What I'm Reading Right Now - eBook Edition!
We've got books all over the house ... and all over our devices!
This week, I'm sharing those entries on my reading list that live not on a bookshelf or a coffee table, not beside the bed or, uh, the throne, and not in randomly-stacked, ominously-looming pillars, but rather, those that reside online and on my phone!
My selections come from two sources: Amazon Kindle and Project Gutenberg, the latter of which is a goldmine repository for free online editions of many of the world's undisputed classics and weird, obscure stuff alike. Amazon is great, too, of course, though not typically free! If you're in need of some new reading material, see if any of these choices tempt you - or point you in the direction of something that does!
From Amazon Kindle:
Shirley Jackson, “Life Among the Savages,” 1953
The awkward, offbeat genius behind - among scores of others - the infamous short story “The Lottery” and the novels "The Haunting of Hill House” and "We Have Always Lived in the Castle” was sometimes called “Virginia Werewolf" for her highly literary, morbid subject matter. What many don't realize, though, is that she out-earned her (absolute boob of a) husband, who was on staff at the New Yorker as well as a prestigious professor at Vermont's Bennington College, with her hysterical memoirs of parenting! In 1953, essays Jackson had published in various womens’ magazines, as well as new material, were published as the collection Life Among the Savages. It was followed in 1957 by Raising Demons.
A crazy-talented artist, Jackson captured the absurdity of domestic life long before Erma Bombeck - and way before the legion of mommy bloggers. She did it better, too. If her signature stuff is a little too spooky for you, check out this wonderful pair of memoirs to see the surreal, stressful joy of raising tiny humans - and a husband who's worse than the lot of them - in a whole new light.
*
Ruth Franklin, “Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life,” 2016
Shirley Jackson is one of those writers whose life story is almost as fascinating as her books. Jackson led a life that could be called triumphant or tragic, and in this excellent biography, Franklin makes a great case for understanding the horror master as both. Born in 1916 to a very prim and proper mother who expected her daughter to be just like she had been, herself, Jackson disappointed her mother at every turn. In her place, I'd be proud as heck of my kid, but Geraldine Jackson wanted a small, thin, stereotypically pretty, demure daughter, not a rebellious artist. And she made that known throughout Shirley's life.
Maybe her husband wanted someone more conventional, too, deep down. Though always the first, loudest, and best champion of Jackson's great writing gift, Stanley Edgar Hyman did not believe in monogamy and essentially pinned his wife in an involuntary open marriage. And this while expecting Shirley, by then a successful and famous writer, to sit quietly at events as a faculty wife while he sparkled in front of his colleagues and all-female students. She wasn't built for that.
In this dynamic biography, Franklin shows us the cost of being made to feel she disappointed everyone closest to her: Jackson died of heart failure in 1965 at age 48. Widely thought to be the result of years of barbiturate, amphetamine, and codeine prescriptions, the cardiac event was almost certainly accelerated by near-constant smoking, heavy drinking, and unfortunate eating habits. Jackson also suffered from fainting spells, colitis, and agoraphobia in the last years of her life. Her early passing sounds like a tragedy - but maybe only to onlookers, as Hyman remarried to a student the very next year. He lived for five more years before dying the same way in 1970 at age 51.
Shirley Jackson was a rather haunted person. Luckily for her readers, it seems she was haunted both by sadness and genius.
If you're interested in Shirley Jackson, check out Ruth Franklin’s comprehensive biography, “A Rather Haunted Life.”
From Project Gutenberg:
Jane Austen, “Pride and Prejudice,” 1813
It is a truth universally acknowledged that any girly-girl in possession of a serious reading habit should be in want of a romance novel! When wealthy, eligible Mr. Bingley moves to the nearby Netherfield estate, all that new neighbor Mrs. Bennet can think of is marrying off one of her five daughters to him, and so commences a comedic epic full of infuriating misunderstandings. Luckily, it all resolves, and almost all of the Bennet daughters who are of age also find love - and, funnily enough, greater or more secure wealth than they'd grown up with - along the way. Netherfield may go to Jane Bingley née Bennet in the end, but the real prize, the dashing and misunderstood Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy, goes to our heroine, Elizabeth.
I first encountered this story in its updated “Bridget Jones’ Diary” guise, around the turn of the century. Although I ate it up with a spoon at the time, I now see how extremely silly and unrealistic that whole series was - although, I've got to say, either Matthew McFadyen or Colin Firth could take a spot on my dance card anytime! I mean, if a meteor fell on Dave, of course.
So it is with enhanced maturity and compassion that I now read the original, and I can't help but be floored by its humor and readability, even over 200 years later. Not the greatest of messages, perhaps - for Heaven's sake, why not simply be nice to the people you propose to?! - but nonetheless, a detour worth taking. (I assure you, you can pass on “Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy.”)
*
William Lewis Manly, “Death Valley in ‘49,” 1894
Project Gutenberg has a nice, handy section where you can find a list of the hundred most popular books available on the site. Pride and Prejudice is on the list - quite near the top -but this remarkable memoir, all but forgotten today, certainly isn’t! But it should be.
Lewis Manly, as he preferred to be called, led a wonderfully exciting life from 1820, when he was born in St. Albans, Vermont, to 1903, when he died in Lodi, California. He spent the intervening years making the treks between the two geographical extremes engaged in all kinds of Zane Grey-like Western adventures: fur trapping, railroad building, gold prospecting, and, later, farming and writing.
Oh, yeah: and saving the lives of desperate, stranded pioneers about to die in their own covered wagons. Since the legendary salt flat one must traverse before reaching California's fertile ground seems right at the doorstep of Death himself, Manly’s party found that a very appropriate name for the region. And it sticks today: Death Valley.
Yeah, that Death Valley: the one just a few hours away from where I live, generally recognized as the hottest place on earth.
Manly and his party's survival in these horribly harsh environs was credited to his quick thinking and incredible mental and physical hardiness. But he was always quick to point out that, if the one tiny puddle of water, frozen in the night sky, that he was able to access had not melted in the morning sun at the exact time he and his companion needed it, he'd never have made it out - let alone back, with help for the rest of the party.
The story is a gripping thrill!
This past weekend, the Death Valley, CA region and park received more water in rainfall than is typical all year. Just over two inches were enough to flood the low-lying desert, marooning cars and wrecking landscapes. This summer, hikers have died out there, and two men have been found dead in their cars due to breakdowns and loss of air conditioning.
I would, it just so happens, like to go visit Death Valley. No, I don't want to hike, especially not when their temperature gauge is going to be between 115* and 125°! But I am curious about how the Manly party got through that unforgiving area without the creature comforts I rely on to maintain my feeble grasp on sanity. I'm in awe!
And, I admit, I'd like to pay a sober homage to those first California pioneers who crossed an entire continent, only to perish in the intolerable heat just a few days’ journey from their goal. We know how to live safely in the desert today because of them. And the story is a great read.
What are you reading this week? Let me know in the comments!