Beginning ~ with a different story

Herland and Selected Stories by Charlotte Perkins Gilman ~ edited and with an Introduction by Barbara H. Solomon (Herland was published in 1915, the Introduction in 1992), fiction

This is written from memory, unfortunately.  If I could have brought with me the material I so carefully prepared, this would be a very different story.

This is a good hook to drag the reader into the story of Herland, in my opinion.  Not that I needed it.  I've been reading and re-reading the novel Herland about once a decade since the 1970s, and I've written about it several times on this blog, as in this example.  Here's a summary of the story:

The book describes an isolated society composed entirely of women.  They reproduce by parthenogenesis (asexual reproduction) and have an ideal society free of war, conflict, and domination.  The men who find this isolated culture think they've found heaven, assuming the women will treat them royally.

This version, edited by Barbara Solomon, includes her own introduction and twenty stories by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, including the well-known "The Yellow Wallpaper" from 1892 that is often read in women's studies classes.  Here are the opening paragraphs of the Introduction:

In the spring of 1887, a depressed and desperate young woman from Providence, Rhode Island, traveled to Philadelphia to consult Dr. Silas Weir Mitchell, the famous physician and specialist in nervous disorders.  She had been ill for about three years, experiencing symptoms which today might well lead to a medical diagnosis of clinical depression.  Moreover, her situation and misery were perfect examples of the condition which would be described so accurately three-quarters of a century later by Betty Friedan in The Feminine Mystique as "The Problem That Has No Name."

After a month of treatment at S. Weir Mitchell's sanitarium, the young woman was discharged with the following prescription:  "Live as domestic a life as possible. ... Have but two hours' intellectual life a day.  And never touch pen, brush, or pencil as long as you live."

Fortunately for posterity, the patient, who was Charlotte Perkins Gilman (though at the time she was Charlotte Perkins Stetson), found it impossible to live according to the doctor's instructions.  She later wrote in her autobiography that those directions caused her to come very close to losing her mind.

Thus, in the fall of 1888, still in poor health and with little money, Charlotte Perkins Stetson did the unthinkable.  She left Walter Stetson, her husband of four years, and traveled with her three-year-old daughter, Katharine, to Pasadena, California.  There she began a life characterized by the independence, determination, and hard work which were to be her salvation.

Gilion at Rose City Reader hosts Book Beginnings on Fridays.  Click here for today's Mister Linky.

A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali ~ by Gil Courtemanche

Twenty years ago, 800,000 people were killed in the Rwandan genocide.  The killing began 20 years ago today.  If you are willing to "experience" the event through a book, I recommend A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali ~ by Gil Courtemanche, published in 2000.  I read it shortly after it was published, long before I had a book blog.  Here's a summary.

This is a moving, passionate love story set amid the turmoil and terror of Rwanda’s genocide.  All manner of Kigali residents pass their time by the pool of the Mille-Collines hotel:  aid workers, Rwandan bourgeoisie, expatriates, UN peacekeepers, prostitutes.  Keeping a watchful eye is Bernard Valcourt, a jaded foreign journalist, but his closest attention is devoted to Gentille, a hotel waitress with the slender, elegant build of a Tutsi.  As they slip into an intense, improbable affair, the delicately balanced world around them – already devastated by AIDS – erupts in a Hutu-led genocide against the Tutsi people.  Valcourt’s efforts to spirit Gentille to safety end in their separation.  It will be months before he learns of his lover’s shocking fate.

Today, Rwanda is mourning the dead.  Click to enlarge the chart, to see what was happening during the hundred days of the genocide in 1994.  In the early 2000s, I met one of the men who fled Rwanda and was living in Chattanooga.  I met him through his wife, and today I should check to see if she's still working a couple of miles from where I live.

Here's David Batzofin's travel blog, which includes photos of the genocide memorial.  I was most moved by one little girl's memorial:

Fillette UWASE
Age:  2
Favorite toy:  doll
Best friend:  Her dad
Behaviour:  A good girl
Cause of death:  Smashed against a wall

Sunday Salon ~ turning the pages

I finished Lost Lake by Sarah Addison Allen (2014 fiction set in Georgia) and rated it 9 of 10, an excellent novel.  Like her other novels, this one is mystical and not quite "normal" in what transpires.  I'm at a point where I think I'd rather read "regular" novels, not ones where alligators convey messages to humans about where to find things.  And I'm still reading these nonfiction books:

• Paul and Jesus: How the Apostle Transformed Christianity ~ by James D. Tabor, 2012
• The Alphabet Versus the Goddess: The Conflict Between Word and Image ~ by Leonard Shlain, 1998

That's about it.  Not much to write about today, though I'm sorting through boxes and boxes of stuff, trying to get rid of lots of books and papers before I move.  It's a lot of work.

Bloggers get together in the Sunday Salon — at separate computers in different time zones — to talk about reading.

Caturday ~ homeward bound, wherever that is

Mayhem the cat

Did you hear about the cat in North Carolina who went looking for his owners?  They had moved to a busy street about six miles away, giving him to a couple on a nearby farm.  But Mayhem loved his people and wanted to be with them.  Even though he had never been there before, he did find them.  It took him about three weeks to figure out where they had were.  Who says cats aren't loving?

Beginning ~ after sleeping for a year

Gilion at Rose City Reader hosts Book Beginnings on Fridays.  Click here for today's Mister Linky.



Lost Lake ~ by Sarah Addison Allen, 2014, fiction (Georgia)

"Wake up, Kate!"
And, exactly one year to the day that she fell asleep, Kate finally did.

Thus begins chapter one of this novel of enchantment.  The quote I like best so far is near the beginning of Part 2, on page 151:

"I knew it!" Bulahdeen said with a cackle.  She slapped the table's surface with the palm of her hand, making the silverware jump.  "Just when you think you know the ending, it changes. ... I taught literature for nearly forty years.  The books I read when I was twenty completely changed when I read them when I was sixty.  You know why?  Because the endings changed.  After you finish a book, the story still goes on in your mind.  You can never change the beginning.  But you can always change the end.  That's what's happening here."

Is it?  That's as far as I've read.  Do books change when we read them again?  Is the ending different when we are at different stages in our lives?  Wouldn't that mean that WE have changed, rather than the book's ending?  This is a quirky book, full of enchantment, like the first one of hers that I read in 2009 — Garden Spells — which included a very temperamental tree that threw apples at people.  Have you read any of Sarah Addison Allen's books?

BTT (#41) ~ annotating books

Deb @ Booking Through Thursday asks about mark-ups:

"Do you write in your books?  Highlight?  Make notes?  Or do you like to keep your copies as pristine as possible?"

First, let me say that I teach from books.  It helps to have notes about — or at least highlight — sections of a book I may want to quote.  Friends who have Kindles assure me I can make notes in them, but I have noticed they cannot quickly find what they need.  And they can't flip back and forth easily.  So yes, I do write in the margins of my books, including my Bible.  I underline, occasionally highlight, definitely make notes in the margins, and use post-it notes to guide me to important points I want to share while teaching my students.

On the other hand, I rarely mark in novels — mostly because (1) I rarely teach from a novel and (2) I rarely keep my novels.  In fact, if my library has a copy, I usually borrow novels I want to read.  Naturally, I can't mark in library copies, though I may annotate them using temporary post-it notes.  The only people I know who keep "pristine" copies of books are collectors.  Although I "collect" books in the sense that I actually have thousands of books, I don't collect books just to have them.  I use books for a specific purpose:

for the ideas I find in them
for learning
for discussions
for sharing the knowledge gained
for clarity

Library Loot ~ April 2-8

Lost Lake ~ by Sarah Addison Allen, 2014, fiction (Georgia)

The first time Eby Pim saw Lost Lake, it was on a picture postcard.  Just an old photo and a few words on a small square of heavy stock, but when she saw it, she knew she was seeing her future.  That was half a lifetime ago.  Now Lost Lake is about to slip into Eby’s past.  Her husband, George, is long passed.  Most of her demanding extended family are gone.  All that’s left is a once-charming collection of lakeside cabins succumbing to the southern Georgia heat and damp, and an assortment of faithful misfits drawn back to Lost Lake year after year by their own unspoken dreams and desires.  It’s a lot, but it’s not enough to keep Eby from calling this her final summer at the lake, and relinquishing Lost Lake to a developer with cash in hand.  Until one last chance at family knocks on her door.

Lost Lake is where Kate Pheris spent her last best summer at the age of twelve, before she learned of loneliness and heartbreak and loss.  Now she’s all too familiar with those things, but she knows about hope, too, thanks to her resilient daughter, Devin, and her own willingness to start moving forward.  Perhaps at Lost Lake her little girl can cling to her own childhood for just a little longer ... and maybe Kate herself can rediscover something that slipped through her fingers so long ago.  One after another, people find their way to Lost Lake, looking for something that they weren’t sure they needed in the first place:  love, closure, a second chance, peace, a mystery solved, a heart mended.  Can they find what they need before it’s too late?

One book, that's all I got from the library this week.  I considered changing the photo of my library (below) back to the Library Loot logo, but I kind of like the flags flapping in the wind.  It was windy yesterday when I parked my car in this same spot and looked up at the flagpole, but only the red-white-and-blue flag was there.  I haven't seen the blue library flag in ages, but I do like it.  A lot.  Anyway, one book, which I've already started.

Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted by Claire @ The Captive Reader and Linda @ Silly Little Mischief that encourages us to name the books we checked out of the library.  Click here to see what others got this week.