Reading post: April

In April my plan was to read biographies and memoirs -- that kind of book. Not difficult, since those are some of my favorite books to read and there were several on my master list. I made it through quite a few of them, plus some that jumped onto the list at the last minute.

Books I said I'd like to read (Biographies/Memoirs)

Swimming in a Sea of Death: A Son's Memoir by David Rieff (2008). I'm not sure how this got onto the list, but I like cancer memoirs, so... It's a weird one, though. David Rieff was Susan Sontag's only child, born when she was 19. He had a troubled childhood, a history of addiction, and is currently a right-wing apologist! A messed-up person, which comes through loud and clear in the memoir. He feels guilty about not having saved his mother from her awful death at age 71. She could not accept it, right up until the end, nor could he, and he seems to think this is normal. I don't think it is. A sad book.

These Precious Days by Ann Patchett (2021). I'd already read several of these biographical essays, but others were new to me, and I enjoyed them. The book seems to be a lot about smoking -- although she quit in 2005, I get the feeling she looks back on it with fondness. That's the one aspect of Ann Patchett that I have trouble dealing with! Other than that, she has so many friends and seems to love absolutely everyone, but it's OK, it's good. I liked the essay about choosing not to have children, "There Are No Children Here," which has some interesting insights into the topic. Reading her essays made me want to write essays too.

The Plague and I by Betty McDonald (1948). In September 2022 I read Nisei Daughter by Monica Sone, about growing up Japanese-American in Seattle and being sent to an internment camp during WWII. In her late teens, Sone contracted tuberculosis and while in a sanatorium, she met a nice woman she called "Chris." Then, last year when I read Looking for Betty MacDonald, I learned that "Chris" was Betty MacDonald, and in her book about the sanatorium, Betty writes about Sone, who she calls "Kimi Sanbo." So of course I had to read Betty's book!

Although The Plague and I was published in 1948, MacDonald and Sone were in the sanatorium in 1937-38, i.e., pre-antibiotics. So this is really an ancient history text. Treatment consists of being forced to lie still in cold rooms, having one lung collapsed in order to rest it, and even having ribs removed. Patients are given no information about the progress of their disease. Some of them die. Still, MacDonald manages to make her story hilarious. I kept annoying Rocket Boy by giggling (while reading in bed). At first I thought the racism would be too much for me, but MacDonald clearly adores "Kimi" (although she makes fun of her speech) and criticizes other patients for being racist, so it was bearable. I would recommend. (Rocket Boy read it too and enjoyed it.)

The Goshawk by T. H. White (1951). In November 2019 I read H Is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald, which she describes as a "shadow biography" of T. H. White and his experiences training a goshawk. In December 2023 I read White's The Sword in the Stone and at that time I wrote,

Now I don't know if I want to read The Once and Future King.... If I read something else by White, it might be The Goshawk.

So this month I read it. It's beautifully written, but it made me sad. At the end of the book, White quotes "an old proverb":

When your first wife dies, she makes such a hole in your heart that all the rest slip through.

And that's what this book is, a description of that first wife and that hole in White's heart. I feel as though I too lost a goshawk.

I Am I Am I Am: Seventeen Brushes with Death by Maggie O'Farrell (2017). A late addition to my list, I ran across this when I was reading about Hamnet. I thought it sounded fascinating -- 17 brushes with death! Who has a life like that? And then I found a copy at the Bookworm, so I read it, and it is really good, but also, I kept thinking -- well, that happened to me. Or something like it happened to me. And I realized that by the time you get to be 65 (or older) you will have had a lot of brushes with death. It's part of life. And that, in fact, is Maggie O'Farrell's point -- that brushes with death are what life consists of. At some point the brush becomes more than a brush and you die, but until then... Really enjoyed this book.

Romantic Outlaws: The Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and Her Daughter Mary Shelley by Charlotte Gordon (2015). This jumped onto the list at the last minute, after I read This Long Pursuit by Richard Holmes (see below). Holmes has a chapter on Wollstonecraft and mentions this book, and then I saw it cited somewhere else too, so I thought I would like to read it. And it was great, so interesting, a biography of a literary mother and daughter who never knew each other because the mother died 10 days after the daughter was born. It goes back and forth between their lives. It's 547 pages, which was a little daunting, but I got interested and made it through.

One thing that really struck me about the book was how both Mary W. and Mary S. insisted on having time to "work" (write, study, read) every day, even while raising children, running a household, etc. It was very important to them, even under impossible circumstances, in the late 1700s/early 1800s. Something to think about.

May Sarton: A Biography by Margot Peters (1997). In 2024, when I was trying to read more poetry, I accidentally read a collection by May Sarton (her last name started with S and I was focusing on Elizabeth Savage that month, etc., etc.). I didn't love the poetry, but I noted at the time,

I might consider reading Margot Peters' biography of her at some point. 

So, at the end of April, I tackled the 399-page bio. I knew it was famous for being very critical, not a lovefest, but Oh My God. May Sarton clearly had borderline personality disorder, and maybe narcissistic personality disorder too (I'm not as familiar with that one). She had a very sad childhood, with parents who could not cope and kept sending her away, and I wonder if that's what caused it. So awful. Margot Peters doesn't come out and say it in the main text, but tucks a mention of possible BPD into the endnotes. But I didn't need her to tell me -- it was so obvious from her description of Sarton. Oh My God. I'm actually curious to read one or two of Sarton's novels or memoirs now, just to see what a borderline writes. It's impressive that she was able to produce as much as she did (over 30 books), considering how miserable and crazy she was. A freaky story.

Books from the New Yorker's "Briefly Noted" reviews

This Long Pursuit: Reflections of a Romantic Biographer by Richard Holmes (2016). It was fun to choose a book from my envelopes that relates to this month's theme, but I didn't realize that this is actually Holmes' third book about being a biographer. It's a general review of his whole career, though, so not a bad place to start. The first section of the book talks about general biographical issues, and the second and third sections are about various historical people who have been biographied (including Mary Wollstonecraft), either by him or others. An interesting book, not quite what I expected it to be, but good.

Other reading

Nerdy, Shy, and Socially Inappropriate: A User Guide to an Asperger Life by Cynthia Kim (2014). My sixth book about autism. Kim was diagnosed with mild autism (Asperger's) at age 42 and this is her book (based on her blog) about herself. I didn't find it very helpful. It often seemed to me that she was labeling things as autistic that weren't. It's as though, having been told she's autistic, she decided to attribute everything about herself to autism. Still, there were some useful bits. So I'll go on reading, picking up what I can from these books.

Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (1968). I read this with Teen A earlier this school year, and so now it was time to read it with Teen B. Of course I've read it many times before, but it's always good to revisit a classic, see how well it stands up. This one really does.

Chocolat by Joanne Harris (1999). The book group book. We wanted a book set in France, because one of our members was going there in April. Le Miserables was rejected when Amazon told us it was 1376 pages. The Count of Monte Cristo was rejected when Amazon told us it was 1312 pages. So we ended up with Chocolat. Which is about the most un-French book set in France that you can imagine. At first I hated it, just forced myself through its pages. Gradually I got sucked in, and at the end I'd say I enjoyed it, a little. But here's the funny thing: I mentioned it to Rocket Boy and he said, "We saw the movie, remember?" I have no memory of this. None. But I looked in my lists book and there it is, January 2005. And I put a star by it, meaning I really liked it. Apparently we even OWNED the DVD for a while, though just now I looked for it and can't find it, so maybe we gave it away. Anyway, we're going to see if we can get it from the library and watch it again. Maybe that will jog my ancient brain into remembering.