what to read in europe

I had a great weekend, with lots of apartment improvements, and a great tour of Fenway Park. I'll share the apartment updates later, when the place is cleaned up enough to take pictures.

For now I have a different kind of post. I read so many great books while in Europe I thought I would share. I found overwhelmingly that reading books set in the place you were traveling truly made the experience that much more fulfilling. 

The first book I read, Lord of the Flies, by William Golding, did not follow this logic. I read it in Sardinia, and while it was a very interesting read, I found it to be distracting from my overall experience. I recommend reading this disturbing comment on the animal character of human nature during a rainy day at home.

The next book I read was one of two Hemingway novels completed during the trip. This posthumously published unfinished novel, The Garden of Eden was loaned to me from a  friend in Chicago, and when I read the back I was not looking forward to it. A man caught between passion for is eccentric wife, and the love of a woman who his wife has also fallen in love with. Sounds pretty twisted. But it was a great book, with interesting relationships and perspectives on the writing process. The best part for me was the continual traveling thorough Europe. Hemingway is so good at capturing that feeling; driving from town to town, sitting at a local cafe enjoying the spectacular food and drink. Even though it was set in the coastal regions of France and Spain, it seemed to really elevate my experience in Cinque Terre. 

The third book, Marie Antoinette: The Journey, by Antonia Fraser, was another great setting book. This fairly dense biography taught me a great deal about the French Revolution, late 18th century French culture, and made my visit to Versailles and Paris like a Marie Antoinette pilgrimage. And considering I read it over Bastille Day, it was very relevant. 

Then I read The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini. Again, not fitting for the European experience, but a quick and entertaining read. 

Finally I read A Moveable Feast. This was a book I picked up at the Shakespeare and Company bookstore in Paris. I had wanted to read another Hemingway book, and when  flipping through it at this quaint english store, I saw pictures in the back of the book of the very place I was standing. Apparently when Hemingway was living in Paris he frequented this bookstore, as well as many other expatriate writers. So naturally I bought it, had it stamped by the store, and felt very cool. The book was short essays about his time on Paris and his experience with the city and the writers living there. Such a a wonderful book to read in the city of lights. Paris seemed very much unchanged in many ways from when Hemingway lived there, and you could just sink into a cafe and be there with him. I loved it and would recommend it to anyone. Hemingway is so good at those simple yet powerful one liners. 

Happy reading!

Great Plains by Ian Frazier

I finished this book this morning, and was so sad it was done. It begins,

"Away to the Great Plains of America, to that immense Western short-grass prairie now mostly plowed under! Away to the still empty land beyond newsstands and malls and velvet restaurant ropes! Away to the headwaters of Missouri, now quelled by many impoundment dams, and to the headwaters of the Platte, and to the almost invisible headwaters of the slurped-up Arkansas!... Away to the skies of sparrow hawks sitting on telephone wires, thinking of mice and flaring their tail feathers suddenly like a card trick! Away to the air shaft of the continent, where weather fronts from two hemispheres meet, and the wind blows almost all the time! Away to the fields of wheat and milo and sudan grass and flax and alfalfa and nothing! Away to Montana and North Dakota and Wyoming and Nebraska and Kansas and Colorado and New Mexico and Oklahoma and Texas!"

This is a book by a writer that lived in Montana for a bit and drove around the great plains. He mixes anecdotes with a lot of history to give a picture of this place. The plains are so dry and holds so little that when things come, they leave an imprint. The plains hold dinosaur fossils, shark teeth and prehistoric fish bones, tracks from buffalo, the Oregon Trail, and Native American camps. Abandoned homes from the 30s still stand as if untouched. Booming towns are now small, but each has a museum from their rich history. They seem to remember Sitting Bull, Billy the Kid, Bonnie and Clyde, or the In Cold Blood killers like they had just left. It makes me want to drive and be in that history. It makes me mourn the loss of the Native Americans, single family farms, open un-owned land, and the promise of adventure. But the expanse there is so large, you can still go and stand under an unobstructed sky, and imagine nothing has changed.

In telling the history and the present of the Great Plains, it seems the reader really gets to know them. Wouldn't it be wonderful to come across a home left in the middle of the Dust Bowl, preserved as if left last month? The book was nostalgic and informative, and I definitely recommend it.

I have been missing my kitty Laney. She is a house guest of my friend Courtney for the summer and has made a new friend, cat Wellington. I miss her greetings at the door, and her little trills (she has a girly meow). I've been told that while she does get along with Wellington, she guards her favorite toy with her life and brings it along with her wherever she goes. What a great cat. She has been with me for a long time. Even lived with me in my garden level studio, not unlike the one I'm in now. If I were sitting like Edward Gorey was (below) among my books and kitty, I would be pretty happy. Well, I guess I am pretty happy. But I still miss my kitty. 

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

I finished the book The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath a few days ago and I'm really glad I did. 

I read a review of the book recently by a chick who gave it 2 of 5 stars because the story was depressing. She said it was bad because it had no happy ending. First of all... are you serious? Some of the best literature I've read lacks that sunshine happy ending. And I would argue that the end was positive. The bell jar was lifted. It may descend at any time but, for someone that struggles with mental illness, this is a happy ending. 

It interested me for a few reasons, beyond the quality of the prose. First, I felt like I could relate to Esther. This concerned me for obvious reasons. She went crazy. But in the beginning, the way she drew herself away from the world and felt separated. I think we all feel that way sometimes. We all have a little craziness in us. I felt this way much more a few years ago. My freshman and sophomore year were very difficult for me. I did draw away a lot. I understood Esther I think.

The book also served the purpose of making me very interested in Sylvia. I know the novel wasn't completely biographical, but I read it that way. Now I want to know so much more about her life. What is it about people who kill themselves that is 

so interesting? I've also always had a fascination with Virginia Wolf partially for this reason. 

Anyways, this has been a bit rambling. But I would recommend The Bell Jar. It's a good read.

from Song of Myself, Walt Whitman

1 I CELEBRATE myself, and sing myself, And what I assume you shall assume, For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

I loafe and invite my soul, I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.

My tongue, every atom of my blood, form'd from this soil, this air, Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their parents the same, I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin, Hoping to cease not till death.

Creeds and schools in abeyance, Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten, I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard, Nature without check with original energy.