Charles Dickens: A Life

From the publisher:

With delectable wit and characteristic sensitivity, Jane Smiley presents a fresh, illuminating take on the life of Charles Dickens. Smiley naturally finds a kindred spirit in the author of such classics as Great Expectations and A Christmas Carol, who was not only a prolific writer but also one of the first modern “celebrities.” She offers interpretations of many of Dickens’s major works, exploring his narrative techniques and his innovative voice and themes. Smiley’s Charles Dickens is at once a perceptive profile of the great master and a fascinating meditation on the writing life.

In addition to being a sketch of Dickens’s life, Charles Dickens: A Life provides a description, and some degree of comparative analysis of his work. Being able to see how Dickens’s work changed over time, and how his own life influenced what he wrote was, in my mind, the most valuable part of Charles Dickens: A Life. Understanding his place as, essentially, one of the first modern celebrities was fascinating as well, but did less for my depth of understanding of Dickens than the exploration of his work.

If you are looking for a hugely in-depth biography of Dickens, then Charles Dickens: A Life may not be exactly what you are looking for. Smiley herself, it seems, would recommend Peter Ackroyd’s Dickens.  Indeed, she uses Ackroyd as a source extensively, mentioning many of his hypotheses and discoveries throughout Charles Dickens: A Life. However, if you are looking for a brief biography of Dickens with an easy-to-read and engaging style, a book that blends beautifully his work and his private (and public) life, Smiley’s biography is a great one to pick up.

All in all, Charles Dickens: A Life is a short but successful biography, and one I would recommend to those with an interest in Dickens and his work.

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Charles Dickens: A Life by Jane Smiley – Book Review

A History of the World in 100 Objects

In 2010, the British Museum and the BBC teamed up to attempt to tell the entire history of the entire world in a mere 100 objects. Now, in addition to being available as an audiobook of the radio show, the director of the British Museum, Neil MacGregor, has put it all in book form, so that the discussions of the artifact and its importance in world history is accompanied by a photograph of said artifact.

I haven’t had a chance to go through the entire book yet, because it is the sort of thing you dip in and out of, but what I have read is amazing. I just couldn’t wait to share this, in case it would be the perfect holiday present for someone (I was planning to ask for it, personally, before I happened to win it in a giveaway).

Not only are the breadth of objects and the depth of discussion impressive, but so is the organization. There are 20 parts, each with 5 items discussed. Each part has a theme like “Empire Builders” or “Rise of World Faiths” and a time period. The artifacts are grouped in order to impart increased context and meaning, and the discussions often refer back to one of the earlier objects in that part. This allows the artifacts to be discussed in relation to one another, without losing the reader by referencing something 20 objects ago that may have been forgotten or not even read about.

A History of the World in 100 Objects is a great conversation piece, but it is also an incredibly fascinating book for those fascinated in history and world civilizations.

Very highly recommended, a fantastic holiday gift for history nerds!

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A History of the World in 100 Objects by Neil MacGregor

Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman

How does a German princess of no great account become the greatest, longest reigning empress of Russia? Catherine IIs story seems an improbable one, to put it mildly, and yet the girl born Princess Sophie of Anhalt-Zerbst ended up ruling Russia for 34 years and earning the appellation Catherine the Great.

Catherine was an incredibly complex woman, and the story of her life could have easily devolved into either a morass inaccessible by all who had not studied her life and Russian history or an overly simplified treatment leaving only a shadow of the powerful ruler. In Robert K. Massie’s capable hands, however, both pitfalls are deftly avoided.

Over 600 pages of Catherine the Great, Massie presents a portrait of Catherine that is both nuanced and easy to follow. She is a vivid character from the beginning, even before her travels to Russia and marriage to Peter. What is particularly impressive, though, is that Catherine is not the only fully realized character; both Peter and his aunt, the Empress Elizabeth, fairly leap off the page. Other characters, particularly many of Catherine’s lovers, were also impressively drawn. Massie’s style is to get into the heads and motivations of the people whose lives he is chronicling, which leads to compelling and realistic historical personages, regardless of how sympathetic they were as human beings.

It is precisely Massie’s ability to connect his readers to the people he is writing about that makes Catherine the Great such an immensely readable biography. It is not an exaggeration to say that it reads much like some of the best historical fiction, if perhaps a bit more dense by virtue of all of the rich historical detail layered in Massie’s every sentence.

In addition to bringing historical figures to life and writing a biography that can hardly be put down, Massie has written an incredibly complex and complete history of Catherine’s life. One particularly effective technique for making all of this comprehensible is most evident in Massie’s discussions of the later years of Catherine’s reign. Instead of relating events in a strictly chronological manner, which would have involved overlapping many complicated series of events, Catherine the Great has a structure in which chronology informs thematic organization. This could have been equally problematic to straight chronology, but Massie excels at weaving in mentions of events from earlier chapters so that readers can form for themselves a comprehensive timeline of Catherine’s life, and what events – both personal and political – might be influencing her at any given time.

All in all this is a superb biography. Not only will it earn a place in my permanent collection, but it will also ensure that I will read more of Massie’s work in the years to come. Very highly recommended.

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Catherine the Great by Robert K. Massie – Book Review

A History of the World in Six Glasses by Tom Standage, narrated by Sean Runnette

Synopsis:

From the publisher:

A History of the World in 6 Glasses tells the story of humanity from the Stone Age to the 21st century through the lens of beer, wine, spirits, coffee, tea, and cola. Beer was first made in the Fertile Crescent and by 3000 B.C.E. was so important to Mesopotamia and Egypt that it was used to pay wages. In ancient Greece wine became the main export of her vast seaborne trade, helping spread Greek culture abroad. Spirits such as brandy and rum fueled the Age of Exploration, fortifying seamen on long voyages and oiling the pernicious slave trade. Although coffee originated in the Arab world, it stoked revolutionary thought in Europe during the Age of Reason, when coffeehouses became centers of intellectual exchange. And hundreds of years after the Chinese began drinking tea, it became especially popular in Britain, with far-reaching effects on British foreign policy. Finally, though carbonated drinks were invented in 18th-century Europe they became a 20th-century phenomenon, and Coca-Cola in particular is the leading symbol of globalization.

For Tom Standage, each drink is a kind of technology, a catalyst for advancing culture by which he demonstrates the intricate interplay of different civilizations. You may never look at your favorite drink the same way again.

Thoughts on the story:

Tom Standage has a fascinating story to tell of how our history has shaped what we drink, which ends up shaping our history again. Both the book and the argument were well-laid out, progressing logically through each of the six drinks and through human civilization, as one drink gave rise to another. Different technological and cultural advances precipitated the rise of each of the six drinks, and each of them further shaped culture in its own way. It should be noted, though, that this is less a history of the world than a history of Western Civilization, beginning with the early farmers in the fertile crescent and moving ever westward. Of course the east does get a mention, particularly when tea is involved, and coffee came to Europe from the Arab world, but in both cases the use of the beverage in Western Europe is the main focus. This is not necessarily a bad thing if one is prepared for this, but at the same time it would have been nice to have a more worldwide lens based on the title.

Thoughts on the audio production:

Sean Runnette is a great narrator of nonfiction. His delivery is clear and his voice easy to listen to, with just the right amount of interest added in his inflection. There was occasionally an issue with the quality of the recording, some of the edits were noticeable, but overall they didn’t negatively affect the listening experience.

Overall:

A really fascinating way of looking at our shared history. Recommended.

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I’m launching a brand-new meme every Friday! I encourage you to review any audiobooks you review on Fridays and include the link here. If you have reviewed an audiobook earlier in the week, please feel free to link that review as well. Thanks to Pam for creating the button.

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A History of the World in Six Glasses by Tom Standage – Audiobook Review

Paradise Lust: Searching for the Garden of Eden

When Brook Wilensky-Lanford learned that a relative of hers had, in his younger days, searched for the Garden of Eden on Earth, she was a bit perplexed. After all, her family definitely did not subscribe to Biblical literalism. As she began to dig a little further into his motivations, however, she found an entire subculture – both religious and secular – dedicated to the discovery of the Garden of Eden. Soon Wilensky-Lanford was on a quest of her own, to discover the breadth of the mania for Eden.

Paradise Lust is a comprehensively researched look at humankind’s desire to return to an Edenic paradise – whether that paradise represents unity, civilization, or progress to any given supplicant – mixed with just a hint of humor and sarcasm. The subjectivity of humor could be a problem in a nonfiction book such as this, but Wilensky-Lanford does a fabulous job of separating the historical record from her own opinions.

It is simply fascinating how many different motivations have driven people to search for the Garden of Eden, particularly the fact that there were secular, not only religious ones. Similarly fascinating is the number of Eden-seekers who have placed paradise in the New World. Columbus, for example, believed he located the Garden in Venezuela, and more than one group has claimed its existence in middle America.

Wilensky-Lanford is an engaging writer, and brings a great deal of clarity to the profusion of quests for Eden. That people continue to search for the Garden on Earth is not an idea that would have ever occurred to me, but regardless, Paradise Lust makes for an intriguing read. Recommended.

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Paradise Lust by Brook Wilensky-Lanford – Book Review

The Women of the Cousins’ War: the Duchess, the Queen, and the King’s Mother

Philippa Gregory is a prolific author, but she is undoubtedly best known for her two series that take place within two consecutive periods of English history, the two that are perhaps the best well-known to devotees of historical fiction: The War of the Roses and the reign of the Tudors. This period of English history is so vivid to many readers that they crave more and more information, to know what is true and what is not. This is not, however, a question of which Gregory thinks very highly:

Some readers want to know the proportion of fact to fiction – as if fact and fiction were not combined in every form of writing, as if historical fiction were a recipe. Some readers want to identify the facts from the fiction; but this is to deny the very form of the novel: something that combines fact and fiction. -p. 11

Gregory instead argues that both fiction and nonfiction have a measure of “speculation, imagination, and creativity.” Even so, writers of historical fiction must do their research somewhere, and the lives of the women involved in the War of the Roses are particularly under-researched, having been largely ignored by their contemporary historians. Biographies of Margaret Beaufort and Elizabeth Woodville do exist, thanks to their close proximity to kings, but facts about Jacquetta of Luxembourg are few and far between. In an attempt to remedy this, Gregory teamed up with historians David Baldwin and Michael Jones to write biographies of all three women.

Baldwin’s biography of Elizabeth Woodville is somewhat more entertaining and informative than Gregory’s of Jacquetta and Jones’s of Margaret Beaufort. Even so, all three biographies were remarkably consistent in tone, voice, and content. Although I am not a historian, the history presented in The Women of the Cousins’ War seems sound, the opinions drawn logical and apparently supported by fact.

Even though Gregory is somewhat dismissive of readers who want to separate fact from fiction, The Women of the Cousins’ War is a good resource for those whose readers whose interest in the War of the Roses has been piqued by Gregory’s Cousins’ War series and other similar works of historical fiction.

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The Women of the Cousins’ War by Philippa Gregory – Book Review

Apollo’s Angels

Synopsis:

In Apollo’s Angels, Jennifer Homans tells the story of 400 years of ballet’s history, a history which, until now, has  been unwritten.

Thoughts on the story:

Ballet is ballet is ballet. Or so I thought, before reading Apollo’s Angels. I had no idea that there were national differences even today, or that political movements such as the French and Russian Revolutions were so expressed through the art of ballet. Weighing in at almost 700 pages in print and close to 24 hours in audio, Apollo’s Angels is certainly a commitment, but it is a pleasant one. Homan succeeds in writing a book which is informative about the history of ballet and the way that ballet serves as a mirror of social and political history, while at the same time is not overly technical. There were certainly passages here and there that lost me briefly talking about specific steps, but even though I have not taken ballet since I was five years old, I was never lost for long, and was engaged enough to stick through those technical sections to return to the history.

The one place Homan did lose me was at the very end, in which she makes an argument for the disappearance of ballet in the near future which does not seem to be hinted at or backed up in any way by the 600 odd pages that precede it. Still, though, it was a very short passage in comparison with the rest of the book, and was not enough to permanently leave a bad taste in my mouth.

Thoughts on the audio production:

Kirsten Potter did an absolutely lovely job narrating Apollo’s Angels, the casting was really just perfect for the book. For my full thoughts on the audio, please see my review for Audiofile Magazine.

Overall:

I was more interested in Apollo’s Angels for the social and cultural history than for the ballet itself, but ballet was a fascinating way to impart this history. I think this would work well in print or audio, although I don’t think I’d have done as well with it in print, as I would likely have gotten bogged down in the technicalities of dance. Recommended.

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I’m launching a brand-new meme every Friday! I encourage you to review any audiobooks you review on Fridays and include the link here. If you have reviewed an audiobook earlier in the week, please feel free to link that review as well. Thanks to Pam for creating the button.

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Apollo’s Angels by Jennifer Homans – Audiobook Review

The Alice Behind Wonderland

Synopsis:

There exists a photograph of a young girl, taken in the summer of 1858 at Oxford. The girl is the six year old daughter of Dean Liddell, dressed in the clothes of a beggar child and looking beguilingly at the camera. The photo is somewhat disconcerting – a half-dressed girl staring with the eyes of a woman – but would be largely unremarkable if this was not the same girl who would become immortalized in literary history for a story about a young girl bearing her name who has an adventure in Wonderland.

In The Alice Behind Wonderland, Simon Winchester explores the real people behind Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Charles Dodgson (aka, Lewis Carroll) and Alice Liddell.

Thoughts on the story:

Other than the fact that the title is slightly misleading – Winchester spends more time delving into Dodgson’s life than Alice’s – The Alice Behind Wonderland is a very informative work of nonfiction. Winchester goes in-depth into Dodgson’s life, both before and after Alice, including a fascinating aside into the early days of photography.

Thoughts on the audio production:

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, I simply adore Simon Winchester narrating his own work. Really, if he decides to stop writing he could just narrate full time, nonfiction in particular. Winchester comes across as a charismatic scholar whose passion for his own research is infectious.

Overall:

An intriguing story, and one that is both well organized and well narrated. Recommended.

After reading The Alice Behind Wonderland, if you are interested in more on Charles Dodgson and Alice Liddell, pick up Melanie Benjamin’s Alice I Have Been for a fictionalized account of their story.

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Audible

I’m launching a brand-new meme every Friday! I encourage you to review any audiobooks you review on Fridays and include the link here. If you have reviewed an audiobook earlier in the week, please feel free to link that review as well. Thanks to Pam for creating the button.

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The Alice Behind Wonderland by Simon Winchester – Audiobook Review

The Statues That Walked

If you have read Jared Diamond’s Collapse, you know that the natives of Easter Island caused the collapse of their own civilization in the course of building their famous statues, causing the deforestation of their island by cutting down trees to transport the giant heads. Hunt and Lipo did not set out to disprove this widely accepted truism when they ventured to Easter Island, called Rapa Nui in the local language, but disprove it they did and, in the course of doing so, they unraveled many of the mysteries surrounding Easter Island: from the true cause of the deforestation of Rapa Nui, to the social structure that supported statue building, to the statues themselves and how they were moved.

One need not be an archaeologist to find The Statues That Walked fascinating. Hunt and Lipo lay out their arguments for the past of Rapa Nui in a clear and articulate manner, providing just enough evidence to lend them credibility, but not so many technical details to lose their lay readers. Assuming their science is valid – and Hunt and Lipo give the reader no reason to assume it is not – this team seems to have made great headway in explaining the history and basic culture of the people of Easter Island, not least the explanation that the statues were moved by ‘walking’ them.

The only real problem with The Statues That Walked is the extent to which its authors inserted themselves in their story, which was either too much, or not enough. In no way did they introduce themselves or give any sense of who they were, and yet they referred to their findings, their state of mind going into the research, etc. Inserting oneself into a story such as this one can lend a greater sense of narrative flow and make it easier to engage readers, but in order to do that, an actual sense of the personality of the authors must come through. The writing was clear and engaging enough that the authors were not a necessary plot device to keep readers interested. In the end, their random insertion served only to distract from the fascinating picture of Easter Island painted by The Statues That Walked.

A solid work of nonfiction, odd insertion of the authors not withstanding. Recommended.

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The Statues That Walked by Terry Hunt and Carl Lipo – Book Review

A Covert Affair: Julia Child and Paul Child in the O.S.S.

If you posted an audiobook review today, Wednesday June 8th, please leave your link in the Mr. Linky before midnight Central time (US) and you will be eligible to win a prize.

Synopsis:

Julia Child is best known as a famous American chef cooking French food. Before she knew how to make the perfect omelet, though, she was a member of the O.S.S., an intelligence agency that was the precursor to the CIA. It was actually in this agency that she met her husband Paul, while both of them were serving in the Far East. It is that period of time, from their work in the O.S.S. through their courtship on which A Covert Affair focuses.

Thoughts on the story:

I must admit that I felt slightly misled by A Covert Affair. It purports to be the story of Paul and Julia during their time in the O.S.S., but having listened to it, that is not at all how I would classify it. In my opinion, A Covert Affair looks at the O.S.S. during the war, and its place in the McCarthyism that subsequently overtook the sanity of America. In order to avoid having a 3,000 page treatise on the agency, Conant uses the Childs as a way to frame the story she wanted to tell. The audiobook opens and closes with the Childs post-war, with Julia working on her cookbook and Paul called back to the United States so his loyalty can be questioned. In the course of the questioning, the name of their O.S.S. acquaintance Jane Foster came up over and over.

It is Jane’s story that seems to be the real heart of the book. Her life with the O.S.S. is much more closely examined, from the time she signed up, through her exploits taming wild animals, to an affair of hers and her post-war marriage. Always somewhat of a leftist, and not particularly discreet, it is no surprise that she came to the attention of HUAC during the years of the Red Scare.

A Covert Affair does then close again with the Childs and their shock at the things Jane Foster is accused of, but it seemed like they were a convenient way for Conant to sell the book, with the recent interest in all things Julia after the popularity of Julie and Julia. I admit to falling into this popularity trap, it is why I wanted to listen to A Covert Affair, and why I listened to My Life in France last year.

All that being said, however, once I got over the fact that I felt a little duped, I realized that Conant did have a very interesting story to tell. In fact, I think it is quite likely that Jane is a more interesting focus during the O.S.S. years than either Paul or Julie would be. In addition, the way the story concludes makes me glad I knew so much about Jane and made it begin to feel that I had been told the story of the Childs experience with the O.S.S., if not exactly their time there.

Thoughts on the audio production:

Jan Maxwell does a very good job with the narration of A Covert Affair. She is one of those no-nonsense narrators who avoid getting overly dramatic, but simply tells the story in front of her with poise – and with enough inflection to keep the story engaging.

Overall

I remain unconvinced that A Covert Affair‘s subtitle Julia Child and Paul Child in the O.S.S. is an accurate depiction of the contents of the book, but there is a very interesting story there that deserves an audience. If you are extremely interested in the history of US intelligence, pick this up in print so you can pore over the details. If you’re more interested in a sketch of the O.S.S. and the place of the Childs and their friends, pick it up in audio to keep the story moving engagingly. As long as you aren’t reading or listening solely for news of Julia and Paul, you won’t be disappointed.

Check out Simon & Schuster’s page to listen to a sample of the audio

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A Covert Affair by Jennet Conant – Audiobook Review