30. Would save if my house burned down.

Well, there goes my secret First Folio. Kidding aside, I think I'd go for a novel my second teacher ever presented to me when I had finished primary school. We had been his first class, and he gave everyone a book as a farewell present, not the same, but a different book for each student, depending on her or his taste, with an individual dedication written by him. I received "Up a road slowly" by Irene Hunt, and here is what I remember about it, not having read it since three decades: the heroine is a loner in love with books and wanting to become a writer. She has a terse relationship with her aunt whom she grows up with after her parents died, originally rejecting her as an humorless spinster, and the reader along with our heroine discovers step by step how fabulous the aunt (named Cordelia) really is. Another interesting relationship is with her uncle (the aunt's brother, not her husband), who is a bit of a slightly more functional Branwell Bronte type (expected to be the brilliant one of the family, overindulged, turns into self destructive alcoholic), who decdes that our heroine is his shot at redemption at some point.

There are also some love interests about, but I don't remember anything about them. Anyway, I loved the book, appreciated that my teacher had picked it for me (the indicated age range on the back was five years older than I was, but Mr. U. knew what else I was reading at that point), and would definitely grab it on my hypothetical way out of a burning house.



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27. Want to be one of the characters.

I don’t think I ever had that particular urge, not with books, nor with tv shows or movies. Not least because I read a lot of historical novels, and goodness but no. Especially not as a woman. Nor as a privileged man. Thanks, but no thanks; precisely because history is my big passion.

But I haven’t wanted to be a character in contemporary or near contemporary fiction, either, nor in fantasy and sci fi books. Look, even being a Hobbit who doesn’t leave the Shire means you’ll have to deal with the Scouring at some point. Well, I suppose Bilbo had a pretty good life – decades of comfort and books followed by adventure followed by decades of comfort (now shared by young Frodo) and books and just the occasional disquieting sensation caused by the Ring, followed by retirement in Rivendell (gorgeous architecture, more comfort and yet more books and music), and then an ending in the West with Frodo and the Elves. But I wouldn’t have wanted to be Bilbo, either. No way I’d have wanted to wait for decades to follow my inner wanderlust. And I really dislike smoking. In conclusion: no book alter ego for me!


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25. Never finished it.

The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann. In my defense, I was a teenager who had only just started to learn French, so the fact alone that various characters have untranslated dialogues in it for what I recall as entire pages (maybe my memory is exaggarating?) alone would have put me off. But I also thought the characters were boring, and the plot non-existent. Considering I was under no obligation to read the book, which I had found in my great aunt's library, I put it back and moved on to the next book, the next book being, as far as I know, an Hungarian novel about Liszt.

In later years, I read other texts by Thomas Mann, but I never tackled The Magic Mountain again. Sorry, Tommy. But I've always liked your older brother better anyway.

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There is a fantastic new MCU vid, Lions Inside, which also uses the most recent movies, Black Panther, Thor: Ragnarök and Infinity War:



Now, on to the book meme:

21. Summer Read

Why not try the first of the Order of the Air novels by Jo Graham and Melissa Scott, Lost Things? For me, each of them are a great summer read, but it does make sense to read them in chronological order. The 1920s, aviation, archaelogy, adventures of the "normal" and of the supernatural type, and an endearing ensemble of characters who make a found family/team that's still in the getting-together stage at this point.

22. Out of Print.

Guy Endore: The King of Paris. (At least Amazon here tells me it's out of print?) Which is a novel about two of the three Alexandre Dumas, though the first one, the general, gets the three opening chapters before finding his early and sad demise. The two Alexandres at the core of the novel are Mr. Historical Swashbuckler, the author of The Count of Monte Christo and The Three Musketeers, and his larger-than-life personality comes across vividly in the novel, and his son of Lady of the Camelies (aka La Traviata) fame. You could call it a comedy and a tragedy at the same time, immensely entertaining and yet also very aware indeed of the flaws as flaws. Considering the more recent biography of the first Alexandre, the general (son of a black slave and her white French owner) , might have reawakened interest in the Dumas family, I hope it will be republished at some point. If not - check out your local library!

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19. Still can't stop talking about it.

The Matthew Shardlake series by C.J. Sansom, the so far last installment of which I reviewed here. Among my favourite historical mysteries. It captures the way Tudor England was experienced by the general population in a way hardly any other does (since the others tend to focus on royalty and/or some top courtiers), the ever present paranoia, how today’s dogma could be tomorrow’s heresy and vice versa, how deeply all relationships (friendships, family) etc. were split and affected as well. Our detective, lawyer Matthew Shardlake (and you learn a lot about the low in Tudor times as well in these books), makes for a sympathetic main character, the regular cast of characters that keeps returning in the novels is built up with care and fleshed out, the portraits of the historically famous, when they show up, are believable, and Sansom manages to keep even (most of) the villains he dislikes human. By which I don’t mean that their actions are excused, but that there are moments of pity for many of them.

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17. Future classic.

The Raphsody of Blood series by Roz Kaveney. To steal the description I gave in one of my previous reviews of it: this is a brilliant series of fantasy novels with a cast almost exclusively consisting of LGTB characters, which somehow manages to walk the tightrope between mythic/epic and intimate/modern. There are two distinct narrative threads through the entire story: one set in present day, told in third person, with Emma Jones and her girlfriend and partner Caroline as the main characters, as they become embroiled in supernatural shenanigans ranging from having to play bodyguard at an annoying elf/vampire wedding to full scale battles between deities and master the challenge with an ongoing refusal to be impressed and a tendency to quip, not to mention compassion for the victims of all these events. (Of whom Caroline is one; she dies at the start and is a ghost from then onwards. This makes her love life with Emma somewhat tricky, but not impossible.)

The other narrative thread is told in first person by Mara, aka the Huntress, and moves through the millennia, not in chronological but in thematic order. Mara, as opposed to Emma and Caroline, doesn't have much of a sense of humor, but what she has is dedication to one specific goal: hunting down and making short work of any being who made themselves into a deity by using "the rituals", blood sacrifices, and protecting the people suffering from the fallout, but note she's called "Huntress" not "Protector". Quite how the two narrative threads are intertwined (beyond the fact that at the start of the saga, Mara shows up in the present a bit too late to save Caroline, dispatches the entity who killed her, kisses a distinctly unimpressed Emma and disappears again) becomes more and more clear as the story goes on, and here we get into the trickiness of spoiler territory and not wanting to ruin the careful build up. I'll try my best.

Mara is such a force of nature that one of the most impressive feats is that our author manages to keep her sections suspenseful because she's more or less undefeatable in combat. But she can be tricked and incapacitated (something Robespierre manages in volume 2, for example), she can make errors of judgment (happens several times, with the most long term consequences happening in vol.1. and vol.3.), and above all, the people she cares for through the millennia are vulnerable. Moreover, some of the opponents the story gives her are truly impressive (every hero needs some good villains), and the friends she makes very endearing, so one desperately fears for them and is incredibly relieved about those who end up well (not all do).
In conclusion: read it now, be able to say you were a reader of the first hour later!


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15. Favorite fictional father.

Ah, literary Dads. (It says "fictional", but this is a book meme, and thus all tv and movie only fathers are excluded.) My problem here is that I'm not sure at what, exactly, the question is aiming at. Because I can think of several characters I like a lot whose being parents is an important part of their characterisation, yet who are plainly terrible at fatherhood. And I have a feeling the question is going for beloved fathers who actually are good for their offspring.Or maybe not. So I shall try to provide answers for all criteria.

A sidenote first: I read To Kill A Mockingbird too late in life to have imprinted on the book. I mention this because I have the feeling Atticus Finch gets named a lot as a candidate for being both a good father and a memorable character (not a common combination in books). It probably says something about me that it took the Go Set A Watchman, the raw sequel/prequel, to make me somewhat interested in that particular father-daughter relationship.

On to my candidates: First, terrible fathers who nonetheless are favorite characters: ( Spoilers for American Gods the novel ensue )

Fathers who are doing their best at being a father but can be failboats as a person anyway: I'm stretching the definition of "fictional" here, but Theodor Fontane's version of his father Louis in Meine Kinderjahre is just my favorite for this. (Also, it's the original for a great many Fontane characters.) Now Fontane, aka one of the justly most famous German late 19th century novelists, is regarded as THE fictional chronicler of Prussian society. And yet his portrait of father Henri Louis Fontane is absolutely anti-cliché when it comes to the popuplar image of Prussian fathers. Louis is charming, loving, a fun parent, and his gift for gab - he's a raconteur , as his contemporaries who lived when German had far more French words, put it - is obviously one that passed to his son Theo. When Louis has to do the expected fatherly thing of importing moral lessons (tm), he'll tell you an anecdote about Napoleon and his marshals instead because he thinks these are more fun. (His favourite was Ney, amenirdis.) At a party, he has no problem making deliberately a fool out of himself as long as it ensures boredom doesn't set in. He's also an incorrigible gambler, which means he loses the pharmacies he has (he's an apothocary by profession), one after the other, and it destroys the relationship with his wife who also hates that she has to be the stern, punishment dealing out parent to Louis' fun parent. (Something adult Theo understands but child Theo didn't.) Said wife is the one who has to cope with the worries of what will happen with the kids after yet another bankruptcy, because she can't share the "something will come up" optimism, and is cast as the joykiller by the kids for her trouble. (Irony of fate: Theodor Fontane to some degree replicated this dynamic in his own marriage - not by gambling, but by deciding to become a full time professional writer. Which in the late 19th century was no safer economic choice than it is today.) Anyway, the portrait of his father is drawn with much affection but also with the clarity of hindsight, and said father certainly is one of the most memorable and compelling Fontane characters, and a personal favorite of mine. (Footnote: if you're wondering about the French names, both of Fontane's parents were descendants of French Huguenots who emigrated to Prussia after Louis XIV had revoked the edict of Nantes.)

Fathers who are good fathers and good people: here my favourite is a father figure, not a father. It's Meister Eder from the German children's novel (and radio play, and tv) series Meister Eder und sein Pumuckl by Ellis Kaut. (This series actually started as radio plays, then she wrote the novels, then eventually it was filmed.) Eder is a carpenter living in Munich and at the start of the story a goblin becomes stuck in his workshop by accident, and thus visible to Eder. This is Pumuckl, the red-headed guy from my icon. By goblin law, Pumuckl now has to stay with Eder, and essentially is an unruly, anarchic child to Eder's kind but set-in-his-ways dad. The charm of the novels lies in them adjusting to each other and complimenting each other in their very opposite natures. Eder, most memorably played and voiced by Gustl Bayrhammer, is a Munich craftsman fond of his beer and his quiet life and yet despite himself absolutely charmed by having this bit of magic in his life; he also makes even Bavarian-despising North Germans like at least this particular Bavarian. (Ellis Kaut herself was literarly a Münchner Kindl, a child of Munich.) Getting adopted by Meister Eder: definitely a dream fate for a great many German kids through the generations.

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13. Makes me laugh.

Her Majesty's Will by David Blixt, which I have reviewed here. As I said, hands down one of the most enjoyable books I've ever read, in which young Shakespeare inadvertendly gets entangled in a (historical) spy plot, flirts with Kit Marlowe (textually, no subtext about it) and the author includes even a few neat put-downs to Oxfordians while he's at it. It's a glorious and very funny romp of an Elizabethan adventure.


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10. Reminds me of someone I love.

I had a younger brother who died when he was 16. We were in some regards quite different, including books - I was always trying to get him to read, with tactics including reading books he liked and stopping at a cliffhanger, for example. And in the year he died, he discovered for the first time books on his own, which I hadn't read first, and which he loved and wanted to share with me, instead of the other way around. Since he'd also just discovered fantasy role playing, these books were the Dragonlance Chronicles by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman. This is why I can't think of them objectively; I can't not associate them with him, and his excited "you must read these" ramble.

11. Secondhand bookshop gem.

Robert A. Caro's The Years of Lyndon Johnson volumes had been recced to me as some of the best political biographies ever by various sources. Each volume weighs a ton, but it just so happened that one of the two English language bookstores in Munich, the one only offering second hand books, had the set pretty cheaply. They were as great as advertised.



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Had a frightfully busy last two days, which is how I feel behind on the book meme. On the bright side, being on my feet all of Saturday meant I didn't gnaw on my fingers waiting for the ssrconfidential collection to be opened. ;) Which it now is! 42 new Agent Carter stories (or vids, or icons) await you here! Enjoy. I'm certainly planning to. The story I received as a gift was this one:



A New Arrangement (3539 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Agent Carter (TV)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Ana Jarvis/Edwin Jarvis, Edwin Jarvis & Howard Stark, Ana Jarvis & Howard Stark
Characters: Ana Jarvis, Edwin Jarvis, Howard Stark
Additional Tags: Pre-Canon, World War II, Canon Jewish Character, Female Jewish Character, Marriage
Summary:

Edwin and Ana love each other, and they're grateful to Mr. Stark. But there are still a lot of details to figure out in their new life.

It's a lovely take on the early days of these three living together, and I'm pleased as punch about my present. On to the book meme:

7. Forgot I owned it

Christopher Clark: The Sleepwalkers. This is no reflection on the book, which I still haven't read - I got it as a Christmas present some years ago and forgot to take it with me when I went back to Munich from Bamberg after the New Year. Then, my father borrowed it and forgot to put it back in my room. And then it fell out of my mind that I had it by the next time I visited my hometown. I was reminded only during a recent visit.

8. Have more than one copy.

A lot of classics which I needed during my university days, from Ovid to Feuchtwanger, whom I wrote my thesis about. I have cheap paperback editions full of markers and broken spines, and I have more solid editions to read for pleasure.


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