Debi Cates

“Wild spirit called to wild spirit...”

Take the most minimal of ingredients—a deformed reclusive man, a skittish young English lass, a snow goose flown far off course.

Then add time. And war.

Those are natural ingredients (humans are natural, baffling, but natural), sometimes bitter wilds, from which Paul Gallico gathered to make a stunningly eloquent and clear-eyed tale that has every right to be a classic.

In one small hour, I fell in love with it.

I'll be bequeathing my tiny hardback copy to my quiet oldest grandson, soon to be 18, already himself a talented professional artist. It speaks of everything I'd wish to tell him about the world.

I would read it to him, except he's now too grown up, soon a man, and too ready for the world.

Update 05/16/2024Oh squee! This is fun! A quite quirky short film of this story starring David Warner, Prunella Scales, Fenella Woolgard, and Andrew Sacks as Mr Loveday. It's an innovative mix of audiobook and video.Evelyn Waugh - Mr Loveday's Little Outing (TV adaptation 2006)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjukuOGikx4Missing GR information=Author: Evelyn WaughFirst published: 1936in [b:Mr Loveday's Little Outing & Other Early Stories 11784645 Mr Loveday's Little Outing & Other Early Stories Evelyn Waugh https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1327505828l/11784645.SY75.jpg 16736622]Number of pages: 14After having just read the short story “The Phoenix” by Sylvia Townsend Warner, another reader in The Short Story Club group mentioned this short story as being similar. And it was.Both are bop-along stories, all well and good, mild entertainment, ending with a sudden “sting in the tail.” If one were to read even just a handful of these formulaic stories, the formula would get old, and tiresome in their lightly veiled social commentary as well. But for a quick read, while having my lunch, I bopped along just fine, mildly amused by the snarky-snobby remarks by Lady Moping, tired clichés and all.

Meh. I've read worse.Read with The Short Story Club group*. It didn't garner much discussion or depth of meaning with the group, unlike many of the short stories in the splendid [b:Black Water 2: More Tales of the Fantastic 147802 Black Water 2 More Tales of the Fantastic Alberto Manguel https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1473851695l/147802.SY75.jpg 1146288] anthology normally do.It was at its heart a social commentary, with a little satisfactory charred bite at the end.* Join TSSC group. We read one short story each week and slurp all the flavor that just about any story can hold:https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/1187035

My first Borges!

Mmm, yes, I liked it. I am drifting into contemplation of its possible meaning. We all are dreaming each other into existence, in a beautiful circular way, each individual will become a ruin, but the cycle continues in yet another person dreamed into existence. Infinitum.

Definitely more Borges in my near, dream-like future.

I read ONE story in this collection, The Dead Fiddler.(And plan to read more.)What a ripping, good yarn, Yiddish style!A ghost (a dybbuk)–a very dead, very life-loving, thirsty, lusty fiddler–possess a young maiden of marrying age, causing lively confusion and shock. But wait, another dybbuk, this time a female prostitute, joins in to possess the same girl and the bawdiness is now outrageous, creating daily entertainment for the villagers, insurmountable challenges for the rabbis, and a devastating grief for the family. Not to mention the sad effects on the girl who lives to old age as a shunned shut-in.So how does that make a 5 star read in my estimation? Well, the story, by its mere existence, is a tribute to the destroyed community of Eastern European Jews. And, as our group discovered, it is not only a loving, rip-roaring tribute but also an exploration of the religious strict rules that rightly or wrongly elevated some and denigrated others, or simply overly separated roles to keep the community at status quo. At status quo, that is, until the dead fiddler appears.This story invoked much lively discussion and sharing of experiences in our group. If you are familiar (I am not) with that culture, I'm sure this story would have even more to say to you.As we wound down our comments, a member (thank you, Hester) linked us to a Youtube short documentary of a 2006 stage production of “The Dead Fiddler.” Seeing snippets of the play (how did they do the dybbuks? Very cleverly!) was emotional. Listening to the director's passion for its meaning and as tribute to a way of life now gone was the perfect finale to appreciation of this deceptively simple short story.That YT video can be seen here, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DK5Qns2E5fEOnce again, this group is elevating my reading experience and pleasure by leaps and bounds. If being curious and also tenacious sounds fun to you, join here https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/1187035 where we are reading our way through, a short story per week, the [b:Black Water 2: More Tales of the Fantastic 147802 Black Water 2 More Tales of the Fantastic Alberto Manguel https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1473851695l/147802.SY75.jpg 1146288] anthology. Moderator Cecily does whatever it takes to make available a copy of every short story to read online.The Short Story Club group's next story runs May 12-May 18, 2025. “The Phoenix” by Sylvia Townsend Warner. I'm stoked to be reading another something by the author of [b:Lolly Willowes 937105 Lolly Willowes Sylvia Townsend Warner https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1680550043l/937105.SY75.jpg 922084]! And even more so with this group.

I probably shouldn't leave a review for this book because I confess that as I listened I would often be doing other things and this isn't the kind of thing that you can miss 10 minutes of narration. When your mind drifts away and then back, suddenly someone now has their head on a pike!

Luckily, I have enjoyed many British-produced programs via YT about the Plantagenets, Tudors, and others. I even studied Shakespeare's Henry IV part 1 in high school. So, I could get by without too much shock even with the gaps of mind-drift (but not pass an O level on it)

Jones is an excellent writer, bringing so many of those little historic details that make it interesting and memorable and not like boring memorizations of history in school. (I hated History in school.) He did a really clever thing, too. He started with the death of the last Plantagenet being beheaded (in her new shoes, how sad is that?) and then tells the Plantagenet history, beginning with Henry....um, II?....through to when one of the Henrys ordered her beheading, that famous Tudor Henry.

But here's a question for my reader friends across the pond–how in the world do you keep track of all the Dukes and Earls of This and That? And sheesh, most of them didn't die a “straw death” as the Vikings would say, did they?

The narrator John Curless was most excellent. It's certainly not his fault that I did some chores while I listened and since I can't chew gum and walk at the same time, I couldn't listen and follow a recipe for dinner at the same time either. I'd eagerly listen to anything this man narrates and that means I have lots of opportunities because he has done a lot of books. Yay!

“She was a frighteningly intelligent woman–also a fool.”Simon Satler, friend of Katharina Kepler

I love this book! But I am disheartened. It has, in GR standards, a lowly rating of 3.39. That's unfathomable to me. So I am here to try to convince you to read this one in spite of its rating.

Especially if you are an old broad like me who enjoys reading about old kickass broads.

Author Rivka Galchen created a living, breathing woman reconstituted from the dry pages of 17c European history, seventy-something year old Katharina, the real mother of early astronomer Johannes Kepler (his work was crucial to Sir Isaac Newton's own). Once when Johannes was six years old, Katharina brought him to an elevated point in order to view the major comet in 1577.

Already you gotta love her, right?

Between the years of 1615-1621 she was on trial for her life, after being accused of being a witch by a woman whose name has gone down in history as the disingenuous perpetrator of lies that could result in Katharina being burned or beheaded. A deception that caught like wildfire, playing into the deep superstitions of villagers whose lives are epitomized by the expression “nasty, brutish and short.” Their hearsay evidence, recounted fictionally (but realistically), was an eye-opener of the incredible variety of transparent and terrible reasons a person might convince themselves they knew Katharina (or any woman or man) to be a witch.

Katharina's real crime? She was old. She also was a widow. She possessed some modest property. That is, she was society's vulnerable. She sold herbal packets to help fever, skin ailments, stomach troubles–herbs being mankind's early medicines, sometimes helpful, sometimes not, always fodder for witch accusations. Worse, she could be seen out and about during daylight not acting demure, not invisible enough to suit some.

I loved her for that independence, her lack of kowtowing, not out of pride but out of just getting on with life. You know that saying, “Dance as if no one was watching?” That's the way Katharina lived her life, perhaps foolishly as her sons and her friend Simon thought. I don't mean she lived in exuberance–far from it, she could be quite dour and cynical–but that she lived her life going about her business, helping others, showing compassion, having an opinion, speaking up, as if no one was watching. But they were.

She was a woman of her time and had her own silly superstitions as well–she didn't approve of strawberries because they grew too close to the earth's foul vapors. She had secret nicknames for people she disliked–werewolf, fake unicorn, and my favorite of the nicknames, cabbage.

She loved Martin Luther. She loved her children, her grandchildren, and her cow, Chamomile who she said had the eyes of her father and the soul of a favorite young granddaughter who died of an unidentified and sudden disease, a death she bore but grieved for a long time.

She also loved her friend and socially reclusive/awkward neighbor, Simon. The first words of the novel are Katharina's, written down by Simon for her, as her “truest testimony” she calls it. From the get-go we know we are meeting a person worth meeting. In the end, the friendship is strained by the trial, by Simon's own woes, and the burden their friendship had on him. Later, she says to him, so wisely, so compassionately, “You've been a friend to me. In the ways that were available to you.”

Back to even that first written testimony, she knows herself and her predicament, how alone she truly is in a way that old crones do:

“There are two things a woman must do alone; she does her own believing and her own dying.”

I love this book!

I've never been to Kew Gardens, although I would put it on a bucket list if I had a bucket list.

The last half hour, though, I feel as if I've been, on a hot, strolling afternoon in 1919 when women were carrying parasols and men had their umbrellas. It was during the interwar period when life must have seemed like it was returning to normal and the Kew was a fine place to be, to wander, to get lost in thought, to remember love and kisses, perhaps to think tenderly of ghosts, and the harmlessness of madness. Yes, the War was happily over. No one knew that another was coming, one that would change every life henceforth.

That future, though, was not for the white and blue butterflies, nor for a determined snail. These creatures shared that 1919 hot afternoon, their small bodies also reflecting the same red and blue and green flashes from the oval flower bed touched by a breeze. And would have their standard limited number of afternoons remaining.

Woolf was also there, in that afternoon, more intently than anyone would have guessed if they had noticed her as she strolled by, a tall, slender solitary figure with blue and black hematite eyes.

The littlest Little (age 7) has been asking why I keep forgetting to bring the Book Bingo game I made just for them and our reading time together. I promised I wouldn't forget the next time.Today was the “next time” – an unexpected conflict of parents' schedules. Could I pick girls up from school? You bet I can!I grabbed the Book Bingo and a random grab of two books from Granny's Kids Book Box.We three girls loved this oldie! Married farmer peasants, Fritzl and Liesi switch duties for the day. She goes to work in the field, and he stays home ready for a relaxing, easy day. Yeah, right.The other book I picked for today, [b:The Paper Bag Princess 240130 The Paper Bag Princess Robert Munsch https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1386912856l/240130.SX50.jpg 844184] made an interesting pairing with this book, both about gender role reversals. Quite by accident! When we were done reading, it was fun to talk about that. Since we've come a long way from the 1930s and the 1980s (a fight the whole way, I might add, and one that is slipping backwards under the current MAGA mentality), I was able to ask them if these two stories could have been told with the roles reversed. Funny that, how “traditional” roles were reversed but that idea, hallelujah, was not very pertinent to these young ones. They agreed the roles could be reversed. Instead, the message we talked about was different perspectives that happen not just about farm work, but any kind of work. Sometimes people think someone else has an easy job only to find out they are quite wrong, and we need all kinds of skill sets to make things run smoothly. Sometimes on a farm. Sometimes in a castle with a fire-breathing dragon hanging aroundThen we played Book Bingo as promised, using the two books we just read. When done, the Granny bag of stickers that accompanies the Book Bingo game was brought out to select a few for a celebratory reward.Good times.

The Littles (my two youngest granddaughters, ages 7 and 9) and I went to the public library today, our favorite place to visit together. And besides today was World Book Day!I taught my 9 year old Little how to use the library catalog on the computer and to subsequently how to find that title in the stacks. Sadly, we discovered the book that she really wanted was checked out and never returned. In 2012! We reported that to librarian (she looked sad, too) so it could be removed from their catalog.I searched the catalog too for this author because the Littles had previously loved [b:Animalia 682751 Animalia Graeme Base https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1344705263l/682751.SX50.jpg 2347064]. For this book, though, the girls found the butterfly in each segment lickety-split, long before the accompanying text could interest them. Honestly, Animalia set a high bar. That's okay. We always have a fun at our library, on any day, reading any book.The 9 year old Little checked out a Babysitter's Club graphic novel, [b:Claudia and the Bad Joke: A Graphic Novel 124932743 Claudia and the Bad Joke A Graphic Novel (The Baby-Sitters Club Graphic Novels #15) Arley Nopra https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1686891898l/124932743.SX50.jpg 146351943]. I noticed she was smiling a lot as she read it. To my surprise, she had finished the whole book, 188 pages, before we even returned home. As the 7 year old says about her sister, “She's a strong reader.” The 7 year old Little specifically wanted to check out a Dr. Seuss book. She selected [b:One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish 7770 One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish Dr. Seuss https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1165640023l/7770.SX50.jpg 98895] to my utter delight–that was my favorite book when I was her age! She read it aloud to me on the way home. We laughed because I could still finish some of the couplets with her from memory. She learned to really read for herself this year and even competed in the annual school Read-A-Thon where she read, in less than a month's time, a total of 700+ pages. Me, I say, “She's a strong reader” too.

This was one of the random picks I chose at our public library to read with my Littlest Little today, World Book Day!

It's hard to rate anything I read with the two littlest grands, my Littles, using any rhyme or reason because the Littles both bring joy to any reading experience. (Gosh, remember when reading was like that? No discernment needed, just open joy.)

This is a simple rhyming book about a Medieval celebration without any special message except things are round (pancakes are round, so are donuts, plums, king's crowns, jester's bells, and so on). The illustrations–I explained the word “illustration” to Littlest Little–were bright, cheerful, and provided the best part of the entertainment. Among all the people, children, and animals, we liked the small white puppy the best because he/she was always right in the middle of the most fun part of the activity. We guessed that by the end of the day, with all the sweet treats the puppy had, the poor thing would be pretty full and pretty tired.

“I don't believe in God, but I miss him.”–Julian BarnesThis short story, read with the Goodreads The Short Story Club group*, sent me on quite a stimulating and challenging journey. In a week, I have gone from 3 star rating to a full 5.Briefly, the story takes place in India in the early 20th century, when three Western scholars of Eastern languages and myths one night suddenly time travel to the scene of a legendary murder. They come to believe their time travel experience was a side-effect of a native Indian scholar who happened to be nearby performing a Tantric ritual. The subsequent effect on the Western scholars is long-lasting and resistant. The night was a contradiction to their intellectual and religious perspectives.I spent an inordinate amount of time trying to do the same kind of reconciling. I had never heard of author Mircea Eliade before but felt certain that this fiction work's introduction to–per Wikipedia– “One of the most influential scholars of religion of the 20th century and interpreter of religious experience...” was key to understanding a meatier message. As I understand it (and that isn't saying much), Eliade's studies address the experience of mankind's various religions as deeply authentic, if not “real.” He breaks out religious experiences between those of “archaic man” and “modern man.” He notes that in spite of a progression from archaic man's belief in the cosmic cycle perspective of Time and history to the modern (Christian) man's one direction arrow of Time and history, there remains a primal, even archetypical, longing to experience what it is that older religions had provided. It is built-in to humans.Superficial googling and also reading a few GR reviews, I picked up tantalizing amounts of new terminology and concepts. I have now put Eliade high on my list to read, starting with his non-fiction [b:The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion 28024 The Sacred and the Profane The Nature of Religion Mircea Eliade https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1309228014l/28024.SY75.jpg 2410655].Coincidentally, very recently I read a work that explains exactly what that longing might look like to fellow atheists, preferers of Science, the curious reasoners of all flavors, Isaac Asimov's [b:The Last Question 4808763 The Last Question Isaac Asimov https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1274107046l/4808763.SX50.jpg 4873881]. It made me indescribably happy to momentarily consider how that longing might manifest in future mankind, and where it might end up in a few billion years.That longing in humans, a mix of our hubris and recognition of seemingly infinite possibilities, is explained in Nights at Serampore by the answer of a swami to the narrator after he described his many puzzlements of that night,“Your reasoning is all very fine, and yet it's completely wrong just the same...” * Join the group here https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/1187035

For those who love.

I love my public county library. Through their offerings of Hoopla and Libby, the World of Words is my oyster! Or, it is for now anyway.

This book completely took me by surprise. I know I'm coming to it 20 years after its first publication and its massive popularity, but I was still surprised because:

It is clever and poetic.
It is funny and horrific.
It is about love and hate.
It is full of death.

It is about Nazism.

If you are one of the millions who shed tears while reading this book, I suspect you are shedding more now too. Among the daily assaults to convert America to totalitarianism, the parallels of the rise of Nazism to the rising of MAGAism are astounding. Two pieces of this current administration and its spineless enablers' destruction stand out to me are: the defunding (also the despising) of public libraries and the deporting (also the despising) of humans without due process.

America, how soon before we will be forced to become book thieves ourselves? How soon before we hide human beings in basements? How soon (it's happening now) before we watch undefended people being marched (or flown) to internment camps?

Like Death in this book, “I am haunted by humans.”

Liesel loved books and words. She loved human beings. But what did Nazis love? Pray, tell me, in God's name, what does MAGA love?

Oh my! I love this story. I love the disorientation, the discomfort of it for the reader. Wait, that doesn't sound right.

What I mean is that this story hits a nerve. The whole piece sounds crazy, like a mere crazy person's rambling. But the more you read, the more you come to grasp the narrator's way of speech, his metaphors, his fragments, and you sense the psychological pain he is in and what it is founded upon. He is in anguish that glittering modern metropolitan life has been one big bait and switch for him (for everyone). He has lost the “rat race.”

This story–a surprise from E.B. White–prompted yet another lively discussion in The Short Story Club group. You can join the group here: https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/1187035

A quiet novel about quiet people

I'm with the other reviewers who found this novel by Coplin a major, beautiful literary work. The writing is luminous, the characters are captivating, the pace is perfect. And, goodgawd, this novel got me in the feels.

The Orchardist has a deceptive simplicity. It's best to leave behind your expectations, your predictions, maybe your previous reading life. Let Coplin tell the story her way.

It took me a little while to grasp I was in the hands of a writer (she was so young when she wrote this!) who has an immense talent. It is told in the small gesture, the unspoken emotions in the quiet spaces in conversation, in the desperation in the repetition of speech, in the times of utter voicelessness. You have to quiet yourself to hear it.

Everything about troubled humanity is here. Coplin slowly opens you up to absorb an acceptance of the complexity of human frailty and damage. She'll also show you the profound commitment of our human connections. Both are often painful.

This is a novel that will make you rethink some of the people you have known, and loved in spite of the woes.

I buddy read with Lisa which was uncanny that we would pick this one from our mutual TBRs–something about us together was the exactly right pairing for it. I'll update with a link to her review when she's done, because her review will give you a better idea of the actual story and in particular the voice and insights in this emotional powerhouse. Her reviews are always lovely that way.

Aha, here it is! Lisa's review https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4255461230

I'm sorry. I haven't told you about the story. I find myself still listening to the novel speak to me in its quiet way.

Another short story read with The Short Story Club group from the anthology [b:Black Water 2: More Tales of the Fantastic 147802 Black Water 2 More Tales of the Fantastic Alberto Manguel https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1473851695l/147802.SY75.jpg 1146288].I'm giving it 3 stars, but that's really not fair. It's my way of saying, “Yes, the author did a great job at what the story set it out to do, but dang, I really didn't enjoy it!” So, imagine that a person can read thoughts of people, and animals too. Then, imagine that person can control the actions of a person or animal via their thoughts. Now, imagine that person is a child! Yeah. The story is the horrors of a life under an all powerful child tyrant. Forgive me if at the moment I am especially repulsed by child tyrants, even if they are 78 year old ones. Cruelty and chaos reign to satisfy one immature person's idea of what a good (or, ahem, “GREAT”) life is.The Short Story Club is a GR group that reads one short story per week. It's my favorite group. You can join here: https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/1187035-the-short-story-club

Maud Martha is plain. This is a plain novel, too.

I'm awed by this little gem, the only novel written by poet Gwendolyn Brooks.

This isn't a work of major ideas or heart-stopping events or clever literary techniques that will astound you. Nothing wrong with those kinds of works, but that isn't what this is. What it is, is a sure-footed walk with poet Brooks, taking you where she has been, a place she wants you to see too.

Maud Martha is a black woman in America mid-century.

It's a story of her every day awareness about every day things. Maud Martha is not special, not admired, not pretty. She is not especially happy nor especially sad. She is one human life among billions.

Like a dandelion.

She makes observations of the things that give her joy and heartache, in her own silent, poetic voice. She makes do, does without, wishes for more, wishes for better, feels her feelings: of lament, fear, nostalgia, anger, boredom, resignation. And feels them without self-pity. Somehow, she doesn't scream (what would be the point of that).

She doesn't often deceive herself about this life,

She was afraid to suggest to him that, to most people, nothing at all “happens.” That most people merely live from day to day until they die. That, after he had been dead a year, doubtless fewer than five people would think of him oftener than once a year. That there might even come a year when no one on earth would think of him at all.

I wanted to say to Maud Martha–to Brooks, so many times while reading, thank you, that “Yes. Yes. That's it. That's the thing I've been wanting someone to share.”

What a great beginning to [b:Black Water 2: More Tales of the Fantastic 147802 Black Water 2 More Tales of the Fantastic Alberto Manguel https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1473851695l/147802.SY75.jpg 1146288]. I was completely enchanted by this story, having a feast with those many delectable, vivid descriptions. One of my favorites was “He picked up his drink and examined it critically, as though expecting to see some minute form of marine life in it.”A short story about an old magician and a young girl, two misfits who profoundly connect through cynicism and real magic.Aw, but bummer. I am crestfallen there is no more Grace Amundson to be read. She and her fate are a mystery.The Short Story Club group reads one short story a week. Great moderators and thinking members. You can join here: https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/1187035-the-short-story-club

Question: What's better than reading a book?

Answer: Babysitting your two granddaughters and the youngest of the two, 7 years old, tells us this story from memory, at bedtime, snuggled three in a big bed.

She's a fun story-teller who often interrupts herself with her own laughter. Which made us laugh, and makes me laugh even now.

Oops, I didn't write a review at the time I read it.

Thinking back on it, it was very readable. Anybody that knows me, knows I like old ladies who brook no opposition (in fiction! maybe not in real life). Emily was just that sort of person, American Southern style. The ending wasn't much of a revelation but it might have been back in the day.

My first Le Carré and the first in the George Smiley series. This is more murder than spy novel, but still a minor introduction to The Circus that will loom even longer in subsequent Smiley novels.

I came to this book because I love the 1979 BBC TV series “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy” and also the later 1982 “Smiley's People”. Both on YT now and I've watched both multiple times. I selected this as it is the first of the George Smiley books. I was keen to learn more about him from his inception. He is a most intriguing character: smart, moral, indefatigable, wizened, wearied, unattractive, and–in the most interpersonal ways–inept.

It's his relationship with his philandering wife Lady Ann that puzzles him most, and is his possible Achilles heel. Indeed, he is described as a “a bullfrog in a sou'wester'” by one of Ann's astonished friends and when they walk down the isle, Smiley himself imagines her kiss will transform him into a prince. Alec Guinness plays Smiley in the series and once you see his perfect interpretation, it is Guinness that you envision always.

I don't feel bad that I didn't figure the mystery all out. In traditional murder mystery fashion, the last chapter is a letter from Smiley to the other involved investigators where he recaps the ultimate correct interpretation of all that transpired. Whew.

Me, I sit back and enjoy the character of Smiley, and let all the twists and turns of the mystery play out, without too much strenuous armchair deducing. In the TV series, the Cold War spying is more challenging, but the casting of all the primary characters is superb so that it is its own joy to behold.


I listened to the audio version, read by Michael Jayston, who played Peter Guillam in the first TV series. It was nice to have that familiar voice connecting back to the experience of watching, being riveted to the series when it aired in the U.S. on PBS. Nostalgic for me, but for any listener, wonderfully done.

A book that now lives in my head.

I can say, with almost perfect certainty, barring dementia, I will remember the story in this remarkable dystopian novel for the rest of my life.

It's just that kind of book. One that, without any dillydallying ado, grabs you from the first page and takes you on its journey of ideas, mystery, empathy, anger, wonderment, repulsion, tears and fears. From page 1 I was thinking continually about the plight of these 40 women. Well, 39 women and 1 teen girl; the teen is the narrator. The fact that she is a teen among women is vitally important. Vitally important in their circumstance.

You'll see what I mean.

I'm dying to tell you more about it. But I won't. I can't. Almost everything I could say would be a spoiler, spoiling your experience of it.

More translations of Harpman's work into English, s'il vous plait!

Is this a five star book? If your first grade granddaughter calls you by video phone and reads it aloud to you for her school's annual Read-A-Thon, it is!

She also read three other Pete the Cat books to me. She has to read 600 pages by April 2nd and she wants to read 1000 pages so she can win the competition.

She doesn't know it, but if she reads 1000 pages–or even the minimum 600 pages–she will win the pleasure and skills of growing as a reader.

She'll call me again tomorrow night. :)

“Beware of firsthand ideas!”

This is Forster's only foray into Sci Fi. Yes, that Forster–A Room With a View, A Passage to India, Merchant Ivory films–same guy.

I wouldn't call it his best writing style but his ideas are first rate Sci Fi. I'd even go so far to say it includes some never before broached “firsthand ideas.” Originally published in 1909, before airplanes and TV, before even radio and telephones were in most homes, Forster saw enough new technologies, their unstoppable march, their impacts, and then wrote this creepily prescient short story, a peek into 2025.

Forster splendidly depicts how the modes of communication actually isolate and how the ease that we can receive goods will make us complacent and physically weak. The Machine is so complicated that no one truly understands it–it is an interconnected system headed by separate committees of departments.

Humanity has been so pampered for so long by the Machine, that people need not do anything, the primary pastime is thinking of “ideas.” But even ideas have transformed from what we think of as ideas. The guiding philosophy is they should not be grounded in firsthand knowledge! Ideas are simply rehashing generations of thinkers, and each successive thinkers thoughts on the previous thinkers. Ideas are relative histories of ideas. Lectures covering history, kept within this concept, are popular entertainments.

Nature is abhorred, a mere necessary resource. That includes the natural human physical connection and the story has but two characters: a mother and son, the pair a sufficient example of the limited experiences available for human life with The Machine.

The Machine is not an evil entity. It's just technology humming along, one that we would recognize as having some AI adjacent abilities. Not sentient. Not extraterrestrial. Simply mankind's own man-made future.

“Humanity, in its desire for comfort, had overreached itself. It had exploited the riches of nature too far. Quietly and complacently, it was sinking into decadence, and progress had come to mean the progress of the Machine.”

Alexa, read out loud The Machine Stops.

Bummer. This short story just never gave up any shining gems for us. Since I joined The Short Story Club group* this year, the anthology we are reading from, [b:Black Water: The Book of Fantastic Literature 53080 Black Water The Book of Fantastic Literature Alberto Manguel https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1725495868l/53080.SY75.jpg 51764] Alberto Manguel as Editor, has normally invoked lively conversations. This one fell flat. Not horrid, just predictable and not at the usual caliber of the other short stories in the anthology.Well, there was one tidbit that member Petergiaquinta shared from the author's New York Times obituary. During the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in 1957, the House Un-American Activities Committee summoned him to testify in San Francisco, where he delivered what may well have been his finest performance.When asked to state his profession, he answered: “I am a gardener. I do underground work on plants.” He then refused to answer questions about membership in the Communist Party, “on the grounds that this hearing is a big bore and waste of the public's money.”I dug that inspiring historic moment of Truth to Power.In addition, from another person in our group, one of the moderators, Cecily, I learned a snazzy new word, shibboleth. I can't wait until I have the right opportunity to use it.So, no, not a sparkling story this time. The members of the group, though, can make almost anything at least a bit sparkly.*You can join us here: https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/1187035. One of the moderators, Leonard Gaya, usually hunts us up a PDF to read online in case you don't have the book.