Belles-Lettres: Brilliant, Blue-Ribbon Books 2013

Biggest Surprise of the Year -  I Loved This Book! 

So Big by Edna Ferber; published in 1924

Top Three Non-Fiction Books That Were Entire Educations in Themselves: 

At Home by Bill Bryson; How to Live, Or A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer by Sarah Bakewell; The Island of Lost Maps by Miles Harvey

Top Three Fiction Books (not mysteries): 

The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster; Equilateral by Ken Kalfus; Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury.

Author Most Read: 

Donald Westlake - Six of his Dortmunder capers

Most Delightful Reread: 

Counting My Chickens... by The Duchess of Devonshire

Brothers I Would Most Like to Meet: 

Reggie and Nigel Heath of The Baker Street Letters, The Brothers of Baker Street, and The Baker Street Translation by Michael Robertson

Best Foreign Location: 

Out of Africa by Isak Dinesen and West With the Night by Beryl Markham

Most Laugh-Out-Loud Dysfunctional Family: 

The Spellman Files and The Curse of the Spellmans by Lisa Lutz

Dreamiest Tale: 

The Frozen Thames by Helen Humphreys

Best Road Trip: 

The Lost Continent - Travels in Small-Town America by Bill Bryson

Mystery Writer I Am So Glad I Found: 

Peter Lovesey - The Last Detective, Diamond Solitaire, The Summons, and Bloodhounds. 

As If I Needed More Reasons Not To Go On A Cruise: 

A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again by David Foster Wallace.

Proof That The South Shall Rise Again: 

Mama Makes Up Her Mind by Bailey White.

Authors I Have Met and Their Books I Read This Year: 

Duffy Brown (Killer in Crinolines), William Zinsser (The Writer Who Stayed), and George S. McGovern (Abraham Lincoln)

Montaigne and his Essais

Montaigne's tower library where he worked on his essais.

How to Live: Or A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer (2010) by Sarah Bakewell is a brilliant book.

I will tell you why. 

It is well written and never, ever boring. It takes a look at the life of a man who lived in 16th century France, a landowner and nobleman who suffered from excruciating bouts with kidney stones, served as mayor of Bordeaux in southwestern France, was married, and advised kings. 

Not much in common with this 21st century woman of a certain age. 

And yet, he retired to the tower library of his chateau one day (wouldn't I love to do that!) and over the course of twenty years wrote about his life. Not about his life as it should be but how it was. Life with all its pains and joys, its contradictions and certitudes (of which he discovered there were few). He wrote not about his great deeds or achievements, or historical events. Instead he wrote of his own experiences with friendship, cruelty, cannibals, smells, thumbs, and how we cry and laugh for the same thing.

Montaigne managed to write a hundred and seven essays, or essais. In fact, he invented the form. 

Ms. Bakewell explains:

Essays has no great meaning, no point to make, no argument to advance. It does not have designs on you; you can do as you please with it. Montaigne lets his material pour out, and never worries if he has said one thing on one page and the opposite overleaf, or even in the next sentence.

By structuring her book as answers to the question How to Live we come to know Montaigne through historical events, his deeds and accomplishments all of which he didn't write about himself. And we come to know Montaigne through his own writings, his own accidental philosophies, as he would call them.

The answers (and chapter headings) to the question How to Live include Don't worry about death; Pay attention; Survive love and loss; Question everything; See the world; Be ordinary and imperfect; and, Let life be its own answer.

Montaigne's own answers come from studying the classical Stoic and the Epicurean philosophies. Not abstract instructions but practical down-to-earth ways to approach life. We learn what worked for him, what didn't work, what he suffered and what he enjoyed. 

The books is simply a marvelous way of learning about the man, both his time in history, his travels, and his thoughts. 

One of the nice things about reading the Kindle edition borrowed from the library is that I could highlight passages to my heart's content - something I most likely wouldn't do in a paper book. And surprisingly, when the book disappeared from the Kindle after its 14-day loan period and I checked it out again, my highlighted sections were still marked. 

Because of this book, which I highly recommend, I purchased a volume of twenty-five of Montaigne's essays and am ready to dip into them. I have tried Montaigne before but just in bits and pieces. I feel that after reading Ms. Bakewell's book I am ready to try even larger chunks of his essays on How to Live.

A Weekend Report

I didn't get as much time to read over the weekend as I would have liked, but I am happy to report that the two books I started are excellent. 

The Brothers of Baker Street by Michael Robertson is a much smoother read than his first mystery concerning London brothers and solicitors Reggie and Nigel Heath. Their law chambers share the same address as Sherlock Holmes - 221b Baker Street. Letters still come for the great detective and part of the lease agreement states that all inquiries will be answered with a polite form letter. In Robertson's first  book, The Baker Street Letters, disobeying the strict rule in the lease that absolutely no contact shall be made with any of the letter writers, Nigel and Reggie end up in Los Angeles investigating an appeal for help made to Holmes. In this next episode, the action takes place in London and concerns the Black Cab Killer and the reappearance of Holmes's nemesis Professor Moriarty. Or at least a reasonable facsimile of that evil genius.

I see that a third in the series, The Baker Street Translation, is due out in April. Oh good.

The other book I started is How to Live: Or A Life of Montaigne in  One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer by Sarah Bakewell. I am barely 30 pages into the book (or at nine percent as my Kindle tells me), and already I can see that this is a book I want to own. It is a fascinating look at the über-essayist's life and writings. I want to flip back and forth and mark certain passages. I want to look at certain photos again. The downside of the Kindle is that this is difficult to do for an Old School reader such as I. 

So, as I write this, the hardcover edition of How to Live sits in my cart and is ready to be ordered from Amazon. 

How did your weekend reading go?

Brothers of Baker Street and Montaigne

Knowing that I have two new books to read for the weekend gives me the same flutter of happiness as does knowing that I have mint chocolate chip ice cream in the freezer.

From the library, I downloaded to my Kindle How to Live: Or A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer by Sarah Bakewell. I was tipped off about this title in a post by Jenny at Shelf Love. It is 400 pages long and I hope I can finish it before it will disappear in two weeks from my e-reader.

Also from the library, I brought home The Brothers of Baker Street, the second mystery by Michael Robertson that follows the investigations of Nigel and Reggie Heath, two London solicitors. 

I am set for the weekend.