With all the year-end reviews and book awards ceremonies, I didn’t do a dedicated December wrap up blog post. But there are three books worth talking about so I’ll add them to my January wrap up.

December 2022

Moll Flanders

Moll Flanders is a novel by Daniel Defoe, first published in 1722, and 2022 was its 300th anniversary. I read Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year at the beginning of the year, which also celebrated its 300th anniversary.

The title page includes this summary of Moll Flanders’ life, so this book is a record of “The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders, &c. who was born in Newgate, and during a life of continued variety for threescore years, besides her childhood, was twelve year a whore, five times a wife (whereof once to her own brother) twelve year a thief, eight year a transported felon in Virginia, at last grew rich, liv’d honest, and died a penitent, written from her own memorandums.”

As I listened to this fictional autobiography, I really couldn’t decide what Defoe’s purpose was. At various points the novel gives moral lessons, for example, after telling how a gentleman slept with a prostitute and gets robbed after much alcohol, Moll Flanders pleads directly to the readers: gentlemen you really shouldn’t get drunk and walk around the city alone, look at the consequences, you could have got sex diseases and have passed it onto your wife, and you could have lost your gold, your honour and your life.

But at other points, the novel teaches in detail how to cheat, how to steal in shops, how to steal people’s watches in a crowd, how to fool and escape the police when caught, all without consequences – she always gets away with it. On its Wikipedia page, there’s a small line saying “Historically, the book was occasionally the subject of police censorship.” I’m not surprised!

Three Men in a Boat

Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog) was published in 1889, is a humorous account by English writer Jerome K. Jerome of a two-week boating holiday on the Thames from Kingston upon Thames to Oxford and back to Kingston.

According to Wikipedia, the book was initially intended to be a serious travel guide, with accounts of local history along the route, but the humorous elements took over to the point where the serious and somewhat sentimental passages seem a distraction to the comic novel.

Honestly it is a bit silly, but it really suited my mood after Christmas. I was exhausted with all the cooking and hosting and the book a perfect way to wind down. I loved listening to Three Men in a Boat lying in front of a fire, and giggling hysterically. I’ll read you one glorious example of putting up a tent in the rain. I have some experience camping and putting up a tent myself, which means I know how realistic and upsetting this can be at the time but hilarious when you look back at it:

It is evening. You are wet through, and there is a good two inches of water in the boat, and all the things are damp. You find a place on the banks that is not quite so puddly as other places you have seen, and you land and lug out the tent, and two of you proceed to fix it.

It is soaked and heavy, and it flops about, and tumbles down on you, and clings round your head and makes you mad. The rain is pouring steadily down all the time. It is difficult enough to fix a tent in dry weather: in wet, the task becomes herculean. Instead of helping you, it seems to you that the other man is simply playing the fool. Just as you get your side beautifully fixed, he gives it a hoist from his end, and spoils it all.

“Here! what are you up to?” you call out.

“What are you up to?” he retorts; “leggo, can’t you?”

“Don’t pull it; you’ve got it all wrong, you stupid ass!” you shout.

“No, I haven’t,” he yells back; “let go your side!”

“I tell you you’ve got it all wrong!” you roar, wishing that you could get at him; and you give your ropes a lug that pulls all his pegs out.

“Ah, the bally idiot!” you hear him mutter to himself; and then comes a savage haul, and away goes your side. You lay down the mallet and start to go round and tell him what you think about the whole business, and, at the same time, he starts round in the same direction to come and explain his views to you. And you follow each other round and round, swearing at one another, until the tent tumbles down in a heap, and leaves you looking at each other across its ruins, when you both indignantly exclaim, in the same breath:

“There you are! what did I tell you?”

Meanwhile the third man, who has been baling out the boat, and who has spilled the water down his sleeve, and has been cursing away to himself steadily for the last ten minutes, wants to know what the thundering blazes you’re playing at, and why the blarmed tent isn’t up yet.

The Year of Magical Thinking

The Year of Magical Thinking, published in 2005, by Joan Didion (1934–2021), is an account of the year following the death of the author’s husband in 2003.

The biggest lesson I got from this book is the uncertainty of life and future. You think you’ll be cared for and surrounded by family, children and grandchildren in old age, but people die before you do and you are left alone. Joan Didion’s husband died in 2003 in his 70s and her daughter died as well in 2005. And Didion lived another 18 years after her husband died. 18 years is a long time, a new born baby would have gone to university in that time. Joan Didion lived all those years without her husband or daughter. It’s a sad thought.

It’s quite an anxious book to read, to look death in the face and to examine it so closely. But after putting the book down, I’m reminded not to take my family and friends for granted, and to cherish each day of small things.

January 2023

Hag-Seed

I spent most of January wrestling with the Tempest, one of the most challenging Shakespeare plays I’ve come across so far. I made a video all about the play and my frustration. I really don’t want to talk about the play itself anymore here. However, we’ll spend some time talking about Hag-Seed.

Hag-Seed is a retelling of the Tempest by Margaret Atwood. Felix is a theatre director at the top of his game, but is betrayed and becomes nobody. Felix takes a teaching job at a prison and the inmates greatly appreciate Shakespeare and his teaching. When he hears that the traitors are coming to the prison for a visit, he plots a Tempest-worthy revenge.

This is the second Shakespeare retelling I’ve read so far that has a theatre setting and the protagonist is a director. The first one was All’s Well by Mona Awad which is a retelling of All’s Well that Ends Well. The protagonist in All’s Well is a drama teacher in a school putting on All’s Well that Ends Well for the school show with a bunch of unwilling teenagers who much prefer Macbeth. The protagonist in Hag-Seed is a theatre director in a prison teaching and producing the Tempest with a bunch of unconvinced inmates who also prefer Macbeth, or Richard III or Julius Caesar. I liked comparing and contrasting them and thinking of the elements in common.

I very much enjoyed reading Felix’s teaching process. To get the inmates interested and to get them to read the play carefully, Felix asks them to list all the curses and swear words, and sets the rule that they can pick a few and only swear with those. He introduces the play and the characters to his reluctant actors, no one wants to play Ariel because Ariel is a fairy, how do you live it down in a prison after that. Felix breaks down the character and directs them to see Ariel in a new light and ends up with a whole team of people working together to achieve Ariel. That’s just one example. He goes through every character with the class and I felt like I was sitting there with them. The analysis of the subtext is very insightful especially as I really struggled with the Tempest itself. For example, according to Felix there are nine prisons in the Tempest. Can you identify them? It shows the production process as well. It’s a bit like seeing theatre at work, the behind-the-scenes stuff, the discussion, the teamwork.

I don’t want to spoil the story so I won’t say much, except it’s very clever. For example, we just said there are nine prisons in the Tempest. To put on a play that has so many prison images in an actual prison, I think that’s clever. Felix is obviously Prospero in the novel – he’s betrayed in real life, but he’s also Prospero in the play in the prison. His roles in real life and in the play are identical. There are also characters in the novel whose roles in real life and in the play do not overlap completely. The double identity is very clever too.

The Great Courses: The Iliad of Homer and The Art of Reading

I took two lecture series in January, one called the Iliad of Homer by Elizabeth Vandiver and one called the Art of Reading by Timothy Spurgin. I don’t know much about the lecturers, I think they are both university professors. One is 6 hours and the other is 12 and a half hours. Both are excellent and both are included in the Audible membership which means I have free access. I find Audible membership really good value for money. The course on Iliad is an introductory course but it’s a substantial introduction. I can’t wait to start reading Iliad next month. The Art of Reading covers a lot of reading skills and techniques which I have already put to use in reading and thinking about the Warden.

The Warden

The Warden is a novel by English author Anthony Trollope published in 1855. The warden in the title refers to Mr Harding, a meek and elderly man, who is the precentor of Barchester Cathedral, which is a bit like a music director today. He’s also the overseer of a charitable house, called Hiram’s Hospital, where twelve lonely, aging and poor men live on the charity of an ancient legacy.

The novel has a linear straightforward narration, a small but varied cast. It’s a perfect short novel to practise what I learnt in the Art of Reading course. Everything is comfortable and peaceful at the beginning. Mr Harding lives with his daughter quietly. He is very content with his role as the precentor of the Cathedral because he loves music, and he very gladly does the job as the Warden looking after the welfare of the bedesmen, often playing music for their company and entertainment in the evening light.

Then we have the destabilising event – a young man called John Bold challenges the status quo thus ends the peaceful life of old Mr Harding. So what’s his problem? Anthony Trollope spends a couple of chapters explaining the complicated historic situation regarding this legacy and the Hospital, it’s a bit clunky and it nearly lost me.

Basically, the house, the land and a sum of money are left by the will of a rich man from a few centuries ago, to provide for the poor of the town, and the estate is under the management of a warden appointed by the Cathedral authority. Each year the income of the land increases and by the time of our story, the warden receives a comfortable living from the land without doing much work and lives a genteel life, while the bedesmen’s income hasn’t increased much and they are still poor and low in social status. John Bold is zealous for social reform and challenges the injustice of the arrangement. Farewell to Mr Harding’s peace of mind and peaceful life.

So far what do you think? Who’s right? I think John Bold is correct in challenging the injustice of the system and campaigning for more money and better living condition for the poor. But to achieve that, Mr Harding has to be turned out of his home where he lived and loved for decades. And when Mr Harding accepted the position and the income that comes with it years ago, he did it with a clear conscience. The previous Warden received £800 and so did the one before that. So did he. Then suddenly, the money is now considered to be corrupt and dishonest. The person who receives it is accused publicly of being corrupt and dishonest as well. Is that fair to old Mr Harding who has been nothing but kind to his friends?

The author presents both sides of the argument so convincingly that I can see from both their perspectives and can’t decide whose side I should be on. Where do you think the story will go? I won’t spoil it. For such a short novel, with a level narrative style, there are some surprisingly powerful moments especially toward the end.

How to Read Poetry Like a Professor

Thomas C. Foster was one of my favourite teachers in 2022 because of How to Read Literature as a Professor. I started 2023 with another book of his immediately, How to Read Poetry Like a Professor. I love the chapters on sense and sound, and the chapter on symbols and images. I wish he talks more about symbols and images.

However, I didn’t enjoy it as much as How to Read Literature and I think partly because I had such high expectations; partly because I’m a lot less familiar with poetry in general. For example, it’s very interesting to hear about Coleridge and Edward Lear because I know something about them. But most of the poems or the poets he quotes and analyses in the book, I’ve no idea who they are. The third reason I didn’t enjoy the book as much is that I feel like he spends a lot of time talking about the rules and forms of poems. It gets technical and confusing. it also sounds a lot like maths which I’m terrible at, so I couldn’t devour it like I did How to Read Literature.

But having said that, it has made poetry a bit less intimidating for me. In passing comments, Foster also says William Blake and T. S. Eliot can be difficult for various reasons. It’s such comfort to know I wasn’t being completely thick, perhaps I just picked the challenging poets by accident.