Finished: Pale Fire (Nabokov) Now THIS is the Nabokov book that should have been in the Top 100...not the utterly despicable Lolita. I'm so glad I gave this author another chance. He really is a great writer....which is probably one of the reasons that I was so viscerally moved in the negative way by Lolita. Anyway, Pale Fire is totally different...rather quirky, weird, but brilliant, really. Divided into three parts the book is about this absolutely exquisite poem, Pale Fire, written by sixty-two year old author and university professor, John Shade. The poem itself makes the book! It is about his life...his marriage, the loss of his daughter, his heart attack, is there life after death?, etc. Where the book takes the quirky turn is that the foreword of the book is written by Charles Kinbote, an editor and fellow professor of Shade's who moves next door to him when he gets his university job. Kinbote becomes rather obsessed with John Shade and his friendship, and though they are friendly enough to him, it doesn't look like John or his wife Sybil return the strong feelings. So, the entire forward in the explanation as to how Kinbote becomes both the editor of the poem and responsible for its publishing after John Shade is murdered! Kinbote gets Sybil to sign some documents that give him the complete rights the day of the murder even though she regrets it later and begs him to let some other publishers at least co-edit. Kinbote is beside himself with indignity because he swears to keep every word in tact. Then, the third part of the book is the "note" section. OMG, this is the majority of the book and where we get to the meat of the story. Kinbote goes off on all kinds of tangents about his own life in notes that should be simple statements about the poem. The first thing we understand is that Kinbote had truly believed in his heart that Shade's poem was going to be all about HIM and the life story he had been telling Shade about. The life story was the tale of the exiled King of Zembla, Charles. The story gets more and more bizarre and we begin to see just how insane Kinbote is as we hear the details of King Charles' young life, his reign, the overthrow of the government, his imprisonment and escape, and his eventual fleeing to America. Of course, we also get the story of the murderer, Gradus, who is a part of a secret order in Zembla who is tasked with the job of assassinating the escaped king, once they find out exactly where he is. Honestly, it's so out there that it's fascinating and I found myself really getting caught up in this obviously fake world of Zembla and Kinbote's crazy imagination. And, naturally, we soon discover that Kinbote is, in fact, the runaway king himself! He is there the day that Gradus comes to the house and accidentally shoots John Shade instead of himself, the king. In reality, the killer supposedly is an escaped mental patient who comes to kill the judge who normally lives in the house that Kinbote is leasing for the school year. Anyway...it's a wacky story, but brilliantly done! Even the index at the back goes through all the characters again and every so often has a little added jab, lol. Sadly, we do lose John Shade who was a wonderful poet. I will definitely read the poem again! This book will go into my Top 100 for sure. :-)

Finished: Black Sheep (Heyer) A fun book...kind of a Jane Austin-light book, quickly paced with happy endings or assumed happy endings for the main characters. It ends in the middle of a conversation between the heroine and her beloved...but a happy conversation. It was number 102 on my Top 100 list, so I thought I'd give it a try and see why it ranked so high. :-) Abigail Wendover is an heiress and is the ancient age of 28. Gasp! She lives with her sister and her motherless 17 year old niece, Fanny, at their estate in Bath. Fanny has always listened to Abby's advice, but now an odious fortune hunter, Stacy Calverleigh, has turned her head, and Abby is concerned. Stacy Calverleigh, more Abby's ages than Fanny's, is about to lose his family estate, Danescourt, and is in severe debt. He is shamelessly begging Fanny to marry him, even to elope, since his charms have not worked on Abby or her older brother (the keeper of all the family money), James. Enter Stacy's "black sheep" uncle, Miles Calverleigh. A good 10 years older than Abby, and not classically handsome, and basically immune to the conventions of society, he comes to Bath after 20 years of family exile in India. (He had scandalously tried to elope with an heiress himself 20 years earlier and been sent off by his father.) Everyone assumes he has no money of his own, but of course a smart reader knows better, lol. He has accompanied Oliver Grayshott, the son of a prominent family home by boat, as Oliver became terribly ill in India. Oliver just happens to be the brother of Fanny's best friend, Lavinia, and she thinks of him only as a brother, but it soon becomes obvious that Oliver is in love with Fanny. Anyway....when Abby first meets Miles, the sparks fly, as they both have humorous, stubborn, fly-in-the-face of convention personalities. Abby begs Miles to help her put a stop to his nephew Stacy's attentions from Fanny. Miles claims to have not a care for his nephew and says he won't mingle in the affairs. However, soon he is declaring his own love for Abby, and we know he will take matters into his own hands. He does so with quite a wonderful ruse that has Stacy dumping Fanny for a "rich widow" who breezes into Bath, thus breaking Fanny's heart, but opening her eyes. Of course, the widow is really just an actress...but now the truth about Stacy's character is known. In the meantime, Oliver has quietly lent his shoulder to Fanny, so that we can assume that in the future, they end up together. Meanwhile, Miles is begging Abby to marry him, but her sister insists that her marrying the black sheep of the Calverleigh family will be too disastrous and what's more, she will lose her beloved sister since head-of-family, James, has threatened to disown her if she marries a Calverleigh. Whatever shall she do? As it turns out, Miles has made his fortune in India! He buys the highly mortgaged Danescourt, also his family home, from the flummoxed Stacy (who had also been convinced of his uncle's monetary non-status), giving Stacy just enough money to get out of debt, but to still lose his good name and reputation. Then, he takes Abby for a ride in the country and lets her know that to take the decision out of her hands, he's abducting her to go and get married! Of course, she half-heartedly objects, but when she demands to be taken home, he stops the horses and says, if that's truly what you want, I'll take you home. She says that she can't tell a lie....meaning she does, in fact, want to marry him. In the middle of their conversation, though, the book ends! Such a strange ending, but nicely wrapped up in that you can see a happy future for both Miles and Abby, and eventually Fanny and Oliver. :-) I wish there was a sequel!

Finished: Foundation (Asimov) My first venture into a truly Sci-Fi book and I liked it. :-) I'm not counting Brave New World and 1984. I guess I consider them more futuristic than Sci-Fi. Maybe it's the same thing? Anyway, obviously set thousands of years in the future, Foundation is the story of how one psycho-historian, Hari Seldon, is able to predict the downfall of the Galactic Empire, and so convinces the powers that be to let him set up refuge on two outlying planets with his fellow scientists, with the pretense of documenting the history of the galaxy. In reality, Hari Seldon knows, due to his ability to predict social behavior on a massive scale, that the empire will soon crumble and go into 30,000 years of darkness, barbarism, and turmoil, while all the outlying planets vie for power. With the creation of his foundation, and their strict following of his "plan" even after he dies, he declares that he can shorten that time of darkness to just 1000 years. The book itself doesn't see too much of Hari Seldon alive, but we see him at different intervals in messages that he brings to the other people in the future. I think my favorite of his followers, who comes 50 years after the creation of the foundation, is Salvor Hardin, who follows the Hari Seldon line of thinking to a tee. He rises in power on the small planet of Terminus and using peace and clever negotiating with the surrounding "kingdoms" of planets, is able to avoid war with one of the kingdoms that is trying to invade Terminus and incorporate the planet into its kingdom. Instead, Salvor ends up instilling foundation religious beings at each of the kingdoms, as they are the only ones who are in charge of the nuclear power...therefore associating the nuclear power with the religious and spiritual necessities of the people. In other words, he completely flips things around and gains control over the kingdoms. :-) My only problem with the book is that it is divided into five parts that take place years and years apart, so I only get to see some of my favorite characters briefly, and then they become a part of history...often referred to, but still history. Anyway, this book is a series and I might just read another one at some point. Hard to believe that Asimov was only 21 when he wrote this first book of the series!!

Finished: The Light Between Oceans (Stedman) Book Club book #6. A pretty good summer read, but sad. The story of Australian WWI vet, Tom, who inwardly scarred by what he had to do in the war, decides to live a pretty solitary life as a lighthouse keeper. He will only get supplies every three months from a boat from town, and will only get to make a trip to town himself every three years! Of course, in the days before he heads off for his post at Janus Lighthouse he meets the free-spirited Isabel. They fall for each other pretty quickly, and after he leaves, she writes him a letter which he gets on the three month boat. By the time the 2nd three month boat comes, they have agreed to be married. Tom gets special permission to go to town to be married and honeymoon, and then Isabel leaves her parents to go and live with Tom on the lighthouse island. Isabel and her parents have suffered the enormous loss of both of her brothers in the war, but they all love Tom and know that he will take good care of her. Tom and Isabel both long for children, but sadly Isabel suffers two early miscarriages. When she suffers the loss of a third baby, this one at the seventh month of pregnancy, Isabel is beside herself and ready to die. Six years on the island and though they love each other, so much heartbreak. Two weeks after they bury their premature son, Isabel hears a baby's cry. Tom hears it too and rushes to the water's edge. There in a small rowboat is a dead young man and a very much alive tiny baby wrapped in a woman's shawl. Tom, a very upstanding man, is ready to alert the authorities and log the event in the books, but Isabel convinces him that the mother must also be dead...for why wouldn't she have been with the father and child? She falls in love with the baby and convinces Tom they should keep her. Tom is soon also in love, though his conscience always bothers him. They name the baby Lucy and live blissfully for the next 18 months. They don't even tell Isabel's parents, or the boat friends, Ralph and Bluey who deliver the supplies every three months, that Isabel had the third miscarriage. They just let everyone believe that Lucy is their child, born on the island. They get their three year shore leave when Lucy is 18 months old and Isabel's parents meet their granddaughter for the first time. Isabel's grieving parents finally have a new life to live for after losing their sons. In a shocking turn of events, though, Tom and Isabel hear about the tragic local story of a young mother, Hannah, who lost her husband and infant daughter to the sea!! Her young husband, Frank, had run away from an angry mob towards the docks and thrown himself and the baby into the rowboat to escape the baby being torn from his arms. Frank was a native of Austria and though he had nothing to do with the war or Germany, many of the town's men got drunk and felt very belligerent towards him when celebrating their fallen sons and brothers one night. They determined to take his child away from him as some of their sons had been taken from them! Frank, a mild-mannered baker, and a very good man, had a bad heart. Though the town and his young wife never knew what happened to them, Tom and Isabel realize that the dead man in the boat was Frank and that their beloved Lucy is Hannah's baby girl! Tom feels like they should do the right thing and immediately give Lucy over to Hannah, as heartbreaking as it will be, but Isabel is distraught and refuses. They head back to the island...but not before Tom sneaks an anonymous note into Hannah's mailbox telling her that her baby is alive and being cared for. Of course, this just fuels Hannah, who most of the town thinks is crazy in her grief by now, to push the authorities harder to find some answers. Without completely typing out the whole plot, needless to say...eventually everyone finds out that Tom and Isabel have Hannah's now nearly 4 year old little girl, Grace. The authorities come to arrest Tom and Isabel and reunite mother and child, but Tom says it was all his doing...that he insisted to Isabel they keep the child. He doesn't want her arrested. Isabel is so furious with Tom for his anonymous actions for the past two years leading to the discovery that she lets the authorities believe his story. It is so heartbreaking for all the parties involved, but mostly for little Lucy who has no idea why her "mamma" and "pappa" are being ripped away from her...and why the intense other lady is insisting that she's her mother. Lucy is so devastated that Hannah is beside herself realizing that the baby she loved is now someone else's. After several weeks, she heartwrenchingly decides that Lucy would be better off with Isabel, because she believes the story that it was all Tom's doing. She tells Isabel that she will give Lucy back to her to raise if Isabel will testify against Tom so he'll see prison time. In a twist that I didn't see coming, Isabel actually chooses Tom instead and goes to turn herself in. In another twist, Hannah actually ends up realizing that she would be better off trying to forge a new future with her daughter and not seeking revenge, so she testifies in favor of Tom and Isabel...that they probably saved her daughter from imminent death when she was a baby. Tom and Isabel are sentenced to just a few months in jail each, and then leave town never to see Lucy again. In six months time, with patience, perseverance, and the ingenuity of Hannah's father, Lucy's "Grandad", Lucy (Grace)...now called Lucy-Grace, starts to think of Hannah as her mother and her memories of Tom and Isabel fade away. It's all so sad. :-( Not that I condone what Tom and Isabel did at all...but I've also never lost my mind over three miscarriages in a row, so who's to say what my actions would have been. Anyway....20 years later, Tom and Isabel have settled in a town far way and have lived a quiet life by the ocean. Isabel has just died from cancer and Tom is lost. A car comes up the road, and a pretty young blond woman steps out. It's Lucy! She hadn't forgotten them as much as we thought, and upon hearing of Isabel's illness, had hoped to get there to see her. She has with her, her own little 3 month old son, Christopher. She and Tom have a quiet reunion and he gives her a letter Isabel had written for her in case Lucy ever came looking for them. Lucy promises to come again soon and Tom is left once again reflecting on his life, but just a bit happier now. A pretty good read, but such a tough subject. Glad I"m through with that one. :-)

Finished: The Color Purple (Walker) A book about one African American woman's life that hits you right between the eyes with it's stark, sad reality. It's always so hard for me to grasp how human beings can treat their fellow human beings so despicably. And, we're not talking about a book on slavery here...we're talking about that period of time where black men themselves treated their women like dogs, worse than dogs, really. Did this all filter down from the way slaves were treated by slave owners in the first place? Possibly. Anyway, the harsh realities of men beating their wives, sexually abusing their wives, daughters, sisters, cheating on their wives, expecting their wives to work out in the field, as well as in the home, while sometimes they just sat on the porch watching. Women were nothing much more than property to fathers and husbands. This is the story of Celie from the time she's a teenager to the time she's a grown woman with grey hair. Celie spends the first part of the book writing her feelings down to God. At a certain point, after she's given birth to and had taken from her two children by her own father (later discovered to be her step-father); been forcibly separated from her beloved sister; been married off to a man who only wants her to keep his house and existing children; found out that her mother was crazy before she was murdered; and on and on...Celie begins to question whether there really is a God. Her friend, Shug (who also happens to be the woman Celie's husband has been in love with for years), gives a long dissertation about the existence of God and a couple of my favorite statements come from that. Over the years, Celie and Shug have become the best of friends, and more. When Celie one day tells Shug that her husband "Mister" beats her, that's the last time Shug ever sleeps with Mister. From then on, it's Celie and Shug who develop the deep relationship. Anyway, after Celie stops writing to God, she starts writing to her sister, Nettie. She and Nettie haven't seen each other since Mister forced Nettie to leave years before because Nettie refused Mister's advances. Nettie has since been in Africa for years as a missionary with a married couple and their two adopted children (in a keen twist of fate...the same two children that Celie was forced to give up!) One day, Shug and Celie discover that Nettie has been writing Celie letters for years and years and Mister has always hid them from Celie. The one person who loved Celie unconditionally has been kept from her in the most malicious way. :-(

This is Celie writing to her sister Nettie about Shug and God. "She say, Celie, tell the truth, have you ever found God in church? I never did. I just found a bunch of folks hoping for him to show. Any God I ever felt in church I brought in with me. And I think all the other folks did too. They come to church to share God, not find God."

"Here's the thing, say Shug. The thing I believe God is inside you and inside everybody else. You come into the world with God. But only them that search for it inside find it. And sometimes it just manifest itself even if you not looking, or don't know what you looking for. Trouble do it for most folks, I think. Sorrow, lord."

"Listen, God love everything you love--and a mess of stuff you don't. But more than anything else, God love admiration. 
   You saying God vain? I ast.
Naw, she say. Not vain, just wanting to share a good thing. I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it."

I love that! The color purple. Also compelling in the book is the side story of Sophia, who marries Mister's oldest son, Harpo. Harpo wants and expects a pushover wife like Celie has been to his father...but Sophia is a tough woman with different ideas. If Harpo tries to beat her, she puts a whooping on him that's much worse than he could do to her. Harpo asks his father's advice, and he tells Harpo to beat her. Harpo looks over at Celie, and she just agrees with Mister and says beat her. In a heartbreaking exchange, Sophia comes up the drive to visit Celie and bring back the curtains she made her. Celie suspects she knows what's wrong, but the words that Sophia directs to her are heartbreaking.

"She say, All my life I had to fight. I had to fight my daddy. I had to fight my brothers. I had to fight my cousins and my uncles. A girl child ain't safe in a family of men. But I never thought I'd have to fight in my own house. She let out her breath. I loves Harpo, she say. God knows I do. But I'll kill him dead before I let him beat me."

I couldn't help but conjure up Oprah talking to Whoopie in that scene! Anyway...a really good book. I'm glad I finally read it. I'm so glad I'm off of my list of Top 100 and now on to books that I've been wanting to read. :-)

Finished: The Tale of Genji (Shikibu) omg, I'm finally finished with the behemoth, 9th century Japanese tale of the many loves of Genji. The story spans four generations with dozens of characters, four different emperors, scads of princes and princesses, and even more concubines. Genji is the son of the emperor at the beginning of the story. His mother is one of the "lower class" concubines, so rather than make Genji a prince to potentially become the crown prince, the emperor makes Genji a commoner...but still, a very rich and privileged commoner...who also happens to be handsome, charming, etc. He grows up getting practically everything he wants, and is hard for anyone to resist. He becomes known as the "shining" Genji. He falls in love with several women over the years and we get to hear of each one in detail. I was able to keep most of them straight...Murasaki, the Akashi lady, Oborozukio, the Orange Blossom lady, etc. However, when they started having their own children. And when Genji's best friend and rival To No Chujo started having children with his many women. And when Genji's brother, the crown prince, started having children with HIS many women. And, then all those children started growing up and mingling, the story was a little harder to follow! I'll just say this...I would not have wanted to be a woman in 9th century Japan, lol. The courting was very formal back then, i.e., the men were not allowed to see the women at all. They had to speak to them from behind screens or curtains. And, they constantly sent notes in the form of little poems to each other as communication. The poems would be mostly about nature, but apparently with strong innuendo that many times I didn't understand until the author explained what it meant. Anyway...the screens were not really such protection if a man wanted to be with a woman. Several times Genji, and then his ancestors, would "push through" the screen and "touch the woman's sleeve". The next thing you know it would be "dawn" and there had been relations began that usually the woman was unhappy about! I suppose it was the way of the world there and then. I just couldn't really get myself interested in or be compelled by Genji's dramatic emotions knowing that he had his wife, Murasaki, who he loved more than life waiting for him at home having to look the other way. Once Genji dies in the book, then the tales keep going with one of Genji's sons (who is really not his son, but shhhh, don't tell Genji), Kaoru. His best friend and rival is Prince Niou, his cousin, and mostly like the next emperor. The book ends rather abruptly as if there might have been more to the story, but at 1090 pages, I'm rather glad it ended when it did. Does it belong in the top 100 books? It's not for me to say, I guess. I mean...to think that such an intensive book with so many story lines and characters woven so intricately was written in the 9th century, with many a poetic verse, well perhaps it belongs there. It just, once again, wasn't really my cup of tea. The good news??? I'm DONE with the Top 100 Book List!! yay! Now, I can keep reading the many books I have put on my list to read and not worry about that goal any longer!

Finished: My Antonia (Cather) Another descriptive story by Willa Cather that just draws you in with her lovely writing! Such a simple story, with no blatant tragedy used to propel or end the story...just life. Ten year old Jim moves from Virginia to Nebraska to live with his grandparents after both his parents die. At the same time, the immigrant Shimerda family from Bohemia makes their way to their new home (basically a cave) in America in the vast expanse of Nebraska. Nearest neighbors, Jim and 13 year old Antonia (pronounced ANT-oh-nia) become the best of friends, perhaps even soul mates. For awhile Jim is in love with Antonia, but mostly they just remain in each other's lives through the harsh farming years, through the suicide of Antonia's father, through Jim and his grandparents moving into town, through Antonia coming to work in town and both of them being taken under the wing of next-door neighbor, Mrs. Harling, and her children, through Antonia developing a bit of a wild streak, to Jim going off to college, through Antonia going to get married, only to be left before making it to the alter...only to come home pregnant and in disgrace, through a twenty year space of not seeing each other, through Jim finally going to see Antonia after all those years and meeting her then 11 children and husband (not the one that left her earlier). They come back together where they first met and the peacefulness of their beautiful surroundings brings them full circle. A lovely story, really. One line I liked explaining why Jim kept putting off going back to Nebraska for all those years was so true: "In the course of twenty crowded years one parts with many illusions. I did not wish to lose the early ones. Some memories are realities, and are better than anything that can ever happen to one again." I love that!