What Fresh Twee Is This?

I have read The Guernsey Literary Potato Peel Pie Society finally. I was avoiding it since it looked pretty twee and I am here to say---"Yep---it's twee alright." But I actually enjoyed it, at least it's fresh twee, the next epistolary novel that mimics it ---say The Outer Hebrides Book and Gooseberry Trifle Knitting Club ----will be the death of the genre. The island of Guernsey was occupied during World War II by the Germans for five years which was news to me, the stories are affecting, the romance is pleasant. It gives twee a good name.

My Bedside Table

Titanic

I ordered Every Man For Himself from Canada since it was out of print here. It's an fictionalized account of the sinking of the Titanic. It's a little too disjointed and vague in the beginning but after I "wiki-ed" the real story of the Titanic I could fill in the blanks and it got better. Actually a very tragic story with a lot of tragic errors on the part of the designers and builders: insufficient lifeboats, miscommunication etc etc. To further my research I was tempted to watch Titanic again but didn't know if I could bear watching them peer over the bow with Celine Dion wailing in the background so found something called I was a Chambermaid on the Titanic instead, an obscure French film. Not sure about it. Beryl Bainbridge also wrote that wonderful book of the Shackleton expedition The Birthday Boys, she has a way with tragedy.

Kate Grenville

Awhile ago I read Kate Grenville's The Secret River and really liked it. I can't remember who recommended it to me, but it's a story of a convict from London sent to Australia with his wife. They're very poorly equipped to do anything in the open country but they settle on some land and try to build a life for themselves. Some aborigines are settled close by and almost live better than they do. At some point in the book there is a choice made and it allows them to stay on their land but at a price. You're left wondering if the price was worth it. It's a very provocative book, reminded me too of David Malouf's Remembering Babylon, another Australian heart breaker and one of my all time favorites.
The Lieutenant is much more gentle on the heart but still pretty painful. It's the story of a British science prodigy in the 1700's who grows up in his own quiet world, always at a distance from everyone. And because of the times he ends up in Australia as a Lieutenant in the navy establishing a settlement of convicts. He is perched in a makeshift observatory to charts the stars and slowly and shyly connects with the aborigines they are 'co-existing' with. In this book too a choice is made and again there are consequences. Grenville writes very simply and beautifully. There is nothing extra. She seems to be looking at the story of the colonization of Australia over and over again, each time thinking it through with different outcomes for the characters whom you grow to care about. Both are very good books.

Losing Mum and Pup

This is a memoir by Christopher Buckley about losing his parents,Pat and William F. Buckley, both in the same year. I actually liked it, it does a good job of recognising their awfulness but still loving them in spite of it all. So on one hand he was truthful about their narcissism and distance while on the other he acknowledged their good qualities. It manages to be funny and exasperated with them but still very tender. An interesting detail about Buckley was that he was a remote control hog, he had to always be in control and this extended to the remote. People would be over to watch a movie and right when the important plot point would be revealed he would switch to a documentary on another channel. When he died Christopher Buckley placed a few things in his casket with him: his rosary, a jar of peanut butter and the remote. It's only about that one year in their lives but manages to somehow radiate beyond that. It's up there with John Bayley's Elegy for Iris.

One thing he quoted from William Hazlitt that I thought quite useful when confronting death:

"Perhaps the best cure for the fear of death, is to reflect that life has a beginning as well as an end. There was a time when we were not; this gives us no concern---why then should it trouble us that a time will come when we shall cease to be?"

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie

This is a mystery with an 11 year old girl narrator who is a bit of a prodigy in Chemistry. She lives in a moldering old British estate with two older sisters and a distant stamp collecting father. A dead body shows up in the garden and she decides to investigate. It's quite enjoyable in a Nancy Drew sort of way. Although her voice is way older than her years she stills acts like a child whizzing along on her bike to sleuth. Her bike has a name which reminds me of when I was young and my bike was an extension of myself, a character in my stories. She is constantly plotting rather sophisticated chemical mischief against her sisters which I would never had been intellectually capable of (although I hasten to add I am sure I would have been morally capable!) which is fun to read and the mystery unfolds quite nicely with only a few characters to keep track of and suspect.

More Lucia

I read another M.C. Beaton Agatha Raisin mystery. Not sure why since, while I like the character, I do not like her writing, I think she pops out a couple of these a year and it shows. The writing is very sloppy. At the library the librarian -----dare I say it?----coo'ed when she saw them. It turns out she loves them and all her friends do too. I started protesting how poorly written they were but since I stood there checking out two more I felt the firm ground beneath my argument shifting. 'Perfect for when you're sick' I tried backtracking weakly. I coughed discreetly into the crook of my elbow as we have been instructed to do. The librarian looked away in distaste. I won't be invited to join her bookclub.
One good thing about Agatha Raisin is she's like a flu shot, over quickly and I moved back to my beloved Lucia. It is the last one and I think I am glad since although they are quite fun, as Georgie says so much arch dialogue can be a bit "tarsome". Like reading too much Woodehouse.