November 2025 Reading Summary

I read ten books in November, two from my Avon/Equinox authors and the rest from my vast collection of fiction from Delphi Classics on Kindle. 

 

 

In the 1985 Storm Over Valia (#35 in the Dray Prescott series) Bulmer lets us in on what has been happening with Dray's #1 son.  We have heard a bit about his doings, but he has never had his own volume until now.  Drak is attempting to rid the mainland of Valia of traitorous enemies.  It takes several battles and reinforcements before he is able to turn the tide in his favour, but then he is kidnapped by the enemy.  #35 in the Dray Prescott series is filled with the usual amount of fighting, carousing, intrigue, humour and outrageous incidents, even though Dray is not present.  While he has been battling the witches' plagues, we learn what else has been going on in other parts of Kregen.  While Drak is a mere shadow of his father, he hasn't had the same amount of time to have his character developed.   Drak shares plot time with Silda, daughter of Dray Prescott's best friend.  Silda is a Sister of the Rose, highly trained in all manner of combat, and she gets a good chunk of the story to herself and her deeds, too.  In fact, she is a more interesting character than Drak.  This is a good entry in the series, allowing the readers to gain a more multi-dimensional view of what exactly is going on.

 

 

It's unfortunate that Tubb is an artful dodger.  In his Dumarest series Tubb never allows his hero to get near the original Earth, as if a change of direction for the series would be detrimental.  And in his Cap Kennedy series Tubb never allows us to stay long enough to learn more about the Zheltyanians, that ancient race that has left traces of itself across the galaxy.  I think most readers would like to see Dumarest getting closer and closer to Earth, and they would also like to see Cap learning more about the mysterious old ones.  But each time they make a discovery, it has to be destroyed for reasons to do with the main story plot.  In Spawn of Laban (1974; 127 pages), Cap and his team have to deal with giant insects, scorpions and spiders that will be used to devastate Earth in the near future.  A twisted professor is mixed up in the plot, and perhaps his lovely daughter.  It's a good story, except for the blowing up of the Zheltyana artifacts which are destroyed at the end.  It appears that giant wasps are using one of their ancient structures as a nest.  So much for getting clues from there.  Many of Tubb's stories would make fantastic movies, and this is one of them.  Any filmmakers out there listening?

 

Cover by Jack Gaughan. 

 

Turning now to Delphi Classics on Kindle, I began the month with an end of the world story by Arthur Conan Doyle.  The Poison Belt is from 1913 and undoubtedly influenced writers like John Chrisopher.  However, Doyle's story is somewhat spoiled by a chicken-out ending, where everyone wakes up next morning as suddenly as they had passed out and were presumed dead the previous day.  This is a Professor Challenger story (The Lost World), and the same team is together again as a poisoned bit of ether seems to have crossed Earth's path.  They survive the night with oxygen, and the best part of the story has them heading for London next day in a motor car to see the devastation.  And while the ending is a cop out, there has been great devastation as a result of people passing out amidst their duties.  There are train wrecks, shipwrecks, completely burned cities and other disasters.  So Earth does not get a get out of jail free card without considerable bumps and bruises.  If you like the stories of Christopher then you will certainly like this one, from one of the great storytellers.

An interior illustration for Doyle's story. 

 

 

Edgar Wallace wrote a few books featuring a London detective from Scotland Yard. The first of these novels is The Nine Bears from 1910. A group of men attempt to manipulate the stock market, causing a major London bank to fail if their plot succeeds. T. S. Smith has his hands full in this cracking crime thriller that has a global reach, including a climax at sea. Wallace writes well and craftily, setting up the capture of the group and their leader time and again, only to be foiled and outwitted. There is a master criminal mind behind the whole thing, and even the best at Scotland yard seems to be no match. My Delphi edition had colour plates of a few scenes. Highly readable, with the bad guys finally done in in the end.

 

 
Next up was T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land, from 1922. This is only the 2nd time I've read this work, and the only time I had a clue as to what is about. My Delphi Classics edition includes the author's notes. The title and much of the mood of the text refers to Jessie Weston's book From Ritual To Romance, about the Grail legend. Eliot claims he was thinking a lot about the Fisher King, his wounded condition and how the landscape reflected that condition. Other influences include Dante, Ovid and Chaucer. The poem is divided into 5 segments, with the 4th being my personal favourite. However, I also love the opening to the 3rd part, and a part of the 5th. 

 

The river's tent is broken: the last fingers of leaf

Clutch and sink into the wet bank. The wind

Crosses the brown land, unheard. The nymphs are departed.

 

Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song. 

 

And.... 

In this decayed hole among the mountains
  In the faint moonlight, the grass is singing
  Over the tumbled graves, about the chapel
  There is the empty chapel, only the wind’s home.
  It has no windows, and the door swings,
  Dry bones can harm no one.

 

Jacques Futrelle (real name John Futrell) was an American writer who wrote mystery and crime novels.  He was a passenger on the Titanic and died as a result of the sinking.  I read his first novel, The Chase of the Golden Plate from 1906.  The author sets up a man as being just about as guilty a person could be of committing a crime, with all evidence pointing to him ass the culprit.  Of course the man is innocent, and the reader must read on to find out how the author gets him off the hook.  Some of the tactics used are a bit much, such as the girl who is engaged to be married to him, and with whom she is eloping the very night of the robbery, does not recognize the fact that she is with someone else.  She thinks it is her lover the whole time.  Hmmmn.  Week, he did have a face mask on.  In the story we are introduced to The Thinking Machine, Futrelle's version of Sherlock Holmes.  He is a man who uses only logic to solve crimes.  It was an okay read, but not the kind of crime novel that I am a big fan of.

 

 

Next came a collection of stories by Gogol, an 1835 set of four tales collectively called Mirgorod.

"The Old Fashioned Farmer" is a tribute of sorts to the author's grandparents.  Minute descriptions of the house interior, exterior and lands surrounding it are given, painting a wonderful picture of a Ukraine ("Little Russia") homestead at the time.  Despite being silently robbed by the workers and overseer, as the old farmer no longer tends to the farm himself, they still get by without enough to keep them happy in their older years.  Not so much a story as a celebration of a way of life.

 

"Taras Bulba" is the tale of a Cossack's life back in the good old days.  It was a manly man's world, leaving wives and young children behind to live in a large permanent encampment upon the steppes of central Asia.  Everything you have wanted to know about Cossacks is here, and perhaps everything you did not want to know.  I would equate the true Cossack to its modern equivalent of the football (soccer in North America) hooligan, out looking for trouble for no real reason other than to prove 'manhood.'  In the famous story, which is quite a long one, Taras introduces his two sons to the life of a Cossack.  The eldest lad takes to it quite well, but the youngest is a bit soft on the emotional side and ends up falling in love with a beautiful woman.  Silly lad.  Several films were made from the story, including a famous Hollywood one.

 

"Viy" is a supernatural horror tale, one of the best!  A young seminary student, a philosopher, has a life or death meeting and struggle with an evil witch.  When he bests her and she dies his troubles begin.  This is a such a great story that I hesitate to give any of the plot away.  Last March we watched the 1967 Russian film version, which, as it turns out, closely follows the story and has incredible effects for the time. (see my review from the March 23rd/25 blog).  A must to read for horror fans. 

 

"The Tale of How Ivan Ivanovich Quarreled With Ivan Nikiforovich" is a tragic/comedy story about two very close friends who have a serious falling out and are unable to reconcile.  The story follows the men as their differences escalate into a court drama, and shows the negative effects it has on their aging and quality of life.  Told with humour, it is a good story that would also make a good film.

 

 

Carson McCullins' Clock Without Hands (pub. 1961) is the 2nd story by her I have read.  The lives of four male characters intertwine much like themes in polyphonic music, though decidedly in a minor key.  J.T. Malone is a small town pharmacist in southern Georgia, a man who failed to pass his second year of medical school.  Now 40, he blames Jewish students for his failure.  He soon finds out that he has leukemia and has just over one year to live.  One of his close friends is Judge Clane, a widower whose lawyer son committed suicide many years earlier.  The judge is a southern bigot, and his big scheme to become even richer than he is, is to get the federal government to redeem confederate money.  The time is the early 1950s.  The judge weighs over 300 pounds and has type two diabetes.  He hires Sherman, a blue-eyed young Black man, to help him administer his shots and to be his personal secretary, writing the letters dictated by the judge.  Sherman's blue eyes attract the judge's grandson, Jester, a homosexual young man yet to act on his leanings.  Sherman can also sing really well, and play piano.  The relationship between Sherman and Jester, between Sherman and the judge, and between Jester and his grandfather form the basis of the book, with Mr. Malone and his terminal illness providing a 4th narrative line.  They keeps the book interesting from start to finish.  There are a lot of f-bombs dropped during the tale, as well as liberal use of the n-word.  This is the deep south of the the 1950s, and it isn't a pretty place for Black folk.  But it's a time of change, too, and more Blacks are speaking up for their constitutional rights, though few are receiving them.  Malone himself is the main 'clock without hands', a man who cannot find himself in life until he is upon his death bed.  But none of the characters really know or understand what they are doing.  The judge fights for whites, in the end separating himself from Sherman.  His son who died by suicide had attempted to defend an innocent black man accused of raping a white woman, and this really put a chasm between the father son relationship.  The same thing happens with Jester, the judge's grandson.  Once Jester figures out what his grandfather really stands for, he rejects him and goes his own way.  Sherman finally finds a cause and a reason to stand up for himself and his race, but it is a useless sacrifice.  Though depressing in many ways (as a piece of music in the minor key can be), it is nothing but an honest glimpse at life in those "good ol' days" white Americans like to think about, the golden age of the 1950s.  I didn't like the book quite as much as The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, though I am left with similar feelings after reading Clock.  Definitely a book worth reading, as this woman is a terrific writer.

 

 

Next came a collection of eight stories of childhood by Kenneth Grahame.  Dream Days was first published in 1888, and illustrated by Maxfield Parrish in a 1902 edition (the one I read).  Of the eight stories four of them are excellent, with one of these being among the best things ever written regarding childhood.  It is a follow up collection to his remarkable Golden Days of 1885.  My four favourite stories are "Mutabile Semper," where our young hero meets a new girl his age and what befalls their brief affair.  Funny and poignant at the same time with an irresistible point of view.  "The Magic Ring" opens with a warning to adults to be careful what they say aloud when children are present, illustrating perfectly how a broken promise can affect a child.  Again our hero becomes momentarily infatuated with not one, but two different females as he unexpectedly is brought to see the circus, after finding out that he would not be going with his parents after all.  We get to experience the lowest and highest points of childhood in one short story.  "The Reluctant Dragon" is one of the most famous stories of all time, and certainly worth reading.  Filled with dry humour and life lessons for accepting others as they are, the tale is a story within a story.  Two of the children, our young hero and his youngest sister, follow what they imagine might be dragon tracks in the snow.  It eventually leads them to the garden of a well known local man who works in the circus.  Once he discovers their mission, he offers to walk them back home, as it is now dark and very chilly.  Along the way he is prompted to tell a story, and out comes the tale of the reluctant dragon.  A beautiful package, indeed.  The final story of the set is the best of them all.  "A Departure" is the story of how the children parted with their toys once they had officially, though not emotionally, out grown them.  As they are packaged up to be delivered to a sick children's hospital, the two youngest, observed by the eldest, undertake to save at least a few of the precious and once-loved toys and give them immortality.  Very touching and moving if read by anyone that had well loved toys as a child.  Like the previous Golden Age stories, this set is indispensable reading.

 

One of ten plates included in my Kindle Delphi Classics edition of Dream Days.

The Man In The Moon watches as the children say good bye to a few of their old toys.
 

 

 

I finished up the month with a detective story by Anna Katherine Green.  XYZ--A Detective Story is a very readable novella about a detective hunting down a gang of counterfeiters, but inadvertently getting mixed up in another crime instead.  From 1883, the story involves a father estranged from one of his sons, and the efforts the other brother and a sister make to reunite the family.  When the father is murdered, however, the detective,thanks to several mix ups and misunderstandings, is right on the scene, and it doesn't take him long to collar the criminal.  Easy to read and quite a fun story.

 

Mapman Mike 

 

 

 

January Books Read

January was a good month for reading.  Cold weather will do that for one.  In addition to the 5 books by Avon/Equinox authors, I managed to finish 8 others.

 

First published in 2001 as a three part story in Asimov SF Magazine, Robert Silverberg's The Longest Way Home is the story of a young teenage boy growing up the hard way.  Joseph is the 15 year old eldest son of a Master, on a planet where two waves of humans have usurped the planet from the native inhabitants.  The first wave was mostly simple farmers, and they were struggling when the ruling class came and took over, making things work.  But Joseph, visiting a distant House in the far north, gets caught up in a serious rebellion.  He makes his escape with the help of a servant, and then is basically on his own, marching south to his home at least ten thousand miles away.  On his journey, several times in which he nearly dies of starvation, he encounters allies where least expected.  His journey is a harrowing one, to say the least.  Brought up with a pampered existence, as the eldest son it will be his job to take over his father's great House someday, and manage it.

Essentially aimed at high school aged boys (sorry, girls, yet again), the story is very simple and never very deep.  Boy walks and walks, encounters obstacles, and somehow gets through them.  At least the story is relatively short, and seldom challenges the reader's credulity.  From what Joseph learns along the way, by the end of the story we expect him to be a far better Master than he would have without his journey.  Quite a good story, but far from exceptional.  It almost sounds as if Silverberg took a very old idea from his pulp days and did his best to update it for modern readers.

 

Next comes the 223 page (original 1977 edition) conclusion to Bulmer's Krozair trilogy, in which Dray Prescott loses, then finally regains, his status as a Krozair warrior.  Krozair of Kregen again shows that Dray doesn't take much interest in poetry, art, or music.  He is a savage killing machine, and not much else.  The first part of the book sees Dray yet again serving as an oar slave aboard a Grondin ship.  It takes time, but he finally escapes with the help of several slave companions.  They become pirates for a while, before splitting up and going their own way.  Dray has a score to settle with a certain king who murdered his daughter at the end of the last book.  He ends up defending a besieged city, but not before encountering a monster from the depths, something directly borrowed from H P Lovecraft (see original cover painting to the 1977 edition, below).  Though he rescues a maiden from her doom at the hands of the monster, she more or less disappears from the story immediately afterwards.

Once on land, the remainder of the story deals with the defence of the city where he has chosen to meet the bad king.  In his usual bold manner, Dray takes the bull by the horns, storming into the enemy camp in disguise, capturing the king, and flying away with him.  Since Dray has been hounded (mistakenly, of course) from the membership in the elite warrior class, his three sons have taken to being shamed by him, and they in turn speak words of hatred about him.  None of them recognize Dray as their father, and there is a very funny scene at the end when they finally come to realize that their "cowardly" father is the brave man they have been fighting with all along.  He is reunited with Delia, his wife, his status as a Krozair is reinstated, and they live happily ever after.  Until Book 15.  A good entry in the series, if readers can get past him being a slave for a time, yet again.

 

Cover art by Josh Kirby.  

Originally published in 1955 as "Men of the Long Rifle," The Pathfinders  is not a traditional western novel.  Lasting only 13 chapters and about 120 pages, there are no cowboys here.  The time is 1830.  The East has been settled and civilized, and things are just starting to move towards the northwest.  There are Indians, and some of them are hostile.  There are scattered frontier forts and trading posts, but not much else.  Ben is a mountain man who meets up with young Dan, running from the corrupt law of a small town where he and his mother are farmers.  They are hired to lead a small expedition from the plains over the mountains, as the search is on for good wagon routes west.

According to Tubb, mountain men are real men, not like those sissy farmers that eat vegetables and wheat and stuff like that.  Real men eat meat, often raw, and nothing else.  Hmm.  Wonder how they avoided scurvy.  Imagine going an entire winter and not eating anything but meat.  And real men will kill a man first if needed, and ask questions later.  Talking only makes things worse.  Hmm again.

Anyway, the basic story is a good one, and it's fun to read a novel about the time before cattle, pony soldiers, and any kind of well travelled trail.  Most travel was done by river in barges, rafts, and canoes.  Only the mountain men ventured much beyond the rivers, trapping and trading to make their way in the world

There is a lot to mull in this book.  With the urge to settle in the west growing, was there a different way of handling things then the way it was done?  A British/Canadian captain near the end does suggest a different way, the way it was done in the north.  In the end, though, Canadian Indians did not fare much better than their American cousins.  The whole thing turned into a disaster, not only for the Indians, but also for the wildlife and vegetation.  Cattle grazing (over grazing, to be precise) has decimated western lands to this day.  One could make a list a mile long to see what went wrong.  Today, we face newer problems, as people from less fortunate areas of the world try to press their way into safer and more prosperous areas.  While they cannot be blamed for wanting a safer and more prosperous life, the strain upon resources, both human and natural, goes on and on.  The planet must be getting tired by now.  And still we ask more from it.

 

From 1981 comes Michael Moorcock's 1981 epic novel Byzantium Endures, the first book of a most promising series.  My hardcover edition runs 373 pages, with large pages and small printing.  The very best books that deal with historical events are sometimes not the ones that deal with overall views and after-the-fact analysis; sometimes the best books about history are from the 'man on the ground,' so to speak.  Biographies are often useful in learning about certain places at certain times, as are autobiographies.  What Moorcock has achieved with his fictional "Colonel Pyat" character is to perhaps invent a new kind of historical fiction.  Born in Kyiv in 1900, this first book follows the young boy through one of Russia's darkest times, up to about 1920.  He lives through the Great War, the Revolution, and the Russian Civil War before finally fleeing from Odessa to Constantinople at the end of this first book.

By confining his hero to Russia and Ukraine in the first volume, readers are able to digest a lot of history as it happened.  Despite being a fictional autobiography, the events depicted were real, though of course not all the details.  Pyat is an engineer, interested in all things mechanical and modern.  He grows up in Kyiv, moves to Odessa on the Black Sea to live with an uncle for a time, who then sends him to a school in Petersburg to gain an engineering degree.  Of course the war interferes with plans, and he is never able to gain his piece of paper, though he does pass his exams with flying colours.  Back to Kyiv, and then, through a very long sequence of mostly bad events, makes his way again to Odessa.

The character of Mrs. Cornelius (to be Jerry's mother in a different series of book) becomes a veritable guardian angel to the young Pyat.  She is a truly inspired creation, and totally unique in the history of literature.  Readers will either love her or hate her; this reader loves her.  The present story is told by a very old Pyat, who operated an antique shop in Portobello Road in London until his death.  He and Mrs. Cornelius remained good friends all their lives, and we can look forward to more of their adventures and meetings in the next three volumes.

I learned more about early 20th C Russia and Ukraine from reading this book then anything else I have ever read throughout my life.  It is a time of great darkness, despair, cruelty, extreme hardship, and, to put it most simply, a time of complete chaos.  I finally understand what makes a Russian tick, as well as that of a Ukraine citizen.  This is a very fascinating book, one of the best historical fictions I have ever read.  Highly recommended.

 

Boston Avenger is a direct continuation from Burt Wullf's San Francisco adventure, the 3rd book in a long series about a lone wolf crime fighter trying to take on the drug lords of America.  This time the mayhem he causes happens to be in Boston.  A good story, this 155 page novel is from 1973, as Malzberg cranks them out but maintains a unique style and definite narrative flow.  Wulff is only able to accomplish what he does through his belief that he is a dead man anyway, so taking huge risks is never a problem if there is a chance they might come off.  One of the more riskier tricks he pulls off is to retrieve a briefcase filled with heroin from a convoy of four police cars on their way to the downtown station with a suspect in custody.  The entire action scene is a complete movie setup.  We have seen so many police chases in movies that it's not difficult to visualize this madcap adventure, which, however, ends quite differently than a movie chase.  This ends up being one of the better parts of the book, and does convince us at last that Wulff is a madman after all.  Lots of killing and shooting, it runs along similar lines to many Samurai and gangster films.  A good addition to the extended book series.  At the end of the book Wulff is on his way back to New York, possibly to look for his girlfriend's murderer.  Stay tuned for more adventure. 

 

The first book read this month not related to Avon/Equinox authors was called Castle Crespin, a medieval adventure story taking place around in France in 1225.  Francis of Assisi has began influencing religious monks, and two of them are featured in this tragic tale.  Written in 1982 by Allen Andrews, it also features talking animals.  Oddly enough the two monks cannot understand them, but the girl Adele can.  Aside from talking animals, this well written story tells of the evil perpetrated by a rogue knight, a traditional all round bad guy, when he stops to visit a local castle.  Though he gets it in the end, as all bad guys should in a good story, he takes a lot of good folk, human and animal, down with him.  

The story begins with a fox getting what he can from a farmer's poultry collection, driving the man nearly mad in his outrageous attempts at killing it.  We gradually meet other animals and people, quite a few, actually, in a well thought out exposition.  The story builds nicely to a major and devastating violent climax.  There may be talking animals, but this does not seem in any way to be a children's book.  There is a good deal of humour as some of the animals complain of the things Nature has them do to keep their species populations vibrant and growing.  Wolves, bears, rabbits, boars, birds of prey, a hunting beagle and the fox make a worthy team against the evil knight and his minions.  

This is the second such book by this author.  Deb found this book in a London charity shop, and paid 50p for the hardcover edition, complete with full colour dust jacket.  A good bargain indeed.

Jacket art by Martin White. 

 

Next came some poetry by Edgar Allen Poe.  I don't exactly have a love affair with 19th C poetry.  I read four collections of Poe's.  The first three (very early) left me glassy eyed.  His earliest collection was published when he was 19, which might explain a lot.  He was heavily inspired by Byron.  Tamerlane and Other Poems came out in 1827.  Tamerlane is an epic poem about the dying conqueror.  It would end up being republished and revised for the next two collections as well.  In 1829 came the publication of Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Other Minor Poems.  Tamerlane is shorter now, and considerably more readable.  Al Aaraaf is Poe's longest poem, inspired by a 1572 supernova.  The star supposedly lies between heaven and hell.  In this purgatory there is no punishment, and also no fulfillment.  To this reader it seems unintelligible.  Both Tamerlane and Al Aaraaf are reprinted again in 1831, in Poems.  Even the revision does not help me with Al Aaraaf, but Tamerlane has once again been improved.

In 1845 came The Raven and Other Poems.  Now we are getting somewhere!  Poe was paid $9 for the original publication of what has literally become the world's most popular poem.  He worked hard at it, and it certainly is a great little piece of writing.  My Delphi Classics Kindle edition comes with three illustrations, two of them by Dore.  Also included in the collection is Lenore, The Conqueror Worm, and Eulalie.  The latter is mentioned in case a reader should come to the conclusion that all of Poe's works are about death.  Left for next time are many uncollected poems.  The above are the ones that were published in actual volumes during his lifetime.

Gustav Dore's illustration to Poe's The Raven. 

 

Arthur Ransome is a new addition to my collection of Delphi Classics complete works.  I will begin with his lone solo non-children's novel from 1915 called The Elixir of Life.  Written in St. Petersburg when the author was a war correspondent, the story concerns a young man who becomes involved with an evil man who kills people to continue living longer.  The events take place in 1716, and are retold 20 years later.  The book has a promising beginning, and the ending at least brings a fitting conclusion to the story.  But beware all those pages in between.  Ransome obviously read his Poe and especially Lovecraft.  By saying that his book is at least as good as some of Lovecraft's writing is not necessarily a compliment, as for the most part Lovecraft was a man with some fun ideas, but he was quite a terrible writer.  Ransome's novel suffers from lack of originality, as there are no ideas here new to 1915.  It also causes its readers to suffer from boredom, as nothing much happens in the story, and everything important takes place in one location, a large house with a rose garden.  In addition, the young hero is actually quite stupid.  Of the five main characters, three of them end up dead, as well as some horses and villagers.  The elixir itself is a preposterous concoction that seems to know when someone has been killed, thus strengthening it mysteriously and magically.  It is not very sophisticated thinking for a 1915 reading audience.  Needless to say the book met with virtual silence upon publication.  I am looking forward to his S & A books next time around.

P. G. Wodehouse's earliest novels are his so called School Stories Books.  This past month I read the second in that series, called A Prefect's Uncle, published in 1903.  It is a mere trifle of a book, barely amusing, and 90% of its content has to do with cricket.  It's another book for boys in boarding school, who it seems must love sports or die of nothing else to do.

Moving on.  The Dragon in Shallow Waters is Vita Sackville-West's 2nd novel, from 1920.  It's a bit of a gut wrenching story centred on two brothers in a dingy and poor factory town in Lincolnshire.  Silas Dene is blind, and very very angry about it.  Gregory is deaf and dumb.  Silas murders his own wife, then tricks Gregory into believing that his wife is cheating on him.  Nan is Gregory's wife, and she is caught between the two brothers, who live in attached but separate cottages.  Silas is the main focus of the novel, his outrageous outlook on life affecting nearly everyone in the village.  Most people stay clear of the Denes.  Nan is bullied mercilessly by both brothers, finally finding words that give her a weapon to use against Silas.  His long hoped for downfall is well written, and well deserved.  Like most evil characters, Silas is rather unforgettable.  However, he does finally do a good deed for Nan before his final fall.  He ends up saving her from a fate worse than death (staying married to his brother).  Coming from Silas, that is a rather good deed.  A very strange tale, but it has  its rewards.

The Philanderer is a play by Shaw from 1893.  However, due to censorship issues it was not produced until 1902.  It is the first of his early plays that reveals his wit, as we recognize the writer that he was to become.  There are several very funny scenes in the play, which is in four acts and is still occasionally mounted on the stage today.  Shaw deals well for his time with the women's movement, as he shows us characters (fathers and daughters) who are caught between the old world view of what a woman is and should be, and what the modern world now demands of the fairer sex.  The young philanderer himself, however, doesn't seem to be affected by any changes around him, and seems destined for bachelorhood.  A very readable play, and it would be fun to see a live production.

Carson Mccullers wrote her first novel at the age of 23.  Born in the southern US, her writing is imbued with hot, sultry days and nights, and characters so real that they seem to leap off the page into one's room while reading.  The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter is from 1940, with the title being suggested by her editor, from a poem, The Lonely Hunter, by Scottish poet William Sharp (as Fiona MacLeod).  The working title for the novel was The Mute.  This novel has probably had a lot of essays and reviews written about it, and for good reason.  It is a fantastic novel.  After so much reading and film watching, this writer can only conclude that the best fiction tells simple stories about average people.  Life and people can be very complicated, so it takes a very special talent to be able to simplify things enough for readers or film viewers to understand exactly what is happening to a character, why it is happening, and where things are likely headed for this individual.  Though there is a very good film version of the story, the book is far superior.

The main character in this novel is Mr. Singer, an intelligent deaf mute who works in a jewellery shop in a small southern US city, repairing watches and clocks, as well as doing beautiful engraving.  Mr. Singers best friend is also a deaf mute.  He and Antonapoulos share a room together, and though the latter character is a simpleton who loves food more than anything else, the two get along really well.  They both talk with their fingers, but Singer does most of the talking, pouring out his thoughts to his friend, who really doesn't listen and usually doesn't really care.  But at least Singer has someone with whom to talk.  It is this theme that is most prevalent in the novel--having a listening ear when you need to talk.  Singer ends up, after Antonapoulus is sent to a care home for causing his uncle a lot of trouble in town, being the person who has to listen to everyone in town who needs an ear for their thoughts.  He can lip read, though he does miss a lot of context.  But after many repetitions, he is able to get the drift.  But like his friend, he doesn't really have much interest in what people tell him.

 

Dr. Copeland, a Black medical doctor, often turns to Singer.  He is the only white person the doctor has ever met that seems to understand his people and the causes the doctor is trying to undertake on their behalf.  Likewise, an alcoholic drifter by the name of Jake Blount finds that Singer is a good friend who listens and understands what he is trying to achieve.  Blount is a Marxist and tries to bring about change in the attitudes of poorly paid and overworked cotton mill employees in town.

 

The most tragic character of all is Mick Kelly, a 13 year old girl who lives in the house where Singer boards.  She, by far, is the book's most interesting character.  She lives and dreams of becoming a musician and composer and conductor.  Her limited experiences with hearing classical music are among the greatest writing on the topic one could imagine.  After watching the filmed version of the book, it was her character more than anything else that eventually drew me to read the novel.  There are some obvious autobiographical elements to her character, as the author herself wanted to become a concert pianist.  Those plans ended when she lost her tuition money somewhere in the New York subway.  Likewise, it is financial matters that keep Mick from ever hoping to achieve her goals.  Her family is dirt poor, and she eventually, at age 14, has to take a job at Woolworths and drop out of school.  Poverty is another huge theme that runs throughout the novel, in addition to loneliness.  American poverty, especially in the deep south, is second to none anywhere else in the world.

There are other themes and many other characters, and the author treats them all in enough detail to make them live for readers.  The town and the people in it become very real, even after a few chapters.  By the end of the novel we feel that we have lived among these people, blacks and whites.  Many black critics have said that McCullers completely gets the Black experience and is able to write about Black characters better than any other white writer.  The short climax hits the reader like a sledgehammer, and with no warning.  Loneliness, frustrated ambition, poverty, and doing what one must do might sound like a rather bleak read.  It isn't.  This is one of the finest novels I have ever read, and I highly recommend it to one and all.

Lastly, I finally finished The Seventy Wonders of the Ancient World: The Great Monuments and How They Were Built.  A Thames and Hudson book from 1999, edited by Chris Scarre, I bought this on a journey to London many years ago. This is my second reading.  With 333 illustrations, 140 in colour, the book also has plenty of text.  The 70 chapters are grouped as follows: The Seven Wonders; Tombs and Cemeteries; Temples and Shrines; Palaces, Baths & Arenas; Fortifications; Harbours, Hydraulics & Roads; and Colossal Statues & Monoliths.  Though most of the amcient works are centred on Mediterranean countries, there are still plenty elsewhere spread across the globe.  We have visited the three sites discussed in the US, and 2 of the 4 in Mexico.  That's about it for us.  A trip to Rome would add a lot to our list, so it might just happen.

A multi-month reading project was finally completed. 

 

Mapman Mike