Ms. Smarty Pants Know It All

At first, In the Wake of the Plague: The Black Death and the World It Made didn’t really capture my attention. It seemed like it was going to hang some loosely related topics onto an arbitrary but sexy theme, such as the Black Death.

But, the second half of the book proved me wrong.

One reason I had my initial reaction is the depth of knowledge demonstrated by Norman F Cantor about such a wide range of topics.

From the Plantagenet dynastic history to the changes in societal structures, each section is covered very thoroughly. Really, it was to the point that I sometimes forgot which history topic I was actually investigating.

Cantor went deeper than I was expecting with certain chapters, but he does always manage to bring them back around to the Black Death and make me remember the book’s title with a start.

By the end of the book, I gained a strong appreciation for how Europe changed because of these waves of deaths.

They affected the dreams of monarchs for power and territory. They transformed the economics of an agrarian society dependent upon human labor and consequently upset the previously rigid class structures.

I especially found the chapter on Jewish history fascinating. Under torture, Jews were forced to confess that they were causing the plague. Their subsequent murders and banishments around Europe really set the stage for how their histories came to play out in the twentieth century.

In the Wake of the Plague is an involved book and probably not that accessible to the casual reader. It requires a certain amount of prior knowledge to really get what the writer wants to convey. If you have that starting base though, this book can fill out you understandings and information pretty quickly.

Audiobook Challenge: one down, eleven to go.

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Both the noir genre and the hard-boiled detective genre are so iconic these days that they are practically punchlines. The first time this chocolate-and-peanut-butter combo really came together, though, was in Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep.

I’m a fan of both genres although I’ve seen more movies and TV shows than I’ve read books. So this is the first time I’m meeting Chandler’s famous Philip Marlowe. Unlike Dashiell Hammett’s Sam Spade, Marlowe is more of an upstanding guy by our standards. Marlowe is like a knight-errant in the service of his clients. Even though we may not be able to see why his particular clients in this story are so worthy of his sacrifices, he knows he has to continue living by his own code.

This brings romanticism to the character, but we also know of the alienation and bleakness that arise from his choices. As good as he is at what he does, he is not a happy man.

The plot of The Big Sleep is simultaneously brilliant and sloppy. The book is set out as a series of mysteries but these are not the kind of mysteries that you’re supposed to follow along and figure out by the clues left along the way.

I would liken it to what Agatha Christie writes, where the story is enjoyable and the characters are interesting, and really, you may as well relax about the solution to the puzzle because you’re not going to figure it out. The author didn’t create the work with the intention of helping you along.

The Big Sleep has plenty of style and progression of plot, but true mystery aficionados are going to be frustrated.

So what’s so brilliant about the plot then? One, Marlowe succeeds right off the bat, and I can’t elaborate further about that without spoiling the action. Two, Marlowe becomes the mystery, and again, I can’t say any more. Structurally, Chandler has done something so witty and playful here. Unfortunately, an understanding of his humor on this front won’t be possible until the end.

But in the meantime, all throughout the book, Chandler is going to make you smile. There are just great turns in the language.

New Author Challenge: four completed, eleven to go.
1001 Books To Read Before You Die list: 79 down

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I think almost every girl who reads Little Women by Louisa May Alcott identifies with Jo. She certainly helped me develop my confidence as a young tomboy whose only lovely feature was her hair.

Little Women was the first book I ever bought with my own money. This book was mine, and the first addition to what was surely to be the magnificent library in my future.

I recently read a review of this book at Page Turners, and it brought all these memories back to me.

I remembered that for years, I would come back to this book. During middle school, high school, college and beyond, I would reread Little Women for the pure enjoyment of it.

Then one year, and I don’t remember how long ago it was, I couldn’t make it through. I got annoyed with it. Did it somehow lose its resonance with me? Was I so changed that I no longer wanted to read what is arguably the most influential book of my life?

I still don’t have that answer. It surely can’t be that I’m too old for it or that its simplistic world view no longer applies to my life can it?

I’ve gotten rid of a lot of my book collection. That dream of having a Henry-Higgins-like library has been replaced by others, but I still have my original Little Women. Surely it will come back to me.

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