describing the merchandise in glowing, lascivious terms -- underscoring the psychological traits which empower the growth and glamor of this rapidly growing phenomenon and shining a glaring spotlight on the greed and heedlessness of a good portion of the population.

In contrast, the love story seems almost an afterthought, just a vehicle to move the story along, provide continuity. I was disappointed in the ending -- there's no resolution there, although a bit of research indicates that this is not the last book in the saga, so perhaps the next book answers the question left hanging in this one.

Robert Julian Yeatman

1066 and all that by Robert Julian Yeatman

My rating: 1 of 5 stars

"Philip Ziegler makes his choice:

"Very occasionally one comes across a perfect book. It is not necessarily among the greatest. Persuasion is more nearly perfect than the shaggy and mountainous The Brothers Karamazov, but the latter bulks larger in the perspective of eternity. The perfect book, however, achieves precisely what it sets out to do, without an unnecessary or a missing word -- an immaculately conceived and fashioned whole.

"1066 and All That (1930) is such a book. Its main object was to mock the traditional presentation of history as a procession of kings and battles. This it did almost too successfully. ...

"The authors' favoured instrument was the pun. The 'Venomous Bead,' the 'Disillusion of the Monasteries,' Judge Jeffrey's furious remarks about Monmouth's followers -- the 'Bloody Asides', were refinements on the sort of howler with which the schoolmaster authors were well acquainted. The authors, however, evolved a pattern of sustained punning which, if not unique, was certainly rarely matched. ...

"The best jokes are noteworthy for their mastery of essential truths. The Civil War was 'the utterly memorable Struggle between the Cavaliers (Wrong but Wromantic) and the Roundheads (Right but Repulsive).' Historians might complain that this errs on the side of over-simplification, but the issue could hardly be encapsulated in a more telling sentence. The 'Magna Charter' said 'that no one was to be put to death, save for some reason -- (except the Common People).' Such phrases tell the reader something of real importance, however frivolous the manner of telling.

"Chapter LXII is entitled 'A Bad Thing' and reads: 'America was thus clearly top nation, and History came to a.' And a good thing too."
~~undated UK newspaper article

I hated this book. Had I but known that it was all puns, I would never have chucked it onto my TBR pile, given that I'm not a big fan of puns. There were some very funny puns in the book, but I felt as though many of them were over my head, & many more I perhaps didn't even recognize.

All in all, the only reasons I finished this book are that it was small, and because I needed a Y author for my Alpha Authors challenge, & Y authors are hard to come by.

E.X. Ferrars

A Hobby of Murder by Elizabeth Ferrars

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"A Hobby of Murder brings back one of E.X. Ferrar's most popular characters, solving a classic mystery in a traditional house party setting.

"Retired professor Andrew Basnett had been at loose ends since finishing the book that was for so long his full-time occupation. A country visit with his old friends Mollie and Ian Davidge seemed like just the diversion he needed.

"And, indeed, the visit begins pleasantly enough with a cocktail party to meet the Davidges' friends and neighbors: Eleanor Clancy, the somewhat tiresome and obviously lonely retired games mistress; Brian Singleton, a biochemist, and his visiting brother, Luke, a well-known thriller writer; Edward Audley, a solicitor; and the fashionable Sam and Anna Waldron, who occupy the manor house of the village.

"Then it is the Waldrons' turn to host a party -- an elaborate dinner cooked by Sam. The fetive evening ends abruptly, however, when one of the guests keels over at the table and dies instantly. It's immediately apparent that the victim's coffee has been poisoned, although how the poison got there is not so apparent at all. But when a second corpse is discovered several days later, it seems clear that at least one person knew the killer's identity.

"Veteran writer E.X. Ferrars was working at the height of her powers in this classic country house mystery, whose startling solution lies in Basnett's close observation and ingenious powers of deduction."

~~front & back flaps

There's always a second corpse, isn't there? Sometimes I think it could hardly be an English cozy without one.

This is indeed a well-written, well-plotted mystery, and although hindsight informs me that the clues were there for me to find, I (like the characters in the book) was diverted and sidetracked by all the other details and red herrings that the author sprinkled so plausibly about.

I don't remember reading other books by this author, but I shall certainly seek them out in future!

Manley Wade Wellman

The Old Gods Waken by Manly Wade Wellman

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"In the wilds of Southern Appalachia lies Wolter Mountain -- a sacred place for the Indians and for their predecessors. But the land atop the mountain, taken over by two Englishmen, Brummitt and Hooper Voth, is undergoing frightening changes.

"Strange and evil rumblings begin to happen around the mountain -- man-like creatures prowling around, mysterious voices reciting evil incantations that terrorize Luke and Creed Forshay who live at the foot of the mountain. Then a wandering minstrel, known only as John, learns that the Voths are Old World druids who are hell-bent on reawakening the pre-Indian spirits that sleep at the summit of Wolter Mountain. Armed with his own arsenal of mystical powers, John and an Indian medicine man must fight their way through the druid's sorcerous defenses to rescue their friends from certain death at the hands of the blood-sacrificing priests.

"A tale of mysticism and terror featuring the author's famous wanderer-hero."

~~front & back flaps

I've loved this series since I read the first book, Who Fears the Devil? a good 30 or more years ago. Silver John wanders the Appalachias, his guitar strung with silver strings, and comes upon situations that prove the truth of the old folk songs: "In the pines, in the pines, where the sun never shines ..." Eerie, haunting songs. And Silver John wrestling against evil, vanquishing it with his silver strings.

The first stories of John were collected in Who Fears the Devil? This book is the first Silver John novel, written 16 years later. It differs by being a novel rather than a collection of stories, and also because John takes second place in the final battle against the evil at the summit of Wolter Mountain. A bit of research informs me there are other books in the Silver John series that I haven't read. It will be interesting to see how they compare with these two.

John Vaillant

The Golden Spruce: A True Story of Myth, Madness and Greed by John Vaillant

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

"On a winter night in 1997, a British Columbia timber scout named Grant Hadwin committed an act of shocking violence in the mythic Queen Charlotte Islands. His victim was legendary: a unique 300-year-old Sitka spruce tree, fifty metres tall and covered with luminous golden needles. In a bizarre environmental protest, Hadwin attacked the tree with a chainsaw. Two days later, it fell, horrifying an entire community. Not only was the golden spruce a scientific marvel and a tourist attraction, it was sacred to the Haida people and beloved by local loggers. Shortly after confessing to the crime, Hadwin disappeared under suspicious circumstances and is missing to this day. As John Vaillant deftly braids together the strands of this thrilling mystery, he brings to life the ancient beauty of the coastal wilderness, the historical collision of Europeans and the Haida, and the harrowing world of logging -- the most dangerous land-based job in North America."

~~back flap

That's the bare bones of this book: how and why Grant Hadwin cut down the golden spruce. Of course there's much more to it than that: the story of the Haida and their part in this destruction; the story of the first fur traders to come to the Northwest Coast -- how they quickly decimated the sea otter population, and how that trade turned to lumber from the world's largest forest; the background and environmental beliefs of Hadwin himself, as they matured over the years, and melded with his increasing mental instability; the story of logging in the Pacific Northwest, a story of environmental raping and pillaging on a scale never before accomplished, aided by the development of modern logging tools that enable loggers to complete massive clear cuts in record time, all the while believing there would always be a forest to cut down (in the same way that each of us secretly believes we will never die, despite all evidence to the contrary.)

"Absolutely spellbinding" is almost a facile description of this book. I could hardly put it down. Very well researched, very well written, but the subject and the "plot" are also necessary ingredients for the excellence of this book. A book about quantam physics could have been just as well researched & written as this one, but wouldn't have been nearly as fascinating, in my opinion.

Michael Underwood

The Uninvited Corpse by Michael Underwood

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

"In The Uninvited Corpse, Rosa Epton, England's answer to Perry Mason, turns her formidable powers to solving another baffling case.

"It is an intriguing group of individuals who occupy the four apartments on the sixth floor of a building in the English town of Mongton-on-Sea. The oldest and richest of these, Vernon Gray, has recently succeeded in involving Rosa Epton in his legal affairs after having seen her on television. Not only has Rosa been hired to draw up a will for the elderly gentleman, but she has also become an unwilling agent in finding new housekeepers to look after him. Housekeepers did not last long with Vernon Gray.

"Not long after the will is drawn up, however, Vernon Gray vanishes along with his current housekeeper. He leaves behind a series of puzzles and strange clues that baffle the police ... and Rosa Epton.

"The Uninvited Corpse is a story of great ingenuity and complexity."

~~front flap

Indeed it was. Lovely old-style British mystery, with great characterization and a plot that keeps the reader guessing until the very end (one of those where you KNOW so-and-so is involved because his or her presence in the story doesn't make sense otherwise, but HOW!) Nicely written, and like peanuts you can't stop reading, trying to figure out how it all makes sense.

Gary Thorp

Sweeping Changes: Discovering the Joy of Zen in Everyday Tasks by Gary Thorp

"Your home is an extension of yourself, therefore, when your home is in turmoil, your life is in turmoil. However, when you attend to your home, you begin to feel less hurried and more in tune with the world around you. There are delight and calm to be found in the midst of washing dishes or changing the water in a vase of flowers: there is pleasure to be experienced in the repetitions of daily life.

"In Sweeping Changes, Gary Thorp shows how the principles of Zen can bring harmony and peace to your life at home. You don't need special surroundings or to sit quietly in a formal posture to achieve the tranquility of Zen: you can find it anywhere -- in the action of dusting a shelf, organizing your closet, or feeding your cat. As Thorp conveys in sparkling prose, many everyday activities provide an opportunity for Zen practice, satisfaction, and spiritual growth. Whether you live in a small room, an apartment, or a palace, this delightful, insightful book will not only change your feelings toward housekeeping, it will help you see your home, and your place in it, in a new and nurturing light."

~~back cover

I'm still thinking about this book -- not sure whether I liked it or not. I am very drawn to Zen, and other books I've read have given me a sense of tranquility and peace as I read them. This book did not, and I'm not sure why it didn't. It was well written, and certainly addressed itself to the main turmoil in my own life: a house that is cluttered, and just short of chaos. I had hoped that this book would be a companion to my efforts to attend to my home, to declutter it and make it a place of comfort, beauty and serenity. Although the various areas and chores of a house are considered in this book, I didn't come away with any sense of the goal ahead, the process of reaching that goal, nor the journey that will be the process. Perhaps that's because I have only taken a few steps along the path -- perhaps I wasn't ready to understand the message.

I think I'll keep the book, and reread it at a later date, when I am farther along the path.