Reading Ourselves To a Better Day


"Spring," she said, "had been a little late that year. It was late because everything was the wrong way round. The world woke up one morning and found that left had become right, up had become down, black was white, and mornings were evenings." from Olga Meets Her Match* (The Olga da Polga series by Michael Bond)



It is a strange time to recommend books.

Heartbreak, anger, and frustration surround us each day. Watching the daily news has turned into a challenge to not sit and wail or feel complete exasperation. Some days are harder than others, but they are all difficult.

At first, staying home was both peculiar and, yet, already somewhat familiar. I was taking an online class (Jane Austen) and was sequestered most of each morning with reading and writing. As soon as my class finished, and I finally looked up from my computer and Northanger Abbey, all of our lives had changed quickly and dramatically.We're using terms like social distancing, and debating the type of soap to use while washing our hands for 20 seconds. We're concentrating on keeping our hands away from our faces, especially eyes and mouths. We're wondering when things will get back to normal or anything even resembling normal. Any petty grievance that crosses my mind makes me uncomfortable, followed by feelings of guilt when reading updates of numbers of people dying, healthcare workers working long shifts often without proper protection, children out of school, jobs changing or disappearing, businesses struggling to reopen.

An escape plan, I've thought. We all need an escape plan. I am grateful that some bookstores are still shipping books while beginning to reopen, and grateful that I can lose myself in a novel's pages.      

Throughout my life, reading has been my joy, my education, and yes, my escape. As spring gives way to summer, a fresh season invites us to a park bench, onto a picnic blanket, to sit in a wicker chair on a porch. We may not be with our families and friends but we can slip into books and again laugh, travel, be thrilled, or given some guidance.  

A recent joy was meeting a little fictional guinea pig named *Olga da Polga who is a bit of a storyteller and fabulist. Her tales both entertain and baffle her friends, Noel the cat, Graham the tortoise, and Fangio the hedgehog. Their adventures along with the aptly named Sawdust family make me long for an English garden with furry friends. My next children's series will be a trip to Narnia. How I made it this far without reading C. S. Lewis' masterpiece is a mystery. Other children's authors that shouldn't be overlooked are Kate DiCamillo (Raymie Nightingale), Gary Paulsen (Hatchet), Roald Dahl (Fantastic Mr. Fox), Judy Blume (Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret), Louise Fitzhugh (Harriet the Spy), Natalie Babbitt (Tuck Everlasting), Cornelia Funke (Inkheart).

   Across the aisle in the adult reading section

When I started to read Dear Edward by Ann Napolitano, I told myself to slow down. My sister tried to slowly savor every word. Yes, it's that good. Instead, I read it in only a few evenings because I couldn't put it down. Young Edward is the sole survivor of a horrific plane crash. He is sent to live with his aunt and uncle who are good people but dealing with their own grief and marital issues. He meets a neighbor named Shay and the story takes off. Napolitano's writing is phenomenal and she is a gifted storyteller. I still think often of the characters, especially Edward. This was one of the best novels I've read in years.

I enjoy historical fiction and The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek by Kim Michele Richardson didn't disappoint. I was unaware of the actual program that delivered books (via horse or mule) to the poorest, least accessible areas of Kentucky and other states in the 1930s. The lead character, Cussy Mary, deals with a genetic disorder (methemoglobinemia) which turns the skin blue. Her neighbors are, at times, either sympathetic or cruel. She delivers library books and along the way, the reader is introduced to her life in rural Kentucky. I am happy to have met Cussy Mary.

Why did I wait so long to read Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens? I kept checking Owens' bio to make sure this was her debut novel. It felt more like a novel written by an experienced writer at her peak. Kya Clark is abandoned by her family at a very young age and raises herself in the marshes of North Carolina. She is surrounded by both the beauty and harshness of nature and humans. Owens packs a lot of themes into this novel: family, racism, abuse, bullying, education, and coming of age are all skillfully woven together. I never considered not finishing the book. No matter how heartbreaking the story, I couldn't leave Kya.

Another book that sat on the shelf for too many months was Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng. A series has been developed from the novel and I wanted to read the book before too much was given away by the show's hype. The Cleveland suburb of Shaker Heights may be well-planned but in reality, our actual lives only offer us an illusion of control. Two families, very different in appearance and outlook, meet and collide. Indeed, there are little fires everywhere.

What makes a family? In Frances Liardet's We Must Be Brave, Ellen Parr discovers a small child left behind on a bus that was transporting residents to safety during a WWII bombing raid over Southampton, England. Ellen, her husband and the mysterious child settle into living as a family until fate steps in and forces tough decisions.

England in the 1940s is also the setting of Dear Mrs. Bird by A.J. Pearce. The young Emmeline Lake has "big dreams of becoming a fearless Lady War Correspondent." After moving to London, she does find work for a magazine but instead of writing from the war's front lines, she edits letters addressed to  Mrs. Bird, an "agony aunt" who dishes out harsh and often unkind advice to her readers. Emmeline struggles with her London life - the frequent bombing raids, falling in love, friendships, and whether she should secretly step into Mrs. Bird's shoes.

I can thank the HGTV show, Home Town, for Richard Grant's Dispatches From Pluto (memoir). The hosts of Home Town are big cheerleaders for their community of Laurel, Mississippi. In their store, they sell Grant's book which is the musing of a travel writer who moves to Pluto, MS, along with his girlfriend and together they create an entirely new life for themselves. Culture shock doesn't even begin to describe this memoir: Heat, political differences, insects, a house with incessant leaking issues and "swamp-to-table-dining." And that's just a start.        

                  My summer reading

Redhead By the Side of the Road - Anne Tyler
The Jane Austen Society - Natalie Jenner
The Book of Awesome Women Writers - Becca Anderson
Passing - Nella Larsen
Grace Will Lead Us Home - Jennifer Berry Hawes (nf)
Untamed - Glennon Doyle (nf)
              

Thanks to Prairie Lights Bookstore in Iowa City, IA and Rainy Day Books in Fairway, KS for their speedy delivery of books for spring and summer reading. Please support your local (and even faraway) bookstores.

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          Tea and a quarantine with Jane

"Know your own happiness. You want nothing but patience - or give it a more fascinating name, call it hope."            Sense and Sensibility (1811) Jane Austen



In the 21st century, we have so many distractions during a time of self-quarantine: disheveled closets, overgrown cold-weary gardens, Netflix, social media in abundance, 24-hour news cycles, planning three meals a day and subsequent safe-distancing grocery shopping. But there is still the question of how to escape for a bit from 2020. And, thanks to Twitter, we know that Margaret Atwood, author of The Handmaid's Tale, recommends a quarantine spent reading Jane Austen. Consider getting acquainted or reacquainted with the Dashwood sisters and young Catherine Morland. Has your opinion of Mr. Darcy changed? Is Emma truly the best novel of the six, as argued by some critics? How did Anne Elliot survive in that viperous family? Consider the social and economic issues of Austen's era: women having no right to property or divorce; women like Austen herself often surviving on the goodwill of other family members; marriages arranged not because of love or respect but size of estates. Or, as Anna Quindlen invites us, read Austen for "pure joy." Dust off a copy of any Austen novel, brew a cup of tea, and escape into brilliantly written 1800s England. 

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Time and distance separate us from Jane Austen and her tales of Georgian England.

However, is it possible for a modern reader to not imagine herself as Elizabeth Bennet? Or to not remember feeling giddy like the young Catherine Morland?

Jane Austen's long enduring literary fan base may be a bit of a surprise to the 21st century reader. Editor Susannah Carson's 33 writers, including W. Somerset Maugham, Amy Bloom, Lionel Trilling and C.S. Lewis share their own views of Austen, her writing and legacy in A Truth Universally Acknowledged - 33 Great Writers on Why We Read Jane Austen (Random House, New York)

The writers examine different novels and aspects of Austen's writing. Both the reader new to Austen and the decades-long enthusiast will find plenty of views to support or further debate, perhaps over a cup of tea.

In her own eloquent voice, Eudora Welty writes of Austen's novels as a critic may write of a ballet using descriptors such as sheer velocity, exuberance, vitality, happiness, and commotion. Welty insists that "surely this cannot fade away, letting the future wonder, two hundred years from now, what our devotion to Jane Austen was all about."

Pride and Prejudice gets a closer look by Anna Quindlen who sums her devotion to the book, writing that "serious literary discussion of P & P threatens to obscure the most important thing about it: it is a pure joy to read."

Rebecca Mead lists six reasons to read Jane Austen including that "the great recognized her greatness" citing examples of Sir Walter Scott and George Elliot as avid Austen fans.

Austen's appeal did not end when Margot Livesay grew from a teenager to a married woman. "...in each of these incarnations I have understood Austen is speaking to me, and about me, and about that deep need to have the world we live in...make sense."

If Austen had lived two additional decades, what novels would she have written? Would Austen ever imagined herself as an industry? And would she have approved?

In the essay that may arguably be the most provocative, Virginia Woolf predicts the literary world would've known a very different Jane Austen at 60-years-old: "She would not have been rushed by the importunity of publishers or the flattery of friends into slovenliness or insincerity. But she would've known more. Her comedy would have suffered. She would have trusted less to dialogue and more to reflection to give us a knowledge of her characters." 

Why would a reader in 2020 choose an Austen novel over a more contemporary author? Editor Susannah Carson maintains that "for two centuries Austen has enthralled her readers. (Readers) all turn to Austen time and again to find some nourishment for their literary souls they can find nowhere else."

This compilation of perspectives offers a deeper understanding of Austen's novels. Not only will readers continue to turn to Austen for "some nourishment for their literary souls," they will also return to this collection of essays for a visit to the gifted literary mind of Jane Austen.

                                           (Essay assignment #1 - University of Oxford online class - Jane Austen, 2020)



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If you enjoyed this post, please subscribe to Read With Enthusiasm. It's easy. Look for follow by email at the top right corner of the blog. Submit your email address. You'll receive a follow-up email to activate your subscription. Thank you.