Read in 2014 - 16: Eugene Pickering

A short book that kept me company on my kindle for the train ride to the second part of my course last week, "Eugene Pickering" is a story by Henry James and my very first read by that author. Originally, the story appeared in 1874 in three volumes of "The Atlantic Monthly", a "magazine of literature, art and politics", as it called itself. Later, the story found its way into several books containing some of Henry James' shorter novellas; apparently, it was never published on its own.

From the start, I found it interesting that the narrator not only remains unnamed, but appears as a spectator and advisor throughout, never as a prinicpal, acting character - except for when, towards the end of the story, he shows initiative by travelling to Cologne to look after his friend and then persuades him into further travelling with him.

Motherless Eugene has had a very secluded upbringing; his stern father wanted to make sure the boy was untouched by all bad influences. For a while, he was allowed a companion for his home schooling; the story's narrator was that companion and became the only friend he ever had.
Many years later, they incidentally meet again, and the narrator finds his old friend, now free of the omnipresent authority of his father, ready to embark on life with all its adventures. The inevitable happens - the naive, inexperienced Eugene falls in love with a woman who has the reputation of being an adventuress.

Taken on its own, that would not be so unusual, but Eugene has a promise to maintain he had no influence upon when it was first given...
The way things turn out in the end is more or less what I expected, but of course I won't tell you here. 

This was an interesting, althougn not exciting, first encounter with Henry James for me. He lived from 1843 to 1916, and of course you won't have difficulties to find out a lot about him on wikipedia and elsewhere on the web. I have some more of his works as free ebooks on my kindle, and I will read them... sooner or later.

By the way, the painting on the book cover has nothing at all to do with the story. I often wonder how such cover art is chosen; most of the time, whoever makes that choice has probably never read one single word of the book in question.

Too Much of a Good Thing?

Can there be, as the saying goes, too much of a good thing? Yes, of course. One can have too many cocktails, too much chocolate, too many nights out, too long of playing one's favourite computer game, and so on. But I can never have too much of the good thing called YELLOW!

My first yellow dress I bought in, I think, 2007. It is still a firm favourite in my wardrobe, although I do not have as much occasion to wear it as I would like to. It is too low cut for work, and of a lightweight linen that needs really warm weather to feel comfortable. You can see that dress here, if you like.

There is now a second yellow dress in my wardrobe, a casual find when I happened to walk through H&M the other day. Does it happen to you, too, that you find the nicest things when you're not looking for anything?

I wrote about the many yellow items and how I prefer to combine them on my blog before; that older post is here. 

Last time I bought a new dress, it was this one in March. It may not look it, but it is one of my most expensive pieces. On the same day I bought the new yellow dress, I also found a top at H&M and a white summer jacket to wear to the office - the yellow dress, top and jacket together cost less than the March-dress alone. The jacket looks a bit large, but it is supposed to be my size, and a look at Comma's website tells me that it looks rather large on their model, too.

The polka dot top (just in case you didn't know - I love polka dots!) is not purple, but a deep navy blue; it is the camera that makes it look purple.

What I really "need" now (if one ever really "needs" clothes...) is a pair of white shoes smart enough for the office, and sturdy enough for the way to work, standing around at the train station and walking to and from there.

When I found the white jacket, I was with my sister. We had met in town for our first visit to the ice cream parlour of this year, it was a beautiful sunny and warm day. On our way home we stopped at that store. While browsing the clothes racks, we came across a collection of particularly ugly things. I forgot the name on the label, it was something "Royal...", but the only "Royal" thing about them was that they had evidently been designed by the King of Bad Taste!

My sister persuaded me to put them on just for the laugh, and took these pictures with her mobile. We had such fun, and I just can't believe someone is willing to spend money on this stuff and really wears it in public! The 80s Revival is over... such outfits did not look good the first time round, and even less so now.
If I ever should be invited to a Bad Taste Party, I'd know where to look for an outfit :-D

Speaking of 80s outfits, I found this yellow retro sweater at Aldi's a month or two ago. It is my favourite outfit for days spent at home doing the cleaning and ironing, very cosy and roomy.

Read in 2014 - 15: The Postmaster's Daughter

While trying to find information about the author, I came across this blog which gives a brief account of Louis Tracy's life - the first 21 years of which are shrouded in a bit of mystery - and a picture.

"The Postmaster's Daughter" was first published from July to September 1916 as a series in "Country Gentleman" and then printed as a novel the same year.

It is a fun-to-read detective story, with (of course!) a love-story thrown in, and kept me guessing at the "whodunnit" until fairly far ahead. The characters are described so well you can easily run the movie in your mind. Some of them are likeable, some less so, but all are very much "there".

The book is neatly divided into 23 chapters (probably the way the story was originally serialized in the "Country Gentleman") with such intriguing headlines as "The Face at the Window", "The Seeds of Mischief", "On Both Sides of the River", "A Matter of Heredity" and "The Truth at Last". Don't some of these sound like the names of episodes in Midsomer Murders?

To briefly summarize the story without telling too much, let me just say that well-to-do bachelor John Grant finds the body of a famous actress he once was in love with but has not met in three years on his own grounds, miles away from her London work place. What was she doing there, and who had a reason to want her dead?

The village near his house is soon buzzing with rumours and suspicion, especially when it becomes known that Grant spent part of the evening of the murder in the company of the prettiest and cleverest girl around, the postmaster's daughter.
What roles do the calm and polite village chemist, the butcher, the landlord of the "Hare and Hounds" and the sporty horse dealer play? And where does the ghost of Owd Ben fit in?

Grant summons his best friend for moral support when everyone seems to point at him, and it does not take long for Scotland Yard's best men to appear on the scene.

In the end, all is revealed, although the culprit is not brought to justice (in a way, he is, but I won't say another word!).

This was, as you probably have guessed, a free ebook from the Kindle store, and one I very much enjoyed for its witty dialogue and good characterization of people.

A Saturday Walk

We've been having an unusually warm and sunny March and April, with the exception of a few chillier and less bright days. For this weekend, rain and lower temperatures were forecast, and when I got up on Saturday morning, I was not at all sure that my Mum and I would be able to go on the walk we had planned.
By the time I'd finished cleaning the flat and getting my groceries shopping done, though, the sun was coming out and it looked like we'd stand a good chance of having our walk without getting wet.

So off we went, across the fields to the nearby town of Kornwestheim, where I so often get off the train one stop earlier on my way home from work in order to enjoy the rest of the trip on foot.

We went to the cemetery where my maternal grandparents' urns are in a columbarium. This month, my grandmother would have been 99 years old. We are not frequently visiting the cemetery and rather remember our dead family members in other ways than placing flowers or lighting candles, but we'd not been there in quite a while and so thought it a good idea to have a look and make sure everything was in order.

Chestnut trees are in full bloom now

On our way there, we stopped at a children's playground so that my Mum could have a little rest on a bench. There was not a single child in sight, and so I tried the swing. As a child, I absolutely loved swings, and in my memory, I have spent hours and hours on a particularly favourite one, very high, at the playground in the palace grounds. Of course it probably was never hours, but you know what it's like when you're a kid; your concept and perception of time is quite different to when you are grown up.

We arrived at the cemetery and found all our relatives' graves in order. I took this picture of the beautiful azalea and rhododendron shrubs, knowing full well that I have taken nearly the same picture last year (you can see it here), only that it was the end of May then - and the new picture is 5 weeks earlier, calendar-wise. Just goes to show what a difference this very mild winter and early warm spring makes.

Our next stop was the town park (Stadtgarten), which also features in the post I have linked to above. There, we sat on a bench near the fountain for a while; it was peaceful and quiet, with only few people about.

The pond is full of goldfish, and we watched this heron catching and swallowing some - I was too slow with the camera to show you that.

A loose feather was sticking up on the back of the heron. After he'd finished his snack, he walked off across the daisy-covered grass, and the feather moved downwards until it fell. Until we had worked out what it was we saw sticking up, I was a bit worried the heron might be hurt, but he behaved so unbothered that we just kept watching him until we were sure he was alright.

The upper part of the Stadtgarten is laid out in beautiful flower beds. This was our last stop before we went to have a cold drink at a café near the train station, where we later took the train home. It had turned out to be a very warm and sunny day, and I was dressed for chilly and possibly rainy weather, so the cold drink was very welcome.

Last night, finally, there were thunder and lightning, and the long awaited and sorely necessary rain arrived. Gardens and fields, parks and woods will look all the more beautiful for it.

Read in 2014 - 14: Jugend zwischen den Kriegen

„Jugend zwischen den Kriegen“ means „Youth Between the Wars“, and that is exactly what this book is about.

Its author, Hieronymus Hirschle, never set out to become an author, and his writing style is charmingly simple, as if he had just wanted to put everything he remembers of his childhood and youth into writing – which is what he did. His written memoirs were found by his daughter after his death, and published in three volumes. This one, dealing with the years 1921 to 1941, is the first.

Hirschle is a Swabian surname and literally means „little stag“. Hieronymus is an oldfashioned Catholic name, the name of a Saint, and its young bearer never really grew to like it; he always had to spell it out for people in order for them to write it correctly, and he much preferred simply being called „Mus“ by his school friends. 

The Hirschle family lived near the village where my Uncle lives, the same Uncle who gave my Mum the book by Ruth Ozan, which I have posted about here. A close relative of Mrs. Ozan’s used to live across the road from my Uncle, until she died a very old lady some time ago. Ever since my Uncle bought a house in the village, he has developed a keen interest in local history. „Jugend zwischen den Kriegen“ deals not just with Mr. Hirschle’s personal history, but also reflects the situation of the village and its inhabitants in those years, as well as the wider picture of what was going on in Germany. As my family and I know the village from many visits to my Uncle and Aunt, we were interested in reading this book as well as the one by Ruth Ozan.

When Hieronymus is born into a modest farming family, the youngest of five children, the event is described as not being much different to the birth of a calf or a piglet. No fuss is made, it is a joyful event, but just normal day-to-day business on a farm. Nonetheless, the Hirschles are a loving, close-knit family; how much the parents love each other and their children is brought home poignantly to little „Mus“ when one of his older brothers dies at the age of 12, and he finds his mother weeping harder and more bitterly than he has ever seen before.

Growing up on a farm in the 1920s meant a lot of hard physical work, rising before dawn, but nobody wasted a thought about it – it was just normal life for them. They were poor, but did not walk hungry because the farm yielded enough to feed the family. And Hieronymus‘ mother took her faith seriously; she considered it her Christian duty to really love all men and treat them as equal, helping those who were poorer than herself with food. She stood up against injustice when she witnessed it, and never stopped buying from Jewish merchants when Germans were discouraged from entering Jewish shops. She taught her children many a lesson in altruism, and had the deep love and respect of them all. In fact, the love for his mother is central to Hieronymus‘ life, and extends to his home village, to „his“ woods and fields, paths and trees, flowers and animals. He is a patriot in the best sense of the word, and does not understand how his noble sense of belonging and his love for his Heimat (there is no real equivalent to this word in English, I think) is abused by the Nazis and turned into something utterly wrong. He has learned from his parents, and feels in his heart, that it is wrong to act against others simply because they have a different background, come from a different country, speak a different language or look different, but he still joins the army as a volunteer, thinking that it is his duty to defend his beloved Vaterland.

It does not take him long to understand that there is nothing really glorious about the war, but it is just when he begins his life as a soldier when this first book ends.

To read how farming folk, villagers and small town residents used to live in the 1920s and 1930s, described not by some historian, but as the vivid memories of a boy who was there, was something I enjoyed very much. There are many touching scenes and thoughts expressed in the book, and I keep thinking of this and that, recalling what I have read. 

The second volume will mainly speak about the war, and how Hieronymus Hirschle ended up as a Prisoner of War, which I am sure will not make for such idyllic scenes as the first part of the trilogy. But I am looking forward to reading it, because I am sure that „Mus“ will not have lost his belief that there is some good in everyone, and something to be learned from every situation.

Happy Easter!

Not long ago, I told you about the Easter egg tree in the palace grounds here, where the aim was to have 10.000 eggs on the tree in time for Easter.

Well, that aim was reached - and nearly doubled! Our local paper had an article about it yesterday. There are now 17.210 eggs on the tree, all real eggs, all hand-painted or otherwise decorated by their donors. Since the organizers had promised 50 Cents to charity for each egg, quite a nice little sum has been given to two local charities.

But that is not all. There was also a competition as to who (individual, group, school, company...) would be contributing the most eggs. A small local school with only 110 students won the prize of 1.000 Euros - 3.585 eggs came from them alone! Since nothing was allowed to go to waste in the process of preparing the eggs, they have now in the freezer of their school kitchen a large provision of food made from the eggs' contents.

The paper published two photos on its website, one with the winners and some officials (which would be very boring for you), and this one, which shows how thickly clustered the eggs had to be hung in order for the tree to hold them all.

I hope the charities put the money they were given to good use; it won't reach very far, but I guess "every little helps", as they say.

Speaking of charity, maybe you remember that I mentioned before (for instance, in this post that my Dad regularly works at a charity shop. That is where my Mum's hand-knitted socks are going to these days. Her Etsy shop, through which she sold socks to dear and loyal customers from nearly all over the world, has been going from quiet to silent, and on her request, I have taken it off my blog's side bar now. Instead of rather less than more successfully trying to sell the socks, she now gives my Dad a few items every time he goes to work at the shop, and the money then goes to the charity running the shop.

No matter whether you celebrate Easter for religious reasons or simply enjoy a long weekend off, maybe spending it with family and friends, or just getting some well-deserved rest, Happy Easter to all of you!

Read in 2014 - 13: Miss Ludington's Sister

"Miss Ludington's Sister" by Edward Bellamy was published in 1884 and is a love story with a twist - actually, more than one twist. It is of just the right length, with enough words used on the description of places and people to portray them vividly, but not with so much detail as to become boring.

A young, beautiful woman with a shiny future ahead of her falls seriously ill. It takes her a long time to recover, and when she does, the illness has taken such a toll on her physically and mentally that she is hardly the same person any more. Her beauty is gone, her colours are faded, and all she wants now is to remember her past self with the happiness of her former life.

The world around her has changed, too; when she timidly starts venturing outside again, she finds her friends from school days are mostly married, have babies, moved away or simply have found other pastimes without her who used to be at the centre of their circle. The village itself is constantly growing and being modernized, so that slowly but surely, everything she knew and loved in her youth is gone.

When she is already in her middle age, she is left a vast fortune, and uses it to act out her dream of restoring the past: On an empty stretch of land, she has the high street of "her" village rebuilt according to her instructions, with every stone, every shrub and tree and every corner just the way they were when she was young and healthy and full of life. She moves into this ghostlike, empty village which becomes the scenery to her reclusive life.

A relative of hers dies, leaving behind a little boy, and the duty to raise the orphan falls on her. Much as she loves the child and treats him like a son, he does not make a difference to her outlook on life, turned backwards instead of towards the future. On the contrary, the little boy loves the life-sized portrait of Miss Ludington's former self from the first moment he sets eyes on it (not knowing who she is), and his love only grows fonder and stronger as he gets older.

Eventually, the boy is grown up, and Miss Ludington in her sixties. He returns from school, reluctant to start any profession or do anything else that will take him away from the empty village and the portrait. Instead, he develops a theory that, if proven true, could mean his abstract love for the girl in the painting can be turned into something real.

How Miss Ludington and her nephew set about to bring the past to real life, and what happens when they do, I will not tell you here. Let me just say that the story managed to surprise me more than once, although some bits were foreseeable.

This free ebook from the kindle shop was one I really enjoyed, and was almost sad to finish. Some information about the author can be found here.