thoughts on how I like to read and Mansfield Park

So it’s been almost a year since I’ve last written here, but tonight I made myself a cup of chamomile lavender tea (due to reading a passage from Proust about tea) and thought of this blog again (the title Lavender Tisane is a bit of a reference to Proust, even though he talks about lime blossom tisane, not lavender. Close enough.).

I’ve been taking a break from book blogging because I was tired of feeling forced to read all the right books that everyone else was raving about. Sometimes it’s nice to be challenged to read something new and different, but personally, I have to feel free to read whatever I want, whenever I want, and to not feel guilty about being myself when I read.

Last year I read a lot of fantasy, for teens, adults, and kids, including four different takes on the Beauty & the Beast fairy tale (my favourite is Beauty by Robin McKinley), and I went back to The Lord of the Rings because I loved The Hobbit movie. I also read some adorable kids books, like The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart and The Penderwicks at Point Mouette by Jeanne Birdsall (the third in the Penderwicks series, which are about four sisters and are the absolute BEST, so read them if you want modern-day Little Women homages and general nostalgic the bestness). I also read lots of my lovely Jane Austen, as usual, and more Georgette Heyer. What I didn’t do was force myself to read a ton of books I wasn’t completely into. I didn’t even finish 50 books last year! I just felt sick of putting so much pressure on myself over something that’s supposed to be a fun, relaxing hobby.

One thing about my reading style is that I start a lot of books that I just don’t finish. I have tried to resolve that I will finish more books, but if I’m not in the mood for them, then it’s just not going to happen. I started Little Dorrit last year in the fall (at a very stressful family wedding out in the Maritimes–I finally got to see the Anne of Green Gables museum and all that at Prince Edward Island, but my husband wasn’t able to come with me and there were crazy family times) and had to take a break from it because it was making me too depressed. I picked it up again this year, but the same thing happened. Will I ever finish it? Who knows, hopefully, but I’m not going to push myself. Part of the reason is because I already have depression and don’t need what I do for fun to make me feel worse. I want to read to feel better. Other people have different motives for reading and that’s good too, but I no longer want to feel pressured into copying whatever everyone else is doing.

In the past, I’ve read the entire Twilight series because I enjoyed it. I’ve also read the entirely of In Search of Lost Time, also because I enjoyed it. I love variety in my reading, as long as it’s something I chose and that I’m enjoying.

Anyway, now that that reading manifesto or rant is out of the way… I’m currently rereading Mansfield Park. I love Fanny even if she’s not the most exciting Austen heroine (I’m very fond of all of them and can relate in different ways to all of them too), but I find it hard to read about her struggles with Mrs. Norris and the like because I’ve also been super shy and overlooked or looked down on and didn’t always know how to speak up for myself. I’ve never been a big fan of the Crawfords, although it varies with each reading how more or less sympathetic I feel towards Henry Crawford.

When I read it last year, I felt bad that Edmund couldn’t see Fanny’s beauty sooner, as Henry Crawford does. I wanted Fanny to be with someone who loved her passionately, like Henry does. But this time, all I see is how selfish Henry’s love is. He’s all excited that he’s going to raise poor little nobody Fanny to a position of importance due to his power and of course she will be eternally grateful to him and since she’s so gentle she’ll never have her own opinions but always do whatever he wants, blah blah. He never stops to consider if she actually loves him or if he’s worthy of someone as good as she is, he simply assumes that because he’s rich and charming she’ll be thrilled. Mr. Darcy also assumed that Elizabeth would jump at him for his money and whatever else (certainly not his charm), but when she proved him wrong, he went out and CHANGED for the better. He didn’t try to manipulate her, he actually listened to her and became a better person because of her. 

(Sidenote, I’ve been watching The Lizzie Bennet Diaries on youtube and very much enjoying them, although I hate waiting for the next one! I don’t know if other book bloggers are watching them, but hopefully some are so we can talk about it!)

So I am reading Mansfield Park slowly, because I have to stop to feel sad for Fanny and worry about the next drama coming her way via Mrs. Norris and the Crawfords, whether it’s an unwanted and pressured marriage proposal or a difficult day out cutting roses in the sun! I’m sensitive enough that a lot of conflict in books gives me grief. I also enjoy just savouring Jane Austen’s writing and not rushing through it. There are other books I want to read after this, but I like taking my time to really live in Austen’s world.

I read Pride & Prejudice before this (due to The Lizzie Bennet Diaries and the 200th anniversary of P&P) and also read it slowly. The language and dialogue of Pride & Prejudice especially is so familiar to me, so iconic, that I didn’t want to just rush through it and only enjoy the wit on the surface, I wanted to see beneath to the real characters and their motivations. The Lizzie Bennet Diaries really helped me to see the story in a fresh light, when sometimes in the past it’s felt a little stale to me, and I was intrigued by the story of Elizabeth and Darcy and seeing them not just in a romantic light, where all their fights are ooh so sexy, but looking at them as people still growing up and finding themselves and how they influence each other and change each other.

Well, I think this is enough for now. I don’t know how often I will write here in the future and I certainly don’t plan on getting involved in reading challenges and whatnot, I just wanted a place to share some of my thoughts about the books I read.

Back to Book Bloggery

So. Here I am again. After disappearing for about six months from the book blog-o-sphere, I got the itch to come back.

But first, I might as well tell you (if there is any of ‘you’ left to read this!) what I’ve been up to lately. My husband and I moved out to Regina, Saskatchewan at the end of August (after my baby brother’s gorgeous wedding). As soon as we got to Regina, my husband went into the hospital with more Crohn’s related health problems and I was left to unpack (along with my very helpful in-laws) in about a week before going back to school. My husband ended up having another surgery at the end of September, but since Saskatchewan has great health care, it finally seemed to work better than all his other ones and he’s now over his stomach infection and doing much better. But for about a month there, he was on IV antibotics 3 times a day, 2 hours every time. So it was very difficult to sleep with the constant beep of his machine and I’ve had sleeping problems ever since. Also, our car was broken into on my first day of school and wrecked enough that it was a write-off. We got a nicer second-hand car and… the first day we were out driving in it together, an old lady rear-ended us. And it was a write-off too. (And that’s not the end of my tale of woe either… but I’ll stop for a paragraph break.)

Perhaps by now it’s becoming apparent why I had no time for book blogging for a while? One good thing that happened in the midst of all the kerfuffle of moving and hospital times was that while I wasn’t sleeping at nights, I started writing creatively again. But it started to worry me because I’d be up for hours in the middle of the night, writing almost manically and unable to stop and just rest, even though I was exhausted. So I finally went to a counselor and began to seriously face my mental health problems. I’m now on anti-depressants and they are helping. I’ve been depressed to varying degrees all of my adult life and I had high anxiety when I was younger too, but I was always scared to go on medication for it. But it’s only helped me. They aren’t an instant cure but things are getting better.

I’m also taking a course in Office Education, something basic and practical (I am now a whiz at spreadsheets and business report formatting). I had intended to use it to go on to medical transcribing, since as a sensitive, depressed introvert, I’d really like to work in a quiet office by myself! But I’ve since discovered that I also enjoy accounting, of all things! My dad is a Chartered Accountant, but I always thought I was too much into the arts to be able to handle that. Now it seems I’m not as scatterbrained as I thought I was. So I might end up taking more accounting classes instead, I keep changing my mind between the two. I felt like a misfit taking this course, since I already have a university degree, and my first semester there was lonely and awkward. But I’ve made friends with another shy girl, who, when I admitted I liked British books, asked me with a light in her eye: have you ever seen North & South? So now we have Jane Austen movie days together. 😀

One nice thing about living in Regina is that our apartment is a 15 minute walk away from a big bookstore and a library! So we go there very often. Where we continue to indulge in buying more books and Starbucks beverages than we should… (My husband and I both love salted caramel mochas there, btw. So so good.) And I got to go to Toronto for the first time this Christmas, to visit my husband’s sister and her family, where I spent lots of time reading by the fireplace in a conservatory (! glorious), petting kittens. So there have been good things with the bad. I have also developed a cough that won’t quite go away and mild eczema on my hands, both due to the extreme dryness of a prairie winter (even Alberta wasn’t this bad!), which is irritating, but at least spring seems to be finally on its way.

As for the reading I’ve been doing, I’ve indulged in many kids books (The Penderwicks and sequels by Jeanne Birdsall are adorable, about a family of four sisters) and some chick lit, as well as a biography of Madame de Pompadour, Louis XV’s mistress in 18th century France. She had gorgeous clothes, but by the end of the book I was rather disgusted with all the excessive spending in the French court that helped set up the downfall of the monarchy in the French Revolution several decades later. Also I was personally pissed off with her because she tried to get involved with politics by getting Louis to ally with Austria instead of focusing on fighting the British to keep their North American colonies — aka, that’s partly why I now speak English instead of French… Sigh. She was very good at staying in power for a very long time, they called her the unofficial ‘prime minister’ even when she hadn’t slept with the king for decades. So I enjoyed my time reading about the decadent 18th century, but was glad to leave it when the book was over.

I also enjoyed Uncommon Arrangements: Seven Portraits of Married Life in London Literary Circles 1910-1939 by Katie Roiphe, which featured the unusual love lives of Katherine Mansfield, Elizabeth von Arnim, Vanessa Bell (Virginia Woolf’s sister), Winifred Holtby, and several others. I liked spending more time in their early 20th century world, marveling at all the shenanigans they got up to and how being a writer didn’t always make them more clear-sighted about their own romantic difficulties.

2011 was also the year I began to read Diana Wynne Jones, a delightful British children’s fantasy author. Howl’s Moving Castle was my first and Fire & Hemlock was next, but over the winter, I’ve also come to love House of Many Ways (a sequel of sorts to Howl’s Moving Castle, although with a different main protagonist), Charmed Life (my first introduction to Chrestomanci), and Witch Week. They are all so varied — this is part of her charm, that you never know what will come next, but it also makes it harder to read her books in a row when you just want something exactly like what you just read. Even if there are some of the same characters from one book to another, the tone is never quite the same. 

Howl’s Moving Castle and House of Many Ways are tied as my favourites (and I made sure I got both of them for Christmas!) and both have a lovely cosy atmosphere of people learning to be friends in the midst of odd situations (specifically odd houses, that either have many strange and unexpected rooms depending on which way you turn the doorknob, or a castle that bounces about at will). Wizard Howl does show up in House of Many Ways in a fantastic disguise (I love him as Twinkle!), along with Sophie, who is still scolding him. It’s so rare that authors bring characters back after the happy ending, so that was lovely to see their married relationship. And that book features a great main character in Charmain, who is constantly reading, even while she eats, until adventures and magic and a volunteer job in the royal library and a little white dog begin to intervene…

However, I wasn’t sure if I liked Charmed Life much until I read the last page and burst into tears. (While on the airplane, flying back from Toronto. Usually I get claustrophobic on planes and can’t wait to get off, but I forgot to be worried while I was reading, so perhaps I was enjoying the book before the last page…) The tone of the book isn’t as happy as the other ones I’d read, despite the introduction of Chrestomanci, of whom I’d heard so much of (he’s an exquisitely dressed enchanter, with a different embroidered dressing gown for every day of the year), but that’s mostly because of the truly horrid Gwendolen who is determined to become powerful, even at the cost of her family. Her brother Cat Chant suffers some chillingly unexpected losses at her hands, but as I say, the ending makes up for it.

And Witch Week is about the horrors of a bad British boarding school with lots of bullying in a world mostly similar to ours, but where witches are still being burned to death. Unfortunately for the students, witchcraft seems to be breaking out everywhere, so they have to call Chrestomanci in to fix things up. This one is my least favourite out of what I’ve read of her work so far, but it’s still thought-provoking and entertaining, with some funny bits.

And I haven’t even mentioned that I’ve finally found a definite favourite out of Jane Austen’s novels… yes, Emma. I’d been leaning towards it for a long time, but last fall yet another reread cemented the deal. I even had to buy the lovely edition at the right just to appreciate it even more. 🙂 Now I have three copies of it, as one should for one’s favourite Austen. To me, the story and comedy and cosy homeyness of it never gets old. It always seems fresh and so funny. I know Emma herself can be annoying, but oh the social misadventures she gets up to! The Christmas Eve party at the Weston’s is very high on my list of favourite literary scenes ever, from John Knightley’s complaints about an inch of snow, to Mr. Elton’s hideously botched proposal. I’m laughing now just thinking about it. I used to think there wasn’t enough romance in the book, but the new BBC miniseries of it with Romola Garai and Jonny Lee Miller gave Emma and Mr. Knightley plenty of romantic tension under the surface in the midst of all their little tiffs, and I now just adore those two together so much. They are old friends and I love couples who start off that way. It’s fun to notice the little details in the book of where their feelings for each other start to show.

So I guess this is enough of my rambling for a while, hopefully I’ll keep this up more often now! I have a personal reading project I’m thinking of that I might share next time. Oh also, in the midst of my non-book blogging months, I have been happily discovering tumblr. My blog there (Lemon Rose) is mostly full of pictures of period dramas, 19th century paintings, and flowers, etc, but I occasionally write about what I’m reading, so if I disappear again, that’s where I’ve gone to. Salut for now, bookophiles!