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At Aqueduct Press's blog, I talk about some of my favorite reads of the year.

One book that didn't make it onto my list is Robert Nathan's novel The Bishop's Wife (1928), which I finished reading (well, listening to on audiobook) this morning. The 1947 film is a favorite of mine, and it was one of the inspirations for my novel Thank You for Sending Me an Angel (which I'm nearly done revising!), but I had never read the novel before. In many ways it is a more sophisticated and philosophical story than the film, though neither version has what I would call a satisfying ending.

The novel makes it clear that the bishop is sexually repressed and that his wife Julia has been disappointed about this since their wedding night, though she enjoys being a mother to their daughter. The marriage between the bishop and Julia is one of mutual respect but, unlike in the movie, there doesn't seem to be much love there. The angel (Michael in the novel) is more earnest and less suave than Cary Grant's Dudley. (He's also fair-haired, and I understood for the first time why they originally thought to cast David Niven as the angel instead of the bishop.) Unlike Dudley, Michael actually kisses and embraces Julia and declares himself to be in love with her. For awhile, I was starting to wonder if Michael and Julia might actually hit the sheets. (Alas, they don't. Julia won't commit adultery, and apparently angels can't actually get carnal, even though Michael is clearly a great kisser.)

The novel is much more explicitly critical of organized religion than the film, and it also brings up antisemitism and racism. I got a little uneasy when the book introduced the wealthy Mr. Cohen, until Cohen told Michael about his grandparents who were killed in a Ukraine pogrom. Wait, I thought, was Robert Nathan Jewish? Sure enough, he was Sephardic. (Side note: he was also the husband of Anna Lee, of Val Lewton and General Hospital fame!)

As much as I like the movie, I can't help but wonder what a Pre-Code adaptation would have done with the book. The novel ends with Julia resigning herself to her unsatisfying marriage, though she has chosen to get pregnant again by the bishop. (At least in the novel, no one gets their memories angelically erased at the end.)

Here is my annual list of favorite reads for the Aqueduct Press blog.

Among the books I included are Elif Batuman's two novels. I am currently reading her earlier nonfiction book, The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them, which I'm enjoying a lot.

I'm happy to share my contribution to Aqueduct Press's annual series, The Pleasures of Reading, Viewing, and Listening. I talk about books and other media that helped get me through this unbelievable year. I always enjoy contributing to this series and reading all the other blog posts.

Meanwhile, I'm contemplating making gingerbread this evening.

I'm hennaing my hair on a mild Los Angeles afternoon. I'm overdue for a haircut, and the length of my hair makes hennaing unwieldy, but now that the weather has finally cooled off, I'm enjoying having long hair. We've had apocalyptic wildfires, followed by a bit of rain. This weekend I polished off my portion of the leftovers (following a lovely Thanksgiving dinner with my mom).

I've been enjoying the second volume of Sylvia Plath's collected letters, and (very slowly) Sylvia Townsend Warner & William Maxwell's letters to each other. I may take a break from these to read some crime novels I have on my tablet.

I finally got my hair cut yesterday. Accordingly, today is the first Henna Day of 2018, on a mild LA winter afternoon. While most of the country deals with intense cold and snow, we've been having a pretty easy winter thus far, though we're supposed to get our first real rain of the season this week. We need it, but I'm hoping my windows won't leak (and that the recent fire areas won't get hit by mudslides).

I am about halfway through volume one of the newly issued Letters of Sylvia Plath. Also I'm rereading The Valley of Fear, which I first read as a preteen at the height of my Sherlock Holmes fanaticism. Over the holidays I watched The Triumph of Sherlock Holmes (1935) and discovered 1) that Arthur Wontner is as excellent a Holmes as I remembered (second only to Basil Rathbone in my estimation) and 2) that, although the film is based on The Valley of Fear, I could recall almost nothing about it (to the point that I'd forgotten it was a novel and not a short story). I should reread more Holmes.

I am hennaing my hair on a warm Los Angeles afternoon. I really need to get a haircut before next month's Henna Day, as the process is getting unwieldy.

Last night I watched Daughters of the Dust for the first time, and I'm still wowing about it today.

The other day I finished reading the Feminist Press edition of Violette Leduc's Thérèse and Isabelle, and now I'm once again deeply annoyed that Leduc's letters haven't been translated into English.

It is Henna Day, and we're having another mini heat wave (typical of Los Angeles in September). My kitchen is stocked with Trader Joe's pumpkin products, but it doesn't feel quite right to consume them in 99 degree weather. (However, I have made a pot of pumpkin spice coffee and eaten some pumpkin-ginger ice cream cookies.)

Fortunately I got my hair cut yesterday, which is helping me cope with the heat.

I am currently reading several books, including the new Shirley Jackson collection Let Me Tell You, Dodie Bellamy's new book of essays When the Sick Rule the World, and C.S.E. Cooney's Bone Swans. I'm planning to read a bunch of ghost stories in October.

Mythic Delirium 1.1 has gone out to subscribers, and it's a beautiful issue. It includes my poem "It's a Universal Picture," as well as work by sovay, sairaali, Jane Yolen, and others.

I've been reading/rereading a lot of Mary Shelley for Readercon and taking a last pass (I hope, I hope!) through the Jo book. Also watching various Hammer horror films, notably The Curse of the Werewolf and the (intentionally?) hilarious Shadow of the Cat. (Oh, and last week TCM showed a bunch of cool Hammer noir films.)

It is Henna Day, on a warmish Los Angeles day. We have had a spate of unseasonably cool (for us) weather, and are apparently about to have a mini heatwave. So long as we keep not having more earthquakes, I'm okay with this.

Once again I have not posted here in nearly a month, though I keep meaning to post about books. A few books I have recently finished reading:

Hangsaman by Shirley Jackson. This is early Jackson, and she hasn't quite worked out her style yet. The novel (mostly set at a college supposedly based on Bennington) doesn't quite work as a narrative, especially compared to the ultra-propulsive style of, say, The Haunting of Hill House. Weirdly, the book suddenly kicks into Quintessential Jackson, with bonus paranoia, in the last thirty pages or so. The book is peppered with some amazing set-pieces, like this one about the posters at a movie theater: "One of the pictures showed a glorious scene between a man in a cowboy hat and uncomfortable pistols, who backed against a door to face a darker, equally weaponful villain; in the background a damsel wrung her hands and all three seemed to turn anxiously to the camera, which alone could justify the violent emotions they ravished themselves to feel. It was plain from the picture that it was near the end of the day; the sun was setting dramatically outside the backdrop window; the hero had the look of one who would shortly remove his guns and his spurs and go home in a car he had bought but could not afford; the heroine seemed to be thinking, under her beautiful look of fear and concern, that perhaps she should keep the children out of school until this chicken-pox scare was over." (Weaponful is my new favorite word.)

Death in Midsummer and Other Stories by Yukio Mishima (loaned to me by Lyman). "Patriotism," in which an army officer and his wife have sex for the last time and then commit ritual suicide, is probably the story that stood out most for me, though I found it hard to read. A story I liked a lot was "Onnagata," about the infatuation of a kabuki actor for the clueless director of his latest play.

The Little Disturbances of Man by Grace Paley. I am a huge fan of Paley's later short story collections (Enormous Changes at the Last Minute and Later the Same Day), but in the past I bounced off her first book (aside from a few stories like "Goodbye and Good Luck"). I finally made it through the whole book, and I see why I bounced off. Unlike Shirley Jackson, Paley nailed down her style early on, but it took her awhile to fully figure out her subject matter and, maybe more importantly, her approach toward her subjects. Or maybe it's that Paley succeeds most fully as a writer of middle-aged and old characters, rather than young ones.

Books I'm reading at the moment include: Hild by Nicola Griffith, Chimes at Midnight by Seanan McGuire, and The Baron in the Trees by Italo Calvino.

...and apparently I haven't posted here since last Henna Day. Yesterday I had about five inches cut from my hair, so Henna Day required about half as much henna as it did last month.

This weekend I've also been working on Jo book revisions, trying to finish up a prose poem, and reading The Fifth Child, which my friend Lyman loaned me. It's the first Doris Lessing I've read in awhile, and it reminds me that I've never read the Martha Quest series and would still like to.

Last night I watched The Heiress on TCM--an adaptation of Washington Square from 1949, with Olivia de Havilland, Montgomery Clift, and Sir Ralph Richardson. It was excellent, though I suspect Henry James rolled over in his grave at the way the end of the story was changed so that Catherine Sloper gets to have bravura revenge on Morris Townsend.