The Last Post

I didn't think it would be so difficult to make such a decision but this will be my last Book Psmith post. I decided at the beginning of 2010 to keep a personal journal of my reading, and although I have been doing a monthly review, I find that I lack a certain motivation to write about my reading twice. However I cannot give up reading and commenting on my favorite book blogs...there are just too many delicious authors and books I get to know through them...nor do I want to give up the wonderful bloggy friends I have made over the past year and a half...is this considered selfish blogging etiquette? Regarding the challenges I joined for 2010, I will still be working on them, and the You've Got Mail challenge I am hosting will carry on.

On to May's reading...for some reason I felt I had read tons but it turns out only finished seven books beginning with The Children Who Lived in a Barn read for Persephone week and written about here. My copy of Dorothy Canfield Fisher's The Home-maker didn't arrive in time for Persephone week but I began reading it the day it came and found myself wishing for one of those long weekends from my childhood where I looked forward to doing nothing more than settling on my grandparent's couch with a good book and no interruptions. As it was, I stole pages here and there and read a paragraph or two whenever I could. The Home-maker lived up to all the things I had read about it but I had a curious reaction to the story during the days that followed my finishing it...I began to despise it...not the characters and their actions but the story itself. It was a very strange experience and one I am still trying to figure out.

I read two books by Barbara Pym, Some Tame Gazelle and Jane and Prudence, both of which I loved but for very different reasons. Some Tame Gazelle is a book I wished I had read in the dead of winter because there was a certain level of coziness to be found in the sisters' home and their relationship that it would have been ideal reading it next to a fire with a blanket thrown over and a hot cup of cocoa (or Ovaltine) to sip. I have to admit that I didn't understand the tenacity of Belinda's feelings for the Archdeacon over so many decades nor Harriet's obsession with curates but I didn't have to in order to love their character and idiosyncracies. As for Jane and Prudence, I felt that I understood Jane a little too well for the fact that I could identify with her inability to say and do the right things in any role she had chosen for herself. Then I also could identify with Prudence and the way in which she reveled in her romantic drama. Prudence was a reminder of my foolishness in youth and Jane in my negotiating the path of being 'grown up'. Plus the book was downright funny.

I was slightly disappointed in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Sign of Four which didn't have the same suspense factor as his other works I have read. Nor did it seem very clever. But I am glad I read it just for witnessing the further character development of Holmes and Watson. Sad to say but I was also disappointed in Miss Read's Village Affairs...and it does make me sad to say that because I have loved everything I have read by her so far but I hesitate to say it was the fault of Miss Read because I kept feeling a level of pettiness as I read this installment in the Fairacre series. Minnie Pringle grated on my last nerve and I wasn't convinced by the drama that surrounded the possible closing of Fairacre school (perhaps because a quick glance at the rest of the Fairacre titles on my shelf gave the whole thing away). But I did appreciate Mrs. Pringle's frustration with her reducing diet. To paraphrase her argument which I whole-heartedly commiserate with...they aren't fattening foods, they are sustaining foods.

To match the strange experience I had with The Home-maker, I read Angela Thirkell's first Barsetshire novel, High Rising, in the beautifully published but badly edited edition by Moyer Bell. This is a fantastic read that I found irreverant in its commentary on motherhood and perfectly entertaining on every level. Simply put it was a blast to read. But once finished I felt no compulsion to continue the series which I am guessing has to do with the fact that I really felt no emotional connection to any of the characters. I already had the second book, The Demon in the House, on its way to my home but for now it will be shelved just in case sometime down the line I feel an urge to pick it up.

Two books I started but didn't finish were Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier and A Far Cry from Kensington by Muriel Spark. Within the first couple of pages, I just couldn't get into Rebecca but have set aside to try again come this October. I can't completely give up on it because I really liked her short story, Don't Look Now, and because so many people recommend it. I got to about page 75 in A Far Cry from Kensington and then shut the thing in a huff. The story started in one place, which I was really enjoying (I mean how great is the scene where Mrs. Hawkins states to Hector Bartlett how she really feels about him and then to find the story behind the story of this character) and then veer off to another centering around a Box just didn't mesh for me. I skipped ahead to read the last few pages which reinforced my decision not to finish.
Currently I am inhabiting that detested state of not reading as I wait for Elizabeth Taylor's Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont...no other book will do at the moment:)

Thank you to everyone who has stopped by to read and comment, and extra big thank yous to all the bloggers who have influenced, and will continue to influence, my reading in immeasurable ways.