Summer Reading: a Summer trilogy, Books about Bookstores, turn back the clock a decade or two and more...

Summer Reading So Far

I have been remiss in writing a summer reading post this year.  My intentions were good, as usual, but the last few hot days have served as a reminder that I can’t ignore.  I always start with a summer/beach trilogy and Mary Alice Monroe’s Low Country Summer Trilogy is just right.  When the first book, Summer Girls, ended with a cliff-hanger, I was anxious to see how the second book, Summer Wind, would start.  Well, it started the next day.  No flashbacks or explanations, the action picked up right where it ended.  The last book, Summer’s End, ties up the loose ends and almost everyone lives happily ever after.  

Next, several staff members were excited about Cynthia Swanson’s The Bookseller.  I was a little reluctant after Gabrielle Zevin’s The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry and Sarah Jio’s Goodnight June.  Really, how many good books can you expect about bookstores? The Bookseller surpassed my expectations and returned me to an earlier time in the 1960s. 


To turn the clock back one more decade,  Judy Blume’s In the Unlikely Event  takes us back to the early 1950s in Elizabeth, New Jersey.  Three plane crashes and many deaths brought the city to a standstill.  You couldn’t live in Elizabeth without knowing someone who had suffered a loss or been somehow impacted by the tragic accidents.  Newark Airport was closed during the investigations.  In the Unlikely Event offers a precisely cut slice of life in 1950s Elizabeth in the same way that Blume’s Wifey offered a slice of Plainfield in the 1970s. 

Many people know that TheGuernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society is one of my favorite books.  I  found  it so charming that I couldn’t decide if I had high expectations or no expectations for The Truth According to Usby Annie Barrows, co-author of TGL&PPS.  Once again I was speeding back in American history and, this time, I landed in the late 1930s.  The characters are as quirky as the small town is pretentious. The federal government is busy employing people through the WPA (Works Progress Administration) to move the economy forward at the same time a local factory is squashing any attempts to unionize.  I enjoyed the fictionalized history lesson; I enjoyed the main characters; I laughed when appropriate; I pondered the mysterious fire at the factory; I enjoyed the parts of the story told by letters to people we never met; and, I sympathized with any and all affairs of the heart.  However, I was more confused than charmed by the story as a whole.  Although my praise is so faint it may disappear from  the screen, I am glad I finished the book.  

Although I never want summer to end, I am looking forward to The Girl in the Spider Web (David Lagercrantz continuing for Stieg Larsson) and The Secret Chord (Geraldine Brooks).  Fall always brings books to remind us that lazy reading is over and it’s time to get serious again.

- S. Bakos

Revisiting the 'Merry Hall' trilogy by Beverley Nichols

This review of the first book in the Merry Hall Trilogy was first posted on this blog over four years ago on July 30, 2010.  Since then I have enjoyed the entire trilogy which the library now owns. The second title is 'Laughter on the Stairs' followed by 'Sunlight on the Lawn.'

Merry Hall by Beverley Nichols

A few weeks ago, Nancy Pearl, a librarian famous for her ability to recommend the right book for the right person and also for being the model for the librarian action figure with real shushing action, tweeted that gardening/readers who like P.G. Wodehouse's books and E.F. Benson's Mapp and Lucia series might enjoy Beverley Nichols gardening trilogy starting with Merry Hall. In any case, I retweeted her tweet admitting that I fit that trifecta of reader interests. What this all leads to is that BHPL staff member, Mme. P.,  who follows our Twittering, offered to loan me Merry Hall, because the library does not own this 1951 memoir of British journalist Beverley Nichols.
Mr. Nichols' book tells the story of restoring the gardens of an old country house outside London just after World War II. His passion for gardens, bordering on obsession, crossing the border actually, is told with dry wit and some withering accounts of local ladies with whom he has gardening disputes. The book combines British wit with the memoir genre, gardening trivia, eccentric characters and rambling country house dreams.

A sample: "I wanted a house. And I wanted a Georgian house. And I wanted a garden of at least five acres. A garden which, for preference, should be wrecked and lost and despairing...I was in a rescuing mood..." (p. 20)
The author finds a house and it's the spectacular lilies that seal the deal. He must have those lilies. His friend tells him it's "lunacy" to buy the house, but his manservant Gaskin rises to the challenge of taking care of the mansion single-handedly. The gardener Oldfield conveys with the house along with his stubborn methods and gardening opinions and oddly inpenetrable accent, as is the stereotype for gardeners in English books. The neighbors are nosy and opinionated, especially Miss Emily and "Our Miss Rose" whose rivalry regarding decorating the church results in a comical confrontation during the Harvest Festival about whose flowers should adorn the altar.
These scenes of English village life recall Bertie Wooster's visits to his aunts' houses in the country, or Lord Blandings dithering about the pigsty whilst admiring the porcine Empress of Blandings.  I'm pretty sure the church decorating rivalry popped up in the Mapp and Lucia books, or if not, it's a familiar theme. So, Nancy Pearl was right: this is a good book for fans of those authors or for gardeners. Although nothing touches the Master, P.G. Wodehouse, in my pantheon of authors, for he truly loves his characters and never condescends. Nichols' humor is arch and a bit mean at times, so be forwarned. Since "snarky" is in style now, perhaps he is due for a revival.

Related links:
Read Mapp and Lucia online here http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks05/0501131h.html
The Wodehouse Society website for fellow Plum fans http://www.wodehouse.org/
A list of gardening memoirs from GoodReads http://www.goodreads.com/shelf/show/gardening-memoirs

8/22/14 In memory of Mme. P.; many thanks for the book recommendations.