Not much going on today. Weather is a mix of mizzy rain and sunshine. Watched some Blue Jays this morning and also some World Figure Skating Championships. Now it's the Semis of the Women's World Curling Championships - Canada vs South Korea and Italy vs Switzerland. GO CANADA!
So before I take the dogs out for mid afternoon walk, let's do a reading and new book update.
Just Finished
I've completed two books since my last update.
"This year I've been focusing on the writing of Ursula K. Le Guin. I've decided that one of my bucket list items will be to try and read as much of her writing as possible. My online book club has various reading challenges and one I've selected is to read 16 of her books. The majority will be in the Hainish Cycle and the Earthsea stories, but I've also picked some of her other books / series. The Complete Orsinia: Malafrena / Stories and Songs is the complete stories of Le Guin's Orsinia collection, as collated by the US Library of Congress. OK, enough of my plans for 2024. 😊
When Le Guin was just beginning to consider a career as an author, the authors that interested her the most were European and Russian authors. But how for a west coast girl to write about Europe? That was her dilemma and it took her a number of years to get into her work. In the meantime, she had Sci Fi short stories and some of her first novels published. But Orsinia was the story she wanted to write. So Le Guin, rather than try to set a story in an existing European country, decided to create her own country and that country became Orsinia, a nation of 10 regions under the influence of the Austro - Hungarian empire. The compilation by the Library of Congress consists of the novel, Malafrena, a chapter of songs and finally a collection of short stories; Orsinian Tales and Other stories. Finally there is an interesting chronology of Le Guin's life; where she lived, when the various novels and other stories were written and published.
So, onto the stories. Malafrena is a town in the southeast of Orsinia. The story follows various people in the Sorde family. Their estate is in Malafrena. The son, Itale, is away at seminary school and rather than move back to Malafrena to help take over his father's estate, decides to move to the capital Krasnoy, where he wants to join the revolution. This causes his father to disown him. The story moves from the estate and the family there and back to Krasnoy where Itale and his college friends try to run a newspaper under the constant overlook of the censors. The story moves around Orsinia as Itale tries to find other people to help with their revolution. He ends up in a prison for a few years in an eastern district, Polana. This allows other characters, sister Laura, her friend Piera and others to develop.
I'm making it sound like a simple story but there are many levels to it. You've got the development of the main characters and their ideas on freedom and thought. You've got various love stories - will they or won't they? And you've got the history of Orsinia going on in the background, placing it within the context of what is happening around it, in Austria, France (the French Revolution). As I got into it, the story became richer and more interesting. It's a different style of writing than I was used to from Le Guin.... different but similar, I guess would be more accurate. Historical fiction vice Sci Fi / Fantasy, maybe.
Then you have the various short stories, all set in Orsinia and many featuring ancestors or children and grandchildren of the characters in Malafrena. They are varied and different; some I liked more than others but all were interesting and enjoyable. Did I have any favorites? Brothers and Sisters, which moved from one family to another and the relationships between the various families was excellent (and in Notes on the Texts portion there is a fascinating portion from one of Le Guin's brothers who talks about the ideas in the story). Imaginary Countries deals with a family closing down their summer home to move back to the city. The interactions between the children and their parents and the feelings about their country home is wonderful. It's a lovely story. Two Delays on the Northern Line was also excellent; a man dealing with the death of his mother and wife and how the end of his train trip seems to solve his emotional loss.
Le Guin is one of those unique writers. There is a sparseness to her writing but at the same time her stories are rich in detail. I always have a reaction to her stories, whether fiction, poetry, Sci-Fi or fantasy. She is equally comfortable writing novels or short stories. Onward to my next story, City of Illusions, back to Sci Fi with #3 in her Hainish Cycle. (4.0 stars)"
"Murder in the Museum is the 4th book in the Fethering mystery series by English author Simon Brett. It's been awhile since I visited the southeast coast of England and saw what crime-solving friends Carrie and Jude are up to.
In this story, Carrie has just been asked to sit on the Board of the house of English poet Esmund Chadleigh. The Director of the Brackett's trust, Gina Locke, had asked her to fill the vacant position, because of Carrie's past experience as a civil servant. Gina hopes to change the home, Bracketts, into a museum. She hopes by adding Carrie to the board that she might have a supporting voice in her efforts.
It's a fractious board, all with their own ideas. And into the mix is the ex-Director and also ex-Board member, one Sheila Cartwright, who still wants to exert her powerful influence on the Board's agenda. As well, creeping into the mix is a biographer, American Marla Teischbaum who wants to write a biography of Esmund. This is upsetting to Esmund's nephew who has been struggling to write his own biography of his uncle.
So there you go... Oh wait, this is a murder mystery after all. A body is found on the grounds by one of the volunteer workers, on the sight of the spot where they are preparing the groundwork for the new museum. Sheila tries to control the narrative of this event, basically taking over from Gina. Keep the press out of it!
In the meantime, Carole's neighbour and best friend, Jude, is helping out at the local detention center, teaching her alternative therapies to the prisoners. (It's a low security facility) One of the prisoners, Mervyn, was one of the volunteers who discovered the body as he works at Brackett's on a work-release program. Mervyn is suspected of the murder of the body and confesses, although it turns out the body has been in place about 50 years.
A final twist is that an old beau of Jude, Laurence Hauker, who happens to study English literature, shows up to rekindle the old flame. He's a hard drinking / smoking man, whose health is suspect. He will help with the investigation, adding his insights into the history and career of Chadleigh.
So there is the gist. Carole and Jude will work together and also conduct their own individual investigations into the mysterious body and the secrets of Bracketts and the Chadleigh family. Carole is somewhat jealous of Jude's distraction as she likes to feed off of Jude's ideas, use her as a sounding board. There turn out to be many secrets in the Chadleigh family. There will be other death(s).
It's a lovely, meandering, interesting story with lots of suspects. The interactions between Carole and Jude are the highlight of course but their relationships with the other characters enrich the plot. Friction abounds. Strong personalities rub each other the wrong way. A nice cozy mystery and it's been too long since I last was at Fethering. Lovely place. 😁 (3.5 stars)"
Currently Reading
"He was a fully grown man, alone in dense forest, with no trail to show where he had come from and no memory to tell who — or what — he was.
His eyes were not the eyes of a human. The forest people took him in and raised him almost as a child, teaching him to speak, training him in forest lore, giving him all the knowledge they had. But they could not solve the riddle of his past, and at last he had to set out on a perilous quest to Es Toch, the City of the Shining, the Liars of Earth, the Enemy of Mankind.There he would find his true self ... and a universe of danger."
When journalist Connie Kuhns approached Vancouver Cooperative Radio in 1981 to host a music program dedicated solely to playing music by women, there was some doubt at the station that there was enough music by women to fill half an hour—and besides, who would tune in? Such was the underground nature of women’s music. Despite the doubters, Rubymusic became a successful program, running for fifteen years, introducing listeners to countless artists through radio, magazines, and newspaper columns and on stage at Vancouver’s annual Folk Music Fest, and serving as a powerful platform for the feminist movements taking place in Vancouver’s punk scene and throughout music history in the 80s and 90s. Rubymusic also served as the launching pad for Kuhns’ life-long passion—the preservation of the histories and stories of the women with whom she crossed paths on the airwaves. Here is a time capsule of a pivotal moment in women’s music history, with special emphasis on the women’s music movement in Canada, including the only written history of the women involved in Vancouver’s punk rock scene."
Do they all have to behave as if a body in the fridge is a perfectly normal event? Does every bored and lonely housewife have a guilty secret behind the fixed smiles and the endless round of coffee mornings?"
Volume Two, OUTER SPACE, INNER LANDS, showcases Le Guin's acclaimed stories of the fantastic, originally appearing in publications as varied as AMAZING STORIES, PLAYBOY, the NEW YORKER and OMNI, and contains 20 stories, including modern classics such as the HUGO Award-winning 'The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas', NEBULA-nominee 'Nine Lives'; JAMES TIPTREE, JR MEMORIAL AWARD-winner (and HUGO and NEBULA-nominee) 'The Matter of Seggri'; NEBULA AWARD-winner 'Solitude'; and the secret history 'Sur', which was nominated for the HUGO AWARD and included in THE BEST AMERICAN SHORT STORIES."
Leaving home is hard and Max is alone for the first time in his life. But not for long. Max is surprised to discover that he’s been joined by two unexpected traveling companions, one on each shoulder, a kobold and a dybbuk named Berg and Stein.
Germany is becoming more and more dangerous for Jewish families, but Max is determined to find a way back home, and back to his parents. He has a plan to return to Berlin. It merely involves accomplishing the becoming a British spy.
Thought-provoking historical fiction with a dash of magic, Max in the House of Spies is a World War II story as only acclaimed storyteller Adam Gidwitz can tell it—fast-paced, hilarious, and filled with heart."
Collects: Saga #37-42."
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