Books At Christmas

Books At Christmas

In recent years Americans have become inundated with television ads for new cars during the festive season.  We'll see at least three in any one-hour program.  In these colourful little ads, delighted flannel-clad family members rush to their kitchen windows on Christmas morning to gape at a brand-new car, shiny and beribboned, parked in their snow-covered drive.  A lot of grinning and jumping up and down with glee then ensues.  The car companies seem bent on convincing the public that giving people expensive new cars at Christmas is a holiday tradition not to be ignored.  Frankly, I don't buy it.  And yes, the pun was intended.

There are all sorts of gift-givers during holiday time, from those who decry materialism and refuse to participate in any sort of festivity that requires legal tender to those who lavish the best of everything on offer for their friends and family.  Personally, the practice of following the Magi's lead and giving gifts to those we love is one I hold dear.  But I'm not a person who stands in the cold outside the local big box store on the morning after Thanksgiving, pawing the ground with the rest of the herd as I wait for the doors to open.  No, I prefer quieter gifts.  I make things, I bake things.  And best of all, I give books.  Lots of books.

When you tie a ribbon round a book at Christmas you are giving so much more than words printed on paper.  You are giving a ticket to other worlds.  You are giving magic.  You are setting a spark to imagination and encouraging empathy to bloom.  Inside that rectangular box is travel and knowledge, laughter and tears.  It's my belief that every book we read changes us, just a little bit.  We see a bit clearer, we feel a bit deeper.  Our hearts, and sometimes even our minds, open just a crack wider.  Now seriously, what new car can do that?

So in the spirit of the season, here are some book ideas for this year.  I do hope you find one you'll want to wrap up for somebody else.  And maybe one, or two, for yourself. 

As usual, just click on the picture and you'll be whisked away to read more about each book.  And though these links take you to Amazon, I would encourage you to purchase from your local bookshops.  You'll find even more wondrous ideas there, I promise!

Merry Christmas to all of you.

xx, 

p

Where the Crawdads Sing

by Delia Owens

Carnival of the Animals

by Elizabeth Varadan

After the Party

by Cressida Connolly

All the Queen's Corgis

by Penny Junor

The Secret Gardeners

Britain's Creatives Reveal Their Private Sanctuaries

by Frances Lincoln

Ocean Meets Sky

by The Fan Brothers

A Place For Us

by Fatima Farheen Mirza

The Faber Book of Christmas

from Liberty of London

The Ghost Stories of M.R. James

The Light in the Dark

A Winter Journal

by Horatio Clare

Buckingham Palace

The Interiors

by Ashley Hicks

Grace

Thirty Years of Fashion at Vogue

by Grace Coddington

Good Rosie!

by Kate Dicamillo

pictures by Harry Bliss

Moving Forward

Moving Forward

"The destiny of man is to unite, not to divide.  If you keep on dividing you end up as a collection of monkeys throwing nuts at each other out of separate trees."

T. H. White

***

Democrats take the House of Representatives, a huge check on the unbridled bigotry of the past two years.   America elected her first openly gay governor, the first Palestinian-American woman elected to Congress, the first African-American woman elected to the house from Massachusetts, the first two Latina women elected to Congress from Texas and the youngest woman every elected to Congress.  Nine women won Governor races.  Ninety-eight women won their elections to the House, twelve to the Senate.  And the first two Native American women were elected to Congress.

Prejudice.  Bigotry.  Religious Superiority.

Fear.  Hatred.  Racism.  Nationalism.  Arrogance.

Stupidity.

We are only free when we all are free.

Thank you to all who voted blue.

We continue working for a better day.

xx

Better Angels

Better Angels

"To know what has come before is to be armed against despair.  If the men and women of the past, with all their flaws and limitations and ambitions and appetites, could press on through ignorance and superstition, racism and sexism, selfishness and greed, to creat a freer, stronger nation, then perhaps we too, can right wrongs and take another step toward that most enchanting and elusive of destinations:  a more perfect Union.

To do so requires innumerable acts of citizenship and private grace.  It will require, as it has in the past, the witness and the bravery of reformers who hold no office and who have no traditional power but who yearn for a better, freer way of life.  And will also require, I believe, a president of the United States with a temperamental disposition to speak to the country's hopes rather than to our fears."

Jon Meecham

from The Soul of America:  The Battle for Our Better Angels

Please Vote Today.

xx

These Are Not Normal Times

These Are Not Normal Times

     I have written this blog for over ten years.  I have written about dogs, about seasons, about books and always with an eye towards lifting up, towards celebration and beauty, towards Love.  If these were normal times, I would happily be writing about those things once a week at least, just as I have in the past, for they are just as important as ever.  These are not, however, normal times.

     Jamal Khashoggi was a journalist for the Washington Post, a permanent resident of the United States who fled Saudi Arabia in 2015.  He criticized the Saudi government for many things, particularly the bombs they are dropping on the people of Yemen.  On October 2nd he was seen on CCTV entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul to obtain documents related to his planned marriage.  He was soon followed by a fifteen member Saudi hit squad who dismembered him with a bone saw while he was still alive.  His Apple watch recorded the whole thing.  This was his punishment for criticizing the government.

    The night after this report came out our “president” held another one of his “rallies”, this time in the state of Montana.  Before his cheering, red-hatted crowd he praised the Montana congressman who is running for re-election, for assaulting a reporter, calling the congressman “my kind of guy”.  He now calls the Saudi government’s explanation of Mr. Khashoggi’s murder “credible”.  That explanation?  That the reporter died in a “fist fight” during an interrogation.  (Who brings a bone saw to a fist fight?)

     Evangelical leader, Pat Robertson, tells his followers (please note I say “his” followers, not followers of Christ) that he agrees with the president.  “We can’t risk a 100 billion dollar arms deal”, he tells us.  Because really, there’s nothing more Christian than selling billions of dollars worth of arms to a fundamentalist Islamic government, is there?

     This is not the America I grew up in.  When the president of the United States refuses to stand against totalitarian regimes, when he “loves” the North Korean dictator, and practically worships the Russian one, while all the while he denigrates and insults our allies,  calls the press the "enemy of the people" and any news that does not flatter him "fake", we  no longer have a leadership that respects American values or even knows what they are.  When so-called Christian leaders stand shoulder to shoulder with this despicable man, we have lost any semblance of moral leadership.  This man and his actions should be repudiated and condemned from every pulpit in the country tomorrow morning.

    We have a chance, a chance, to stop the bleeding of our once respected country and that is on November 6th.  I will be voting a straight Democratic ticket this year.  I cannot respect any Republican candidate, or any Republican, who stands for what that party represents today.  I refuse to relegate a great America to a memory.  I refuse to lay my values at the feet of greed, mendacity and evil.  If you feel the same, I ask you to please vote on November 6th.  Please.   

     If this is not the sort of post you would normally expect to find here, so be it. As I said at the outset:  These are not normal times.

London Books

London Books

My impressions of London were formed by turning the pages of books.  So much so that when I traveled there for the first time, years ago, I expected all the streets to be as leafy as Cherry Tree Lane, the fog as thick as outside the sash windows of 221B Baker Street and each morning as "fresh as if issued to children on a beach".  I wanted to look for the shadow of Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens and inspect every wardrobe in every hotel room in the hopes of finding an entrance to Narnia.  And you know what?  I have never once been disappointed.  As Helene Hanff put it in her book 84 Charing Cross Road, "I remember years ago a guy I knew told me that people going to England find exactly what they go looking for.  I said I'd go looking for the England of English literature, and he nodded and said: 'It's there'."

I just returned from another trip to London, a personal reward for finishing an important task I'd set for myself and one that has kept me away from this blog for awhile.  I traveled solo, which is something I'd recommend for every person to do every now and then.  The solo traveler gets to do precisely what he or she wishes every minute of the day, whether it be skipping lunch, walking too far and too long, or spending inordinate amounts of time in book shops, all of which I regularly did.

London in the month of September is just about as good as it gets.  The air was suitably crisp in the mornings ( I could wear a sweater which is increasingly, sadly, becoming a rare September occurence in the changing climate of my home town ), and the afternoon sky was the colour of flow blue china.  I wandered through Kew Gardens in the early morning hours.  I went to see Harry Potter and the Cursed Child at the Palace Theatre.  I attended evensong at Westminster Abbey and roamed the state rooms of Buckingham Palace.  And I spent long, totally blissful, hours at John Sandoe Books.

I thought some of you just might like to see the books I brought home.  And yes, it took a special sort of creativity to pack all these in my one carry-on bag for the return trip and, yes, that bag was heavy.  Extremely so.  But boy, was it worth it.  I hope you enjoy browsing through my choices.

xx

*******

1.  Edith Sitwell
by Richard Greene

2.  The Diary of a Nobody
by Weedon Grossmith and George Grossmith

3.  Manderley Forever
A Biography of Daphne du Maurier
by Tatiana de Rosnay

4.  A Talent to Annoy
Essays, Journalism & Reviews
by Nancy Mitford

5.  The Pursuit of Love
by Nancy Mitford

6.  Love in a Cold Climate
by Nancy Mitford

7.  Wigs on the Green
by Nancy Mitford

8.  The House in Little Chelsea
by Clare Hastings

10.  Transcription
by Kate Atkinson

11. Ninety-Nine Glimpses of Princess Margaret
by Craig Brown

12.  Lethal White
by Robert Galbraith

13.  Nina Campbell 
Interior Decoration/Elegance and Ease
by Giles Kime

****

Also, for all of you who might be wondering about Andrew, he's now ten months old and seventy-something pounds.  Here's a little video of him reveling in his favourite activity, flying.
You can see more of London of Andrew, and many various and sundry things on my Instagram page.
xx

Happy Fourth of July

The New Colossus

by Emma Lazarus

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,

With conquering limbs astride from land to land;

Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand

A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame

Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name

Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand

Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command

The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she

With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

Puppies and Books, A Summer Reading List

Puppies and Books
A Summer Reading List

Andrew doesn't like the owls.  They come in the gloaming; just at that evanescent moment when the light of day turns mysterious, when it's almost possible to mistake their black silhouettes for things more expected, like a squirrel's nest or an insomniac crow.  They soar to the treetops in silence.  It's easy to miss them, especially if you've never seen one before, and if your introduction to the world of owls is an audible one, well, who can blame you for being just a tiny bit unnerved? 

 I always know when they're out there.  Andrew will burst through the back door like a gust of winter wind and dash to my side where he will sit down quickly at my feet and proceed to pretend nothing whatsoever is wrong. It's an act he has yet to perfect.

I'd forgotten how entertaining it can be to watch a puppy discover the world.

 Everything is a new experience.

Andrew is six months old now.  And over sixty pounds.  We have no idea what he is or how big he will actually get.  In the three months that we've had him he's found out that he loves carrots and watermelon but is decidedly unimpressed with Apple's favourite food, the green bean.  Birdsong fascinates him and he will sit for the longest time under the trees with his head pointed straight up in an attempt to catch the singer in action.  He is bewildered, loudly so, by dogs on television and will come running if he even suspects one has made an appearance.  He has a habit of climbing up into any chair in which I happen to be perched and resting his face in the crook of my neck for a few minutes before happily continuing on his way.   I find this both amusing and comforting and it is something for which I am rarely prepared, often yanking a book, or knitting, or a computer screen out of his way in the very nick of time.

His puppy chewing path of destruction, though varied, has thankfully not been very wide.   He has decimated three newly planted vinca, a couple of well-established hostas, four knitting needles and one of The Songwriter's hats.  We are still learning not to leave anything vital at his eye level which is not as easy as it sounds as his eye level is rising with each passing week.

But, bless his furry heart, he hasn't destroyed a book.

This is a more impressive fact than one might think because books are everywhere here.  

They are stacked beside chairs and on tables;

 sometimes a stack of books is used as a table. 

 They lie open on ottomans, chairs and beds.  

Big books, little books.

New books, old books.

And Andrew has left them all alone.

I am both impressed and grateful, particularly because it's the season for adding new books to my collection for summer, and I have my eye on quite a few.  Here, in no special order, are some of the ones I'm considering as well as a few I've recently loved.  I hope you enjoy browsing around.  As always, click on the photo and you'll be able to read more about the book.

Reading is one of the best parts of summer, don't you agree?

And come to think of it, Andrew doesn't know what summer is either.

This ought to be fun.

xx

Summer Books

I Am I Am I Am

by Maggie O'Farrell

The Overstory

by Richard Powers

Warlight

by Michael Ondaatje

The Art of the Wasted Day

by Patricia Hampl

Educated

by Tara Westover

The Soul of America

The Battle for Our Better Angels

by Jon Meacham

Life in the Garden

by Penelope Lively

Perfect English Townhouse

by Ros Byam Shaw

Mr. Lear

A Life of Art and Nonsense 

by Jenny Uglow

A Larger Table

by John Pavlovitz

Cake

by Maira Kalman

The Secret Gardeners

Britain's Creatives Reveal Their Private Sanctuaries

by Victoria Summerly

The Cottage Kitchen

Cozy Cooking in the English Countryside

by Marte Marie Forsberg

Lost Voices

Lost Voices

I trusted the voice of my father.  He was a man of few words who never sang in church, but he could recognize the atonal notes of a lie like someone with perfect pitch and he had no time for the people who told them.  He lived by the rules of his heart, while I watched.  From him I learned that strength and honesty walk hand in hand, that humility and compassion are never signs of weakness and that a man is only as good as his word.  Daddy could say both "I love you" and "I'm sorry" without losing an ounce of his pride.  His voice was underscored by his integrity, it was consistent and unwavering and, consequently, I trusted it.  I listen to that voice even now, though it's been ten years since I heard it outside of my dreams.

Despite the cacophony of sounding brass and tinkling cymbals aloft in the air today, the silence is deafening.  So many voices have been sacrificed for political expediency and can never be trusted again.  Men who once proudly stood beneath the red, white and blue banner of "family values" now clump together in a frayed knot of self-righteousness, weakly defending their new holy policy of justification and end result.  But the curtain has been lifted.  It is now apparent that the outrage they once spewed at the slightest perceived infraction was only a theatrical act.  How long will it take them to realize that their voices have forever been muted by their own hypocrisy?

Many people of faith feel like they're living in exile because American Christianity is no longer known to champion the words of Christ.  By aligning itself with the vile and indecent its voice has reduced to a whisper.  By linking arms with the National Rifle Association (from whom we are told guns are our "god-given right"), it has muddied the truth with an ignoble cause.  It has looked away while the murdered are ignored, the survivors slandered.  We have listened for its outrage as the poor have been denigrated, both in speech and in policy, and heard nary a word.  While the immigrant is demonized in direct contradiction to the call of Scripture, it has stood by in a silence seen as tacit approval by many.  Kindness and compassion?  Decency?  Beauty?  Love?  All have been devalued by a misguided agenda that has far overshadowed the bright light of Truth.  How long will it take those aboard this off-course ship to notice no one on shore hears their voice any longer?

These are the days we never expected, the days we thought gone for good.  These are the days that can break a person, even a person of faith.  I have watched those I once admired either goosestep their way down a path I find reprehensible or choose instead to prioritize their own contentment, riveting their eyes heavenward and refusing to stand in the way of the lies currently prostituting the very faith they profess to follow, the very country they profess to love.

We Americans have always been proud of our spunk.  If we think we are right, we will go it alone if we have to, make no mistake.  For generations we have stood as a beacon of hope and justice in a fractured world.  With all of our faults, and we have them, we have generally been looked to as a people of compassion who have at least the desire for good.  This reputation is now in peril.  Yet there remain those amongst us who continue to shake their fists in the air, determined to defy the world if they must, not in defense of the good but in a defiant embrace of what they themselves would once have deemed downright ugly.  Our pride is being used against us by a man devoid of the most basic of decent human qualities, a man more than willing to break us into a million pieces for his own gain.

How many lies does it take to lose a voice?

One?  One thousand?

Two?  Two thousand?

How long will it take us to realize we're rapidly losing our own?

The Dog I Need

The Dog I Need

My neglect of this blog has been appalling of late and for that I sincerely apologize.  Several of my readers have written to check on me and for that I am so touched and grateful.  The simple truth is that I have been busy finishing up a writing project that I've had going for quite awhile and after a day spent doing nothing but finding the proper word for the proper place, my brain is so flat it could slide right beneath my bedroom door.  I am left with no wit, no bite, no cohesive thought.  Add to this the one fact that will not be ignored:  I am raising a big puppy to be a well-mannered citizen of the world and that is quite a tall order indeed.  So I suppose I have indulged in a bit of puppternity leave and I hope you'll forgive me.

Andrew is growing.  You can almost sit and watch him grow, so rapidly is he doing it.  His feet are like dinner plates and neither he nor I are used to them yet.  He trips over them regularly; I trip over them only occasionally.  Apple, who began by tolerating him the way an elderly aunt might tolerate a bouncy new nephew she neither asked for nor particularly wanted, is now visibly fond of him and I often catch them napping together on the rare occasion Andrew naps.  He does sleep soundly all night long and has done so since the first week he came home, a fact for which both The Songwriter and I are extremely grateful.  However he has woke me up on too many mornings by sticking his tongue in my ear.  (Andrew, not The Songwriter.)  He was incredibly easy to housebreak, something we have been ever so thankful for.  When your puppy is roughly the size of an articulated bus, being easy to housebreak is a gift unsurpassed.  Also, he abhors vacuum cleaners and hair dryers with a passion usually reserved for the homicidal.  We are hoping he outgrows this.

At just five months old, Andrew weighs fifty-two pounds and shows no signs of slowing down in that progression.  I confesss to googling, "How big will my dog get?", more than once.  There are charts and the like online that profess to an accurate prediction for this, but frankly, the results were so alarming that I've decided to just wait and see.  I can tell you he is far too big to comfortably dine with his food bowl sitting flat on the floor so, whilst I search for a stand that doesn't offend my aesthetic sensibilities, he is eating off a big round hatbox, no doubt the only dog on the street to be doing so.  He is also now enrolled in a canine charm class to aid him in his journey to responsible adult.  We tried group classes but as he was both the biggest dog in the class as well as the youngest, and as he vociferously let it be known all through class that all he really wanted to do was play with his classmates, it was deemed advantageous to all involved if he was trained privately.  His legs are so long that when he responds to the command, "Down", he sticks them straight up and out before flopping on the floor with a theatrical thud much in the manner of a canine religious experience. His teacher has declared him "very intelligent" which should make me proud but at present is a niggling point of concern.  As I write this I just saw him run through the back garden with my underwear on his head.  If he learns to open doors we are in serious trouble.

He loves riding in the car and as we've enjoyed an unusually cool, almost cold, Spring, he has been coming along with me quite a lot.  Let me tell you, the sight of a huge black and white puppy hanging out the window of a little green Fiat has been the most reliable way I've yet discovered to put smiles on grumpy faces.  Stopping at traffic lights is a gregarious experience for everybody.

I promise to do a better job on the blog particularly as Andrew continues skipping to adulthood.  He is very funny, very sweet and quite the snuggler.  He is also very different from Edward, as I'm sure you can tell from this writing.  A friend told me when Andrew moved in, "God gives you the dog you need", and I think she's right.  There is a look in Andrew's eyes that reminds me of the soulful gaze of Edward but just when I see it and start to dip down into grief at that terrible loss, Andrew will do something hilarious and I burst out laughing.  He is the dog I need.

Magical Thinking

Magical Thinking

Be it skepticism, hubris, or a gray-green combination of both, for some reason I have always avoided the self-help section of the bookstore.   I’ve never quite been able to stomach being told that “men are from Mars”; never bought the promise that I could “think and grow rich”; never spent one second worrying about “who moved my cheese”.  And frankly, I rather resent being told how much better my life would be if I just “tidied up” my room.  

That said, I do turn to writers I respect when life lands me on rocky pathways they themselves have trod.  I hunger to know how they handled those jarring switchbacks life can throw; how they managed to put one foot in front of the other on those days when all you want to do is stop and sit down.

So when Edward suddenly died last August, I turned to C.S. Lewis and Joan Didion.  From Mr. Lewis I was comforted to know I wasn’t alone in the realization that grief felt so much like fear.   When Ms. Didion shared the magical thinking that haunted her during the year following the sudden loss of her husband, I knew without doubt I was experiencing similar feelings.

I knew all autumn that getting another dog would be a good idea for Apple.  She missed her roommate.  But, like Ms. Didion, a nagging thought clung tight to my soul:  If I allow another dog into my house, into my heart, then that will mean Edward is really and truly not coming back.  I knew, as Joan Didion knew, that this thought was nonsensical.  But I can tell you it was as real as daylight.  Oh, I looked at dog rescue sites on the internet.  But every face I saw seemed like an intruder on my grief.  I still wanted Edward back.  I still do.

And then, a couple of weeks ago, from a rescue in Missouri, I saw a face I couldn’t ignore.  There was something in the eyes.  Something in the soul.  I contacted the rescuers and filled out an application, knowing our chances were slim as we lived so far away.  But for some reason, even with loads of applications coming in for him, we were chosen.

So last Friday, very early in the morning, The Songwriter and I set out to get our new family member,
 feeling every bit as nervous as blind dates.

It was love at first sight.

For both of us.

Meet Andrew.

He’s eleven weeks old and those paws tell us he’ll be a big boy.  He’s cheerful, curious, and he’s settled into The House of Edward like he’s lived here before.  From the looks of things, he’s mostly Landseer Newfoundland, with perhaps a wee bit of Border Collie throw in for good measure.  He will be like unwrapping a present each month; we have no idea what he’ll turn out to be. 

This will always be The House of Edward. 
 When the next book of essays comes out later this year,
 it will be Edward’s face on the cover.

But I’ll share Andrew’s life with you all on occasion.  

How could I not?

Just look at that face!

***

A Grief Observed

C.S. Lewis

The Year of Magical Thinking

Joan Didion

***
For those of you from Instagram 
who are looking for my essay on the Spacious website,
 you can find it HERE.  
Spacious is a "movement of folks who want to create ways to bring people together to banish loneliness and foster deeper connections and community". 
Do pay them a visit. 
I'm honored to be featured.