Cold Mountain ~ by Charles Frazier

Cold Mountain ~ by Charles Frazier, 1997, historical fiction (North Carolina), 449 pages

Sorely wounded and fatally disillusioned in the fighting at Petersburg, a Confederate soldier named Inman decides to walk back to his home in the Blue Ridge mountains to Ada, the woman he loves.  His trek across the disintegrating South brings him into intimate and sometimes lethal converse with slaves and marauders, bounty hunters and witches, both helpful and malign.  At the same time, the intrepid Ada is trying to revive her father’s derelict farm and learning to survive in a world where the old certainties have been swept away.  Inman is not the man he used to be, as wounded in battle he slowly makes his way home to North Carolina.  His sweetheart, Ada, is no longer a flighty belle but a hard-working farm woman.  Will love be the same?

It has been decades since I read this excellent book, so I've taken it off my shelf to read again.  It will also take me "home" to the mountains where I lived before moving to St. Louis.  I'm from Tennessee, which borders North Carolina. 

A novel by Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York

A Most Intriguing Lady ~ by Sarah Ferguson with Marguerite Kaye, 2023, historical fiction (Scotland), 368 pages, 9/10

This is an historical saga is about a Duke’s daughter — the perfect Victorian lady — who secretly moonlights as an amateur sleuth for high society’s inner circle.  Victorian London was notorious for its pickpockets.  But in the country houses of the elite, gentleman burglars, art thieves and con men preyed on the rich and titled.  Wealthy victims — with their pride and reputation at stake — wouldn't ever go to the police.  What they needed was a society insider, one of their own, a person of discretion and finely tuned powers of observation, who is adept at navigating intrigue.

That person was Lady Mary Montagu Douglas Scott, the youngest child of Queen Victoria’s close friends, the Duke and Duchess of Buccleuch.  Bookish, fiercely intelligent, and a keen observer, Mary has deliberately cultivated a mousey persona that allows her to remain overlooked and significantly under-estimated by all.  It’s the perfect cover for a sleuth, a role she stumbles into when trying to assist a close friend during a house party hosted by her parents at their stately Scottish home, Drumlanrig Castle.

It is at this party where Lady Mary also meets Colonel Walter Trefusis, a distinguished and extremely handsome war veteran.  Tortured by memories of combat, Walter, like Mary, lives a double life, with a desk job in Whitehall providing a front for his role in the British Intelligence Service.  The two form an unlikely alliance to solve a series of audacious crimes — and indulge in a highly charged on-off romance.  So this novel documents one remarkable woman’s ability to be both the perfect lady and a perfectly talented detective.

Week in Review

• On Monday, HERE, I mused about taking one's own advice.
• I wrote about two unrelated things on TWOsday, HERE.
• My Wednesday Word, HERE, was "pandiculation."  Have you ever used that big word?  I'd never even heard the word until this week.
• My Thursday Thoughts, HERE, were about a very young survivor of Auschwitz.
• My Book Beginnings on Friday, HERE, were from the memoir of a man going blind.
• My cat Jackie was perturbed that I posted on "her" Caturday, so she added her two cents worth about the situation, HERE.

Hosted by Deb at Readerbuzz

Cat book for Caturday

Catland: Louis Wain and the Great Cat Mania ~ by Kathryn Hughes, 2024, history of cats, 432 pages

In 1900, America and England were in the grip of a cat craze.  An animal that had for centuries been seen as a household servant or urban nuisance had now become an object of pride and deep affection.  From presidential and royal families who imported exotic breeds to working-class men competing for cash prizes for the fattest tabby, people became enthralled to the once-humble cat.  Multiple industries sprang up to feed this new obsession, selling everything from veterinary services to leather bootees via dedicated cat magazines.  Cats were being traded for increasingly large sums of money, bolstered by elaborate pedigrees that claimed noble ancestry and promised aesthetic distinction.

In Catland, Kathryn Hughes chronicles the cat craze of the early twentieth century through the life and career of Louis Wain.  Wain's anthropomorphic drawings of cats in top hats falling in love, sipping champagne, golfing, driving cars, and piloting planes are some of the most instantly recognizable images from the era.  His round-faced fluffy characters established the prototype for the modern cat, which cat "fanciers" were busily trying to achieve using their new-found knowledge of the latest scientific breeding techniques.

Despite being a household name, Wain endured multiple bankruptcies and mental breakdowns, spending his last fifteen years in an asylum, drawing abstract and multicolored felines.

But it was his ubiquitous anthropomorphic cats that helped usher the formerly reviled creatures into homes across Europe.

Beautifully illustrated with over 130 drawings and based on new archival findings about Wain's life, the wider cat fancy, and the media frenzy it created, Catland chronicles the fascinating history of how the modern cat emerged.

*Jackie speaking!  (Even if I have to do it in a footnote of sorts.)

Somebody put this cat book in the box beside our door.  It's full of strange cat drawings, so Bonnie wrote about it for Caturday.

Hey, Bonnie!  Did you forget this day is supposed to be MY day?  I'll settle for this footnote today, but please let me do next CATurday's post.  (And I want to read the Catland book, too.)

Beginning ~ with the Introduction

Introduction: The End Begins

I'm going blind as I write this.  It feels less dramatic than it sounds.  The words aren't disappearing as I type.  I'm sitting comfortably in the sunroom.  The sun is rising like it's supposed to.  I can plainly see Lily sitting next to me, reading in her striped pajamas.  The visible world is disappearing, but it's not in a hurry.

The Country of the Blind: A Memoir at the End of Sight ~ by Andrew Leland, 2023, memoir, xxv + 339 pages

We meet Andrew Leland as he’s suspended in the liminal state of the soon-to-be blind:  he’s midway through his life with retinitis pigmentosa, a condition that ushers those who live with it from sightedness to blindness over years, even decades.  He grew up with full vision, but starting in his teenage years, his sight began to degrade from the outside in.  Soon —  but without knowing exactly when — he will likely have no vision left.

Full of apprehension but also dogged curiosity, Leland embarks on a sweeping exploration of the state of being that awaits him:  not only the physical experience of blindness but also its language, politics, and customs.  He negotiates his changing relationships with his wife and son, and with his own sense of self, as he moves from his mainstream, “typical” life to one with a disability.  Part memoir, part historical and cultural investigation, The Country of the Blind represents Leland’s determination not to merely survive this transition but to grow from it — to seek out and revel in that which makes blindness enlightening.  Brimming with warmth and humor, it is an exhilarating tour of a new way of being.

A very young survivor

Survivors Club: The True Story of a Very Young Prisoner of Auschwitz ~ by Michael Bornstein and Debbie Bornstein Holinstat, 2017, memoir, xviii + 348 pages

In 1945, in a now-famous piece of World War II archival footage, four-year-old Michael Bornstein was filmed by Soviet soldiers as he was being carried out of Auschwitz in his grandmother’s arms.  This is the unforgettable story of how a father’s courageous wit, a mother’s fierce love, and one perfectly timed illness saved his life, and how others in his family from Zarki, Poland, dodged death at the hands of the Nazis time and again with incredible deftness.

In case you were wondering, Michael Bornstein survived for seven months inside Auschwitz, where the average lifespan of a child was just two weeks.  Six years after his liberation, he immigrated to the United States.  He graduated from Fordham University, earned his Ph.D. from the University of Iowa, and worked in pharmaceutical research and development for more than forty years.  Now retired, he lives with his wife in New York City and speaks frequently to schools and other groups about his experiences in the Holocaust.

Working from his own recollections as well as extensive interviews with relatives and survivors who knew the family, Michael relates his story with the help of his daughter, Debbie Bornstein Holinstat.  Shocking, heartbreaking, and ultimately uplifting and inspirational, this narrative nonfiction offers an indelible depiction of what happened to one Polish village in the wake of the German invasion in 1939.

Note from Bonnie:  Even though this is written for ages 10-14, reviewers say this memoir should be read by everybody.  As I was re-shelving library books here at the Crown Center for Senior Living, I noticed this book and checked it out to read myself.

"Pandiculation" is a big word for today

This week’s word from Collins Dictionary is pandiculation (pænˌdɪkjəˈleiʃən), which means "a condition of great joy or bliss; euphoric state."  But then they go on to say that pandiculation is "the act of stretching oneself."  So which is it?  Both?  I guess it's "great joy" to "stretch" when I've been in one position for too long.  Anyway, I like that the illustration shows a stretching cat.  And since "joy" is my favorite word, I love this definition.

Anyway, here's the rest of the definition I got in my email:

The term (which derived from Latin) appeared in English medical writing in the seventeenth century and comes from the Latin pandiculari, meaning to stretch oneself, which is connected to the broader root pandere, to spread out or extend.

The word refers specifically to the simultaneous stretching and yawning that occurs most commonly upon waking.  This precision is worth noting.  Stretching and yawning can occur independently, and pandiculation names their combination rather than either action alone.  Early medical writers grouped the behaviour with other involuntary movements and associated it with fatigue, fever, and the transitions between sleep and wakefulness.

The Latin root pandere may have a more distant origin.  It has been connected to a Proto-Indo-European root relating to outward spreading, the same root thought to underlie the English word fathom, which originally described the span of two outstretched arms.  However, this connection remains a proposed etymology and it is not fully confirmed.

Two unrelated things for TWOsday

One

I went to the nearby pharmacy and got my flu shot for this year.

Two

I also got more dry cat food for Jackie, the latest cat who now blogs on Caturdays, you know, the day after Friday.  I got up this morning later than she preferred, so she quite adroitly ripped open the almost empty bag herself and, apparently, helped herself to breakfast.