Diana Athill recalls her life at age 97

Diana Athill died last week, just when I was getting to know her. By page 3 of Alive, Alive Oh! and Other Things That Matter (Granta 2004), her words on lovers and bluebells and Venetian art had kindled the light of her presence. As she exclaims about reading Boswell, "How extraordinary...that a lot of little black marks on paper can bring a person who died two hundred years ago into your room," and "let you know him better than if you'd met in the flesh." Through Diana's words, I intend that we shall become better acquainted.

In 1967, she published her first book in America, afraid to let her mother see it. Later, she screwed up her courage and sent Mum the book. They discussed it once, and never again, but their relationship was further deepened by knowing their differences could never derail their love.

Her most fascinating descriptions concern personal matters. How I adored reading about that "admirable old juggins," her subconscious, which she imagines "plodding along pig-headed, single-minded, a tortoise lumbering through undergrowth." It is this part that conspires to make her illogically but happily pregnant at the age of 43, a venture that nearly kills her instead of giving her a child. The experience also gives rise to the title of the book.

I loved reading her evocations of the past -- for instance of having friends with whom she conversed about nothing that matters, as she "had cousins for that." In a chapter entitled "The Bit that ought not to be True," she describes how by age fifteen, she had rejected the values of her family and the society around her. Yet she felt unable to share her dissenting views, since "they would almost certainly feel that they ought to cast me out -- and I did not want to be cast out, nor were they by nature caster-outers." So she kept quiet, though she "found this hypocrisy shaming."

In a meditation on fashion, she mourns the passing of the evening dress and the changed way in which clothes were viewed postwar, as were the women who wore them. This was evident in the 1950s, and the change in attitudes was reflected in an altered language of fashion. When a Canadian friend offered to lend her a "sexy" piece of clothing, she thought the description odd, even vulgar, and put it down to a transatlantic usage. Later, wearing the borrowed garment, she found it very becoming, and was reassured that the friend "couldn't have meant anything rude."

A delightful whimsy permeates the story of her being presented at court "during the very brief period when Edward was on the throne before bolting to marry Mrs. Simpson." Shopping for this event - reduced by the bored king to a garden party from the customary evening event for debutantes - did not go well. Why, she asks herself, "did I come away from the elegant shop...with a dress in the one colour I knew didn't suit me?" A black hat and gloves make matters worse, and her mood drops to match "the mask of desperate boredom on the sulky little royal countenance."

Other wonderful comments on clothing involve the "Infallibility of the Guilty Impulse," which led to the purchase of pricey clothing from catalogues and expensive shops, until her previously drab wardrobe "could hardly recognize itself." All the guilt-inducing garments proved great successes. And "just in time," because "over ninety-five, one's idea of luxury shifts away from clothes." Yet fashion can be taken too far, as in the case of a yellow-clad woman in a shop who looks "as though she were enclosed and protected by an invisible bubble of pure elegance," which leads Diana to think it "impossible to imagine her in bed with a man."

It's a truism that men are mostly oblivious of women's clothing, but one of Diana's boyfriends took this to extremes. She explains that while he "accepted the fact that if a woman was going to a party she took off the dress she had been wearing and put on another, he hadn't a clue why." Since they were "getting on very well together," she saw "saw no reason to try to change him." In any case, "clothes were not important" in publishing, and her work provided only a modest income.

Diana Athill was born to a middle-class family. Though not particularly wealthy, she grew up at Ditchingham Hall, her grandparents' estate in Norfolk. Descriptions of her chidhood home with its well-designed grounds and walled kitchen garden are full of joyful images: the taste of perfect muslin-wrapped pears, the scent of parma violets, and the daily summer duty of berry-picking, for which she used a cabbage leaf as a container.

Perhaps it was this social context that gave rise to the comment that "Few events in my life have been decided by me." She says that her biggest decision was to move into an old people's home. The scene was set in part when a friend she'd known since Oxford moved into the unique Mary Feilding Guild in North London.

Though it meant culling a lot of her enormous book collection, this move proved a good decision, and even led to the making of new friends. These fellow gardeners were able to transform a bit of unused land on the property. Diana and four others cheered on a fellow pensioner who lost a shoe in the mud while tramping in freshly planted rosebushes and finished the job with her bare feet.

Engaged at a young age before WWII, Diana Athill was abandoned by her fiance when the Air Force took him to Egypt, where he met someone else and abruptly stopped writing to her. The loss of him broke her heart at the time, but in retrospect she does not consider this a tragedy. Though they suited one another well, the "snag was that he was a person who lived in the moment...which made him wonderful to be with but dangerous to be apart from."

Her most valuable life lessons, she tells us, learned from this and from other love affairs, are the risks of romanticism on the one hand, and possessiveness on the other. "Both of these can be dangerous, and in conjunction with sexuality even lethal." The powerful sexual impulse came into play when she sat in the back seat of a car beside Stephen, and her hand, "which was resting on the seat between us, began to hum with invitation." This led to her first affair with a married man.

She has no regrets about her childlessness, having diagnosed in herself "a streak of beady-eyed detachment...that steers me away from very strong emotional commitment." Comfortable in the role of Other Woman, she has "never for a moment expected or wanted to wreck anyone's marriage." In this way, she feels that she "was able to enjoy a relationship while living my own life and discovering myself, as I don't think I could have done in an ordinary marriage," where "a woman has to shape herself into a good fit in another person's life."

Athill also shares some astute observations of politics. With the threat of Brexit now imminent, her words seem prophetic. Her concise summary of a certain unrealistic but persistent British attitude to Europe is timely and poignant: "The difference between being at the hub of a vast empire and being a tiny island off the shores of but not belonging to Europe seems to be something they are unable to understand." Acknowledging England's "blundering" attempts to become European, she puts her finger on what lies beneath: "an apparent feeling that Europe ought to be grateful for our condescension in joining it."

I'm also of a mind with her on poetry. She prefers the kind that tell a story, and reads "to see something, not to discover codes." Speaking of poetry, she describes a bit about the life of the handsome, intelligent and club-footed Lord Byron, then comments that "the direction taken by his career was largely determined by immaturity." This is not meant as a criticism, but rather a comment on the society and the mostly absent family that produced him, then encouraged him into a "disastrous marriage."

In closing, I'd like to share what Diana considers the "necessary bedrock for love." This she experienced with Barry, beginning at age 43 and continuing until his death over forty years later. "We just happened to know each other well enough to talk and listen without inhibition, and to recognize that we could do this from our first meeting."

Dipping into the past with Jordan B. Peterson, Sid Arthur and Alexander Soldier Nixon

I've been listening to Jordan B. Peterson's book. This U of T psychologist has been marked both by his growing up in northern Alberta, and by the books, events and zeitgeist of his era. As well as providing support for Peterson's claims, his chosen quotations from TS Eliot, Friedrich Nietzsche, and the King James Bible evoked memories of linguistic misunderstandings.

As a kid I thought the three kings of the carol were from a place called Orientar. Seventeen and new to UBC, I misheard crucial words in a Religious Studies class. A student's mention of Sid Arthur in a presentation on Buddhism confused me, as I pictured a Yorkshire miner.

Later, in the process of completing my teacher training, I took a course in Eugene, Oregon. As professor Marg Czapo drove, she and my more tuned-in fellow students discussed the amazing new book by someone I heard as Alexander Soldier Nixon. Ensconced in my own world as I looked out the window from the back seat, I thought it odd that the word Soldier should be part of his name. Later, I saw the book on the car's back shelf and clued in. I never read Solzhenitsin's most famous work, but was reminded of its great significance by Jordan B. Peterson, who cites it repeatedly in his comments about how its author courageously exposed the violent excesses of Russian communism.

Words in the burbs

Wednesday evening at Western Sky Books, writers and readers gathered to hear the latest Words in the Burbs. To illustrate her setting, Janet Fretter shows the tombolo connecting Shetland to St. Ninian's Isle.

Hosted by Christina Myers and Lynn Easton, readings included essays, memoir and haiku. Janie Chang read from her historical novel, Dragon Springs Road. Missed the event? Catch Janie next month at Canadian Authors -- Metro Vancouver, the Alliance for Arts and Culture, 7 pm Feb 13.

Unique book launch with Jerena Tobiasen

Sunday evening was very special for author Jerena Tobiasen. She hosted a launch for her first book, The Crest, Volume One of a Trilogy.

But Jerena also did something highly unusual: she invited fellow writers to share the limelight with her. The evening progressed at a comfortable pace through readings by Jerena and friends, between breaks for conversation and delicious food. I first met this author at Southbank in Surrey, a summer program run by The Writer's Studio at Simon Fraser University. Great to see her in print.

Want to read an absorbing family saga featuring a Roma family and a German one in time of war? Check out Jerena's website here, or order her book from Amazon here.

New dog performs old trick

The old aluminum cookie cutter produced many gingerbread dogs in its time. We used to decorate these traditional Christmas cookies with sugar bead eyes and collars. Then the cutter retired, remaining for years in obscurity at the back of a kitchen drawer. While home for Christmas, Yasemin took a notion to make gingerbread dogs again. In doing so, she discovered the old cutter was dented and dull. We ordered a new one online -- identical in shape to the old one. Here they are: a bright sorrel and a gray roan.

Peace Tower emerges at last against a complicated sky

Phew! Finally finished this last puzzle of the season. The image of the Parliament Buildings with the Peace Tower pops, and so it should, as the symbolic expression of our national ideals.

I first saw Parliament Hill when I was sixteen. After winning an essay contest, I was on a tour to New York and the UN. Oddly, my daughter was also sixteen when we spent some time seeing Ottawa after a power outage caused the airport to close, altering our travel plans.

Milkman by Anna Burns

The realism of this unreal novel is unbearably chilling; yet at times Anna Burns achieves a zany humour. To avoid thinking of the sectarian violence and sexual bullying that she's supposed to accept as normal, the 18-year old female protagonist reads while she walks. Soon this eccentric and socially unsanctioned behaviour causes neighbours to gossip. As another form of escape, she resorts to running. The story darkens as the violently sectarian "Milkman" begins stalking her. For the narrator, changing her route and practice means allowing "religious geography" to constrain her movements. The implicit threat to her is exacerbated by the gossip mill, which inists, without a grain of truth, that she's the lover of the married, middle-aged renouncer of the government.

Meanwhile, the community, including her mother, fail to acknowledge his creepy encroachment on her space. Trained to be polite, the besieged woman finds herself unable to brush off the man: the stalker claims to know her brothers and her father, so must be deemed safe.

In this time and place, "violence was everyone's gauge for judging everyone else." References to routine fighting, drunkenness and violence begin in the first lines of the novel. They hit harder as the the narrator piles on images of decimated families, riots and shootings, like that of "Somebody McSomebody's brother." The protagonist chooses her "maybe boyfriend" because he doesn't get involved in it.

Danger besets this narrator at every turn, and as an intelligent young woman, she does what she can to protect herself. Unfortunately, her carefully constructed protective mechanisms backfire. Her unusual practices (walking while reading, running in the park) are snatched away by the predatory behavior of the Milkman. By then, the emotional walls she has erected have begun to alienate her not only from her nosy neighbours, but from herself.

The description of the suffocating society she inhabits comes out in language like this: "A whole chivvy of mothers trying to get their daughters wed." In this mad place, even for the girl's mother a marriage to a "bigamous terrorist" will do, if it will save her daughter's reputation.

Burns uses the powerful technique of anonymity, never mentioning the specifics of time, place or person. Instead, she refers to the people of the "other religion" who live "over the road," while those who have left the country have gone "over the water." We never learn the name of the protagonist, who refers to the people in her life as Maybe-boyfriend and French Teacher, Tablets Girl and Nuclear Boy, first brother-in-law, second little sister, and so on. Thus the reader can both intuit the real setting and ponder the universal nature of the deeply flawed society Burns so chillingly portrays.

The tension ran high through this book; I both wanted and dreaded to find out what would happen. Yet I couldn't possibly have predicted or even imagined how it would end until it did. Anna Burns grew up in Belfast during the Troubles, and this novel won the 2018 Booker Prize.

The Uses of Enchantment by Bruno Bettelheim

I meant to read this book many years ago. When it first came out in the mid-seventies, children's literature was quite a new field of study at UBC. Bettelheim's ideas about how fairy tales convey psychological support to children as they grow and develop fascinate me still. After picking up this well-worn copy from the VPL, I crossed the breezeway, got a coffee and settled right down to read.

Fairy tales, says child psychologist Bruno Bettelheim, are "works of art which are fully comprehensible to the child." They "represent in imagination what the process of healthy development consists of," making this "attractive for the child to engage in." The author asserts that fairy tales make "great and positive psychological contributions to the child's inner growth."

He contrasts traditional fairy tales with more engineered forms of children's literature. Some children's books are designed to teach reading, but Bettelheim finds fault with the idea of trying to teach the skill of reading, irrespective of meaning, calling such efforts shallow. Modern stories written for young children, he says, often avoid the existential problems that "are critical issues for all of us." Calling the unconscious "a powerful determinant of behaviour," he warns of the dangers of repressing it, adding that "when unconscious material is...permitted to come to awareness and worked through in imagination, its potential for causing harm...is much reduced" and "some of its forces can then be made to serve positive purposes."

Besides, he says, reading is a difficult skill, and "becomes devalued when what one has learned to read adds nothing of importance to one's life." He supports this strong claim with arguments about the importance of achieving psychological wholeness. Life is a difficult business, and rather than belittling childish fears and other strong emotions, adults should support kids by giving "full credence to the seriousness of the child's predicaments, while simultaneously promoting confidence" in his or her future.

Fairy tales provide "a moral education which is subtly, and by implication only, conveys...the advantages of moral behaviour, not through abstract ethical concepts but through what seems tangibly right and meaningful." Such works "speak simultaneously to all levels of the human personality." This line of thought is much more than speculation from the ivory tower of psychology.

It is undeniable that "one-sided [reading] fare nourishes the mind only in a one-sided way, and real life is not always sunny." The author alludes to the "widespread refusal to let children know that the source of much that goes wrong in life is due to our very own natures, the propensity...for acting aggressively, asocially, selfishly, out of anger and anxiety." But, he warns, "children know they are not always good; and often, even when they are, they would prefer not to be." This sobering realization can "make the child a monster in his own eyes."

"Reading and being read to are essential means of education," states Bettelheim, and I wonder now, four decades after the publication of the book, how many people have given up reading to their children in exchange for sharing the rising tide of visual culture with them, or more often, leaving them to negotiate that pervasive visual culture alone. I muse too, on how this dramatic change in child-rearing might influence the psychological well-being of future generations.

Returning to Bettelheim's fairy tale interpretations, we may begin with The Three Little Pigs. This well-loved story portrays the process of maturation. "The child identifies with each of them in turn, and recognizes the progression of identity." Since the story represents "stages in the development of man, the disappearance of the first two little pigs is not traumatic; the child understands subconsciously that we have to shed earlier forms of existence if we wish to move on to higher ones." There is nothing didactic in this message, and it permits children to draw their own conclusions, a process that "makes for true maturing, while telling the child what to do just replaces the bondage of his own immaturity with a bondage of servitude to the dicta of adults."

Another popular fairy tale is Little Red Riding Hood. In this story, "the kindly grandmother undergoes a sudden replacement by the rapacious wolf which threatens to destroy the child." Though we adults "may think the transformation unnecessarily scary," it is no more scary than feeling the sudden rage of a real granny, who may appear to have become an ogre when a fit of anger may make her "suddenly act in a radically different fashion." The story assures the child that "the Wolf is a passing manifestation--Grandma will return triumphant." Moreover, "the fantasy of the wicked stepmother...preserves the image of the good mother," and "helps the child not to be devastated by experiencing his mother as evil."

Interestingly, ten years before this book's initial publication, the song Li'l Red Riding Hood hit the top of the charts. Introduced by Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs, it was later sung by such popular groups as the Lovin' Spoonful, the Trogs, the Animals and the Rolling Stones. The lyrics make explicit the dark side of predatory male tendencies, along with a man's conscious rational decision to curb them.

Bettelheim explains the psychology of integration through stories of two brothers, or a brother and sister [Hansel and Gretel can be interpreted as opposing aspects of the personality functioning as a team and working to their strengths]. The powerful developmental stage of the Oedipal complex is portrayed through stories of damsels in distress and knights in shining armour. While a boy inevitably passes through the stage where he "wants Mother to admire him as the greatest hero of all, that means he must somehow get Father out of the way," and this idea "creates anxiety: one the one hand, how would the family thrive without Father's protection, and on the other, how would the small and relatively powerless boy cope with his potential revenge?"

Similarly fascinating interpretations are given for such well-known tales as Jack and the Beanstalk [moving away from the mother and achieving manhood] and Snow White [coming to terms with the sexual bleeding of menstruation, intercourse and birth, as well as oedipal issues].

Goldilocks and the Three Bears, says Bettelheim, is laden with meaning; though it "lacks the most important feature of a true fairy tale" (a happy ending), it "deals symbolically with some of the most important growing-up problems of the child: the struggle with the oedipal predicaments; the search for identity, and sibling rivalry."

Pointing out that fairy tales are common to all cultures, he also interprets a variation of the Genie and the Lamp, from the 1001 Arabian Nights. Called The Fisherman and the Jinny, this version of the tale, is "richer in hidden messages than other versions." Trapped in the bottle, the genie goes through the same stages of attitude and emotion as a child whose parent has left for a time. First, he will be happy and reward the person who releases him; then he decides to grant three wishes to the one who releases him. Finally, though, as more time passes with no rescuer in sight, he waxes "exceeding wroth" and tells himself that he will slay the one who lets him out. "The way the Jinny's thoughts evolve gives the story psychological truth for a child."

To conclude, "Myths and fairy stories answer the eternal questions: what is the world really like? How am I to live in it? How can I truly be myself?" Sanitized and didactic works of literature do not provide the nourishing intellectual and emotional food that can be found in fairy tales. Indeed, if these tales did not provide the developmentally supportive nourishment they crave, why would children insist on hearing the same ones again and again?

Patricia Sandberg presents on that elusive quality, voice

January 10, author Patricia Sandberg gave a presentation to the local branch of Canadian Authors. Referring to her self-published book Sun Dogs and Yellowcake, she talked about getting the voices of her fellow townspeople right, and described her project as a "memoir of a town."

Before assembing her fascinating work of Canadian social history, Sandberg interviewed over a hundred people who had lived in the temporary fifties boom town of Gunnar Mines. There she too grew up, playing in the tailings pond with other kids and handling yellowcake, partially refined uranium ore destined for the Cold War weapons buildup. Located in northern Saskatchewan, this purpose-built town grew into a warm community that left its former residents with warm memories even decades later. What remains are the memories and the ongoing cleanup.

Avatar?

Recently, I learned how the old word avatar is now used in computer parlance. Wikipedia describes it as the "graphical representation of the user or the user's alter ego or character." It's also an acronym that stands for: Advanced Video Attribute Terminal Assembler and Recreator.

The word avatar is derived from a Sanskrit word meaning descent. It entered English in the nineteenth century to refer to earthly incarnations of Hindu deities like Vishnu.

Today it is also used metaphorically as the embodiment or representation of a person or idea. And, it's the title of a famous 2009 film.

That cute little avatar in the picture is actually a stain on a cafe table, left by scraped-off paint.

Books Read in 2018

For the past few years, I've been tracking the books I read. In 2018, I logged 109 volumes in all genres. Down from 126 in 2017, but the good news is, I've been writing more. In fact, I finally finished my novel manuscript and am in the process of shopping it around. Hope my writer friends will keep their fingers crossed that I get an agent and then a publisher! Happy Reading Year, everyone. In 2018, I read the following books:

Ann Cleeves                  The Moth Catcher (CD)

Ann Cleeves                  Thin Air

Robert Galbraith           The Cuckoo’s Calling (CD)

Daisy Styles                   The Code Girls

Daisy Styles                   Secrets of the Bomb Girls

Christina Baldwin         Seven Whispers         

Stanley Evans                 Seaweed Under Water

Faroud Laroui                               The Curious Case of Dassoukine’s Trousers     

Leila Aboulela                              The Kindness of Enemies

Robert Galbraith (JK Rowling)    The Silkworm (CD)

Ruth Montgomery                        The World to Come                                        

Lucilla Andrews                            A Weekend in the Garden

Leila Lalami                                  Secret Son

Sadeq Hedayat                              Sadeq Hadayat, an Anthology (read part)

Alex Berenson                              The Silent Man (CD)

Lucilla Andrews                            One Night in London

Peter Selgin                                   179 Ways to Save a Novel

Helen Simonson                            Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand

Jack Knox                                      Hard Knox: Musings from the edge of Canada 

Paul Willett                                    Rendezvous at the Russian Tea Rooms

Anita Brookner                              Hotel du Lac

Jo Nesbo                                        The Son (CD)

Robert Galbraith                            Career of Evil (CD)

Daniel Kalla                                   Rising Sun, Falling Shadow

Lisa See                                          The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane          

Lisa See                                          Dreams of Joy (book 2 of trilogy)

Elizabeth George                            With No One as Witness (CD)

Peter Carey                                     A Long Way from Home

Lucy Ribchester                              The Amber Shadows

Jane Friedman                                 How to Publish Your Book (book & CD)

Xiaolu Guo                                     Twenty Fragments of a Ravenous Youth

Emma Donohue                              Astray (CD)                                                      

Simon Singh                                    The Code Book

Tessa Hadley                                    The Bletchley Girls (CD)

Xiaolu Guo                                       Nine Continents

Anne Marie Drosso                          Cairo Stories

Jacqueline Baker                              The Broken Hours

Jack Knox                                         Opportunity Knox

Margareta Magnussen                      The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning

Douglas Todd                                    The Soul Searchers Guide to the Galaxy

Douglas Todd                                    Brave Souls

Katherine Ashenburg                         All the Dirt: the History of Getting Clean

Katherine Ashenburg                         Sofie and Cecilia

Anne Marie Drosso                            In their Father’s House

Xiaolu Guo                                         A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers

Amanda Quick                                   Till Death do us Part (CD)

Amanda Quick                                   The River Knows

Elinor Florence                                   Wildwood

Alan Bradley                                       A Red Herring without Mustard (CD)                    

Asa Briggs                                             Secret Days: Code Breaking at Bletchley Park

Alan Bradley                                          The Dead in their Vaulted Arches (CD)

Alan Bradley                                          The Grave’s a Fine and Private Place (CD)

Susanna Kearsley                                  Bellewether

Oliver Sacks                                           The Mind’s Eye

Laurel Deedrick-Mayne                         A Wake for Dreamland

Amanda Quick                                       A Perfect Poison

Amanda Quick                                       Otherwise Engaged

Frank and Joan Shaw                            We Remember The Blitz

John Lawton                                          Friends and Traitors

Elizabeth Claire Prophet                        St. Germain’s Prophecy for the Millenium    

Amanda Quick                                       Burning Lamp

Alan Bradley                                          Speaking from Among the Bones (CD)

Alan Bradley                                         I Am Half-Sick of Shadows

Laurel Deedrick-Mayne                         A Wake for the Dreamland

Kamila Shamsie                                     Home Fire

Rachel Lebowitz                                    Hannus

Ahmad Danny Ramadan                       The Clothesline Swing (didn't finish; lost interest)

Simon Winchester                                 Atlantic (CD)

Simon Winchester                                 Pacific (CD)

Ian McEwan                                          First Love Last Rites

Dean Radin                                           Real Magic: Ancient Wisdom, Modern Science, and… 

Marlo Morgan                                       Mutant Message Down Under                     

Dennis Bock                                          The Communist’s Daughter (CD)

Agatha Christie                                      They Came to Baghdad (CD)

Michael Ondaatje                                   Warlight

Benjamin Black                                     The Silver Swan (CD)

Jeffrey Archer                                        Mightier than the Sword (CD)                        

Kate Atkinson                                        Case Histories                             

Dr. Russ Harris                                     The Happiness Trap (partly read ebook)

Agatha Christie                                     The Mystery of the Blue Train

Kagiso Lesogo Molope                         This Book Betrays my Brother

Amanda Quick                                       Garden of Lies (CD)

Alexander McCall Smith                       A Time of Love and Tartan

Alexander McCall Smith                       The Quiet Side of Passion

Keith Ogilvie                                         The Spitfire Luck of Skeets Ogilvie

Jeffrey Archer                                        Best Kept Secret

Jeffrey Archer                                        Be Careful What you Wish for        (CD)

Lloyd C. Douglas                                   Summer of the Red Wolf                                          

                                        

 Jeffrey Archer                              Only Time will Tell (CD)

Susan Crean                                 Finding Mr. Wong

Jeffrey Archer                              Cometh the Hour (CD)

Jeffrey Archer                              This was a Man (CD)

Simon Winchester                        Outposts (CD)

Sisonke Msimang                        Always Another Country

George Saunders                          Lincoln in the Bardo (not finished, bored)

Stuart Hylton                                Their Darkest Hour: the Hidden History of the Home Front

Ian Rankin                                    In a House of Lies                                                       

Tana French                                In the Woods

Tana French                                Faithful Place (CD)                                

Malebo Sephodi                          Miss Behave

Bill Johnson                                A Story is a Promise

Aminatta Forna                           The Memory of Love (not finished, lost interest)

Alexander McCall Smith            Chance Encounters (CD)            

AJ Pearce                                    Dear Mrs. Bird                           

Wanda John-Kehewin                 Seven Sacred Truths

Robert Galbraith                         Lethal White (CD)

Donna Leon                                 The Temptation of Forgiveness (CD)

Anne Lamott                                Almost Everything: Notes on Hope

Tana French                         Broken Harbour (CD)

The lines between separate months. I didn't read in December because I was frantically writing, and then it was Christmas and puzzle season.

Apologies to Jarvis et al, and thanks for the life lesson

The mythical Jarvis, along with his putative confederates, has earned my apology. Further impugning his reputation was wrong.

Turned into a life lesson. With our long history of jigsaw anomalies, I expected something odd to happen again. Thus, I unconsciously created it, by accidentally misplacing one piece and failing to notice the empty slot for another.

This came to light when my husband insisted the missing piece had to be somewhere. With his encouragement, I found it under the table, and then discovered the gap where the other fit. Anway, putting together the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel was a big challenge and provided an interesting lesson in art history, not to mention a close look at a place I'll probably never see.

Recording "an epoch of loss" inspires a beacon of hope

In this illustrated children's book, described by the author as a work of magic, Robert Macfarlane questions the removal of certain nature words from the Oxford children's dictionary.

It's a telling moment in history. Childhood is "becoming virtualized...interiorized, and going indoors...nature is slipping from childhood as it is slipping from all our lives and our landscapes." Yet it is important for children to name living things, since "to name something is to know it a little bit better, and maybe to care of it." A partial list of the lost: kingfisher, otter, acorn, wren, bluebell, skylark, fern, willow, raven. Many of these are also endangered. "We are living in an age of absence."As the creatures go, the names go."

Here's the hope and magic. "Culture can change...societies." Macfarlane's book has done that, inspiring schools all over the world to direct children's attention to the natural world.

Thoughts on flexibility from the Tao Te Ching

Men are born soft and supple;

dead, they are stiff and hard.

Plants are born tender and pliant;

dead, they are brittle and dry.

Thus, whoever is stiff and inflexible

is a disciple of death.

Whoever is soft and yielding

is a disciple of life.

The hard and stiff will be broken.

The soft and supple will prevail.

Lao Tzu Image from Fearless Soul 

One more jigsaw puzzle touched by the malign hand of Jarvis

The jigsaw portraying the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel called for special measures. Yasemin created a numbering system for the alcoves and sorted through the thousand pieces so we could assemble the basic structure. This was a lesson in art education, as we labelled the characters in the painting and examined a clearer image she found online. Alas, Jarvis never misses a trick. Once more he switched a single piece. The last one to go in wouldn't fit because it was from another puzzle.

Atomic Habits, by James Clear

Humans are creatures of habit. Building on the work of Charles Duhigg, James Clear further advances our understanding of habit formation and maintenance. The subtitle says it all. Tiny changes can lead to remarkable results. Techniques like habit stacking can be life-altering.

A revolution in how you spend your time and what you achieve as a result begins with awareness, and James Clear maintains a website with free downloads of worksheets designed to help you expose your current habits to view and create a foundation for change.

It's the season for New Year's Resolutions, so this is a good time to check out his podcast.  A summary of the book's contents can be found here. Notable quote: "You get what you repeat."

A lot of what Clear says is surprising. For instance, he warns that "Self-control is a short-term strategy, not a long-term one. You may be able to resist temptation once or twice, but it’s unlikely you can muster the willpower to override your desires every time." The secret of self-control, he believes, is in the environment and cues. "Make the cues of your good habits obvious and the cues to your bad ones invisible."

Some astonishing research demonstrates this point. Although of the heroin users who go into rehab, about 90 percent relapse when they return to their old haunts, the case of the returning veterans proved opposite. Work done by Lee Robins, a psychiatric epidemiology researcher, demonstrated that about 90 percent of heroin-addicted soldiers who served in Vietnam got clean when they left the place and conditions where they had become addicted. This stood in stark contrast to the belief of the time (still prevalent) that drug addiction is an irreversible condition, caused by moral failing and lack of willpower. The research presented by Clear suggests that nothing could be further from the truth. Indeed, when all the cues are removed, old habits can simply "fall away."

Another amazing passage discusses supernormal stimuli. The research into this began in the 1940s with Tinbergen, who studied geese and gulls. Advertisers quickly cottoned on to the fact that  "Humans are also prone to fall for exaggerated version of reality." Junk food is constantly being engineered for taste and texture so that it "drives our reward systems into a frenzy." The fact that too many chips make your mouth feel like sandpaper isn't a problem either, since "your brain has far more neural circuitry allocated for wanting rewards than for liking them."

Overall, this book inspired me to remember a great truth. It's the things we're absolutely sure of that put our thinking on the wrong track. To escape some of the manipulation we are subjected to daily, we need always to be open to questioning the embedded "truths" that our societies impose on us.