I was very excited to get this book today. It’s been a long wait as it always is for a hand-made book. Since this book was a gift from my generous parents, it made a brief stop under our tree while I made sure I didn’t have to “wait” to open it. That would have been torture.
I’ve got a bit of a backlog of reviews but hope to get to this one done after the two in the queue. In the meantime, enjoy some preliminary quick photos. And you can always check out my review of the Folio Society WITW too.
I now have three editions of this book even though I don’t enjoy reading it very much. It’s a curious book in that way. The two main characters are just so creepy and despicable but the writing is so good I didn’t want to stop reading. Despite the fact that I know the story well enough that I could have stopped and still written most of this review. That would defeat the purpose of The Whole Book Experience, which is to try to describe the experience of reading a book in a specific edition.
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I’ve been remiss in sharing my newest book-related joyful discovery: These amazing book cradles by Natasha Herman and STILT.
This little gem of a chap book showed up at my door recently, packed full of other ephemera and goodies from Thornwillow’s Dispatch subscription program.
Continue readingWhenever a package shows up at the front door, whoever grabs usually yells “Santa!” Any day it is a book that shows up is a good day. From the first book I owned as a child, I’ve always loved getting books. It doesn’t matter what the book is: it could be something for my business, a reference, or something to read. But it is especially joyous when the box has a fine or private presses name or logo on it. So I thought I’d do quick posts whenever that happens even if it might be a while for that book to show up in a review, if ever. In this case, it’s “Booka Claus!” not “Santa Claus!”
You’d think during a pandemic, with the yoga studios and tea events I normally work closed, while I work and stay at home except for grocery runs and rides up into the unpopulated trails behind my house, that I’d have plenty of time to write. But apparently anxiety about half a million (and counting) dead Americans in the U.S. isn’t conducive to my muse. As I start to write this review I’ve only got a week left of Black History Month. I read Portrait of a Free Man months ago in preparation for this post and even uncharacteristically took the photographs ahead of time. Ha, still didn’t help me not sweat my self-imposed deadline of posting for this symbolic month.
Any Edgar Rice Burroughs (ERB) book is an instant trigger for déjà vu to my adolescent self, whether it is a mention of the author as an influence to a modern author, a sighting of one of his tattered pulp fiction paperbacks in a used bookstore, or through an actual re-read of one of my favorite titles. I’m not alone, at least in generations adjacent to mine. No less of a towering figure in modern fantasy and fiction than Michael Moorcock has this to say in the forward for this edition:
Continue reading“I hope you enjoy this extraordinary labour of love. A Princess of Mars is over a century old and I’m quite certain it will last at least another century. It has the vitality of a true original and it is that wonderful quality we continue to celebrate.”
The title of W. Somerset Maugham’s novel has always seemed fraught to me. It seems even more so now. I wondered early on if it might be titillating but then I realized it was written at the end of the Victorian era, so little chance of that. It might have been an easier read if it was that kind of bondage. But there are many forms of bondage and this novel deals with the bondage of economics and gender and institutions in society. The novel portrays English society
but women and poor in many parts of the world would probably see themselves in the story. With the destruction of the middle class in my country, it seems like 95% of us are sliding towards the type of life and bondage described by Maugham. But we’re not in a book, so maybe there is even less hope for a happy ending than the slim chance you would give for this book to end well.
Maybe this wasn’t a great choice for a pandemic read.
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It’s been 100+ days since the “Stay at Home” order was issued for the state of California. While the state started rolling it back in stages a couple of weeks ago, our COVID cases are spiking and maybe we’ll be ordered back soon. Regardless, this reader has been laying low since the beginning and I really have no desire to venture out much more than is needed. And since my primary recreation throughout my life has been reading, I’m really not that phased by social distancing, isolating, or quarantining. Of course, as a business owner teaching yoga (all studios closed) and selling tea on-line (thankfully doing OK), my income has taken a hit. But I’m privileged to have a bit of a financial safety net and a house full of books to stay at home in—so for now I’m OK.
