9 posts tagged “read this”
The Elegance of the Hedgehog, by Muriel Barbery.
Isn't that title magnificent?
I very nearly bought this book for the title alone, but I did skim a page or two before slapping it down and saying "I'll take it!" I must say, however, that I'd never have purchased it if it weren't for the title. A customer requested it months ago, and the title stuck firmly in my brain. Today, I desperately needed something to read, and so I purchased The Elegance of the Hedgehog as I left work.
I also must say that I don't understand all of it. The author is very philosophical, and has a tendency to go on about thinkers for a page at a time. That's nowhere near as disturbing or annoying as it might be. Somehow, it fits this book.
If you like to laugh about upper class snobbery and read about Japanese simplicity and would enjoy spending time in the company of a French concierge who is extremely art-and-music conscious but must maintain proletarian facade while making snarky side comments about the insanely rich young university students yakking about how reading Marx has changed their lives, man....go read the book. Oh, and the concierge (to the distress of the building's other residents, natch) becomes friends with a young genius who lives in the building and whose suicidal adolescent genius angst is perfectly tempered by the concierge's dry public maturity and private uncertainties.
Furthermore, the author has described the effect of music better than ever I could. In the following paragraph, the 12-year-old genius is listening to the choir at her school perform, and observes:
"Every time, it's the same thing. I feel like crying, my throat goes all tight and I do the best I can to control myself but sometimes it gets close: I can hardly keep myself from sobbing. So when they sing a canon I look down at the ground because it's just too much emotion at once: it's too beautiful, and everyone singing together, this marvelous sharing. I'm no longer myself, I am just one part of a sublime whole, to which the others also belong, and I always wonder at such moments why this cannot be the rule of everyday life, instead of being an exceptional moment, during a choir.
When the music stops, everyone applauds, their faces all lit up, the choir radiant. It is so beautiful.
In the end, I wonder if the true movement of the world might not be a voice raised in song." (p. 184-185, The Elegance of the Hedgehog)
I think I've found my monthly book to recommend. One brief note: this book is translated from the original French. Therefore, it never had a hardcover debut in America, as it was, I believe, translated to English and sold in America after European success. I bought it in paperback. I considered very briefly spending the money to have it shipped in hardcover from England, and decided that I'd rather not spend the money for the book and the ridiculous shipping only to not know if I'd even like it or want it in my library. This book stays. Furthermore, I can think of at least two people to whom I'd like to give this book for birthdays or Christmas.
UbiCaritas gives this book two thumbs up and five stars.
Title: 84 Charing Cross Road
Author: Helene Hanff
Rating: Can one perhaps raise five stars to the second, third, or tenth power? (Can you tell that I'm taking another math class this semester?)
Read it
if you love good books,
if you want to share that love with wonderful and book-loving people,
if you want to become a friend of friends of books,
if you love the feel of a perfectly bound good book in your hand--none of those revolting "grimy schoolboy editions" published by B&N, Borders, and all and sundry,
if you appreciate great wit and gentility,
if you consider abridgement, retelling, and selection to be crimes that would, in a reasonable world, be punishable by hanging, drawing and quartering at the very least,
if you are or ever have been an impoverished bibliophile,
if you've read and loved The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (a reviewer of that beautiful book led me to 84 Charing Cross Road),
(and if any of these statements are true and you haven't read The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, get thee to your nearest bookstore/computer/library)
if you haunt real used bookstores and/or devoutly wish that chain used-book stores, however well-meaning, would not exist as they tend to put the privately-owned used-book stores out of business,
if you dream of spending afternoons wandering through shelves and shelves and shelves of books,
then you must read this book. That's all there is to it. You will laugh, nod, hop up and down, run out and spend too much money on some books, cry, and reread, because the only issue I'd have with the book is that it is too darned short.
I got my copy yesterday, stayed up 'til two reading it after work, and will reread it again today before finding a fellow book lover to whom I'll pass it on.
Go forth and purchase it! In paperback, you can get it for $5 (including shipping) from Abebooks.com. In hardcover, you could get it for $8 or so (again, including shipping). I'd argue that this book should be purchased in hardcover because of the sort of book that it is, but I'm sure Ms. Hanff would have understood if one must purchase it in paperback. Heck, go to a library and get it for free. It is all of maybe 150-200 pages, and probably less; not exactly a tome.
Just read it, okay?
(Carapiccoladiva, I have vowed that this afternoon I shall sit down and read Mrs. Dalloway cover-to-cover and not let myself be distracted from my purpose. Now you go get this book! :D Incidentally, it is available in German. Oh, and I've meant to email you about this, but to look back to the book meme of over a year ago, Birgit Nilsson's autobiography--La Nilsson--has finally come out in English.)
I found this at Half-Price Books today, and couldn't resist. (Well, I could have, but then I wouldn't have a blog post. File that under "lamest excuse ever for purchasing a book.")
I first read Inside, Outside when I was in high school. For my last two years of high school, I attended a tiny high school in a correspondingly miniscule town. The school library was the town library. I kid you not. It was open to the public two days each week for two hours at a time. It was open to students during school hours, and featured two shelves of nonfiction, three of fiction, and a wall of reference books.
Since I spent most of my class time and all of the time on the bus reading, I finished anything worth reading in that libary by Halloween or so of my junior year.
I asked the libarian to request some books via interlibrary loan for me.
She replied that it had been years since she last did that, she didn't think that she remembered how to do it, and why did I want to have my nose in a book all the time?
I offered to put away all the books on the "Reshelve" cart if she'd get that list of books for me. As the librarian was morbidly obese and had bad hips/knees/feet, she realized the benefit of this: she could remain sitting at the desk while requesting those books, and her shelving would be finished.
I had heard of Inside, Outside after I read Chaim Potok. (When I checked out My Name is Asher Lev, the librarian suspiciously asked me if I was planning on selling it on Ebay, because NO ONE read Chaim Potok because they LIKED him.) Inside, Outside also deals with a Jew who reads much Talmud, but there the similarities end. While Potok writes beautiful, heartbreaking, stunning literature, Wouk is just a bloody good read. Imagine a politically liberal Jewish tax attorney who is married to an even-more-politically-liberal woman. Imagine if Nixon (who is never mentioned by name but implied) decides that he needs a Jewish person on his staff--err, I mean, "Special Assistant to the President for Cultural and Educational Liason." Now remember that the wife campaigned madly for Stephenson. The man--who, while he disagrees politically with Nixon, doesn't hate him--decides to write a memoir about his crazy family in order to pass the time. He's studied Talmud for hours while waiting for a job from the President--though he does occasionally get delegated to take Soviet professors of American literature to topless bars. Now it's time to write about his totally devoted (and nutty) mother, his peculiar ancestors, and his grandmother, who makes sauerkraut by the vat while the lot of them are living in an apartment.
Off to read...
Title: To Kill a Mockingbird
Author: Harper Lee
Originally Published in: 1960
My Rating: Four Stars
A few months ago, I picked up and read To Kill A Mockingbird for the first time. Though I am a high school graduate, I had never read this book before. I remember being given it on my tenth birthday and my mother refusing to allow me to read it then or at any time after that. I suspect that her reason was that the suspect was accused of rape and that that was not a subject she wanted to discuss. I'd argue that I might not want a ten-year-old aware of the existence of rape but that, rather unfortunately, most ten-year-olds and virtually all teenagers are familiar with the concept. I'd probably hand this book to a high-school freshman or an eighth-grader without a qualm, and consider it carefully for younger children. The rape is not described in graphic detail.
As most know, this book discusses racism and, to a lesser extent, gender roles. It's also a truly fantastic read; once I picked it up, I did not put it down until I finished it at 2:30 AM or so. The ending is not a happy one, and will unquestionably prompt conversation. Yet that was the way the South was in the 1960s, and Lee's keen insights regarding human nature are certainly eye-opening. This is the sort of novel that one is in; one walks up and down the street with Scout and her brother, wonders if a gift has been left in the hollow of the tree, and returns briefly to imaginative childhood games. I practically hopped up and down and cheered, "Yes! Yes! Yes!" when she indicated the unimaginable importance of great books in the life of a child.
Having said all of that, this novel was nominated as "Best Novel of the Century" in 1999 by the Library Journal. I simply do not think that it deserves that title.
Honestly, I can't even give a particularly substantive reason why I do not think that it was the "Best Novel of the Century." I think that I can put it best in a paraphrase of what a friend of mine says, on occasion, to her students: "A paper does not have an 'A' as a default grade. A 'C' is an average grade; better than average work deserves a 'B', while truly outstanding work deserves an 'A'. Your paper might be grammatically correct, may make me smile in places, and may even fascinate me with your ideas on this subject. That does not mean that it is more than above average, nor does it mean that it is truly outstanding."
Does that make any sense? While this book was ever-so-well written, while it made me smile and cry, while it made me think about uncomfortable subjects, that does not mean that it was the "Best Novel of the Century."
I would, however, say that Ms. Lee unquestionably deserved her Presidential Medal of Freedom. That book took courage, and brought a subject into the open that had been shamefully ignored for far too long.
Please, anyone who has read it, feel free to comment! I'd like to know if this is just my impression or if I'm alone in thinking this.
PS-I am about one third of the way through Victor Hugo's Les Miserables. I never read it before, but after being reminded of its existence during vocal rep a few weeks ago I thought, "Hm, another 'great book' I've never read. Maybe I should." All I can say is that if you loved The Count of Monte Cristo (I did), read Les Mis. I'm having a hard time putting it down, to the point where I'm reading it in the recital hall during rehearsals (not while I'm supposed to be on stage, of course). It really is fantastic. Yes, it is abridged, but apparently it is only missing the history of a religious order of some kind. It is the B&N Classics edition, which came to about $5 with my discount. Even with the abridgement, it is 830 pages without the footnotes. As far as I'm concerned, that's a good thing: I can enjoy it longer!
Things I should be doing:
a) sleeping
b) homework
c) tidying the house
d) doing laundry
What am I doing?
Composing a list of the ten books that have most influenced/impressed me. Or the most important books (for me) that I've read. Or something along those lines. It's a list that has been brewing in my mind for a while, so maybe if I write it down I can concentrate on other things better! :P I was inspired to do this by a thread on a website that I visit frequently, which asked each person to post the three most influential books of his/her life. I can't possibly list just three, so here are my ten.
This is in no particular order, though I'd say that the Iliad would rank higher on the list than most.
1) Homer's Iliad. Everyone should read this. EVERYONE. Best line: "I have done what no other mortal man has done; I have kissed the hands of the man who killed my son." Graduating from college without reading this (no matter what the degree plan) should be illegal because of how much this book makes you think. It's about refusing to fight a war for the wrong reasons, going into battle for the right reasons, forgiveness, the sorrow and grief caused by war (however just it may/may not be), the importance of philosophy, and so much more.
2) The Time quartet, by Madeleine L'Engle. These books are about doing the right thing (however difficult and frightening), drawing closer to the Divine via the Aquinian idea of beauty+goodness MUST come from the Divine no matter what the apparent source, time/space/dimensional travel, family, the good kind of feminism (women can be both brilliant Nobel-Prize-winning scientists and still be fantastic wives and mothers), the importance of love, and (again) so much more. I reread these about twice a year (usually on school breaks). The best kind of children's book can be genuinely enjoyed by adults and kids more than once.
3) Heart and Hands, by Elizabeth Davis. This is a very entry-level midwifery textbook. Every woman ought to read it for a better understanding of her body, femininity, fertility, women's health overall, etc. It is extremely readable.
4) A Tree Grows In Brooklyn, by Betty Smith. While this is not considered a children's book, I first read it when I was about 12. I didn't understand all of it, but I enjoyed it generally and appreciated it as a whole. Three or four years later, I read it again. I finally bought it and reread it about a two years ago, and I loved it even more. Womanhood, love of books and music, the importance of great books in children's education, growing up/coming of age, poverty, the importance of imagination, delight in small pleasures--all of those are covered. Oh yeah, and it's a REALLY fun read. I've reread it twice in the past two years, and intend to continue.
5) My Name is Asher Lev and The Gift of Asher Lev, both by Chaim Potok. These aren't as well known as Potok's The Chosen, but they spoke more to me. A Jewish Hassidic boy with an incredible and uncanny talent for art (particularly Impressionistic) comes of age (and, in the second, is married and a father to his own children) in New York in a fictionalized Ludivicher (sp?)-style Hassidic community. This is a brilliant book just in the attention to the details of what it is like to grow up in such a community, though that is a sideline in much of the book. The community in which Asher Lev grows up is not one that approves of much of his kind of art (everything from nudes to crucifixions to portraits to impressionistic landscapes/still lifes et all); the less judgmental tend to think of it as a waste of time, while the very critical consider parts of it to be an abomination. Unusually (and this is part of what makes these books great) the Rebbi (the leader of the Hassidic community) is not portrayed as cruel or even unkind. Instead, he is thoughtful in his dealings with Lev; he does not give approval to certain aspects of this art, but he does not judge, either. His concern, as a truly great and wise man, is for the well-being of his community, of which he clearly considers Lev a part. Lev gives (particularly in the second book) excellent (yet gentle) rebuttals to the community: he goes to the childrens' school and, upon being criticized openly by a young child, turns to the board and draws a masterpiece in chalk: a portrait of the Rebbi. Now, to this community, the Rebbi is much like the Pope is to Catholics, but he is (due to the size of the community) more like Peter (first Pope) would have been to the early Christians: closer, and therefore draws God closer to them. Lev explains that by depicting that which is uplifting and good, art can draw us closer to the Divine, and that by depicting evil, one can understand it better (and therefore avoid it). I know that these are technically two books, but they really should both be read if one is read.
6) Shoeless Joe, by W.P. Kinsella. This is the book from which the movie Field of Dreams was based. It is NOT just about baseball. It is about baseball, the love of the game, the "thrill of the grass," following important ideas if they feel right and even if they seem absolutely crazy, dreams coming true, broken hearts being mended, and souls finding peace. Even if you aren't a baseball fan (and I'll admit, I pretty much grew up on stories about the old-time Yankees, the Black Sox, et all) you should read this.
7) Tolkien's The Hobbit. While many people will cite The Lord of the Rings trilogy as a favorite, I think I am one of about five people on this planet who preferred The Hobbit. I find it easier to identify with the main character, I laughed more while reading it, and the imagery/descriptions/scenarios were just beautiful and crystal-clear. Important themes? Well, not so obvious. Perhaps expecting the unexpected, finding hidden depths, not being content with a regular and comfortable placency but instead stretching oneself mentally and physically, etc. (and yes, LOTR fans, I realize that those and more are all in your beloved LOTR. I don't particularly dislike LOTR. I just never enjoyed it the way I did The Hobbit. Chill.)
8) The Blue Castle, by L.M. Montgomery. Montgomery is best known for her Anne of Green Gables series, of course. Personally, I always liked The Blue Castle more than anything else she wrote. It is (I think) still in print, but it is rather unknown, particularly compared to her Anne and Emily books. In short, a girl (Valancy) finds out that she is dying, and is given about a year to live. In her late twenties, she is considered a hopeless spinster by her thoroughly unpleasant family. Upon learning she is dying, she determines to keep that a secret, and to really live life to the fullest. She leaves her mother's house and goes to nurse another girl who is dying of TB. No one else will take care of this other girl because she is considered "bad" after being knocked up, but Valancy discovers a gentle and innocent soul. She uses the money that the girl's father insists on paying her for the nursing and housekeeping to purchase pretty new clothes that she would never have been allowed to wear before. Eventually she marries a rather disreputable man who was kind to the dying girl, and enjoys every minute of the next year. There is a surprise ending, which I shan't post here. I know I've made all this sound very Victorian-novel-y, but this is really a well-written and enjoyable book. I probably identify a lot with the character (no, I'm not going anywhere! :P), but in all honesty anyone who feels pressed down or what-have-you should read this. Very liberating.
9) The Secret Garden, by Frances Hodgson Burnett. Beauty, magic, mystery; the smell of beautiful flowers and fresh air and rich dirt; the importance of nature in anyone's life. It's all in here. Oh, yes, and a wonderful story, too. This book more than makes up for that nauseating Little Lord Fauntleroy nonsense; in fact, it just stands on it's own as A Good Book.
10) Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury. Again, I'd say that every college student should have to read this. Right now, the educational system (at least in this country) is such that few have actually read any of the great books from which great ideas come (I had a speech teacher once who had never read Thomas Paine's Common Sense or Aristotle or Plato or Homer and objected to my referencing them). Most college students could tell you who was on American Idol, and a heck of a lot fewer could tell you the great ideas in the Odyssey or why they are both important and relevant in today's society. Many spot-on quotes, including, "Give the people contests they win by remembering the words to more popular songs or the names of state capitals or how much corn Iowa grew last year. Cram them so full of noncombustible data, chock them so damn full of "facts" they feel stuffed, but absolutely "brilliant" with information. Then they'll feel they're thinking, they'll get a sense of motion without moving. And they'll be happy, because facts of that sort don't change. Don't give them any slippery stuff like philosophy or sociology to tie things up with. That way lies melancholy....So bring on your clubs and parties, your acrobats and magicians, your daredevils, jet cars, motorcycle helicopters, your sex and heroin, more of everything to do with automatic reflex. If the drama is bad, if the film says nothing, if the play is hollow, sting me with the theremin, loudly. I'll think I'm responding to the play, when it's only a tactile response to vibration. But I don't care. I just like solid entertainment." Bradbury's Coda at the end of Farenheit 451 shoul be read by every reader. A brief (okay, relatively) quote: "Some five years back, the editors of yet another anthology for school readers put together a volume with some 400 (count 'em) short stories in it. How do you cram 400 short stories by Twain, Irving, Poe, Maupassant and Bierce into one book? Simplicity itself. Skin, debone, demarrow, scarify, melt, render down and destroy. Every adjective that counted, every verb that moved, every metaphor that weighed more than a mosquito--out! Every simile that would have made a sub-moron's mouth twitch--gone! Any aside that would have explained the two-bit philosophy of a first-rate writer--lost! Every story, slenderized, starved, bluepenciled, leeched and bled white, resembled every other story. Twain read like Poe read like Shakespeare read like Dostoevsky read like--in the finale--Edgar Guest. Every word of more than three syllables had been razored. Every image that demanded so much as one instant's attention--shot dead. Do you begin to get the damned and incredible picture?"
I've intended for some time to send the whole of that Coda to my high school English teachers and the principal of that high school. We were given such readers. Yes, we did read a few, a very few, books in entirety, but so much of what we read was excerpted/shortened/abridged etc. When I hear at work of teachers actually assigning the "Shakespeare Made Easy" series, I want to reach through the phone and strangle them. Books are important. Ideas are important. One asks the student to stretch his mind to encompass new ideas; one doesn't condense and distill the new ideas to fit the student's mind in its present state.
So, that being said, I'm curious about what other people would put on their "Ten Most Influential/Important Books"/"Books That Made Me Who I Am Today" list. This isn't necessarily a "Greatest Books Ever Written" list; it's supposed to be more personalized. Consider this a sort of meme, if you will, and tag at least three people. Carapiccoladiva, katiebell, misskate, themaureencorps, and shewhomustbeobeyed, consider yourselves tagged! :)
Book: The Inner Voice
Author: Renee Fleming
Originally Published In: 2004
Rating: How much higher than five stars can one go?
Several weeks ago themaureencorps and shewhomustbeobeyed asked me what I wanted for Christmas. I gave them a list which basically said opera, opera, more opera, some music, some books, some prints. Obviously, this was a list from which they would choose a few things to get; I was just trying to make it easy. We do lists for each other around Christmas because while I know that themaureencorps will want DVDs, she has THOUSANDS of them already so I would otherwise have no idea what to get her and shewhomustbeobeyed has specific yet wideranging ideas (this year, I got her temporary tatoos and a new sweater). In my case, they admit to not knowing much about my kinds of books or music or art, so I give 'em a list.
Anywhoooo-where was I?
Oh, right.
Bear in mind that while I love classical music as a whole, I am still but a freshman, and really haven't familiarized myself with opera as much as some others have. I grew up in a household with NO exposure to opera beyond the Gilbert and Sullivan operettas (don't get me wrong, I still love G&S). So, aside from Pavarotti (childhood friend introduced me to him singing "Nessun Dorma" and I fell in love) I know almost nothing about opera or its singers except what I hear around me at school and read about in my spare minutes. I watch clips on YouTube and am slowly aquiring a CD collection. Right now I have some each of Joan Sutherland, Pavarotti, Kathleen Battle, Jessye Norman, Cecilia Bartoli; very wide ranging, but I'm still trying to figure out what I like and what's what and who's who in opera. This is a very fun time!
So, when asked what I wanted for Christmas, I threw some of the aforementioned names on a list, along with that of Renee Fleming. When themaureencorps and shewhomustbeobeyed found that Renee Fleming had written a book, they got me two of her CDs and the book (as well as some delightful Degas and Monet prints, but that's another post) for Christmas. (end of second digression)
I just finished reading the book.
Wow.
Wow.
WOW.
I think I'm still trying to process a great deal of it. But still---WOW.
She wrote that she wrote the book in part because she wanted a book like this when she started out as a singer. It is brilliant. Perfect. Exactly what I needed right now. And I'll be reereading this periodically.
She describes so many of the ideas (technical, emotional, performance, you name it) that I have or had been thinking about or ponder occasionally. This really is exactly what I needed. I only wish it had gone on longer, but she covered pretty much everything.
This book is not an autobiography of her so much as it is an autobiography of her voice and what singing is all about. It is humorous, supportive and gentle. She doesn't (thank you!) turn her life into a soap opera (oh, thank you so much!); instead, she touches on family stuff so far as it affects her voice, but doesn't air dirty laundry. In short (now that WOULD be a first) the book is broadening, amusing, and classy. She discusses things technical (mask singing, how to reach high notes, et all), businesslike (managers, for example), scholastic (her wonderful teachers through the years) and even relationships with directors/producers/actors/singers.
If you are considering studying classical voice, are interested in opera or classical singing, or need, as a singer, a boost of wisdom and humor--READ THIS BOOK. NOW. And I don't want to hear about how you don't have time to read anything. I (who am a firm believer in practicing, practicing a lot, and then practicing some more to the point of occasionally solfeging in my sleep) say that this is as important as practicing.
So, READ THIS!
What, you may ask, do I get the child between 3-8 on my list? Easy! (and yes, I know this is a little belated, but it is too good a book not to rec)
Book: Bad Kitty
Author: Nick Bruel
Genre: Kids' Fiction
I saw this in the kids' section the other day, and thought that it was so cute that I promptly bought one for Spiderman for Christmas. It goes through the alphabet four times, so it is somewhat educational. It is, however, extremely humorous (actually, I was laughing so hard back in kids' that a coworker came back there to see if I'd finally gone around the bend). Kitty is a good kitty until the family runs out of cat food. They do offer kitty some nice, healthy substitutes: asparagus, bananas (I think) and so forth. Kitty takes umbrage at this, and decided to be a bad kitty--but not just any bad kitty. A very, VERY bad kitty. So he claws grandma, demolishes the daisies (I may be paraphrasing here, but he runs through the alphabet of bad behavior). Then the family returns home with tasty (to a cat's mind) food, and they list (alphabetically, of course!) all the tasty food they have for Kitty, who then repents of his bad behavior and fixes all the messes he created. "What a good kitty. What a very, very good kitty." The family rewards this behaviour by...getting a puppy for the kitty to play with "and share your food with." The book closes with Kitty getting a "bad kitty" look on his face and the words, "uh oh..."
I am not doing justice to this book. You'll have almost as much fun reading it to the kid as the kid will have hearing it (or vice versa, if the kid is at the reading-to-you stage). There is a sequel (Bad Puppy) which, though good, is nowhere near as humorous. I give Bad Kitty six out of five stars. In short, go get it!
Book: In This House of Brede
Author: Rumer Godden
Originally Published In: 1969
Rating: 5 Stars, and two thumbs up!
In This House of Brede is my favorite book by Rumer Godden, and certainly one of my top ten favorite books, period. Most of the novel occurs in Brede Abbey, a cloistered Benedictine convent. Before you roll your eyes, dear reader, I will assure you of one thing: a wishy-washy, namby-pamby milksopilly boring story about nuns (you can't tell that I loathe that genre, can you?) this ain't!
The central character is a woman named Phillippa Talbot who, at the age of 42, discovers a vocation as a Benedictine nun. Phillippa is most unlike the typical youthful and starry-eyed novice (nun-in-training, so to speak): she is quite mature (there is a twenty year age gap between her and the other novices), extremely well-educated ("took a first in languages at Oxford,"), had been the head of a government department at a time when that was rather unusual for a woman (circa late 1940s-early 1950s), had been married, divorced and widowed, and had gone through a wrenching tragedy that most of the other nuns could only imagine.
Sister (later Dame--fully professed Benedictine choir nuns of the time were called Dame) Philippa struggles with various unique (and not so unique) temptations throughout the book. She is never given more than she can handle, and it is interesting to note that her temptations are ones that most of us have gone through at some point. At the beginning of her postulancy, she struggles with her desire for cigarettes; she also learns self-control, humility, willingness and intimacy.
There are many other strong characters throughout the book. Abbess Catherine Ismay is a very human woman who, upon election as Abbess, weeps out of fear and loneliness. Dame Maura, the precentrix, develops innapropriate (yet understandable) feelings for a younger nun; Dame Maura faces this head-on and triumphs over it. Dame Agnes, a particularly strict and learned nun, is jealous of Dame Philippa for her looks, scholarship and renown; yet, after a struggle, that flaw, too, is conquered.
In short, In This House of Brede looks at a little-know subject and describes what it really is. Godden deals with several myths about enclosed religious communities. No one is forced to inflict pain upon herself as penance. A novice or postulant may leave at any time. Nuns have the same wants and desires we have (yes, that does include a husband and babies). In This House of Brede also describes precisely what one might expect when nearly a hundred unrelated women live under the same roof. There are differences of opinion, outright arguments, tempers and snits, but when it comes down to it, all those women really are sisters.
And yes, there is even a touch of humor.
So, go get this book and READ IT!
