In a Swoon

Jonathan Yardley

I do believe I have a crush on Jonathan Yardley. His Second Reading is a delight. He is crazy about Eudora Welty and William Faulkner (shades of my Grand Southern Literary Tour). His favorites, with so many to choose from, by those two famous authors are The Robber Bridegroom and The Reivers.

He believes that The Great Gatsby is just about the greatest work by any American writer. Steinbeck doesn't stand up to his scrutiny as well as he did when Yardley was reading him as a younger man. Hemingway is just as cruel to Fitzgerald and Stein and Ford Maddox Ford, all who were a help to him, in A Moveable Feast.

He takes a good long look at the early essays of Joan Didion, Slouching Toward Bethlehem; Maxine Hong Kingston's memoir The Woman Warrior; Toni Morrison's Sula; and, Crazy Salad, essays by the recently deceased Nora Ephron.

He adores James Thurber (My Life and Hard Times) and E. B. White (The Elements of Style)...as do I.

Best of all, once I am finished with the 60 reviews in this book, and I only have ten more to go, there are 37 more to be found online.

I am in a swoon.

Cloudy with rain - finally

Cloudy with rain. I am tired of the sun and heat. A perfect day to loll on the chaise lounge and read and pretend it is cool outside. (It isn't.)

I am truly enjoying Jonathan Yardley's book Second Reading. One minute I am visiting suburbia in the short stories of John Cheever, The Housebreaker of Shady Hill,  and a few pages later I am thrown into the world of baseball with Jim Brosnan's The Long Season.

What I really appreciate is that Mr. Yardley still owns the books he is rereading. Some are first editions bought at time of publication; others are well-worn finds he bought at used bookstores. Many he admits to rereading many times.

He also gives a brief bio of each author. Nothing ponderous; usually just a paragraph. Enough to place the author and the book in their time period. Much appreciated.

I am also finishing up another witty mystery by Georgette Heyer - The Unfinished Clue (1934) with Inspector Harding of Scotland Yard.

The gruff and bullying Sir Arthur is stabbed in the neck with a letter opener at the end of a weekend house party (that the British do so well). No one seems to miss him but a murderer must be found. Plenty of suspects; a terrific character, Lola, a dancer from Mexico, the fiancee of the dead man's son; and a perfectly named butler, Finch.

As always, Ms. Heyer perfectly captures the tone of the upper class manor and manners. Delicious.

Second Reading by Jonathan Yardley

A lovely bookcover

I love books about books and I bought one last month that I have been anxious to start: Second Reading by Jonathan Yardley.

Yardley is a book reviewer with the Washington Post and this book is a collection of 60 some essays that he wrote between 2003 and 2010. These are not essays on the Book de Jour. Yardley takes a look - a second reading - at his favorites. Some books and authors have fallen out of fashion and some have never fallen out of fashion; hence the subtitle Notable and Neglected Books Revisited.

Just a scan of the table of contents and I know this is the book for me. I am reminded that I want to read Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis and Cannery Row by John Steinbeck. I am anxious to read what Yardley thinks of Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House by Eric Hodgins (I thought I was the only one on earth who loved that book) and A Moveable Feast by Hemingway (which I just reread for Paris in July).

And then there are those I have never heard of such as Reveille in Washington by Margaret Leach about Washington during the Civil War which Yardley promises is the best book ever written about the nation's capital.

After reading just a few of the selections, I can assure you that his style is smooth, his quotes only whet the appetite, and his opinions are lively and insightful. The book itself is a lovely volume published by Europa Editions which, according to its website, publishes "works of literary fiction, high-end mystery and noir, and narrative non-fiction from around the world." 

All in all, I am quite happy to make Mr. Yardley's acquaintance.