LUCY PICK BOOKS

Idea shamelessly stolen from Sarah Eve Kelly. I thought it would fun and maybe even useful to make a list of some of the things I hope to accomplish this summer as a way of keeping myself on track and honest. The original title of this post was ’summer bucket list” but I realized once I was done that most of these things are not bucket list worthy (though some are). I am confining the list to those things over which I have some degree of control…

First are some things that are work related, but don’t feel sorry for me. I actually find working on my own research projects fun (which is why I have the job I have):

Okay, now here are the fun bits:

What are you trying to accomplish?

Just this week I picked up a copy of Dunant’s Sacred Hearts, now out in the United States in paperback. I’ve loved everything else she’s written, and I think I may like this one best of all. To tempt you, here’s an interview with Dunant in Sarah Johnson’s blog, Reading the Past

Stuck in Heathrow/Schiphol/La Guardia/Charles de Gaulle? Finished your Grisham and your George and need some new reading material? I’ve got the perfect selection of novels you can read to while away the time.

My first choice is Margaret Elphinstone’s Hy Brasil. This is one of my favourite novels of all time, and it is the perfect thing to distract you from airport food. The story of Sydney Redruth’s visit as a travel writer under false pretenses to the imaginary island of Hy Brasil, a place that combines elements of Bermuda, Newfoundland, the Faroes, and yes, Iceland, located somewhere in the north Atlantic, it includes pirates (yes), ancient treasure, love, drug smuggling, political corruption, and indeed, a great big erupting volcano. You won’t be able to put it down.

While you’re in the Elphinstone section of the airport bookstore, check out her The Sea Road, a novel about a woman of Iceland who travels with the Vikings to the coast of Newfoundland. Not only will it pass the time, it will give you some ideas about possible alternate routes and methods for crossing the Atlantic while your airplane is stuck on the ground.

If it is more volcanoes you want, I suggest, Dorothy Dunnett’s To Lie with Lions, which has the benefit of still being in print. I won’t give away the plot, except to say that it has a fabulous climax during a fifteenth-century explosion of Mount Hekla, in Iceland. It is the sixth book of an eight book series though, so you’d be best off starting the series with book one, and reading through. Don’t worry. You’ve got time.

After sales in Canada, Italy, and the Netherlands (am I forgetting any?), Alison has cracked the U.S. market. From Publisher’s Marketplace this morning:

Alison Pick’s FAR TO GO, an epic historical novel set during the lead-up to Hitler’s invasion of Czechoslovakia and the fate of one Jewish family, to Claire Wachtel at Harper Perennial, in a good deal, by Barbara Howson at House of Anansi Press.

Can a U.S. book tour be far behind? Here’s hoping for Chicago.

Check it out:

angrychicken.typepad.com

I found this post the usual way by following a link that took me to a link and then to another, but this one stopped me cold.  Dear Reader, I owned almost every single pair of these shoes.  Not the Tretorns.  My sister owned the Tretorns.  But Duck boots? Check.  Jellies? Check?  Penny loafers (no pennies; that’s TTFW), topsiders, espadrilles?  Check, check, check.  I even owned a series of pairs of Dr. Scholl’s.  In fact, I still have the last pair and I wear them at the cottage.  God, I was such a  preppy.

I haven’t felt so bad since I realized my local Whole Foods plays the soundtrack of every high school dance I ever attended every time I shop there.  I’d better stay away from Urban Outfitters or it could get ugly.

My Keds were pink, by the way.  And this is not an Aril Fool’s joke.  I only wish.

My grandfather died twenty-four years ago yesterday.  I sent this to some members of my family this morning, in response to a note my uncle wrote with some memories of his own of his last moments, but I decided I would post it here too.

I remember visiting Gumper and Granny in Florida a month before he died.

I remember him using my visit to go to an all-you-can eat buffet, which Granny deplored as much as she hated the early bird special.  I ate my first (and last) oyster there.

I remember working on my term paper on the stories of Franz Kafka while I was in Florida.  I remember reading “The Judgement” for the first time earlier in the semester and physically shaking at the end, so much I felt it described the relationship of Dad with his father.  I was never able to get the exact feeling back on subsequent rereadings.

I remember making Gumper potato pancakes out of a box because he asked me to.  Shortly after his death, I learned how to make proper latkes from scratch and I never make them but I think of making the ones for Gumper, and wishing I had known then how to make proper ones (but some people, esp. from Poland and maybe northern Bohemia like those pureed kind more than the grated kind, so maybe he would have still preferred the boxed ones).

I remember him talking to me about how bored he was.  When he died, I felt he had been ready because of that conversation.

I remember asking Dad if he wanted me to leave school and come stay with him when Mum and Deed were in the Caribbean.  He told me there was no point; he was at work all day.

I remember Gumper’s funeral, the Czech anthem, Dad asking us to wave and shout goodbye to Gumper as we walked home.  I remember Dad telling us that he had learned something, that there was some secret, but he wasn’t going to tell us yet.  Of course, we never learned what it was.  I remember raspberry squares.  I remember dying easter eggs with Alison and Emily.

I got back a couple of days ago from the annual conference of the Medieval Academy at Yale. I have to admit, it is a conference I usually avoid for a variety of reasons, mostly having to do with an unedifying reverse snobbery. I was persuaded to attend this year by a worthy cause, a session organized to honour my beloved doctoral advisor. “Oh well,” I thought, “It is worth it for that alone and I can spend the rest of the time reading novels and eating fish by the seaside.”

I did eat fish by the seaside (lobster rolls, lobster bisque, and sole in lobster sauce in one memorable meal), but the conference was worth it on so many levels. It was beautifully organized. Conferences, like armies, march on their stomachs and we were exceptionally well treated in that respect. The program was really exciting, and this is not always the case, to put it mildly. So, good for you, Yale.

In Publisher’s Marketplace:

Dutch rights to Alison Pick’s THURSDAY’S CHILD, to Orlando, at auction, by Margaret Halton at Rogers, Coleridge & White, on behalf of Anne McDermid at Anne McDermid & Associates.

Congratulations, Alison!

I’m pointing you outside my blog today, to a post I wrote for the web journal Sightings, published by the Martin Marty Center. As many of you know, I wrote my dissertation and first book on anti-Jewish religious polemic in the Middle Ages, and the way it was used to define Christians and separate them from those with different beliefs. When I read the address Pope Benedict XVI gave at Regensburg on reason and faith in 2006, it upset me greatly because I had the sense he was arguing for a return to twelfth-century modes of inter-religious understanding — or misunderstanding as it might be. But I wasn’t moved to write until a couple of weeks ago, when I read a new address he gave praising one of the architects of this understanding, Peter the Venerable. Here’s the first paragraph, and the link that follows will take you to the full text:

n his general audience in St. Peter’s Square on October 14th, Pope Benedict gave an address in which he held up the twelfth-century monk and abbot of Cluny, Peter the Venerable, as a model for contemporary Christians, lay and monastic, praising him for his ability to balance both contemplative spirituality and the demands and pressures of the world. Peter was an unusual choice. Though the pope associated him with the abbey’s canonized abbots, quoting his papal predecessor Gregory VII that at Cluny, “there was not a single abbot who was not a saint,” Peter in fact was never canonized. Why select him as a model over other Benedictine contemplative administrators, not least Saint Benedict himself, who could provide the same example of tranquility in the face of turmoil? What makes Peter stand out from his brethren at this moment in time?

http://divinity.uchicago.edu/martycenter/publications/sightings/archive_2009/1029.shtml

As promised, here’s a photo of my treasures from the annual Hyde Park used booksale. Missing from the photo are a couple of gifts, but otherwise, they’re all here, 50 books for around $30. Taking a look at my piles, I can see why I have a hard time answering “What’s your favourite genre?” questions. I truly do read a little of everything. But they’re not all mine. Most of the left-hand stack are for my son, especially all the Patrick O’Brians. And the Star Wars. But you knew that.

(Click the photo for a larger view)