Elective Affinities

This book was not what I thought it would be. Much lighter and sillier than I thought a German can be. Apparently Goethe when attacked on it's frivolity reponded that it was a novel written for women. He did not mean it to be serious. It's the story of a wealthy couple who marry later in life. Having been childhood sweethearts, their first marriages had been against their wishes, their love affair is seen as High Romance until two others appear on the scene. A childhood architect friend of the man and the young goddaughter of the woman.

As Goethe has them early on in the book explaining the scientific theory of elective affinities you know what you're in for. The couple are pulled apart and cleave to the other newly introduced particles---I mean---characters. All this is dealt with rather glibly including the death of a child from the couple that was conceived while they were both fantasizing about the other new person. The child, interestingly enough, doesn't look anything like it's parents and more wittily looks exactly like the fantasized characters. The book ends in a highly dramatized fashion and somehow reminded me of Garcia Marquez in some of the themes: the folk tale quality to the story telling, the perennial old goat lusting after an 18 year old girl.

Ssshhhhhh......

Quiet everyone! Gaye is reading Goethe! Actually I am making a big show of reading Elective Affinities in the hopes that everyone will forgive me for my former lapses in taste. Although not sure if fellow T-riders know about these lapses. But I still make intellectual faces every time I pull it out of my bag just in case. You never know.

I am just going outside, and may be some time...

The Anglo Files by Sarah Lyall. I enjoyed this book and immediately passed it on to another Anglophile. Just some essays about certain aspects of the British character, particularly their understatement and tendency towards stoicism. She includes one of my favorite stories of British stiff upper lip-iness to illustrate their manly resolve. Robert Falcon Scott's doomed journey to the South Pole where the Norwegian explorer got there a month before him in a race and Scott died coming back, 11 miles away from a supply depot. His journal entry "I do not regret this journey, which has shown that Englishmen can endure hardships,help one another, and meet death with as great a fortitude as ever in the past." (!) Not to be outdone his companion, Captain Oates, who was sick announced as he stumbled out of the tent "I am just going outside, and may be some time." before he marched out into a blizzard, never to be seen again.

When the British were asked to come up with a statement of British values in 2007, sort of a catchy mission statement or motto some of the entries were:

"Dipso,Fatso,Bingo,Asbo, Tesco"

"Once mighty empire, slightly used."

"At least we're not French."

"We apologize for the inconvenience."

and finally, the winner:

"No motto please, we're British."

Good Good Thief

I really liked this book. I kept waiting for a false step but there were none. Just like Obama's campaign! It's just a very exciting compelling story about an one handed orphan named Ren, set in New England in the 1800's, who's adopted by a pair of thieves. It never gets overly sentimental and never lets up. Quite satisfying.

Unpaid Political Announcement

Go Billy! (whoops! not supposed to call him that anymore).

The Good, the Bad and....the Undecided

Reading Hannah Tinti's The Good Thief and have two alternate pictures to choose from.