What She's Reading

Though I tend to favor biographies, (see my favorites here),  I also love novels, poetry, memoirs, and non-fiction of all stripes. Here are just a few of my recommendations, based on my recent and all-time favorites:

A Venetian Affair
by Andrea Di Robilant: Often, after a trip to a region or a country, I want to know more about it (my husband does the opposite: he picks books ahead of a trip and reads them during the visit), and after a stupendo visit to Venice in spring 2009, I read this true story on clandestine love in the 18th century.

The Almond Picker
by Simonetta Agnello Hornby
Another gem for lovers of Italy.  Life in the 1960’s in a small Sicilian town.

Words in the Air
The complete (and long) correspondence between two great New England poets, Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell, shows the intense relationship between two poets. I found it fascinating. The fact that they never married or became lovers must have only deepened their 30-year friendship. Such wonderful warmth and affection from two people who had so much to offer to each other. He was married and she had a long relationship with the architect Lota de Macedo Soares. Lowell admired Bishop’s eye and she admired his wit. Not a bad combination don’t you think?

Voyage dans le passé
by Stefan Zweig
A short story  about love, loss and desire.

Any and all of Mary Oliver’s poetry (I love her classic poem “Wild Geese”), as well as this one from Goethe:

Until one is committed, there is always hesitancy,
the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness,
concerning all acts of initiative and creation,
there is one elementary truth,
the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans:
the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too.
All sorts of things occur to help that would never otherwise have occurred.
A whole stream of events issues from the decision,
raising to one’s favor all manner of unforeseen accidents and meetings
and material assistance which no man could have dreamed would come his way.
Whatever you can do or dream you can do, begin it.
Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.

The House of Mirth
by Edith Warton
The book is a classic, as relevant today as it was a century ago, dealing with love, money, class issues, emotions, values and much more—including despair and death. Lily is a fascinating character who wants more for herself. Actually she wants it all, including social success. She tries hard, has the ability to bounce back, has integrity but fails to think through and does not grasp that success is not “to get as much as one can out of life”. She also lacks true friends and mentors to help her understand that beauty and charm are not enough and that growing through “know thyself” is part of life. The book offers some great lessons to young and less young women, and Edith Wharton’s prose is a bonus.

Cooking with Shelburne Farms
by Melissa Pasanen and Rick Gencarelli
After reading, I now want to go to this inn and restaurant (also a national historic landmark, working farm and education center) in Vermont to taste that maple-roasted butternut squash soup and more.

Paris Changing: Revisiting Eugène Atget’s Paris
by Christopher Rauschenberg
For those of you who love photography, I highly recommend you add this book to your wish list. It’s amazing to me how static Paris looks 100 years later. Going through the book was like traveling to the City of Light in a nostalgic way. I also picked a few sites I plan to walk to over the year-end holiday.

The Black Dress
by Valerie Steele
A good read for fashionistas.  As director of the museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology, Ms. Steele has access to great material and history going back to the 15th century–when black was the color of choice of the elite. She then leads us through history into the latest, trendiest uses of my favorite color.

The Bad Girl
by Mario Vargas Llosa
Do I love this book because it's a love story which takes place in Paris...or simply because the title fascinates me?

The Grass is Singing
by Doris Lessing
Her debut novel—which I had never gotten around to reading before--deals with the collision of white and black cultures and racial injustice in colonial Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) where she grew up. Of course, like many young women, I devoured her novel The Golden Notebook during grad school. If you have not read it, I highly recommend you pick up a copy.  The book is the story of a young woman who wanted to live freely, and who was, in some ways, Doris Lessing’s alter ego.

The Measure of Her Powers
an M.F.K. Fisher reader
We never met but M.F.K. Fisher and I talked a few times on the phone late in her life. I still have a couple of thank you notes from her, as she was a Veuve Clicquot fan, and I’d send her a bottle for her birthday. Of course, I have devoured everything she’s written. She certainly acquired her joie de vivre while living in Dijon and Aix en Provence.

The quote by Frank McCourt on the back cover of The Measure of Her Powers will make you want to read it: "If I were still teaching high school English, I’d use (Fisher’s) books to show how to write simply, how to enjoy food and drink but, most of all, how to enjoy life. Her books and letters are one feast after another."

Suite Française
by Irene Nemirovsky
Not a fun book to read because it’s about the war --specifically the 1940 exodus--but it shows the tensions and frustrations that are caused by war. Nemirovsky writes simply and beautifully and that makes this book a must read.

The Year of Magical Thinking
by Joan Didion
Made me cry. Grief and mourning are part of life, and each of us experiences it differently—though I can’t imagine what it must be like to lose both a husband of a lifetime and an only child. Seeing Vanessa Redgrave perform Didion's stage version of this autobiographical story on stage gave it yet another dimension.

The Book of Happiness
by Nina Berberova
I’ve read and reread Berberova's books but somehow had missed this one, until now. I loved it (a slice of Paris helps perhaps?). Here are three more splendid short stories about love, joy and happiness. Her imagination reminds me of Turgenev. Best of all is her evocative writing. I loved "The Accompanist."

Extraordinary Weddings
by Colin Cowie
Was it fate that I received this gift just before our wedding anniversary? Or was the giver aware that I’m a sucker for anything beautiful and romantic in which travel, food, wine, and flowers are ingredients to make an event? Inimitable Colin definitely is the event planner of the century, and no one can come close to his sense of style, beauty, and passion in everything he does. Reading this book transports you to the many magical places where most of us will never have a chance to go, but will dream about while taking in the book's gorgeous photography and delicious menus. Well done.

Tomorrow
by Graham Swift
I received a galley copy of this book and devoured it on a long cross-country flight. A woman’s tender reflection/meditation on her life (including a love-for-her-cat story) that takes place as her father plans to reveal a "secret" to their teenage children. The human bonding makes this book another must read.

Here are a few of the books on my growing to-read list that I hope to dive into before year’s end:

Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner
Rebecca Mead’s One Perfect Day
Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Living to Tell the Tale
Alain de Botton’s The Architecture of Happiness
Barbara Ehrenreich’s Dancing in the Streets
Henry James’ George Sand