Here is a review of the memoir mathmom mentioned above, Like Family: Growing Up in Other People’s Houses: https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/paula-mclain/like-family/
I understand now why McLain felt a connection with Beryl Markham. Paula McLain was abandoned at age 4 by her mother, a woman who finally resurfaced 16 years later “to establish a tentative relationship the author admits still baffles her today.”
Yes, I agree with her…but then it’s sort of a silly question. Is there any place in this world–either then or now–where “softness and helplessness” raise the odds of survival? I don’t think so, unless you’re a kitten waiting to be adopted.
I doubt it’s possible to place “too much” value on strength and independence. But like anyone, Beryl Markham made choices as to where she would focus that strength and how she would exercise that independence. Motherhood was not one of her strengths; financial insecurity limited her independence. But in so many other areas, from her skill with horses to her fearless hunting to her cool-headed aviation, she was imdomitable. Glad to have “met” her through our discussion.
And on that note, feel free to start thinking about our next selection!
Thanks to Mary and our book club for selecting this duo. I don’t know when, if ever, I would have read the excellent and memorable West With the Night otherwise. Really good discussion too.
I have been casting about for a book to suggest. A new novel that looks pretty good is This Is Your Life, Harriet Chance! by Jonathan Evison. Reviews do describe it as rather dark, but that can be hard to avoid in novels these days.
I’d still like to read Far From the Madding Crowd, one of our runners-up from last time. I saw the movie, but it was clear that a lot was left out of it.
I just saw the new movie last week, the older one wasn’t available on Amazon streaming or I would have watched it too. I enjoyed the movie, but realized that it’s
that’s my favorite Thomas Hardy. But Bathsheba is an interesting and often aggravating character.
I had to return my copy of Circling the Sun to the library (7 day book), but I’d taken some notes of quotes I thought were interesting and then couldn’t remember where I had put them, but I found them today taped to my office wall.
p 277
I can’t remember now whether it was a particular place in Kenya, or just Africa in general.
p339 (on safari near the end of the book)
I think softness and helplessess was considered a bit of a Victorian ideal - especially for society women, but I think for the really successful ones especially any social climber ruthlessness got you a lot further.
I think Clara, Beryl’s mother, was the target of that thought! Soft or helpless, Beryl was not. If only she had been a little bit kinder. But then again, maybe she was. We’ll never know.
I also enjoyed this months pairing and the discussion. Beryl’s memoir was beautiful. Circling the Sun, while disappointing in some ways, did fill in many of the details of Beryl’s life for me, and prompted the additional investigation with the opposing biographies.
I haven’t seen or read (but do have) Far from the Madding Crowd. I’m willing. A few other titles I have in the queue are:
)PlantMom, I read an excerpt of Purity in the New Yorker and disliked it. Good luck with the book – let us know what you think, if/when you finish. 
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/06/08/the-republic-of-bad-taste
I was able to get through the story (a link to it is above), just as I was able to get through Franzen’s The Corrections a number of years ago. However, both left kind of a bad taste in my mouth.
Purity - I gave it a really good effort, but abandoned it. I liked The Corrections, and looked forward to this book. Ugh
Re The Admissions by Meg Mitchell Moore: I’m not sure if anyone remembers this–maybe SouthJerseyChessMom?–but when the CC Book Club was established, the first request from members was “No books about college admissions!” because everyone was looking for a break from the insanity unfolding on 90% of the other threads.
I’m not sure if that rule still applies because we’ve been together so long that most of our kids are years out of school and thinking about making us grandparents…but just sayin’, it IS in the by-laws.
I’d like to read something by Wilkie Collins, but the CC book club read The Moonstone back before my time, I think. I believe another rule is not to repeat authors?
^ Yes, that’s correct; we’ve never repeated an author. 45 different authors, by my count! This seems like a good time to re-post our selection history:
2009:
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parent-cafe/722812-cc-june-summer-book-club-selection.html (The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society)
2010:
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parent-cafe/839908-help-february-cc-book-club-selection.html
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parent-cafe/874004-shadow-wind-april-cc-book-club-selection.html
2011:
2012:
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parent-cafe/1324495-cat-s-table-june-cc-book-club-selection.html
2013:
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parent-cafe/1461744-orchardist-april-cc-book-club-selection.html
2014:
2015:
^^^ I hope not. I’d like to read The Woman in White.
Other suggestions:
The State We’re In (short stories)
The Water Knife
*The State We’re In/i sounds good.
The Water Knife seems to be a dystopian novel. We’ve read one of those (Station Eleven), and the Stephen King novel we read had dystopian elements…and – how could I forget? – so did Cloud Atlas!
Not that I’m necessarily opposed to another dystopian story, but…
No worries. All rules and/or longstanding traditions can be altered by majority vote (by-law 1371.2).
Technical question: In the past, before CC changed its software, whenever I would copy and paste a link to a thread, the title of the thread would automatically appear instead of the URL. It doesn’t work that way anymore, which makes a long list like the one I posted above hard to decipher. Is there a new trick I need to learn or a secret setting to activate?
I read The Woman in White a long time ago, but have no real desire to read it again. I actually picked up something by Anne Beattie from the library that looked intriguing - I’ve never read anything of hers.
^^The rules make sense I’m a few years post college admissions but the stress of helping my kiddos is fresh enough. Also, I’ve now read about 30 pages of the Franzen, and I and think it would be a bad choice. Withdraw that one, officially! Oh, Anne Beattie’s The State We’re In does look intriguing.
On Wikipedia’s pages on Mansfield Markham and Beryl Markham, it mentions that in the divorce, instead of the Duke being named in the divorce proceedings, a man named Hubert Broad was named. Broad was an aviator and evidently also had an affair with Beryl.
@"Mary13 gosh, we’ve been at this a long, long time., and naturally, our memories aren’t what they used to be.
It’s my recollection we enacted** article 23/ section 103.56- which gave you,Mary13, fearless leader, who has on more than one occasion subdued the tangled cats in the bag, sole discretion on any possible book genre,and thematic content. **
I hope we don’t have to worry about your memory Mary13, now that we have aged a bit, and assume you have just simply forgotten the long ago change to by laws.
Is it true college seeking parents and students use this site ?
Ummm, no wonder it’s called college confidential, I guess I just forgot, thinking it’s about book discussions. Weddings, retirement and becoming grandparents,
Wish I had something to add to possible selections. Purity. I abandoned,
I did just finish Anne Enright’s, The Green Road, which was stunning, Ann Tyler meets, Colm Tobin. I am not recommending, because I Don’t know if it will appeal, the tone is bleak, family drama issues.
Geraldine Brooks has new book, The Secret Chord, I’m on page 10.
^ Wow, Beryl was a busy woman! Hubert Broad doesn’t show up in either book–but he does have a Wikipedia entry: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubert_Broad
Oh … I’m interested in The Secret Chord. I meant to suggest it also.
I’m returning the Markham biographies to the library today, but I did look up Hubert Broad. Neither Lovell nor Trzebinski has evidence to support a Hubert Broad/Beryl Markham affair. Rather, they both record that Mansfield Markham was attempting unsuccessfully to divorce Beryl so he could marry Mary Ellen Adley, his future wife, and he named Broad, Beryl’s friend, as “co-respondent” while getting Mrs Broad’s support for her own case.
[quote]
…both cases were defended and dropped, but Beryl was very cast down by the rumours this caused./quote.