First Lines: May 2024 edition

Below are the first lines of the books I finished reading in May.  I have included 2 short stories/novellas.  I’m not usually a fan of the short story genre - they are too sparse for my liking (but ironically the sparseness makes for a great short story).  Maybe these are a bit longer than short stories.

 

 

Book 1

June 1887

I stared down into the open grave and wished that I could summon a tear.

 

 

Book 2

The Vanishing

In April, millions of tiny flowers spread over the blackjack hills and vast prairies in the Osage territory of Oklahoma.

 

 

Book 3

Dear Daughter,

This letter has taken an extraordinary time getting itself together.

 

 

Book 4

I wanted a cupcake.  I was in my late twenties and, all my other ambitions thwarted, I just wanted a cupcake.

 

Book 5

“a great sea A going”

Eight months of the year Hallowell, Maine, was a seaport. 

Novella 1

In a certain Russian ministerial department –

         But it is perhaps better that I do not mention which department it was.  There are in the whole of Russia no persons more sensitive than Government officials.  Each of them believes if he is annoyed in any way, that the whole official class is insulted in his person.

 

 

Novella 2

Though it was still daylight, the hot lamp was shining full-beam over the mahjong table.

 

 

The titles and authors revealed:

 

 

Book 1

A Curious Beginning (A Veronica Speedwell Mystery Book 1) by Deanna Raybourn

356 pages • first published 2015.

 

Started off slow.  I found the traveling circus section tedious, but then about halfway through it got much more interesting.  Character names are excellent, ex: the vicar’s wife, Mrs Clutterthorpe.  There is some tea drinking, but also other drinking and sometimes those liquid enhancements are combined with tea. 

 

Book 2

Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI, by David Grann.  

316 pages • first published 2017.

I recommend this excellent telling of a huge sad injustice in our country. The writer is an assiduous researcher.  I was especially interested that he followed up the historical story by speaking to the next generations and how the history affected their lives.  I am told the book is much better than the movie.

 

 

Book 3

Letter to My Daughter by Maya Angelou.

166 pages • first published 2008

This book consists of very short essays, some curmudgeonly, some with deep wisdom, from this great American poet.   I started it some weeks ago, and finished it during the “liquids only” (day before) phase of colonoscopy prep.  Strictly speaking, Maya Angelou did not have a daughter; this book is addressed to us, her “thousands of daughters” of kinds.

 

 

Book 4

Congratulations, The Best Is Over! By R. Eric Thomas

240 pages • first published 2023.

Essays.  Quite amusing and yet heartfelt at the same time.  Addresses the pandemic.

 

 

Book 5

A Midwife's Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812 by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich.  

464 pages (main text is about 400 pages) • first published 1990.  Pulitzer Prize winner in 1991 in the History category.

 

I was reading this during the throes of colonoscopy prep but had to stop when I was lightheaded from the prep and the book was delving into various gross 18th century medical techniques.  About 10 days later, I resumed reading, but had lost a bit of the thread of Martha Ballard’s story because of the lack of continuity.  I’m glad I was able to finish – I found it fascinating.  More at this link.

 

 

Novella 1

The Overcoat by Nikolai Gogol (a short story)

My edition was published in 2016 by Open Road Integrated Media Inc.  No translator’s name is given.  (I always want to give the translator credit but alas, in this case I cannot.)

49 pages • first published 1842.

Perfect to read during the second and nasty phase of colonoscopy prep.  I’ve read it before, so I didn’t need to concentrate deeply.  Parts of it are tongue-in-cheek, but it is not fluffy; actually rather dark, which fit my circumstances.  I will think about the deeper meanings (which are there) another time.

 

Novella 2

Lust, Caution: The Story by Eileen Chang. Translated by Julia Lovell.  

68 pages • first published 1978.  Translation copyright 2007. 

Recommended by my older daughter - she read it last year in her quest to read one book related to every country in Asia.  An excellent fraught romantic/political tragedy, told in tight prose.  Has been made into a movie by Ang Lee.

Book Review: A Midwife's Tale

 A Midwife's Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812 by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich.  

464 pages (main text is about 400 pages; the rest is appendix and notes) • first pub 1990.  Pulitzer Prize winner in 1991 in the History category.

(For the full First Lines May 2024 edition, follow this link.)

When our children were ages 7, 5, and 1, we all accompanied their Dad (the Common Household Husband) on his business trip to Toronto, Canada.  Daddy went off to his scientific conference all day, while I attempted to drive around an unfamiliar city to take the kids to museums.  We converged as a family in the evening, lining up in our one hotel room like sardines, with no energy left except to watch TV.   The family-appropriate show that we found was a reality-type show (maybe this one?) about a family that lives for a year in a house without any modern conveniences.  The women spent all day just trying to keep the dust at bay.  I can’t remember what the men did.  The family’s existence seemed exhausting and bleak.  

This is the closest I have come to being
a Pioneer Housewife.

The book A Midwife’s Tale, which my sister-in-law, a midwife by training, recommended to me, had echoes of that TV show. 

It's a historical treatise, meaning that the author examines a primary source, the diary of a midwife in (what would become the state of) Maine in the late 1700s-early 1800s.  The historian is able to take the terse diary entries, amplify them with the history of the time, and weave it all to tell the story of a strong, hard working woman.  

The historian author, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, was the first to publish the now-famous phrase "well-behaved women seldom make history," writing in a scholarly journal in 1976.  In 2007 she published a book with that title (it’s now on my reading list).  She is a Pulitzer- and Bancroft-Prize-winning historian, a feminist, and a Mormon.

A Midwife’s Tale shows that in late 1700s America, a midwife provided not only her medical skills at a birth, but also her skills generally as a healer.  Martha Ballard attended to many ailments in her community. There was no shortage of additional non-midwife tasks – combing flax, weaving cloth, raising crops, managing livestock, giving birth to and raising her own children, and all of the management of the family and household.

 

In that era, extramarital sex (as evidenced by the resulting pregnancy) was a common thing and not as severely dealt with as I would have thought.  The knowledge of the time said that if a woman pregnant out of wedlock was asked, during the process of giving birth, who the father was, she was incapable of telling a lie in that moment.  It was part of the midwife’s job to ask this question and record the answer.  Often, the birth occurred and then the named father married the mother.

 

Midwives had dominion over the birthing process until forceps were invented, and then doctors (men) horned in on the process.  Doctors (men) also invented the latest up-to-date medical techniques, such as bleeding a patient.

Men working in the kitchen.
My father (on the left) is squatting Pakistani style
(a skill he learned as an infant and child) and
my brother is attempting the squat.
They are shelling nuts or cardamoms
or something for the biryani.

 

I was surprised not to find more in this book about abortions, but that might be for several reasons:

 

The illnesses are sometimes described obliquely.  Often Midwife Ballard would write that the person was “feeling unwell” which could mean: in labor, sick with a sore throat, infested with worms (yup – trigger warning!), or sick with just about anything.  There could be a number of euphemisms used to describe abortion.  (But Ulrich does not say anything about abortions or contraception.)

 I didn’t read the appendix first.  There are 8 pages listing the medicines used by Martha Ballard.  Some of these have uses listed such as

Hops: “bring down the courses”;

Pennyroyal: “deobstruent, particularly in hysteric and other female complaints”;

Rue: Used to promote menstruation;

Maybe the use of such herbs could denote an attempt to end a pregnancy?

 

The late 1790s to early 1800s in the territory of Maine was an era of contention over property rights (between factions of White people – the native population had already been forced away) with some shocking violence, as described in this book.

 

A few other tidbits: It seems that the Boston Tea Party was not the only instance where white men dressed up as natives in order to cause trouble.  Debtor’s prison was a thing, but the debtor could roam the town (to work, eat, drink etc) as long as he stayed the night in the prison.

 

When quoting the diary, the historian maintains the variable spellings of the original text, which makes for slower reading, but at least I didn’t have to try to read 18th century handwriting.  The prose sometimes got a bit dry, but overall I found it to be a fascinating portrayal of a woman important to her community.

Me doing my bit for women's well being. 
Can you tell I was (and still am) furious?

First Lines: April 2024 edition

Fence.  Shore.  Summer.  2015.

Below are the first lines of the books I finished reading in April.  Most are short books.   I did not plan to read two books in a row with the word “unexpected” in the title, but that is what happened.

 

 

Book 1

Part One: 1993

The morning was ideal, a crime to waste it cooped up.  They were off to the shore.  That means you, too, Pasha – you need some color, a dunk would do you good, so would a stroll.

 

Book 2

Miss Cackle’s Academy for Witches stood at the top of a high mountain surrounded by a pine forest.  It looked more like a prison than a school, with its gloomy grey walls and turrets.

 

 

Book 3

Open Door

The first time I got drunk was on Elijah’s wine.  I was eight or so.

 

Book 4

Semiotics, Pubs, Decisions

It was summer.  The forward movement of the year, so tentative in the early months of spring, now seemed quite relentless.  

Book 5

Act One, Scene One

It is 1957.  TROY and BONO enter the yard, engaged in conversation.  TROY is fifty-three years old, a large man with thick heavy hands; it is this largeness that he strives to fill out and make an accommodation with.

 

 

Book 6

My Big Brother

 

Always

had a

short

fuse

but now

         it's permanently lit.

  

Book 7

The nurse walked out of the room, closing the door behind her, and Mrs Pollifax looked at the doctor and he in turn looked at her.

 

Book 8

On the day that he was due to retire, Inspector Ashwin Chopra discovered that he had inherited an elephant.

Elephants depicted on miniature elephant canvas.
Painted by Older Daughter, 2014.
The canvas is wood, about 2 inches wide.

 

Book 9

Chapter 1: The Kind of Problem Poverty Is

I recently spent a day on the tenth floor of Newark’s courthouse, the floor where the state decides welfare cases.

Did not finish

The grandmother didn’t want to go to Florida.  She wanted to visit some of her connections in east Tennessee and she was seizing at every chance to change Bailey’s mind.

The titles and authors revealed:

 

 

Book 1

Panic in a Suitcase by Yelena Akhtiorskaya.  320 pages First published 2014.

 

The writing style gives us a froth of words, boiling over.  Cacophony amounting to nothing meaningful.   THe first two sentences you read up above may be the shortest sentences in the book.  My husband (who did not finish the book) pointed out that this confusing barrage of words may be brilliantly designed to reflect the confusion that an immigrant may feel on arrival in the US.

 

I disliked all the characters, their lives, their motives, their way of speaking.  This is one of those books where all the scenes take place in grime, either actual or metaphorical.

 

Here are a few words from several NPR reviews (all misleading):

·  a multitude of exuberant set pieces about modern émigré life

·  tart eloquence to her character studies

·  the excellent debut novel

·  such a breath of fresh air

·  patient, understated prose

·  Akhtiorskaya's dry, brilliant sense of humor

 

I thought it was going to be at least rather amusing, if not outright funny.  It turned out to be dark, frantic, and depressing.  I only finished it because I was the one to pick it for book club.  A rash decision, to suggest a book one has not read.  But to not finish would have left me with unending guilt.

 

Non-panicked suitcases

 

Book 2

The Worst Witch (#1 in the series) by Jill Murphy

107 pages • first published 1974.  Children’s lit.

One of many light reads this month.

 

Book 3

A Field Guide to Getting Lost by Rebecca Solnit

224 pages • first published 2005

Started strong.  But I skipped portions of the later essays.  Some of them seemed to meander.  I like the author’s writing style and I like reading essays.  I will probably read more from her.

 

 

Book 4

Espresso Tales (44 Scotland Street #2) by Alexander McCall Smith, illustrations by Iain McIntosh

345 pages • first published 2005

Having 17 books in this series makes life more tolerable.  I supremely enjoy these characters.  I have not read the series in order.  This is the 2nd in the series, and the 5th one I have read.

 

Book 5

Fences, by August Wilson.

119 pages.  First published 1986.

Masterful.  For book club in June.

 

 

Book 6

What About Will, by Ellen Hopkins

384 pages.  Published 2021.  For Grade 5 or higher.

This book is about a pre-teen whose older brother experiences addiction (trigger warning – attempted suicide).  It’s a meaningful story with interesting characters.  I hated the writing style.  Inexplicably the book is written in “verse”, which means a regular sentence is split up to land on several lines.  I don’t call it poetry just because the lines end up that way – the language has to be poetical also.  The advantage of this style is that a 384-page book is a very quick read.

  

 Book 7

The Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax (Mrs. Pollifax #1) By Dorothy Gilman

208 pages • first published 1966

A totally improbable spy novel.  Quite enjoyable.  Most of the novel takes place in… well, let’s just call it an undisclosed location.

 

Book 8

The Unexpected Inheritance of Inspector Chopra (Baby Ganesh Agency Investigation #1)

By Vaseem Khan.  320 pages  • first published 2015

A totally improbable murder mystery. Quite enjoyable.  Most of the novel takes place in Mumbai, India.

 

Book 9

Poverty, by America by Matthew Desmond

284 pages • first published 2023.  The main text is 190 pages; the footnotes take up about 40% of the book. 

 

The premise of this book is that poverty in the US is intentional, caused by policies that most of us approve of; most of us benefit from the existence of poverty.  It is, for sure, an uncomfortable thesis.  It will make for a good discussion at church next week.

 

The section on rental housing vs homeownership was eye opening.

 

The author is spot on when he says that the question to ask about a particular economic situation or policy is:  Who benefits?

The question that ... we should ask every time we drive past a tent encampment, those tarped American slums smelling of asphalt and bodies, every time we see someone asleep on the bus, slumped over in work clothes, is simply:  Who benefits?  Not Why don’t you find a better job?  Or Why don’t you move?  Or Why don’t you stop taking out such bad loans?  But Who is feeding off this?  (page 79)

 

This book is a quick read for those who don’t need to refer to the footnotes.  But ever since my read of the Mueller Report, I have loved footnotes with substance.  As I was reading Poverty, by America I would question whether the numbers quoted were in constant or nominal dollars (i.e. had inflation been taken into account).  I had to refer to the footnotes for that.  As another example, that section I quoted above has a whole page of a footnote that makes a very important point.

 

Some of the footnotes have meaty explanations that I wish were in the main text, but maybe that would make some people quit reading.

 

The author is a sociologist at Princeton Univ.  I am sure economists (and maybe sociologists) will disagree about the cause(s) of poverty and solutions to eliminate it; for me to make my conclusions I will have to do more reading. 

 

Did not finish

A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Other Stories by Flannery O'Connor

264 pages • first pub 1955

Great writing.  I kind of saw which direction the story was going and could not read further, given my current mental status.  I am completely intrigued that by page 17, we know the names of the son of the grandmother, and his children, but not the names of grandmother nor the mother of the children.