Notre-Dame Cathedral is the very soul of Paris but so much more — it is a touchstone for all that is the best about the world, and a monument to the highest aspirations of artistic achievement that transcends religion and time. It has survived so much — from the French Revolution to Nazi occupation — to watch its devastation is excruciating.”
~Barbara Drake Boehm, Paul and Jill Ruddock Senior Curator for The Met Cloisters
Steve and I visited the Notre Dame Cathedral in September, 2011. Having loved ecclesiastical architecture since I studied it in Mr. Orr’s AP European History class in tenth grade, I was particularly keen to see the most iconic French Gothic cathedral in existence. I was awed by its beauty, its grace, and its historical significance, and I was in tears watching it be engulfed by flames today.
Notre Dame was – is – so much more than mere stones and mortar. I cherish Notre Dame as an example of the soaring heights that human ingenuity and spirit can achieve. From the news reports I have read, it appears that not all is lost, that the statuary, the art, and even the stained glass have been or could be recovered – I hope that’s true. But still, it breaks my heart to think that my children won’t be able to marvel at the gargoyles or at the ceiling arching high above them. And yet I know the people of Paris, and those of us in far-flung places around the world who love art and architecture, will rebuild.
Go look at the beauty in the world.
Last Hope Island: Britain, Occupied Europe, and the Brotherhood that Helped Turn the Tide of War, by Lynne Olson – Somehow, despite loving popular history, I hadn’t read any Lynne Olson before last month. I’m glad to have corrected that error now and can’t wait to read more. Last Hope Island was fascinating and engaging. Beginning with heart-in-throat depictions of the rescues of the ruling families and government dignitaries of occupied Europe – King Haakon of Norway, Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands, and more – and continuing on to describe the role of the BBC, Britain’s warring intelligence agencies, and the daring of the nascent resistance movements left in the occupied countries, it was the most well-researched page-turner I’ve ever read. (Well, maybe tied with Erik Larson’s Dead Wake). The discussions of the intelligence failures, betrayals, and lack of support for and collaboration with the governments in exile made me heartsick; I said to Steve “This book is proof that there is a God, because without divine intervention I really don’t see how the Allies win that war.”
Old New York: Four Novellas, by Edith Wharton – I’ve been on a bit of a Wharton kick lately, and I loved these four novellas – especially the last one, New Year’s Day (the 1870s installment). Each of the four novellas covers one decade – the 1840s, ’50s, ’60s and ’70s (although the 1860s story mostly takes place in the 1890s, confusingly). I especially loved The Old Maid, in which two women conspire to hide a secret, and the aforementioned New Year’s Day, which was a heartbreaking story of a woman caught in what seems to be an affair. I won’t say more, because you should read it! It’s a slim volume but every page was a delight. Fully reviewed 
The Joy of the Snow, by Elizabeth Goudge – After loving The Little White Horse, I’ve been meaning to read more Goudge, and I thought her memoir would be a good place to begin. It was. Goudge describes her childhood and girlhood in lyrical prose – as with The Little White Horse, she is at her best when describing houses. The Ely house, with its passage to the Cathedral green! The garden at Devon! The sweet country cottage in Oxford! I enjoyed the rest of the book – despite Goudge’s well-documented tendency to get a little preachy from time to time; I mostly skimmed those sections – but the houses were the highlight.
Slightly Foxed No. 61: The Paris Effect, ed. Gail Pirkis and Hazel Wood – Although I am trying to make my way through an epic library stack right now, I am powerless to resist a new Slightly Foxed when it arrives at just the right moment, and this one did. The best issues of Foxed – for me at least – combine books I’ve read, books I’ve been meaning to read, and books I haven’t heard of before but now have to track down; this issue was a perfect example of that alchemy. I’m now itching to get my hands on Dorothy Wordsworth’s journals and In Pursuit of Spring, and to read the Nancy Mitford novels I already have on my shelves.
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, by Agatha Christie – As I mentioned 
Three Men on the Bummel (Three Men #2), by Jerome K. Jerome – I’ll have a full review (for the Classics Club) coming to you next week, but just as a teaser in the meantime – J., Harris, and George are back and scheming up another epic Victorian vacation, this time a bicycling trip through the Black Forest. Times have changed a bit since the friends went up the Thames – George is still a bachelor, but J. and Harris are both married and encumbered with several children, so their plans are complicated by the need to convince their wives to free them for a few weeks. But they find a way and the reader is treated to a number of delightful and hilarious scenes. Three Men on the Bummel doesn’t quite live up to its predecessor, Three Men in a Boat, but it was good fun all the same.
Queen Victoria: Twenty-Four Days that Changed Her Life, by Lucy Worsley – It’s terrible of me to borrow this Worsley from the library when I have Jane Austen at Home sitting on my borrowed-from-a-friend shelf, waiting to be read so I can return it to my dear 
Ninety-Nine Glimpses of Princess Margaret, by Craig Brown – I guess I was on an “experimental royal biography” kick, or else hampered by library deadlines (maybe a little of both) because I turned next to another royal biography, written in a different sort of style. This one didn’t work as well for me. It might be that Princess Margaret has never been my love language, or that this biography was a bit too experimental. I liked the “glimpses” that consisted of actual quotes from the press or Palace announcements, or that read as more traditional biographical essays (and I did a tiny cheer every time James Lees-Milne turned up to thumb his nose at royalty) but the fictional stories about Margaret married to Pablo Picasso or one of her other admirers read as a little off, and I really hated the dream sequences where the author described his own nightmares about Margaret invading his study and looking at all his notes for his biography of Her Royal Highness. Not information I needed.
The Glass Ocean, by Beatriz Williams, Lauren Willig and Karen White – I was intrigued by this both from the team-writing perspective (I am currently working on a team-writing project, although it’s going very slowly – my fault entirely, and my writing partner is being very patient) and because the story sounded cool. Williams, Willig and White portray three women who are connected through history. One is a present-day popular history writer who finds something potentially alarming in a trunk belonging to an ancestor who died on Lusitania. The others are two Lusitania passengers – one the wife of a wealthy industrialist and one a conwoman and forger. So this was fine, and it read quickly, but it didn’t entirely work for me and I felt a bit blah at the end. But I’m interested in anything to do with Lusitania, so I did enjoy the descriptions of life aboard the ship.
Thanks, Obama: My Hopey, Changey White House Years, by David Litt – I’ve been meaning to read this since it came out, and especially since it spent the last couple of months sitting on my library stack, but other things kept pushing it down the list. Finally I ran out of renewals, so it was time. I loved it. Litt had me laughing and reading passages aloud to Steve throughout the book, and he was such a breath of fresh air and just what I needed to read as my town collapses into a pit of angst over the Mueller report. I especially loved Litt’s anecdote about falling out of a closet half-dressed on Air Force One, and his musings about how much less stressful his life would be if only he was Bo, the Obamas’ dog, instead of a speechwriter.
(No spoilers ahead!) I expect most avid readers have this experience at one time or another: the distinctly unsettling inability to recall whether or not one has read a particular book. There’s the feeling that you probably have read it, at some point or another – but before you joined Goodreads or Library Thing, so it’s impossible to verify. You dread it coming up in conversation, because you’ll have to confess your uncertainty: you might have read it, but then again, you might not have. If the confession is made to other bookish folks, odds are they’ll understand. But the general public is less likely to make allowances. They’ll either assume it was a forgettable book, or they’ll think you scatterbrained.
Queen Lucia introduces us to Emmeline “Lucia” Lucas, her husband “Peppino,” best chum Georgie Pillson and frenemy Mrs. Quantock. When the book opens Lucia is the undisputed Queen of her small village, Riseholme. She is a benevolent ruler, treating her subjects to garden parties and evenings listening to Lucia play the first movement of the Moonlight Sonata – not the second or third, though, because they are really more “afternoon” and “midnight.” She goes so far in thinking of their well-being that in the opening scene, she walks home from the train station after a visit to London, so that the villagers will have something to talk about when they see her luggage arrive home without her. But there are revolutionary rumblings threatening Lucia’s throne – her frenemy Daisy Quantock has brought a “Guru” from London to teach her yoga and mindfulness. Lucia quickly determines that she must “annex” the “Guru” before Daisy usurps her position as arbiter of all things cultural and/or interesting. No sooner has Lucia carried off this feat than an opera prima donna arrives in town and begins hosting “romps,” and Lucia’s loyal lieutenant, Georgie, begins to harbor revolutionary feelings of his own. What is a self-proclaimed village cultural ruler to do?
In Miss Mapp, we meet the denizens of Tilling for the first time. Elizabeth Mapp reigns supreme over the high street – or at least, she’d like to think she does. She certainly has a gift for seeing what her neighbors are up to and connecting the dots to ferret out all their disagreeable little secrets. But Miss Mapp gets her comeuppance time and again – whether in the form of accidental twinning with her archrival “Diva” Plaistow, curtsying to a man she mistakenly believes to be the Prince of Wales, being threatened with false and defamatory rumors about drunkenness, or having nothing to do with a duel that comes to nothing. Every time Mapp gets into a social scrap, the reader finds herself torn between rooting for her and hoping that she embarrasses herself – again. Each of the characters surrounding Miss Mapp – from the ostentatious social climber Mrs. Poppit to the exhibitionist fishmonger – is a delight.
covered in flour 