Pairing Books with Movies: Excellent Women

Excellent Women
by Barbara Pym
★★★

Set in 1950s England, Excellent Women explores Mildred Lathbury’s small world. She’s a “spinster” in her 30s who lives a quiet life. Her closet friends are a vicar and his sister. When the Napiers, a contentious married couple, move into her boarding house her life is thrown into turmoil. 

I struggled with this one because I honestly couldn’t decide if Pym intended it as a parody or not. Mildred comes across as a cookie cutter version of a spinster. She’s a bit nosy and seems to have no real personality. She’s easily swayed by whoever she’s with at the moment. On the other hand, Helen Napier is a fascinating character. She’s a self-proclaimed horrible housekeeper and cook. She’s passionate about her work in the field of anthropologist, and she’s struggling in her marriage. Unfortunately she’s the one who is presented as a bit of a villain. 

The book was not without its charm. There’s a scene where Mildred returns to her childhood school for a reunion event. She’s with an old friend and they are talking about how small and simple everyone’s jobs and descriptions sound. They talk about how the main thing everyone cares about is whether or not they are married. It’s sad and true how little our lives can seem so small when we describe them in a single line or two. The depth and heart of anyone’s life get missed when they are simplified in that way.

BOTTOM LINE: Not my cup of tea, but I’d like to try something else by these author to see if it was just Mildred’s personality that rubbed me the wrong way.

Pairing Books with Movies: Excellent Women is set in England in the 1950s, so the BBC show “Call the Midwife” is a perfect pairing. It also explores England during that time period, but it gives some balance to the role women had in that world. “Call the Midwife” shows a group of strong women who work as midwives in a poor community, it’s a much more progressive and realistic version of England at that time. It’s a fantastic show and that’s coming from someone who is kind of terrified of all things connected to childbirth.

The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin

The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin

by Gordon S. Wood

★★★☆

It’s important to understand that this is not a biography of Franklin in the normal sense. It does tell the story of his life and his rise to political influence, but it’s more about how his reputation and image was molded into something different over the years. Wood’s goal was to remove the myths and get to the heart of who Ben Franklin truly was, but answering that question isn’t as easy as it sounds.

Franklin was the youngest son of 17 children. Despite his huge family and low stature, he managed to get a position as a printer’s apprentice and start to learn a trade. He was one of the first truly a self-made men in America. Over the years he wrote columns for his newspaper under dozens of pseudonyms. He was vocal about his beliefs and never shied away from stating an opinion, though he might only do it anonymously.

He was a scientist, political leader, ambassador, inventor, post master, printer, free mason, and a self-made gentleman. He fell hard for London society and then later France, and lived in both places for years. It was interesting to learn that he was a staunch loyalist to the crown until late in life when he felt like he had been passed over for a position in England.

Over the centuries his image has been distorted by historians. He is sometimes painted as prudish, miserly, or as the all-American tradesman. Depending on what the historian decided he needed, Franklin’s legacy was warped to fit a mold.  His incredible talent as an ambassador was often overlooked.

It felt like the author admired his influence, but he didn’t like him as a man. Honestly, the more I learned about his personal life the less I respected him.  When he lived in England he left his wife and daughter in America, rarely writing them and skipping his daughter’s wedding. He took his illegitimate son with him, but later disowned the son when he was loyal to the country (England) that Ben Franklin had taught him to love.

BOTTOM LINE: Wood paints an honest portrait of Franklin. There are no rosy glasses with which to view his life, but he sticks to the facts and I appreciated the candid portrayal. I am in awe of how much Franklin did for our country, especially since he received little thanks for it. No man is perfect and Franklin’s impact on the founding of our Nation and the alliance that was formed with France was truly priceless.

“‘The players of our game are so many,’ he told a French correspondent. ‘Their ideas so different, their prejudices so strong and so various and their particular interests independent of the general, seeming so opposite that not a move can be made that is not contested. The numerous objections confound the understanding. The wisest must agree to some unreasonable things that reasonable ones of more consequence may be obtained and thus chance has its share in many of the determinations so that the play is more like trick track with a box of dice.’”

Wordless Wednesday: Coventry Cathedral

Coventry Cathedral in England

More Wordless Wednesday here.

Photo by moi.

The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street

The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street
by Helene Hanff
★★★★★

When I read 84, Charing Cross Road in 2009 I was completely in love with it. Helene Hanff’s first book is a collection of letters between herself and the British bookseller, Frank Doel. For years the two wrote back and forth, never meeting in person but sharing a deep love of literature.

In this sequel Hanff finally had the opportunity to visit London for the first time. Unlike her first book, this one is written in journal form as she chronicles her time there. Her quick wit and acerbic nature make the whole thing so much fun. The nonfiction account hit a soft spot for me. I’m such an anglophile that when she describes her lifelong desire to visit London (see below) it was like I was reading my own thoughts.

“All my life I’ve wanted to see London. I used to go to English movies just to look at streets with houses like those. Staring at the screen in a dark theatre, I wanted to walk down those streets so badly it gnawed at me like hunger. Sometimes, at home in the evening, reading a casual description of London, I’d put the book down suddenly, engulfed by a wave of longing that was like homesickness. I wanted to see London the way old people want to see home before they die. I used to tell myself this was natural in a writer and booklover born to the language of Shakespeare.”

I felt the need to visit London from a young age. I just always knew that one day I would go. When I was 19 I planned my first trip to Europe, hopped on a plane by myself and met a friend in London. During that trip I visited Bath, Windsor and London, and then traveled to Ireland and explored Dublin and some coastal towns. It was absolutely everything I imagined it would be. Seeing poets corner in Westminster Abbey, Twelfth Night performed at the Globe, dinner in a pub, etc. I loved everything about it. Later I moved there for a few months to do a semester abroad and my love of London grew ten-fold.

Hanff’s experience was similar to my own (except she was a bit of a celebrity because of her first book). She was in awe of everything see saw and all she wished for was more time. She made friends along the way, pinching every penny so she could spend just one more day in her beloved city.

BOTTOM LINE: I loved it so much! If you’re an anglophile or you loved 84, Charing Cross Road don’t miss this one!

“I seem to be living in a state of deep hypnosis, every time I mail a postcard home I could use Euphoria for a return address.”

p.s. Hanff wanted to personalize every book she signed and at one point she has to sign a stack of books for a bookseller to take to his shop and she said…

“I still couldn’t bring myself just to write my name and let it go at that, it seems unfriendly. Wrote “To an unknown booklover” in every copy.”

I wish so badly that I could get a signed copy of this book!

Photo by moi.

Wordless Wednesday: Magdalen College

Magdalen College where C.S. Lewis taught in Oxford, England

More Wordless Wednesday here.

Photo by moi.

I Love England aka Sisterchicks Go Brit! review

(Me posing with Ben and my beloved Paddington station)

Sisterchicks Go Brit!
by Robin Jones Gunn
★★★☆

I am an undeniable anglophile. Obviously there are many literary greats that hail from the UK (Shakespeare, Austen, Dickens, the Brontës, etc.), but it’s not just the authors that leave me itching to cross the pond. I love the cranky bartenders at the pubs. I love the rolling hills in the countryside. I love the limitless new plays that cycle through the West End. I love double-decker buses, the Tate, cathedrals, day trips to sleepy villages, the Tube, Tower Bridge and posh politeness from strangers.

My Brit love boiled over when I lived in London. Instead of sating my thirst, it only cemented it. The first time I visited England I don’t know if I stopped smiling the whole trip, which probably made it painfully obvious that I was a tourist. I was only 19 and I flew into Heathrow by myself. I visited a friend who was living in London and then we traveled to Bath and Stonehenge for a few days.


I flew over to Ireland and wandered through that country on the same trip. Though I passionately loved the land of Guinness, it wasn’t quite the same devotion I felt for England. Two years later I managed to swing a semester in London, which made it officially my permanent home away from home.

(Me at the British Library and Picadilly Circus)

All of that is to explain why Sisterchicks Go Brit!, a light read from one of my favorite authors when I was a preteen, was so much fun for me. It was a great reminder of all of the above. Gunn’s characters travel to England for the first time and just like me, they are smitten. I felt like I was reading about my own experience in many parts. They did so many of the things that I (and many tourists before me) did. They shopped in Portobello Road, saw Les Miserable, posed with Big Ben, traveled to Oxford to visit the Eagle and the Child pub (where the Inklings hung out!). The book itself isn’t life changing, it’s just a sweet walk down memory lane.

Do you guys have any places that you’re felt drawn to your whole life?

Photos (other than cover) taken of or by moi.