Where Timon Loses It

Timon of Athens by William Shakespeare
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Not all that fun to read.

As a curiosity, it's all right. That's how I read it. But it's a pretty horrible story.

Timon was a hero of Athens and made himself rich. The early part of the story--first couple acts--he is popular, holding dinners and events, giving his guests not only fine food and drink but gifts, like jewels and other nice things. He also pays high prices for paintings and artwork to support the artists. His man of business keeps trying to warn him that he's overextended, that he has debts himself, but he doesn't listen. Then, flat broke, with creditors demanding payment, he asks his friends for help, and they all tell hm no. He is ruined and flees Athens, cursing it, after one final banquet where he serves his false friends stones and water--then throws the stones at them.

His cursing is so severe it's almost funny:

...Slaves and fools,
Pluck the grave wrinkled Senate from the bench
And minister in their steads!
...Bankrupts, hold fast:
Rather than render back, out with your knives
And cut your trusters' throats! Bound servants, steal!
...Son of sixteen,
Pluck the lined crutch from thy old limping sire,
With it beat out his brains!

That's only part of it. He's pretty upset.

In the last acts, he lives in a cave, digging for roots, and finds gold. Instead of rejoicing and making himself rich again, he gives the gold to thieves and prostitutes and asks them to do even more than they've been doing, to undermine Athens with their immorality. One of the bandits he talks to this way is a little disturbed and says that Timon "has almost charmed me from my profession by persuading me to do it." You're freaking me out, man, and I don't think I want to be a bandit anymore.

This isn't, in my opinion (and who cares what I think?) a very good tragedy. He's supposed to have a tragic flaw--like anger, or pride, or something equally reprehensible--but it seems like his flaw was to be too generous and believe his fellow man was better than he turned out to be. I suppose you could argue that he was always an angry misanthrope, but that part of his personality wasn't revealed as long as he had spectacular good luck. Once tested like Job, he becomes a hater, instead of revealing patience or humility or something.

I dunno. Maybe that's convincing. I think he was just embittered by having literally everyone desert him after he had done so much for them, and it's pretty extreme, but you can sort of see how he got there. His end was tragic, but not really in the classic sense.

IMO.

Anyway, it's somewhat entertaining. It's clearly not as well-rounded a play as many others, as smarter people than me say about it. For completion's sake if nothing else, it's worth looking at.

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Where Everybody Might Have Done It

Jane and the Canterbury Tale by Stephanie Barron
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Number 11 in my favorite all-time series. And another 5-star book.

I read this first maybe 15 years ago. Hard to believe it's that long ago. But like the last reread (book 10, I mean), I think I liked it even more this time through. (It was long enough ago that I didn't recall the solution to the mystery, not until I got to the crucial scene, so it was still great fun all the way. Perks of a faulty memory...)

Jane is staying with her wealthy brother near Canterbury when there is a murder, and the victim turns out to be the supposedly-deceased husband of a widow who has just remarried. Jane's brother is the magistrate and has to investigate, leading him to jail a friend of the family and consider others as possible suspects. So many people turn out to have genuine reason to want the man dead, it was hard to find someone who wasn't a suspect.

Lots of twists and turns, lots of social awkwardness (sorry I jailed your sister!), lots of clues and misdirection. All fun. As always, the writing feels both Jane Austeny and modern, a nice trick, and the characters are well-drawn and entertaining. A couple of rogues show up that I think deserve a spin-off series, if only the author could be persuaded. :)

I generally don't reread books. Very rarely. But I enjoy these so much I might become one of those people who goes back through a favorite series every year or two. Not a bad notion.

Highly recommended.

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Where They're Too Beautiful to Care

The Ivory Mischief by Arthur Meeker
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I'd never heard of this novel when I picked it up in a library bookstore. I just liked the looks of the hardcover--that was what sold me.

It's a great novel. It took me some time to read, but I loved it, and I am struggling to explain to myself what exactly held my attention so long. The genre isn't exactly my thing--straightforward historical novel, leaning more literary than popular, though it apparently was very successful in its day, that being the early 1940s.

Set mostly in France in the late 1600s, it is the story of two beautiful, rich sisters, Magdelon and Cateau. Cateau is the clever one, Magdelon the sweet one; Cateau has more beauty and more lovers, and is more adept in society; Magdelon makes a better marriage and has children and grandchildren, a family life her sister never achieves. But despite their differences, they remain close and live lives more similar than different. Both spend decades in the public eye, wearing the most expensive clothes, taking lovers almost without discretion. Both behave throughout the years of their youth and beauty as if nothing will ever change and the world will always be at their feet. But the novel follows them through their fifties, sixties, seventies, and eighties, and we see them desperate and afraid for their souls when everything has been taken from them except each other (and Cateau's money, which they both live on).

Much of the novel is about their earlier years and their brilliant careers as fashion leaders, invited to dances and parties and dinners almost every day of the week. The men in their lives come and go, off to war each year, sometimes not to return. Cateau especially seems to have everything anyone could want, but even rich beauties are not immune to grief and loss. Nor is she or her sister immune to befriending the wrong people, or being too flagrant in their disregard for decorum, and both spend years in hiding, if not repentance, until their fortunes brighten once more.

And all of this is true. The novel is fiction, filled with scenes and events and dialogue that is invented, but the people (I don't say characters) were real, and lived these very lives, rising and falling in public esteem, in wealth, in fortune, as found in letters and other documents from the times. In a real sense, this is their joint biography, if somewhat embroidered. And so the ending, which leads us to their passing months apart in their eighties, is more than usually poignant. It's like we knew them as very young women, right around twenty, with all of their lives ahead of them, and fast-forwarded (well, through about 700 pages) to gray hair, failing memory, and anonymity. I found it very touching.

Maybe every tenth or twentieth book I concern myself with prose. It's not one of my cares, usually. But when it's striking, as it is in this novel, I become aware of how much I approve of it. A dull story with brilliant prose means no more to me than a lovingly-painted image of garbage (I don't know; that might be cool, after all...) but an engaging, lively, stimulating novel with amazing prose is fantastic. Meeker uses a lot of ellipses and em-dashes and parentheses, a style I actually vibe with, and I find it adds to rather than detracts from comprehension. Maybe it's just me. Here's a taste literally at random, from page 340:

At thirty-eight--an age at which most of her contemporaries were grandmothers--the Comtesse d'Olonne [Cateau] was still a beautiful young woman. Her outline was as slender and graceful as ever; her eyes were as blue, her curls quite as yellow--or very nearly: Cateau had lately fancied that they were losing something of their new-minted glitter and had experimented, in spite of La Martin's vigorous protests, with various blond powders, none of which, fortunately, had done any lasting damage. Her complexion, too, had retained its pure ivory pallor [the ivory of the title, btw], so that even from as close a point of vantage as her own dressing-table mirror Madame d'Olonne appeared to be the same white-and-gold idol that had been the admiration of Paris for two decades.

Is it more a novel of manners? Maybe so. It reads like many 19th Century novels, for sure. It's beautifully done, whatever category we want to put it in, and I would love it if more people knew about it. And it makes me wonder how many such novels are waiting in bookstores and basements that cry out to be read, like this one did.

Highly recommended.

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Where Robert Langdon Follows Some Artsy Clues

Inferno by Dan Brown
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I always like Dan Brown books. He knows how to write a thriller that keeps you guessing and takes you all over the world. For me, that's fun. 4 stars.

Ever since the Da Vinci Code, he's been the target of haters, and I don't get it. If I don't like an author, they disappear from my life. But people will hate-read his books and then bang on about how badly written they are or how they hate the tropes he uses, whatever. And a lot of Catholics seem to think, still, that he's trying to take down their religion, and he gets accused of anti-Catholic bias because of it. It's a fundamental misreading of fiction. We *know* this is a made-up story, and we aren't confused by that. Rome is real; Robert Langdon is not. Conspiracy theories make for fun stories, where wild ideas that are *theoretically* possible are strung into a great "what if?" and we all take a ride.

That's what we do here. Nobody thinks this is journalism. Nobody's picking on you or attacking you.

Final word on that sermon--if it's not fun, don't read it. So many other good books to read. Skip this one.

I had forgotten how quickly he drags you from chapter to chapter, from scene to scene, whisking the reader into a confusing state of chases, riddles, exotic locales, and literature coming to life. It's a great mix, and most of the time it works well. Bestsellers are about movement and excitement and action, about big ideas splashing across wide landscapes, and that's what we get in this novel. One of the best things about his writing is that he has a great formula. One of the worst things is that sometimes you get tired of the formula. For me, that's why this is a great 4-star book but I couldn't go to five.

My favorite stuff is the travel. I've not been many places in Europe, but I've been to Florence, and it's amazing to see all of the things behind the scenes, or in the attics, or under the stones. That's a big part of his formula. There's also Venice, with all kinds of behind the scenes looks at St. Marks. then there's Istanbul, which gets a similar treatment. Robert and his allies are trying to stop someone from doing a thing that will be real bad, and hints and clues have them hopping from one city to the next, always a little late... but--all together now--that's the formula.

He also gives us the brand names of everything the professionals use--what kind of helicopter, what kind of laser pointer, what kind of boat--and I actually dig that. It's super easy to lampoon, especially if you read it in your head in a Leslie Nielsen kind of voice, but despite that I still like it, and he knows it lends a kind of competence to his characters, as if they know they are using the very best equipment because they are professionals. It works for me.

What I'm tired of are the twists, the reversals. He's the enemy! No, he's on your side. They're attacking me! No, they're trying to save you from someone else. A little of that goes a long way, and Dan Brown does it relentlessly. This hurts my appreciation for the story, because I'm one of those "found family" kind of readers; I love team-ups, people coming together to save the world. I hate having to retcon all of my understanding of the novel to this point by believing the good guys have been the bad guys and the bad guys were the good guys. It makes me feel like I need to go back and reread everything in the light of the new evidence. It's dramatic, but I hate it.

That disagreement aside, I really enjoyed reading the book. It was fun to pick up over and over again instead of other books I'm reading that are less compelling, and it never felt like work the way some novels do. So I give him credit--he writes stuff I like to read.

From my brother Jon's collection. Still thinking of you, brother.

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A Dark Mystery in a Dark Time

Mistress of the Art of Death by Ariana Franklin
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a very entertaining book and series. I've been reading it all out of order--you find what you find at used book stores--but that doesn't affect it much. The stories all work on their own.

This is the first, and yet it feels like there was another book before this where the characters were born. (Seems like there was more than just back-story behind this, as if there's a missing first book in the series didn't catch on. I don't know. Doesn't really matter.) In any case, the main character and her friends--she's a doctor from Salerno, working with a Jewish doctor and a Muslim man--set out for England to solve a long series of murders that are being blamed on the Jewish population of Cambridge.

This is the 1100's. None of them are well-received in England, but especially not a woman trying to practice medicine. Not done. So they have to pretend that Adelia is an assistant to the men, although she is the one with all the crucial skills to solve such cases.

The mystery here is compelling and horrifying, not to mention scary and disturbing and horrible, and the plotting is strong. Also, the world it's placed in, the world of 12th Century England under the much-maligned King Henry II (who is a great character here), is vividly recreated. (I just realized there's a map in the front that I really could have been using all along. Sheesh.) Good mystery, good history, good characters--there's a lot to like. And while I like the main character and appreciate what she brings to the story, I find her hard to really like. I'm not sure why. She just always seems a contrarian who makes it hard for anyone to talk to her. If there's any sweetness in Adelia, it isn't clear on the page. I can't figure out quite what the author is going for with her, but it may be a cultural difference between us that makes it hard for me to connect.

But I like the book and I'm cheering for the main character, even if I'd never want to chat with her in real life. If you want someone to catch your murderer, though, she's a good choice.

Recommended.

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Where Dan Models True Scholarship

The Bible Says So: What We Get Right (and Wrong) About Scripture’s Most Controversial Issues by Daniel McClellan
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is such a great book. Highly recommended. And not just for people interested in the Bible or the history of religion--but definitely for those guys, as well.

Dan is one of the best things to happen to the world during COVID. He has a wide web presence, but I know him from TikTok, and he's amazing over there. Everything he brings to this wide discussion on social media is present in this book, which is why I love it.

First of all, the topics here--whether god lies in the Bible, whether he had a wife in the Bible, what the Bible "says" about abortion or rape or Satan, and so on--are interesting to many of us. Even non-religious people are affected by the beliefs people hold on these topics, by the arguments they make about them, by the policies they support or oppose based on these beliefs. And for someone raised in a religious tradition, discovering that many things I thought were so were not so, actually--well, that's like finding a secret room in your attic or something. Surprising. Exciting. Strange. And Dan nails these topics, presenting amazing evidence from a wide variety of sources to support his positions.

But when you get down to it, the central theme of his writing is always "Data over Dogma," and that controls everything he puts out. It's not just "prove your point with better examples than the other guy;" it's more like "amend your belief to correspond to what is demonstrated by scholarship, whether or not it matches what you were raised to believe." Combined with that, he shows great restraint in his rhetoric, very rarely employing sarcasm or negativity even when *ahem* we all feel like he could. That is because, I think, he deeply believes in the worth of persons--even people he absolutely disagrees with. And in all his videos and writing, at every step, he demonstrates the way we might move forward in our divided culture if we agreed to interact in a more elevated, careful way. Showing respect to people he disagrees with is a powerful example. Standing with the disenfranchised and marginalized instead of the entrenched powers when the data is ambiguous is another. Taking care in his language to avoid offense is another. Dan doesn't want the conversation derailed by unkindness or anger. People come after him, but he doesn't take the bait emotionally.

Instead, he writes a great book.

There are surprising, fun things in this book. There is a ton of amazing research (from many people) and the best modern scholarship, all centered on exciting questions that I wanted answers to. All of that makes it worth reading, without doubt. The content is fantastic. But the example he sets here (and in regular life) is probably the bigger reason to look at this book. This is how academics should work. This is how we should talk to each other. This is how we incorporate new information into our lives, even if it contradicts things we always believed.

Highly recommended.

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Where Jane Stares Down Byron

Jane and the Madness of Lord Byron by Stephanie Barron
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I still agree with 15-years-ago me--this is a very good book. 5 stars.

In this one, Jane and her recently-widowed brother are visiting Brighton for a little cheering up time, and on the way they rescue a young woman who is tied up in a coach, being taking north. Turns out, she's being abducted by Lord Byron. (This is fiction, though anything was possible with Byron.) When she's restored to her family, we learn that her dad's a jerk, blaming the poor kid for the actions of a pretty bad guy. This and that happens (visits and dances, that kind of thing), then the young woman is killed, drowned, and her body is discovered in Byron's bed.

You know that's gotta mean Byron didn't do it--but he really feels like the kind of guy who would. Various friends impose on Jane to help clear his name, despite her feelings about the guy. As always, Jane will search for the truth, whatever direction that takes her. Lots of bad guys to choose from here, including the Prince Regent and several people around him. Very salacious.

Caro Lamb is an important character in this one, the young woman who loved Byron to distraction, and she's wild, but super interesting. In fact, this whole novel is a bit wilder, a bit darker, a bit seamier, than earlier ones, even though all of them have had danger and bad guys and way more discussion of sex or sex crimes than you would ever find in Jane Austen's own novels. We are 200 years on, of course, so I think it's good. Realer. Rougher. Jane is undaunted, though even she is a little put off by Caro Lamb's "frankness" about bedroom topics.

Great plotting, great writing, wonderful characters. (I've still got a huge crush on our heroine. However, I fear she would call the literary version of me respectable and immediately forget me. Alas.) These novels are all fun to read, and this is one of my favorites.

Recommended. :)

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