When the history of St. Louis is written, historians inevitably begin with the "journal" of Auguste Chouteau. Not really a journal but a memoir written many years after the event, Chouteau gives a version of the founding of St. Louis in which he and Pierre LaClede are the major players. And why not? Chouteau would become one of the most important businessmen in the young town of St. Louis, his family becoming very rich in the fur trade. The Chouteau family were definite "winners" in the economic race run by the first founders of the City. And, as we know, history is written by the winners.
But there are always, of course, others who were important in history. Perhaps those who do not have descendents to write about them. Or those for whom the written records is scattered. If those records can be gathered they often document lives of great interest.
Carl J. Ekburg and Sharon K. Person have written about such a life in this book. Louis St. Ange de Bellerive led one of the most interesting lives in French colonial history - and possibly in all North American colonial history. The Groston de St. Ange family came from Canada where the father, Robert, had immigrated in 1685. Robert was a member of the French Marines. (Despite most of the French North American colony being landlocked, the area was under the jurisdiction of the Marines. This probably made sense as supplies needed to be sent by ship.) He would spend his entire career in service to the French crown and his career would take him and his family all over what is today the American midwest.
In 1720, Robert, his second wife and two adult male children, Pierre and Louis, were at Post St. Joseph at the bottom of Lake Michigan near present-day Niles Michigan. From that posting, Robert (and presumably his sons) accompanied the Jesuit Father Charles Charlevoix down the Mississippi to Kaskaskia and Fort de Chartres. The St. Ange family were now a part of the colony of Louisiana. In 1723, Robert and his son Pierre were ordered to accompany a man named Bourgmont who was tasked with setting up a post on the Missouri River - Fort d'Orleans. Louis St. Ange eventually joined the family there and remained as commandant of Fort d'Orleans in the 1730's while his father returned to Fort de Chartres and became commander there.
When Louis' brother Pierre was killed in action against the Chickasaw, his now retired father requested that Louis be given command of the post at Vincennes. Louis St. Ange remained as the commandant at Vincennes from 1736-1764 when the end of the Seven Years War resulted in the transition of all the land east of the Mississippi to the English. St. Ange was then moved from Vincennes to Fort de Chartres and was made commandant of all of Upper Louisiana. It was he who eventually handed over the fort to the English and moved his troops across the river to the new settlement established on the west bank where he remained commandant of "Spanish Illinois" until an actual Spaniard could show up to take over. An old man, he died a few years later in St. Louis in the home of Madame Chouteau.
As a genealogical researcher with family living in Upper Louisiana during that time, including in Vincennes, I've been well aware of St. Ange's history. Ekburg and Person are to be commended in putting the history of the St. Ange family into one place where it can be easily accessed by the general public and where Louis de St. Ange might finally get his due.
In addition to the history of the St. Ange family, Eckburg and Person have also spent time researching the written records of the village of St. Louis in the years leading up to 1770 when Pedro Piernas finally arrived in St. Louis to institute Spanish governance. They write a fascinating social history of the village, examing births, deaths and marriages. They discuss the architecture of the village and include a creditable discussion of the law of the land: the Coutume de Paris. They include a full chapter on slavery in early St. Louis and describe the foundations of the fur trade.
For anyone interested in the founding of St. Louis this book is a must-read. My only complaint is that, in their zeal to show that the story of Laclede and Chouteau are not the only important, or even the most important, story to know about the founding of St. Louis, they sometimes get a little petty. Every book has a point of view - even history books. But far better to show that St. Ange was more important than Laclede by writing about St. Ange than by editorial comments about Laclede. If you can ignore that editorializing, this is a book well worth reading.
Sunday, May 31, 2015
Saturday, May 16, 2015
April Reading
April was a busy month. Here's what I was reading.
In the King's Service by Katherine Kurtz. This article caused me to remember how I had enjoyed Katherine Kurtz when I was young. I looked her up and realized that I had never read the last three books she published. Kurtz is a fantasy writer who began writing back in the late 60s/early 70s. She created a world of historical fantasy loosely based on medieval England, including a strong pre-reformation Catholic Church. The fantasy involves a group of people with the ability to read minds and do some magic, called The Deryni. I remember loving the world that she built. Back in those days people didn't write fantasy novels that were 1000 pages long (a la George R. R. Martin) so, instead, she wrote in trilogies. Each trilogy totaled about 1000 pages. Each trilogy takes place in the world she created but often at different time periods. It has been years since I read them and maybe that's why I found many of the "family trees" hard to follow in the first part of this novel. But eventually I got into it and am ready to move on to the other two books. The article compared her to Dorothy Dunnett but I don't really see it. Her style and language is much simpler and, in fact, sometimes too simple; her characters are interesting but the side characters are not as deeply developed as Dunnetts' and her plots are not nearly as complicated. And she tends to "tell" and not "show. But I do love the world she created and am happy to go back to it.
How to be Both by Ali Smith. This Booker Prize longlisted novel has a gimmick. The dual story of a teenage girl in the 21st Century and a yohttps://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1974275832677042000#editor/target=post;postID=4052206831820001768;onPublishedMenu=allposts;onClosedMenu=allposts;postNum=0;src=postnameung female artist in the Rennaissance, half of the book is told from the point of view of one character and half the book is told from the point of view of the other character. That isn't really the gimmick. The gimmick is that in some editions of the novel, one story is first and in other editions the other story is first. I read it in the NOOK version so I was asked to pick which half I wanted to read first. I ended up with the renaissance character first. Since that character is a dead consciousness come back to life in the 21st Century, the first 20-30 pages are a little confusing; not to mention that you don't know that the character is female. And the "ghost" thinks that she's following a boy, but she's really following George, the girl from the other part of the novel. But once I caught on to what was happening, it worked fine for me. A meditation on how the past is always with us, there was a lot to think about in this novel.
The Dead in Their Vaulted Arches by Alan Bradley. The sixth Flavia de Luce novel. Turns out I wasn't quite right in my guess about Flavia's mother's demise but I was close. Some loose ends were tied up, but not all. Flavia's sisters are getting much more human and Flavia has grown slightly less annoying in her ways. When Alan Bradley began the series he clearly did not intend to be writing a series. He's done a good job of opening up the characters little by little, while still keeping them the stereotypes that girls of Flavia's age think people are. Again, the mysteries are really beside the point.
Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell. An unexpected delight chosen by my reading group. Eleanor is the new girl at school and Park is the only Asian American boy. Both ride the bus and eventually become friends and then more than friends. Rowell's depiction of the slow way in which people get to know each other was spot on. The two studiously ignore each other on the bus until Park realizes that Eleanor is reading along with him as he reads his comic books. Even then the conversations are limited as they very slowly get to know each other; each holding back from the other the harder aspects of his or her life. Rowell does not tie up the ending with a bow, which seemed appropriate.
Aimless Love by Billy Collins. I received this collection of poems by the former US Poet Laureate for Christmas and I read it very slowly - one poem a day. It is not, technically, a completely new book as two-thirds of the poems were previously published. Collins is known as our "accessible" poet and he certainly is. But his poems are humorous and sometimes poignant and often don't end where you think they are leading. It seems that he can turn anything into a poem and, apparently, people are always pointing this out to him:
In the afternoon a woman I barely knew
said you could write a poem about that,
pointing to a dirigible that was passing overhead.
West of the Revolution: An Uncommon History of 1776 by Claudio Saunt. In our Anglo-centric view of American history we focus on what the British and their colonists on the east coast of the North American continent were doing in the 1770's. In Alaska, the Inuit were dealing with abusive Russian fisherman; in California the Spanish were moving up the coast to found San Franciso as a result of the threat that Russia would move down the west coast of North America. In the north, British traders were exploring the vast Canadian wilderness in search of trade. And in the south, the Creeks were seeking help from Spain to fight the English. This relatively short book (about 200 pages before the end notes) gives a good overview of what the rest of the North American continent was dealing with in 1776. And what is clear is that they weren't at all concerned about the civil war that was going on in the East between the British.
In the King's Service by Katherine Kurtz. This article caused me to remember how I had enjoyed Katherine Kurtz when I was young. I looked her up and realized that I had never read the last three books she published. Kurtz is a fantasy writer who began writing back in the late 60s/early 70s. She created a world of historical fantasy loosely based on medieval England, including a strong pre-reformation Catholic Church. The fantasy involves a group of people with the ability to read minds and do some magic, called The Deryni. I remember loving the world that she built. Back in those days people didn't write fantasy novels that were 1000 pages long (a la George R. R. Martin) so, instead, she wrote in trilogies. Each trilogy totaled about 1000 pages. Each trilogy takes place in the world she created but often at different time periods. It has been years since I read them and maybe that's why I found many of the "family trees" hard to follow in the first part of this novel. But eventually I got into it and am ready to move on to the other two books. The article compared her to Dorothy Dunnett but I don't really see it. Her style and language is much simpler and, in fact, sometimes too simple; her characters are interesting but the side characters are not as deeply developed as Dunnetts' and her plots are not nearly as complicated. And she tends to "tell" and not "show. But I do love the world she created and am happy to go back to it.
How to be Both by Ali Smith. This Booker Prize longlisted novel has a gimmick. The dual story of a teenage girl in the 21st Century and a yohttps://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1974275832677042000#editor/target=post;postID=4052206831820001768;onPublishedMenu=allposts;onClosedMenu=allposts;postNum=0;src=postnameung female artist in the Rennaissance, half of the book is told from the point of view of one character and half the book is told from the point of view of the other character. That isn't really the gimmick. The gimmick is that in some editions of the novel, one story is first and in other editions the other story is first. I read it in the NOOK version so I was asked to pick which half I wanted to read first. I ended up with the renaissance character first. Since that character is a dead consciousness come back to life in the 21st Century, the first 20-30 pages are a little confusing; not to mention that you don't know that the character is female. And the "ghost" thinks that she's following a boy, but she's really following George, the girl from the other part of the novel. But once I caught on to what was happening, it worked fine for me. A meditation on how the past is always with us, there was a lot to think about in this novel.
The Dead in Their Vaulted Arches by Alan Bradley. The sixth Flavia de Luce novel. Turns out I wasn't quite right in my guess about Flavia's mother's demise but I was close. Some loose ends were tied up, but not all. Flavia's sisters are getting much more human and Flavia has grown slightly less annoying in her ways. When Alan Bradley began the series he clearly did not intend to be writing a series. He's done a good job of opening up the characters little by little, while still keeping them the stereotypes that girls of Flavia's age think people are. Again, the mysteries are really beside the point.
Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell. An unexpected delight chosen by my reading group. Eleanor is the new girl at school and Park is the only Asian American boy. Both ride the bus and eventually become friends and then more than friends. Rowell's depiction of the slow way in which people get to know each other was spot on. The two studiously ignore each other on the bus until Park realizes that Eleanor is reading along with him as he reads his comic books. Even then the conversations are limited as they very slowly get to know each other; each holding back from the other the harder aspects of his or her life. Rowell does not tie up the ending with a bow, which seemed appropriate.
Aimless Love by Billy Collins. I received this collection of poems by the former US Poet Laureate for Christmas and I read it very slowly - one poem a day. It is not, technically, a completely new book as two-thirds of the poems were previously published. Collins is known as our "accessible" poet and he certainly is. But his poems are humorous and sometimes poignant and often don't end where you think they are leading. It seems that he can turn anything into a poem and, apparently, people are always pointing this out to him:
In the afternoon a woman I barely knew
said you could write a poem about that,
pointing to a dirigible that was passing overhead.
West of the Revolution: An Uncommon History of 1776 by Claudio Saunt. In our Anglo-centric view of American history we focus on what the British and their colonists on the east coast of the North American continent were doing in the 1770's. In Alaska, the Inuit were dealing with abusive Russian fisherman; in California the Spanish were moving up the coast to found San Franciso as a result of the threat that Russia would move down the west coast of North America. In the north, British traders were exploring the vast Canadian wilderness in search of trade. And in the south, the Creeks were seeking help from Spain to fight the English. This relatively short book (about 200 pages before the end notes) gives a good overview of what the rest of the North American continent was dealing with in 1776. And what is clear is that they weren't at all concerned about the civil war that was going on in the East between the British.
Saturday, April 4, 2015
March Reading
Here's what I read in March:
1. Bad Feminist by Roxanne Gay. I read this book of essays over the last few months while I was getting my hair colored or getting a pedicure or sitting in waiting rooms. Many good topics, some good thoughts, but I found myself mostly unsatisfied with the essays. And I can't explain why.
2. My Dear I wanted to Tell You by Louisa Young.
Riley Purefoy is a young, working class boy, who becomes friends with Nadine Waveney and her upper middle class family who live near Kensington Gardens. The Waveneys are friends with an artistic set and Riley meets and begins to study with an artist friend-of-the-family. As he grows older, he and Nadine form a close friendship and begin to fall in love, but her family disapproves because of the difference in their classes. Feeling rejected young Riley joins the army to go to France where the new war has started. It is summer of 1914, everyone expects it will be over by Christmas. Up until this point (which is fairly early in the novel) this is fairly conventional novel. But more than almost any other novel about World War I that I've read, Young really captures the slow mental and physical disintegration that happened to men who survived the war, as well as the women who spent the war nursing the hundreds of thousands of casualties and also the women who stayed behind where life changed at a different pace than for those on the battlefield. The mental states of Riley and his Commanding Officer, Peter Locke, are reflected while they attempt to appear "normal" on the outside. Unlike other novels where the main characters make it through the war, these men don't come through undamaged either physically or mentally. I very much enjoyed the last two thirds of this novel (although some the long descriptions of the medical procedures might have been a bit shorter for my taste). I understand there is a sequel and I'm sure I will read it.
3. Speaking from Among the Bones by Alan Bradley.
This is the next installment in the Flavia de Luce mystery series. I only have one more to go before I'm caught up and I'm not looking forward to the day that I don't have a Flavia de Luce novel to read. Flavia and her sisters are getting along much better. Feely (Ophelia) is engaged and Flavia spends some time trying to figure out which of Feely's beaus is the lucky winner. Could it be the American, Carl, from St. Louis, Missouri? "Carl's going to take me to watch Stan Musial knock one out of the park." I had forgotten that Carl was from St. Louis and I wonder why Bradley decided to choose St. Louis out of all the obscure (to the British) cities in America. The actual mystery revolves around the exhumation of the bones of the local saint from his vault in the village church. Flavia is surprised that some of the history of the saint seems to have been forgotten and Bradley has a great line: "History is like the kitchen sink ... Everything goes round and round until eventually, sooner or later, most of it goes down the waste pipe. Things are forgotten. Things are mislaid. Things are covered up. Sometimes, it's simply a matter of neglect." How true. The ending has a twist that I've suspected was coming for some time but I did not expect it at the time it happened and the way it happened. Can't wait to read the next book.
4. Murder on the Champ de Mars by Cara Black.
The next in the Aimee Leduc mystery series, Aimee is now a single mother with a six month old baby named Chloe. But she has a great child-minder and is able to spend all the hours she needs solving crimes, still dressed in her chic second hand designer clothes, albeit with a little baby spit-up on her shoulder, and wearing her red Chanel lipstick. This mystery is a little more personal to Aimee because it might lead to clues as to who is responsible for the death of Aimee's father many years before. I can't say I was completely surprised by the ending, I've seen it coming. But I still liked it and it makes me want the next novel to come sooner.
5. Hush Hush by Laura Lippman. The long awaited next installment of the Tess Monaghan series, it picks up a few years after the last one. I almost had forgotten where we were in Tess' life story, that's how long it has been. In the meantime, Lippman has been writing stand-alone crime novels with a strong psychological bent and that comes through in this novel. In some ways she seems more interested in all the characters other than Tess. But I enjoyed it.
6. A Dangerous Place by Jacqueline Winspear. Another long awaited next volume, this time in the Maisie Dobbs series (not as long as wait as from Lippman, but long enough). One of the weaknesses in the last few Maisie Dobbs mysteries has been Winspear's reluctance to break off Maisie's relationship with James or to have Maisie commit to James. She solves that in this novel. I won't say how but you will know very early on in the novel. And it works. This novel takes place in Gibralter in the late 1930's with the Spanish Civil War raging just across the border. Moving Maisie out of England works too - although I'll be content to have her return home eventually. The mystery is serviceable but the picture of Maisie at this point in her life is very good. Well done.
7. Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill. The narrator explains to us, her readers, how her world was so normal but then it came apart. She speaks to us directly in short little bursts, very much like a character in a play. In fact I was very much reminded of those plays from the 1980’s that explored women’s “consciousness”. The Vagina Monologues maybe. Except this was a lot about being obsessed with a child. But then suddenly it becomes a third person novel, the narrator no longer, apparently, even able to speak directly about what happened in her life. Finally it reverts back to the first person. This is an odd little book. Most of the time, I just felt sorry for the narrator’s husband. Which I’m thinking was not what the author was going for.
1. Bad Feminist by Roxanne Gay. I read this book of essays over the last few months while I was getting my hair colored or getting a pedicure or sitting in waiting rooms. Many good topics, some good thoughts, but I found myself mostly unsatisfied with the essays. And I can't explain why.
2. My Dear I wanted to Tell You by Louisa Young.
Riley Purefoy is a young, working class boy, who becomes friends with Nadine Waveney and her upper middle class family who live near Kensington Gardens. The Waveneys are friends with an artistic set and Riley meets and begins to study with an artist friend-of-the-family. As he grows older, he and Nadine form a close friendship and begin to fall in love, but her family disapproves because of the difference in their classes. Feeling rejected young Riley joins the army to go to France where the new war has started. It is summer of 1914, everyone expects it will be over by Christmas. Up until this point (which is fairly early in the novel) this is fairly conventional novel. But more than almost any other novel about World War I that I've read, Young really captures the slow mental and physical disintegration that happened to men who survived the war, as well as the women who spent the war nursing the hundreds of thousands of casualties and also the women who stayed behind where life changed at a different pace than for those on the battlefield. The mental states of Riley and his Commanding Officer, Peter Locke, are reflected while they attempt to appear "normal" on the outside. Unlike other novels where the main characters make it through the war, these men don't come through undamaged either physically or mentally. I very much enjoyed the last two thirds of this novel (although some the long descriptions of the medical procedures might have been a bit shorter for my taste). I understand there is a sequel and I'm sure I will read it.
3. Speaking from Among the Bones by Alan Bradley.
This is the next installment in the Flavia de Luce mystery series. I only have one more to go before I'm caught up and I'm not looking forward to the day that I don't have a Flavia de Luce novel to read. Flavia and her sisters are getting along much better. Feely (Ophelia) is engaged and Flavia spends some time trying to figure out which of Feely's beaus is the lucky winner. Could it be the American, Carl, from St. Louis, Missouri? "Carl's going to take me to watch Stan Musial knock one out of the park." I had forgotten that Carl was from St. Louis and I wonder why Bradley decided to choose St. Louis out of all the obscure (to the British) cities in America. The actual mystery revolves around the exhumation of the bones of the local saint from his vault in the village church. Flavia is surprised that some of the history of the saint seems to have been forgotten and Bradley has a great line: "History is like the kitchen sink ... Everything goes round and round until eventually, sooner or later, most of it goes down the waste pipe. Things are forgotten. Things are mislaid. Things are covered up. Sometimes, it's simply a matter of neglect." How true. The ending has a twist that I've suspected was coming for some time but I did not expect it at the time it happened and the way it happened. Can't wait to read the next book.
4. Murder on the Champ de Mars by Cara Black.
The next in the Aimee Leduc mystery series, Aimee is now a single mother with a six month old baby named Chloe. But she has a great child-minder and is able to spend all the hours she needs solving crimes, still dressed in her chic second hand designer clothes, albeit with a little baby spit-up on her shoulder, and wearing her red Chanel lipstick. This mystery is a little more personal to Aimee because it might lead to clues as to who is responsible for the death of Aimee's father many years before. I can't say I was completely surprised by the ending, I've seen it coming. But I still liked it and it makes me want the next novel to come sooner.
5. Hush Hush by Laura Lippman. The long awaited next installment of the Tess Monaghan series, it picks up a few years after the last one. I almost had forgotten where we were in Tess' life story, that's how long it has been. In the meantime, Lippman has been writing stand-alone crime novels with a strong psychological bent and that comes through in this novel. In some ways she seems more interested in all the characters other than Tess. But I enjoyed it.
6. A Dangerous Place by Jacqueline Winspear. Another long awaited next volume, this time in the Maisie Dobbs series (not as long as wait as from Lippman, but long enough). One of the weaknesses in the last few Maisie Dobbs mysteries has been Winspear's reluctance to break off Maisie's relationship with James or to have Maisie commit to James. She solves that in this novel. I won't say how but you will know very early on in the novel. And it works. This novel takes place in Gibralter in the late 1930's with the Spanish Civil War raging just across the border. Moving Maisie out of England works too - although I'll be content to have her return home eventually. The mystery is serviceable but the picture of Maisie at this point in her life is very good. Well done.
7. Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill. The narrator explains to us, her readers, how her world was so normal but then it came apart. She speaks to us directly in short little bursts, very much like a character in a play. In fact I was very much reminded of those plays from the 1980’s that explored women’s “consciousness”. The Vagina Monologues maybe. Except this was a lot about being obsessed with a child. But then suddenly it becomes a third person novel, the narrator no longer, apparently, even able to speak directly about what happened in her life. Finally it reverts back to the first person. This is an odd little book. Most of the time, I just felt sorry for the narrator’s husband. Which I’m thinking was not what the author was going for.
8. The House Girl by Tara Conklin. This was a book chosen by my book group and no one, including me, liked it. Perhaps because we are mostly lawyers and roll our eyes at unrealistic depictions of first year associates in Big Law Firms. Perhaps because some of us (me) have done a lot of genealogical research and it is NEVER this easy (this novel makes those people on the PBS genealogy show look like they are really working, and I never think that about them). The novel is divided into two parts, one of which takes place on a plantation in the mid 1800s. That part is fine and Conklin should have stuck to it. She did create a compelling character and set up a good, tense storyline. The other, modern, part? Not so much.
Friday, March 20, 2015
TV
I've been watching quite a bit of good TV lately:
1. Vikings.
2. Broadchurch, Season 2.
3. Outlander, Season 1.
4. Game of Thrones, Season 4.
1. Vikings.
2. Broadchurch, Season 2.
3. Outlander, Season 1.
4. Game of Thrones, Season 4.
Sunday, March 8, 2015
My February Reading
This is a little late, but here's what I read in February.
1. Song of the Vikings: Snorri and the Making of Norse Myths by Nancy Marie Brown.
Snorri Sturluson was an Icelander who lived in the middle ages (13th century) and wrote down many of the Norse myth stories that are the basis of what we know today about Scandinavian mythology, including the stories on which Wagner's Ring Cycle is based as well as "The Lord of the Rings". This is a biography, in a general sense of the word, of Snorri that also gives a lot of information about what Iceland in the medieval times was like. The biography of the author says she keeps an Icelandic sheepdog, which I had to Google. I'm a bit of a geek when it comes to these things so I enjoyed reading this book, but even I had a hard time keeping track of the tangled family tree of Snorri. A chart would have helped. This book took me a while to get through so I didn't read as much this month as I might normally.
2. The Red House Mystery by A.A. Milne.
Yes, that A.A. Milne, of Winnie the Pooh fame. The amateur detective in this mystery at times reminded me of Christopher Robin, all grown up and surrounded by bears of very little intellect. The mystery was pretty standard British country house fare of the type published in the 1920's. I happen to like that genre of mystery so I enjoyed it.
3. I am Half-Sick of Shadows by Alan Bradley ( a Flavia de Luce Mystery). In this volume, Bradley opens up the home of the somewhat reclusive de Luce family to a film company. Of course, murder ensues and Flavia is helpful in solving it, to the amusement and chagrin of Detective Inspector Hewitt. Although time moves on in these mysteries, it moves very slowly so Flavia hasn't aged much and she is still at war with her two older sisters (although perhaps there is hope of a truce).
4. Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. I loved this novel. Adichie is a Nigerian author who spent much time in the United States and her main character, Ifemelu, experiences being a black person in the United States who is not African American. Ifemelu is born in Nigeria and spends her formative years there where she meets and falls in love with Obinze. Ifemelu leaves to attend college in the United States, where her Aunt and cousin live. Obinze cannot get a visa and ends up an undocumented alien in London. Eventually both return to Nigeria. The ending was a little too "love story" for me but the rest of the novel was a knock out. Ifemelu says: "I came from a country where race was not an issue; I did not think of myself as black and I only became black when I came to America." Adichie is also capable of writing beautiful description: "In London, night came too soon, it hung in the morning air like a threat, and then in the afternoon a blue-gray dusk descended, and the Victorian buildings all wore a mournful air." Parts of the novel required the suspension of disbelief (specifically that she could be so financially successful as a blogger) but the story hung together and I couldn't put it down.
1. Song of the Vikings: Snorri and the Making of Norse Myths by Nancy Marie Brown.
Snorri Sturluson was an Icelander who lived in the middle ages (13th century) and wrote down many of the Norse myth stories that are the basis of what we know today about Scandinavian mythology, including the stories on which Wagner's Ring Cycle is based as well as "The Lord of the Rings". This is a biography, in a general sense of the word, of Snorri that also gives a lot of information about what Iceland in the medieval times was like. The biography of the author says she keeps an Icelandic sheepdog, which I had to Google. I'm a bit of a geek when it comes to these things so I enjoyed reading this book, but even I had a hard time keeping track of the tangled family tree of Snorri. A chart would have helped. This book took me a while to get through so I didn't read as much this month as I might normally.
2. The Red House Mystery by A.A. Milne.
Yes, that A.A. Milne, of Winnie the Pooh fame. The amateur detective in this mystery at times reminded me of Christopher Robin, all grown up and surrounded by bears of very little intellect. The mystery was pretty standard British country house fare of the type published in the 1920's. I happen to like that genre of mystery so I enjoyed it.
3. I am Half-Sick of Shadows by Alan Bradley ( a Flavia de Luce Mystery). In this volume, Bradley opens up the home of the somewhat reclusive de Luce family to a film company. Of course, murder ensues and Flavia is helpful in solving it, to the amusement and chagrin of Detective Inspector Hewitt. Although time moves on in these mysteries, it moves very slowly so Flavia hasn't aged much and she is still at war with her two older sisters (although perhaps there is hope of a truce).
4. Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. I loved this novel. Adichie is a Nigerian author who spent much time in the United States and her main character, Ifemelu, experiences being a black person in the United States who is not African American. Ifemelu is born in Nigeria and spends her formative years there where she meets and falls in love with Obinze. Ifemelu leaves to attend college in the United States, where her Aunt and cousin live. Obinze cannot get a visa and ends up an undocumented alien in London. Eventually both return to Nigeria. The ending was a little too "love story" for me but the rest of the novel was a knock out. Ifemelu says: "I came from a country where race was not an issue; I did not think of myself as black and I only became black when I came to America." Adichie is also capable of writing beautiful description: "In London, night came too soon, it hung in the morning air like a threat, and then in the afternoon a blue-gray dusk descended, and the Victorian buildings all wore a mournful air." Parts of the novel required the suspension of disbelief (specifically that she could be so financially successful as a blogger) but the story hung together and I couldn't put it down.
Friday, February 13, 2015
Bernadette Peters in Concert
Last weekend Bernadette Peters was in town to perform for one night. Well, not really in town. She was in St. Charles at Lindenwood University's J. Scheiddegger Center for the Arts. This was my first visit to this facility, and I was impressed.
I've seen Bernadette Peters in concert a few times and she was, as usual, highly entertaining. Wearing a signature slinky gown, backed by a full orchestra, she strutted onto the stage to perform Let Me Entertain You, a song from the musical Gypsy, which she starred in a few years ago on Broadway. That wasn't one of the songs she sang in that show but it was the type of song that Peters loves to sell. She followed that up with No One is Alone from Into the Woods, another show she starred in on Broadway and another song she didn't perform in the original production. From there she went on to There is Nothing Like a Dame, from Rogers and Hammerstein's South Pacific. This number is usually performed by a chorus of men dressed as sailors but Peters vamped it in high style.
The nice thing about a concert is that the performer can perform Broadway Musical songs that she would be the wrong age, or sex, or even size to perform in the actual Broadway show. And Peters took advantage of that, performing Some Enchanted Evening, again from South Pacific, and Johanna from Sweeney Todd. She did When I Marry Mr. Snow from Carousel, a song she would now be far to old to perform in the show itself.
In between numbers she chatted to the audience, although I had heard much of her schtick about having a house in Florida to sell before. Although she must be in her mid-60's she looks great and can still pull off the sexy pout when singing the Peggy Lee classic, Fever, on top of a piano.
But my favorite part of the show was the two songs from Follies that she sang. These were songs she sang herself in the show a couple of years ago: In Buddy's Eyes and Am I Losing My Mind. Peters can take a lyric and deliver it in a way that makes you hear it for the first time. I would have predicted that I didn't need to hear Send in the Clowns ever again in my life, but she made it fresh.
Her high notes are not always as bell-like as they have been in the past, but she can still deliver. And she is probably the world's leading interpreter of the songs of Stephen Sondheim. One of my favorite songs that she performs is Sondheim's You Could Drive a Person Crazy.
Her final song was Sondheim's Being Alive, and she gave it her all. For an encore she performed a song that she wrote herself to support her favorite charity, Broadway Barks.
It was a wonderful evening of show tunes by a Broadway legend.
Friday, February 6, 2015
Tango Buenos Aires
I'm a sucker for live tango (for filmed tango too, for that matter). I can never get over the fact that they aren't accidentally kicking each other through the whole performance. I constantly rue the fact that I am uncoordinated and could never learn to tango - I mean, really tango.
Dance St. Louis brought us, this past weekend, "direct from Buenos Aires, Argentina" Tango Buenos Aires performing "a journey through dance and music of the life of Eva Peron". The live dance performance was accompanied by live music (always a joy) performed by an ensemble of pianist Fernando Marzon, bandoneon players Marco Antonio Fernandez and Emiliano Guerrero, violinist Mayumi Urgino and bassists Roberto Santocono and Sebastian Noya (there was only one bass in our performance and I don't know which one was playing).
Bandoneons are like accordians - the old fashioned kind - like what the Italian waiter plays in the famous spaghetti scene in Lady and the Tramp. Some of the music was familiar and some was composed for the performance. All of the musicians were wonderful but I particularly liked the violinist who had a couple of extensive solos that brought huge rounds of applause from the audience.
You'll notice that I'm speaking more of the music than the dance. That's because the music in a way seemed the center of the evening. The dancers sometimes (not always) seemed secondary.
The "journey" was, of course, all in dance. If I didn't already have an idea of the biography of Eva Peron (mostly from watching Evita) I probably would have been lost. But it wouldn't have mattered because most of the dances could have stood alone without a story. At the end of the first act the men perform Las Boleadoras - these are dances where each man holds an Argentinian tool used to catch cattle in the countryside in each of his hands - ropes with a weight at the end. The men would swing the two ropes and make clacking noises on the ground with them. The combination of dance and the rhythmic sounds of the ropes hitting the ground were compelling. Then one of the men took center stage and performed on his own for a good 10 minutes without any accompaniment other than two box drums that the other dancers drummed. At times he swung his ropes so fast that it was hard to believe that he wouldn't hit himself with the ropes. The audience was wowed.
The second act also had some dances between various couples that were exquisitely done. Strangely, the program never told us the names of the various dancers so I don't know who was who. It seemed that the female dancers especially were of varying degrees of virtuosi, one of them seemed more of a beginner than the others. Another was perfect, holding herself straight and haughty - the way you always picture tango dancers - her arms and hands casually elegant and her footwork impeccable.
Tango Buenos Aires has visited St. Louis a number of times previously. I always enjoy them when I get a chance to see them. I hope they come back the next time they tour.
Dance St. Louis brought us, this past weekend, "direct from Buenos Aires, Argentina" Tango Buenos Aires performing "a journey through dance and music of the life of Eva Peron". The live dance performance was accompanied by live music (always a joy) performed by an ensemble of pianist Fernando Marzon, bandoneon players Marco Antonio Fernandez and Emiliano Guerrero, violinist Mayumi Urgino and bassists Roberto Santocono and Sebastian Noya (there was only one bass in our performance and I don't know which one was playing).
Bandoneons are like accordians - the old fashioned kind - like what the Italian waiter plays in the famous spaghetti scene in Lady and the Tramp. Some of the music was familiar and some was composed for the performance. All of the musicians were wonderful but I particularly liked the violinist who had a couple of extensive solos that brought huge rounds of applause from the audience.
You'll notice that I'm speaking more of the music than the dance. That's because the music in a way seemed the center of the evening. The dancers sometimes (not always) seemed secondary.
The "journey" was, of course, all in dance. If I didn't already have an idea of the biography of Eva Peron (mostly from watching Evita) I probably would have been lost. But it wouldn't have mattered because most of the dances could have stood alone without a story. At the end of the first act the men perform Las Boleadoras - these are dances where each man holds an Argentinian tool used to catch cattle in the countryside in each of his hands - ropes with a weight at the end. The men would swing the two ropes and make clacking noises on the ground with them. The combination of dance and the rhythmic sounds of the ropes hitting the ground were compelling. Then one of the men took center stage and performed on his own for a good 10 minutes without any accompaniment other than two box drums that the other dancers drummed. At times he swung his ropes so fast that it was hard to believe that he wouldn't hit himself with the ropes. The audience was wowed.
The second act also had some dances between various couples that were exquisitely done. Strangely, the program never told us the names of the various dancers so I don't know who was who. It seemed that the female dancers especially were of varying degrees of virtuosi, one of them seemed more of a beginner than the others. Another was perfect, holding herself straight and haughty - the way you always picture tango dancers - her arms and hands casually elegant and her footwork impeccable.
Tango Buenos Aires has visited St. Louis a number of times previously. I always enjoy them when I get a chance to see them. I hope they come back the next time they tour.
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