A Mid-Week Reading Update

Since my last update, I've finished one more book. I also received a couple of books in the mail. So let's do the normal update stuff. 😁

Just Finished

1. By Cecile by Tereska Torres (1963).

"By Cecile is my second effort by Tereska Torrès the first being Women's Barracks, often described as the first lesbian pulp novel. By Cecile was originally published in 1963. It tells the story of young French woman, Cecile and is set at the end of WWII and the years afterward. 

Cecile was moved by her parents from Paris to live with an aunt in a small country town to keep her away from the war. Her parents are sent to a 'prison' and she awaits the end of the war, hoping they will return. A family friend, Maurice, a man who is basically a literary agent+, comes and gets Cecile and brings her to Paris, to live in her parents' apartment. He eventually marries her and the majority of the story is their life together.

Cecile is a free-spirited child, imaginative, full of life. Maurice introduces her to sex and to the artistic life in Paris. (The sex is more hinted at than graphic). Cecile isn't happy with Maurice and begins to fall in love with Henriette. Maurice discovers a story that Cecile is writing and decides it needs to be touched up (that is his specialty; he's not a writer, rather an editor) and by touched up, he means more detailed exploration of sexuality.

Everything sexual is described very mildly, more by intimation than actual action. It's a very French story. I can see it as a movie by Jean Luc Godard or Francois Truffaut. The story is very well-written, provides an excellent picture, and is very thoughtful. It's a slow-paced story, but that is necessary and it helps present Cecile's character and describe her growth. Thoughtful and interesting. (3.5 stars)"

Currently Reading

1. Return from the Stars by Stanislaw Lem (1961).

"An astronaut returns to Earth after a ten-year mission and finds a society that he barely recognizes.

Stanislaw Lem's Return from the Stars recounts the experiences of Hal Bregg, an astronaut who returns from an exploratory mission that lasted ten years--although because of time dilation, 127 years have passed on Earth. Bregg finds a society that he hardly recognizes, in which danger has been eradicated. Children are "betrizated" to remove all aggression and violence--a process that also removes all impulse to take risks and explore. The people of Earth view Bregg and his crew as "resuscitated Neanderthals," and pressure them to undergo betrization. Bregg has serious difficulty in navigating the new social mores.

While Lem's depiction of a risk-free society is bleak, he does not portray Bregg and his fellow astronauts as heroes. Indeed, faced with no opposition to his aggression, Bregg behaves abominably. He is faced with a choice: leave Earth again and hope to return to a different society in several hundred years, or stay on Earth and learn to be content. With Return from the Stars, Lem shows the shifting boundaries between utopia and dystopia."

New Books

1. Hell House by Richard Matheson (1971).

"For over twenty years, Belasco House has stood empty. Its shadowed walls have witnessed scenes of almost unimaginable horror and depravity. Two previous expeditions to investigate its secrets met with disaster, the participants destroyed by murder, suicide or insanity.

Now a new investigation brings four strangers to the forbidding mansion who are determined to probe Belasco House for the ultimate secrets of life and death. Each has his or her own reason for daring the unknown torments and temptations of the mansion, but can any soul survive what lurks within the most haunted house on Earth?"

2. Enola Holmes, Book 2 by Serena Blasco (Vols 4 - 6 / 2022).

"In Book 2 of the series, Enola is back on the case, deciphering clues and developing leads in each of three new mysteries. What she doesn’t know is that she, too, is being pursued—by her own brother! Once again, Sherlock Holmes’ brilliant, strong-willed younger sister takes center stage in this delightfully drawn graphic novel based on Nancy Springer’s bestselling mystery series.

London, 1889. A woman is being held prisoner while she awaits a forced marriage. Another has been kidnapped, and yet another disappears…

As Enola seeks to rescue the three women, her brother embarks on a quest of his own. When Sherlock receives a mysterious package, he knows he’ll need Enola’s help to decipher its meaning. In the end, the three Holmes siblings will have to work together to answer the question that started it What happened to their mother?
 
Book Two contains three engrossing The Case of the Peculiar Pink Fan, The Case of the Cryptic Crinoline, and The   Case of Baker Street Station."

3. The Good Companions by J.B. Priestley (1929).

"Probably the most popular of Priestley's novels, The Good Companions was an instant best-seller when it was first published in July 1929, and, while JBP came to feel its success subsequently overshadowed many more important works, the book has remained popular. It was his third novel and it is certainly well-written and very readable. It is, too, an enjoyable romp, all about a stranded theatrical group the Dinky Doos rescued by Miss Trant and converted into the Good Companions, and involving their adventures with such characters as Jess Oakroyd, the middle-aged joiner from Bruddersford, who breaks free from his miserable domestic existence, Susie Dean and Inigo Jollifant. It is the sort of long, colorful novel which was one of Priestley's hallmarks, and it is clear that Priestley enjoyed himself writing it. He regarded the job as not so much a task, more a kind of holiday."