The Professor's House, by Willa Cather

Willa Cather displays her talent for storytelling, and creating believable characters and situations in this novel.  It is set up a bit differently from other books of hers I have read, as we have the main story line about the professor, his family, and his impending retirement, and a second one told in flashback about Tom Outland, his most celebrated student (and his daughter's fiance)--an inventor and adventurer whose promising life was cut short in World War I.

The two storylines invite comparison, as the first one features the professor's quiet, comfortable everyday life, preoccupied with moving into a new house, and the second one is prompted by the professor's coming across Tom's diary among the things in his study while preparing for the move, and reading through it.

Tom's life before coming to the university was everything the professor's isn't--chaotic, impoverished, adventurous, with lots of time spent exploring the ruins of the pueblo Indians' cave dwellings in New Mexico.  The professor, having completed and been recognized for his masterwork on Spanish history, feels that there is nothing left in life to look forward to.  His daughters are both married and on their own; they don't seem to need him as much as they used to.  The elder especially, who has inherited Tom's estate, is developing some personality traits he doesn't care for.  The new house is more his wife's project than his.  There is no place in it comparable to his old attic study, where so much of his work was done and which holds many memories.  He stays in it long after the rest of the house has been vacated, to the point of renting the old house for some extra months.

It's the perfect picture of a man who is reluctant to move on to a new phase of life (which looks drab and uninteresting from his present point of view), and tries to hang on to the old life for as long as possible.

Shadows on the Rock

I learned about the existence of this novel (not one of Willa Cather's better known ones) while reading this article by Patricia Snow on First Things Magazine.  It is a historical novel covering a year in the life of Cecile Auclair, the twelve year old daughter of an apothecary in Quebec City in the 17th century.  Cecile and her family are originally from Paris, emigrating to Quebec when their aristocratic neighbor and patron, the Count de Frontenac, was appointed governor general by the king.  While Cecile and her family are fictional characters, the Count, the two bishops, and other persons of rank in the story are real, as are the events that are remembered and talked about so this is a believable picture of what everyday life might have been like on "the Rock" during French colonial times, when the Church had a strong influence on culture and lifestyle and when one had to depend on the infrequent visits of transatlantic ships from France to get word from home and much needed commodities not available in Canada.  Those who are familiar with Quebec City will recognize the landscape and architecture of the Upper and Lower Town, the Hotel-Dieu hospital, the church of Notre Dame des Victoires, and other historical landmarks.

Willa Cather has a great talent for creating realistic characters and environments, so it was easy to get engrossed in the story.

Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats, by T.S. Eliot

Collection of fun poems about cats and their varied personalities.  I learned from this book that I have a Jellicle Cat, a Rum Tum Tugger, and an Old Gumbie Cat.  But I think my favorite poem is the first one about the Naming of Cats.

Mrs. Dalloway, by Virginia Woolf

I put this book in my To Read pile because a year or two ago I saw the 1990's movie version starring Vanessa Redgrave and enjoyed it.  I thought the book would be lots more confusing than it really was because I was aware it was written in Woolf's "stream of consciousness" style.  Actually this style of writing is very effective at establishing an atmosphere and a character because you are let in on many more details in the scene noticed by the characters as well as their chance thoughts.  So I liked this a lot better than I thought.

The Snow Goose, by Paul Gallico

Beautiful World War II story set in the British Isles about a lonely artist with a great love for animals, and a little girl who comes to his doorstep with an injured (and rare in those parts) Canadian snow goose.  The artist became one of the hundreds of British civilians who came to the aid of the stranded British army on the beaches of Dunkirk, helping to get the soldiers off the beach in little fishing boats, pleasure cruisers, yachts, and any kind of small craft they could find.

You'll need a box of Kleenex within arm's reach for this one.

Death of a Salesman, by Arthur Miller

This is the story of Willy Loman, a salesman whose main fault seems to be a lack of prudence, the virtue of always remaining firmly anchored to reality.  Willy likes to think of himself as a very successful, popular salesman with a wealth of contacts in the Northeastern territory with a devoted wife and two grown sons on track to become as successful as himself.  In real life, his boss is trying to get him to retire, and his wife and sons are very careful not to say or let him know anything that might spoil his illusion since they found evidence pointing towards a suicide attempt on his part.  His elder son hasn't accomplished much of anything after being a star football player in high school and has lost several jobs because of theft, while his younger son is a womanizer who hasn't done much else either.

 I would probably enjoy this more if I saw a performance rather than just reading it.  It did get a bit dull at times, although the premise is interesting.

Pierre, or The Ambiguities, by Herman Melville

The book started interestingly enough. Pierre Glendinning, the apple of his mother's eye and the beloved son of a well respected family, discovers that his father, whose character he thought was irreproachable, had an illegitimate daughter by a French refugee who mysteriously disappeared.  He meets this half-sister, Isabel (or she claims to be his half-sister), and, in order to ensure that she is taken care of gets part of his father's estate, he pretends to be married to her and alienates both his mother and fiancee.

After the point where he moves to the city and sets up housekeeping with his "wife" and a dishonored young woman named Delly from his village who has no place else to go, the storyline all went to hell pretty fast, going through all kinds of incoherent melodramatic twists and turns. I only finished the book because I figured I had already gone this far and there was a chance it might improve (this is <i>Melville</i>, the literary giant, after all), but it didn't.  I have since read somewhere that Melville may have written it to spite his publisher, who wanted him to produce more saleable conventional potboilers--so he deliberately made a mess of this one.

I gave it 2 stars because there are some beautiful passages in this book, but it was too weird for me. But then, Gothic novels in general aren't my thing anyway.  I read the <A HREF="http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/34970">Gutenberg ebook</A> of this title.

Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott

I must have read this ten or more times as a child.  My mom had an old hardback copy from the 1940's that she had since her childhood and she gave it to me.  That book had a really hard life it was read so often--the cover and spine are falling off.  I have always enjoyed stories (no matter how long) that are told in such a way that the people in them become real to me and I can really get into that world.  Well Louisa May Alcott definitely has that talent!  I won't go into what my favorite parts of the book are because that would involve spoilers.

Ethan Frome, by Edith Wharton

I first read this book some years ago when I was in college because I was putting off studying for an organic chemistry final.  It was a very sad but beautiful story.  If I wasn't in the mood to cram for chemistry before reading it, I was even less inclined to do so afterwards!  Because I'm not usually in the mood for sad stories I never reread it, until recently when I watched the Liam Neeson/Patricia Arquette film adaptation from the 1990's.  It is very true to the book.

The story still affects me in the same way, except that now that I'm older and hopefully wiser, I am now able to see that the consequences suffered by the three main characters are at least partly caused by their own self centeredness and bad choices, instead of just being tragic victims of fate.

I'm also better able to appreciate Edith Wharton's use of symbols to foreshadow events or states of mind throughout the novel, rather than concentrating only on the plot.   This was the first of Wharton's books I had ever read and she has since become one of my favorite novelists.