Thus Was Adonis Murdered by Sarah Caudwell -- BOOK BEGINNINGS

BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAYS

Thus Was Adonis Murdered by Sarah Caudwell

Thank you for joining me for Book Beginnings on Fridays. Please share the opening sentence (or so) of the book you are reading this week. You can also share from a book that caught your fancy, even if you are not reading it right now.

I got back from my vacation yesterday but I still pre-scheduled this post because I knew I would be jet lagged and have 1,000 to do after leaving my husband home without me for three weeks. So, again, my apologies if something goes wrong. 

MY BOOK BEGINNING

Scholarship asks, thank God, no recompense but Truth.

-- from Thus Was Adonis Murdered by Sarah Caudwell. This is the first of four legal mysteries featuring a pipe-smoking Oxford professor named Hilary Tamar. I wanted to read this one because it takes place in Venice and I read it when we were there last week. I also love mysteries with lawyers and campus novels, so this one ticked all my boxes. 

 

YOUR BOOK BEGINNINGS

Please add the link to your Book Beginnings post in the box below. If you share on social media, please use the #bookbeginnings hashtag.

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THE FRIDAY 56

The Friday 56 is a natural tie-in with Book Beginnings. The idea is to share a two-sentence teaser from page 56 of your featured book. If you are reading an ebook or audiobook, find your teaser from the 56% mark.

Freda at Freda's Voice started and hosted The Friday 56 for a long, long time. She is taking a break and Anne at My Head is Full of Books has taken on hosting duties in her absence. Please visit Anne's blog and link to your Friday 56 post.

MY FRIDAY 56

-- from Thus Was Adonis Murdered:

The Venetians, it seems, adopted St Mark as their patron saint in the ninth century, at which time the mortal remains of the Evangelist were reposing in Alexandria. To demonstrate their piety, the Venetians set out a body-snatching expedition, which abstracted the sacred corpse from its resting-place and brought it back through Customs between two sides of pork, so discouraging investigation by the fastidious Muslims.

FROM THE PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION

Set to have a vacation away from her home life and the tax man, young barrister Julia Larwood takes a trip to Italy with her art-loving boyfriend. But when her personal copy of the current Finance Act is found a few meters away from a dead body, Julia finds herself caught up in a complex fight against the Inland Revenue.

Fortunately, she’s able to call on her fellow colleagues who enlist the help of their friend Oxford professor Hilary Tamar. However, all is not what it seems. Could Julia’s boyfriend in fact be an employee of the establishment she has been trying to escape from? And how did her romantic luxurious holiday end in murder?

January 2024 -- MONTHLY WRAP UP

 

MONTHLY WRAP UP

January 2024

I made a strong start to the reading year, finishing 13 books in January, including six TBR 24 in '24 books. I wanted to get a jump on that one and not wait until the end of the year like I did in 2023.

See any here that you’ve read or want to? 

The Loved One by Evelyn Waugh, for a bookstagram read along. This short novel satirizes Hollywood and the American funeral industry. It is dark but very funny. 

Jamaica Inn by Daphne du Maurier, as part of a Du Maurier Deep Dive group I'm in, also through Instagram. I loved every melodramatic page. 

Can You Forgive Her? by Anthony Trollope, the first book in yet another buddy read, this one a read through of Trollope's Palliser novels. 

Rates of Exchange by Malcolm Bradbury, a TBR 24 in ’24 book about a college professor on a cultural exchange to a Soviet Bloc country in the early 1980s. Definitely a highlight of the month. 

Lost in Thought: The Hidden Pleasures of an Intellectual Life by Zena Hitz, another TBR 24 in ’24. I loved this book. Hitz examines the joys of intellectual pursuits, how “leisure” differs from “recreation,” and why our regular jobs are not (usually) intellectually fulfilling. 

Rather be the Devil by Ian Rankin, from his John Rebus series that I love but want to wrap up.

Need Blind Ambition by Kevin Myers, a fantastic new campus thriller.

My Almost Cashmere Life by Margie Adams, TBR 24 in ’24 nonfiction. I admit read this memoir about the end of a dysfunctional but long-term marriage because I know the husband. I wanted the inside scoop.

Cancel Your Own Goddam Subscription by William F. Buckley, Jr., my favorite title of the month and another TBR 24 in ’24.

Quentins by Maeve Binchy, my feel good TBR 24 in ’24. I love her Aga Sagas. 

Political Woman: The Big Little Life of Jeane Kirkpatrick by Peter Collier, more TBR 24 in ’24 nonfiction and a fascinating slice of recent history.

🎧 NOT PICTURED 🎧

Beartown by Fredrik Backman. More serious than his other books I’ve read, I thought this was a compassionate and insightful handling of teenage sexual assault and its repercussions in a small community. 

In a House of Lies by Ian Rankin, which leaves only two to go. I want to finish this series before I start any new ones. I have my eye on Mick Heron's Slow Horses series. 

There wasn’t a clunker on that list. I loved them all. Now, on to February. What book are you excited to read this month? 

Need Blind Ambition by Kevin Meyers -- BOOK REVIEW

BOOK REVIEW

Need Blind Ambition by Kevin Meyers (2023, Beaufort Books)

Need Blind Ambition is the second novel from Kevin Meyers, a former journalist turned college administrator. I love the play on words in the title, the moody cover, and the whole college noir atmosphere of the book.

As with his first novel, Hidden Falls, this story deftly balances action, ideas, tension, and humor. The protagonist Peter Cook, having landed a public relations job at a prestigious private college, finds himself torn between protecting the college and exposing its illegal activity. Peter is a sympathetic hero who also wrestles with his own past trauma. Woven into the story are reflections on the state of college education, its cost, admission policies, and the fallout from the pressure created by our higher education system.

I love campus novels and I love mysteries, so a novel of suspense set on a college campus is my cup of tea on any day. That this one is set in my town of Portland, Oregon, made it even more tantalizing. With a complex plot, realistic characters, and exploration of relevant issues, Need Blind Ambition is an excellent read.


FROM THE PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION

The desire for relevance—and to save his marriage—is ultimately what pushed Peter Cook to leave his beloved Alaska for the prestigious Parker College. Lured by the chance to work with his childhood political idol turned college president, Peter moves his family to Portland, Oregon to help promote his hero’s fundraising initiative that would eliminate financial status from the college’s admissions process.

Peter arrives on campus as the Great Recession looms, the stock market is trending toward disaster, and the opioid crisis has breached the walls of the privileged college. He quickly learns the reality of Parker College strays far from its professed idealistic mission after discovering a plot to cover-up felonious drug activity in return for a seven-figure payday to the Need Blind Campaign.

While plumbing the depths of his conscience for the conviction to do the right thing, Peter’s untreated childhood trauma resurfaces, threatening to cloud his perception when it needs to be at its sharpest. Peter must stabilize his mental health while also trying to parse competing versions of “the truth” as law enforcement investigates the criminal conspiracy.

Need Blind Admission by Kevin Myers -- BOOK BEGINNING

 

BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAYS

Please join me every Friday for Book Beginnings! Share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading, along with your initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires. Please remember to include the title of the book and the author’s name.

EARLY BIRDS & SLOWPOKES: This weekly post goes up Thursday evening for those who like to get their posts up and linked early on. But feel free to add a link all week.

SOCIAL MEDIA: If you are on Instagram, Twitter, or other social media, please post using the hash tag #BookBeginnings. I try to follow all Book Beginnings participants on whatever interweb sites you are on, so please let me know if I have missed any and I will catch up. Find me on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.

TIE IN: Sadly, Freda at Freda's Voice is taking a break from her weekly blog event, The Friday 56, Her event was a natural tie in with this event and there was a lot of cross over, so many people combined the two. Freda needs a break, but I hope she is back soon. Please visit her Freda’s Voice blog even if the Friday 56 is on hold indefinitely. 

MY BOOK BEGINNING

William James was beyond saving when the Parker College security guards discovered his body sprawled near the community garden by the border of the affluent South Parker neighborhood.

-- from Need Blind Ambition by Kevin Meyers, out now from Beaufort Books.

Need Blind Ambition is the second novel from Kevin Meyers, a former journalist turned college administrator. I love the play on words in the title, the moody cover, and that first sentence. Wow! It really grabs you, doesn't it?

I only just got my copy and haven't started it yet. I can't wait! A novel of suspense set on a college campus is my cup of tea on any day. (I'm adding it to my list of campus novels right now.) But that this one is set in my town of Portland, Oregon makes it even more tantalizing. 

YOUR BOOK BEGINNINGS 

Please add a link to your Book Beginnings post in the box below. If you share on social media, please use the #bookbeginnings hashtag. Have fun!

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It feels so strange to post my Book Beginning without a Friday 56 teaser! Here is more informaiton about Need Blind Ambition:

FROM THE PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION

The desire for relevance--and to save his marriage--is ultimately what pushed Peter Cook to leave his beloved Alaska for the prestigious Parker College. Lured by the chance to work with his childhood political idol turned college president, Peter moves his family to Portland, Oregon to help promote his hero's fundraising initiative that would eliminate financial status from the college's admissions process.

Peter arrives on campus as the Great Recession looms, the stock market is trending toward disaster, and the opioid crisis has breached the walls of the privileged college. He quickly learns the reality of Parker College strays far from its professed idealistic mission after discovering a plot to cover-up felonious drug activity in return for a seven-figure payday to the Need Blind Campaign.

While plumbing the depths of his conscience for the conviction to do the right thing, Peter's untreated childhood trauma resurfaces, threatening to cloud his perception when it needs to be at its sharpest. Peter must stabilize his mental health while also trying to parse competing versions of "the truth" as law enforcement investigates the criminal conspiracy.

Need Blind Ambition asks: how far will a college stray to protect its reputation?

The History Man by Malcolm Bradbury -- BOOK BEGINNINGS

BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAYS

Welcome to Book Beginnings on Fridays. Please join me to share the opening sentence (or so) from the book you are reading this week. You can also share from a book that caught your fancy, even if you are not reading it right now.

MY BOOK BEGINNING

Now it is the autumn again; the people are all coming back. The recess of summer is over, when holidays are taken, newspapers shrink, history itself seems momentarily to falter and stop.

-- From The History Man by Malcolm Bradbury. I love campus novels and Malcolm Bradbury wrote some of the best of them, including his first novel, Eating People is Wrong. 

The History Man was published in 1972 and is a spot-on period piece describing radical campus life in the late '60s and early '70s. The "history man" of the title is Professor Howard Kirk, a sociologist and dynamo of academic vacuity. He waltzes through history, reflecting every cultural, political, and sexual fad. It is dark satire at its best. 

YOUR BOOK BEGINNINGS

Please add the link to your book beginnings post in the box below. If you share on social media, please use the hashtag #bookbeginnings.

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THE FRIDAY 56

Freda at Freda's Voice hosts another teaser event on Fridays. Participants share a two-sentence teaser from page 56 of the book they are reading -- or from 56% of the way through the audiobook or ebook. Please visit Freda's Voice for details and to leave a link to your post.

MY FRIDAY 56

From The History Man:

Well, to understand it, as Howard, always a keen explainer, always explains, you need to know a little Marx, a little Freud, and a little social history; admittedly, with Howard, you need to know all this to explain anything. You need to know the time, the place, the milieu, the substructure and the superstructure, the state of and the determinants of consciousness, and the human capacity of consciousness to expand and explode.

It's not a book for the faint hearted, but it is trenchant and very funny.

TBR 23 in '23 and Mt. TBR Challenges -- My Sign Up Post & Wrap Up Post

 

THE TBR 23 IN '23 CHALLENGE

COMPLETED

This is my sign up post for the TBR 23 in '23 Challenge. The simple idea is to read 23 books off your TBR shelves between January 1 and December 31, 2023. If you want to join me (and I hope you do), go to the main challenge page here to sign up. You can participate through your blog, social media, or just in the comments on the challenge pages.

You do not have to pick all your TBR 23 in '23 books ahead of time. I like to, so I do. You can pick them now. Or you can pick some now and some as you go. You can pick them all at whim. Or you can pick now and then change your mind. The only real rule is that you read books that you already owned before January 1, 2023. Find all the rules on the challenge page.

MY TBR 23 IN '23 BOOKS

I like to pick my books ahead of time and keep them stacked by my bedside to motivate me through the year. These are all books that have been on my shelves for so long I want to read them so I can stop looking at them! One has been on my shelf since 1982!!

Here's a list of what is in this basket, listed in alphabetical order by author name, not as shown in the picture above. I may read them in this order because I have no other plan.

• The History Man by Malcolm Bradbury. Campus novels are my favorite sub-genre and this one is a classic.

• Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There by David Brooks, now out of date social commentary, which happens when I leave books on my TBR shelf for so long. 

• Home Cooking: A Writer in the Kitchen by Laurie Colwin. I can't wait to get to this one and have More Home Cooking I plan to slip in as well. 

• The Dud Avocado by Elaine Dundy is a NYRB Classic that gets lots of social media love for it's awesome cover. 

• Mrs. Ted Bliss by Stanley Elkin. This is on my shelf because it won the National Book Critics Circle Fiction Award in 1995. I want to read it now because I read Francine Prose's praise of Elkin in her book, What to Read and Why.

• A Cordiall Water: A Garland of Odd and Old Receipts to Assuage the Ills of Man and Beast by M.F.K. Fisher, one of her few books I haven't read yet.

• In Search of a Character: Two African Journals by Graham Greene. He's a big favorite of mine but I've not read his nonfiction before.

• The Monsters of Templeton by Lauren Groff is a book I found in a Little Free Library and it looked interesting, if not my usual cup of tea. I'll give it a go, although I did not like Fates & Furies. 

• Mystical Paths by Susan Howatch is the last of five novels in her Church of England series, which I really enjoyed.

• Mystic River by Dennis Lehane. I can't believe I've never read this. 

• Scandinavian Noir: In Pursuit of a Mystery by Wendy Lesser. My law partner gave this to me for Christmas two years ago and I forgot about it!

• Black Dogs by Ian McEwan is one of his earliest books and has sat on my shelf a long time. 

• The Orchid Thief: A True Story of Beauty and Obsession by Susan Orlean. Another contemporary classic I can't believe I haven't read yet.

• Oregon Confetti by Lee Oser is a book that caught my eye a few years back then got lost on my shelf. It looks excellent. 

• The Cloister and the Hearth by Charles Reade. This is the one I bought in high school in 1982 and have carted around ever since. It is time I finally read it!

• The Tuscan Year: Life and Food in an Italian Valley by Elizabeth Romer is one of the many ex pat memoirs lingering on my shelves. 

• The Complete Lord Peter Wimsey Stories by Dorothy L. Sayers. I finished the last of the Wimsey novels last year but never get around to the short stories. Time to fix that. 

• The Driver's Seat by Muriel Spark looks terrific. 

• S. by John Updike is a modern retelling of The Scarlet Letter, which sounds very good. 

• Know Your Style: Mix It, Match It, Love It by Alyson Walsh is a fun little book about fashion for women of a certain age. 

• The Spring by Megan Weiler is a novel about an American ex pat living Tuscany. It's a book club pick so i will read it sooner rather than later, and maybe follow it with the Tuscan memoir.

• The Bear Comes Home by Rafi Zabor won the 1998 PEN/Faulkner Award for fiction and is about a jazz saxophone playing bear in New York City. OK. I'll give it a try.

THE MT. TBR CHALLENGE

COMPLETED

This TBR 23 in '23 Challenge dovetails nicely with the Mt TBR Challenge that Bev at My Reader's Block hosts every year. Like I've done for the past couple of years, I am signing up for the "Mt. Kilimanjaro" Level in 2023 to read a total of 60 books off my TBR shelves. That means 37 books in addition to those listed above.

MY MT. TBR BOOKS

I will try to remember to list my Mt. TBR books here as I read them, although I completely forgot this last year.

UPDATE: Indeed, I forgot to list the books as I went along, but here they are. I read 63 books off my TBR shelves, in addition to my 23 TBR 23 in '23 books, for a total of 86 books off my TBR shelves -- my best year ever!

• Manhattan Beach by Jennifer Egan

• Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens (abridged)

• The Big Four by Agatha Christie

• Decline and Fall by Evelyn Waugh

• Playing for the Ashes by Elizabeth George

• A German Requiem by Philip Kerr

• Our Man in Havana by Graham Greene

• Waverley by Sir Walter Scott

• Resurrection Men by Ian Rankin

• The School of Essential Ingredients by Erica Bauermeister

• Rule Britannia by Daphne du Maurier

• The Man Who Was Thursday by G. K. Chesterton

• Winston Churchill: Painting on the French Riviera by Paul Rafferty

• Slightly Foxed, No. 25, Edited by Gail Pirkis

• A Ladder to the Sky by John Boyne

• The Flight of the Falcon by Daphne du Maurier

• The Holy Bible, King James Version

• On Cussing: Bad Words and Creative Cursing by Katherine Dunn

• In the Presence of the Enemy by Elizabeth George

• Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh

• So Big by Edna Ferber

• The Magic Barrel by Bernard Malamud

• Quo Vadis by Henryk Sienkiewicz

• Mapp & Lucia by E. F. Benson

• Deception on His Mind by Elizabeth George

• More Home Cooking: A Writer Returns to the Kitchen by Laurie Colwin

• Lucia's Progress by E. F. Benson

• Kingdom of the Blind by Louise Penny

• Trouble for Lucia by E. F. Benson

• The Grave Gourmet by Alexander Campion

• Assignment in Brittany by Helen MacInnes

• A Simple Country Murder by Blythe Baker

• In Pursuit of the Proper Sinner by Elizabeth George

• Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh

• The Sellout by Paul Beatty

• A Better Man by Louise Penny

• The Painted Veil by W. Somerset Maugham

• The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

• Dusk and Other Stories by James Salter

• Snow by John Banville

• After Many a Summer Dies the Swan by Aldous Huxley

• My Cousin Rachel by Daphne du Maurier

• The Confessions of Nat Turner by William Styron

• Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham

• A Traitor to Memory by Elizabeth George

• Mating by Norman Rush

• The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte

• The Chosen by Chaim Potok

• Hungry Hill by Daphne du Maurier

• The Mystery of Edwin Drood by Charles Dickens

• The Collected Poems by W. B. Yeats

• The Long Good-Bye by Raymond Chandler

• Black Mischief by Evelyn Waugh

• The Man with Two Left Feet by P. G. Wodehouse

• Lost for Words by Edward St. Aubyn

• A Place of Hiding by Elizabeth George

• Innocent Blood by P. D. James

• Straight Man by Richard Russo

• Piccadilly Jim by P. G. Wodehouse

• The Moon and Sixpence by W. Somerset Maugham

• Even Dogs in the Wild by Ian Rankin

• Aqua Alta by Donna Leon

• War & Peace by Leo Tolstoy

List: Campus Novels

CAMPUS NOVELS

Actually being a college professor holds no interest for me. I wasn't even particularly fond of being a college student. I don't want to live in the Ivory Tower, just visit. I love novels featuring college professors, set on college campuses, with an academic theme or plot. The Campus Novel is my favorite sub-genre.

That's why I keep a running list of Campus Novels. These are books I have read or want to read. If you have suggestions for additions to this list, please send them my way!

I'm not so keen on novels featuring students on campus. I read a distinction once (I think made by David Lodge) between "Campus Novels" that focus on college professors and other faculty, and "Varsity Novels" that focus on student life. The later don't appeal to me much. There may be a few on my list that could cross over, but most fall on the professor side of the line.

Here's my list, in alphabetical order by author's name. I made notes about whether I've read it, it's on my TBR shelf, or if it is available as an audiobook from my library.  Any favorites? If you have ideas for additions, please leave a comment.

Crescent by Diana Abu-Jaber 

Jake's Thing by Kingsley Amis FINISHED

Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis FINISHED TWICE

One Fat Englishman by Kingsley Amis (reviewed here) FINISHED

Death of an Old Goat by Robert Barnard

End of the Road by John Barth

The Dean's December by Saul Bellow FINISHED

More Die of Heartbreak by Saul Bellow TBR SHELF

Herzog by Saul Bellow FINISHED

Ravelstein by Saul Bellow FINISHED

The Morning After Death by Nicholas Blake

Eating People is Wrong by Malcolm Bradbury FINISHED

The History Man by Malcolm Bradbury TBR SHELF

Possession by A. S. Byatt FINISHED

The Professor's House by Willa Cather FINISHED
 
Wonder Boys by Michael Chabon TBR SHELF

Falconer by John Cheever TBR SHELF

Disgrace by J. M. Coetzee FINISHED

The Archivist by Martha Cooley

Holy Disorders by Edmund Crispin (and the rest of his Gervase Fen series) SOME ON TBR SHELF

Dreaming of the Bones by Deborah Crombie

In the Last Analysis by Amanda Cross (and the rest of her Kate Fansler series) PARTLY FINISHED

The Rebel Angels by Robertson Davies (reviewed here) FINISHED

What's Bred in the Bone by Robertson Davies FINISHED

The Lyre of Orpheus by Robertson Davies FINISHED

White Noise by Don DeLillo ON OVERDRIVE

Death is Now My Neighbour by Colin Dexter (from his Inspector Morse series)

The Silent World of Nicholas Quinn by Colin Dexter (from his Inspector Morse series)

The English School of Murder by Ruth Dudley Edwards

The Trick of It by Michael Frayn

Death at the President's Lodging by Michael Innes FINISHED

The Weight of the Evidence by Michael Innes

A Single Man by Christopher Isherwood (reviewed here) FINISHED

Redback by Howard Jacobson

Pictures from an Institution by Randall Jarrell

The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova FINISHED

My Latest Grievance by Elinor Lipman (reviewed here) FINISHED

The British Museum is Falling Down by David Lodge FINISHED

Thinks by David Lodge TBR SHELF

Deaf Sentence by David Lodge (reviewed here) FINISHED

Changing Places by David Lodge (reviewed here) FINISHED

Small World by David Lodge FINISHED

Nice Work by David Lodge FINISHED

The War Between the Tates by Alison Lurie

A New Life by Bernard Malamud

All Souls by Javier Marias

An Oxford Tragedy by J. C. Masterman FINISHED

The Groves of Academe by Mary McCarthy (reviewed here) FINISHED

Irish Tenure by Ralph McInerny (and the rest of his Notre Dame mystery series)

The Search Committee by Ralph McInerny

Prisoner in a Red-Rose Chain by Jeffrey Moore

Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov FINISHED

Pnin by Vladimir Nabokov FINISHED

The Lost Journals of Sylvia Plath by Kimberly Knutsen TBR SHELF

Blue Angel by Francine Prose FINISHED

Japanese by Spring by Ishmael Reed

Letting Go by Philip Roth FINISHED

The Professor of Desire by Philip Roth FINISHED

The Breast by Philip Roth

The Dying Animal by Philip Roth FINISHED

The Human Stain by Philip Roth (reviewed here) FINISHED

That Old Cape Magic by Richard Russo FINISHED

Straight Man by Richard Russo ON OVERDRIVE

The Small Room by May Sarton FINISHED

Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers FINISHED

Dear Committee Members by Julie Schumacher FINISHED

The Shakespeare Requirement by Julie Schumacher ON OVERDRIVE

Porterhouse Blue by Tom Sharpe

Grantchester Grind by Tom Sharpe  

Moo by Jane Smiley FINISHED

On Beauty by Zadie Smith (reviewed here) FINISHED

The Masters by C.P. Snow FINISHED

Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner FINISHED

The Secret History by Donna Tartt FINISHED

Miss Pym Disposes by Josephine Tey TBR SHELF

Memories of the Ford Administration by John Updike TBR SHELF

Stoner by John Williams FINISHED

The Hair of Harold Roux by Thomas Williams (reviewed here) FINISHED

Anglo-Saxon Attitudes by Angus Wilson FINISHED


NOTES

Updated December 28, 2022. If you have suggestions for additions to this list, please leave a comment!

Book Beginning: Eating People is Wrong by Malcolm Bradbury

BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAYS

THANKS FOR JOINING ME ON FRIDAYS FOR BOOK BEGINNING FUN!

MY BOOK BEGINNING

Term had just begun. Professor Treece, head of the department of English, sat at his desk, his back to the window, with the cold, clear October light shining icily over his shoulders on to the turbulent heaps of paper upon his desk, on to the pale young faces of his three new students.

-- Eating People is Wrong by Malcolm Bradbury. This is my favorite book title ever. What's yours?

I love Campus Novels and Eating People is Wrong is an early classic I've been looking forward to for quite a while. I've been laughing out loud while reading it, although when I read the funny bits to my husband, he doesn't share my amusement. He thinks I'm an English Major nerd. .

Please join me every Friday to share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading, along with your initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires. Please remember to include the title of the book and the author’s name.

EARLY BIRDS & SLOWPOKES: This weekly post goes up Thursday evening for those who like to get their posts up and linked early on. But feel free to add a link all week.

FACEBOOK: Rose City Reader has a Facebook page where I post about new and favorite books, book events, and other bookish tidbits, as well as link to blog posts. I'd love a "Like" on the page! You can go to the page here to Like it. I am happy to Like you back if you have a blog or professional Facebook page, so please leave a comment with a link and I will find you.

TWITTER, ETC: If you are on Twitter, Instagram, Google+, or other social media, please post using the hash tag #BookBeginnings. I try to follow all Book  Beginnings participants on whatever interweb sites you are on, so please let me know if I have missed any and I will catch up.

TIE IN: The Friday 56 hosted by Freda's Voice is a natural tie in with this event and there is a lot of cross over, so many people combine the two. The idea is to post a teaser from page 56 of the book you are reading and share a link to your post. Find details and the Linky for your Friday 56 post on Freda’s Voice.

YOUR BOOK BEGINNING

Mailbox Monday: Sam's Theory and More

Three very different books came into my house last week. How about you?



Sam's Theory by Sarah Mendivel. I am excited about this book. It's a YA fantasy novel written by a therapist as a creative way to help young people heal from trauma. What a brilliant idea!



A Florentine Death by Michele Giuttari. This is the first book in this Italian author's series featuring Chief Superintendent Michele Ferrara. It's perfect for the European Reading Challenge.



Wise Virgin by A. N. Wilson. I love campus novels an this one looks great, although it never crossed my radar before.

Thanks for joining me for Mailbox Monday, a weekly "show & tell" blog event where participants share the books they acquired the week before. Visit the Mailbox Monday website to find links to all the participants' posts and read more about Books that Caught our Eye.

Mailbox Monday is graciously hosted by Leslie of Under My Apple Tree, Serena of Savvy Verse & Wit, and Vicki of I'd Rather Be at the Beach.

Teaser Tuesday: Dear Committee Members

This letter recommends Melanie deRueda for admission to the law school on the well-heeled side of this campus. I’ve known Ms. deRueda for eleven minutes, ten of which were spent in a fruitless attempt to explain to her that I write letters of recommendation only for students who have signed up for and completed one of my classes.

-- Dear Committee Members by Julie Schumacher.

That was just one of the many lines that made me laugh in this hilarious campus novels told entirely through a series of letters of recommendation written by Jason Fitger, a professor of creative writing and literature at a small, undistinguished liberal arts college in the Midwest.

This has been on my Campus Novels list since it came out a year ago, and I am so pleased to be tearing through it.

Teaser Tuesdays is hosted by Jenn at A Daily Rhythm, where you can find the official rules for this weekly event.

Mailbox Monday: Dear Committee Members

Thanks for joining me for Mailbox Monday! MM was created by Marcia, who graciously hosted it for a long, long time, before turning it into a touring event. Mailbox Monday has now returned to its permanent home where you can link to your MM post.

I got one book last week, started it, and I am enjoying to to no end!



Dear Committee Members by Julie Schumacher

Campus novels are favorites with me and this one is spot on hilarious. The whole thing is a series of letters of recommendation written by Jason Fitger, a professor of creative writing and literature at Payne University.

I added this to my Campus Novels list a while back, after hearing about it on NPR, but I just got a copy the other day when I was looking for a fun and funny book to read.

Review: The Groves of Academe by Mary McCarthy

White Russians, communists, atheists, Catholics, progressives, classicists, English professors, and visiting poets all roam the halls of Jocelyn College and the pages of Mary McCarthy’s 1951 campus novel classic, The Groves of Academe. Jocelyn is an experimental liberal arts college somewhere in New England and prides itself on the academic freedom enjoyed by its professors and students. But when Henry Mulcahy gets a letter from the college president informing him that his contract will not be renewed in the fall, he tries to twist the college’s liberal Zeitgeist to his own advantage.

Mulcahy starts the rumor that he was let go because he was a member of the Communist Party. In the era of McCarthy hearings and Hollywood blacklists, Mulcahy perversely figures that his fellow academics in the English department would rally to support him in his hour of prosecution, championing his cause for political freedom.

What follows is a series of closed-door conspiracies, petty intrigues, and shuffling alliances, as the English department debates Mulcahy’s future and tries to persuade the president to keep him on. Meanwhile, Jocelyn hosts its first-ever poetry conference, introducing a dozen new characters and opportunity for greater mischief.

Freedom is the underlying theme of the story. Debates rage (in the civilized, over-intellectual tones of college professors) around the idea of freedom: freedom in academics, politics, sex, ideology, religion, poetry, movement, and expression. Specific discussions address whether, in a supposed bastion of academic freedom, a card-carrying Communist can be intellectually free or must take orders from the Party? Are Catholics in the same position, bound by the dictates of Rome? Are the students of Jocelyn really academically free to choose their fields of study, as advertised, if the professors, anxious to reduce their own workload, steer the students towards a select syllabus? Are the students, in fact, better off with a little intellectual steering?

Often, McCarthy raises the idea of personal freedom more subtly, in the choices the characters make or descriptions of college life. For instance, the new-found freedom enjoyed by college students sparkles in this gem, describing the professor who always volunteered to chaperone student trips abroad in exchange for free travel:

Whenever, during the summer, he took a party of students abroad under his genial wing, catastrophic event attended him. As he sat sipping his vermouth and introducing himself to tourists at the Flore or the Deux Magots, the boys and girls under his guidance were being robbed, eloping to Italy, losing their passports, slipping off to Monte Carlo, seeking out an abortionist, deciding to turn queer, cabling the decision to their parents, while he took out his watch and wondered why they were late in meeting him for the expedition to Saint-Germain-en-Laye.

With that kind of wit and insight, the story plays out like the best drawing room drama. It is sneakily funny, both as subtle and biting as a gin gimlet. For example, McCarthy deftly captures the character of the college president:

Like all such official types, he specialized in being his own antithesis: strong but understanding, boisterous but grave, pragmatic but speculative when need be. The necessity of encompassing such opposites had left him with a little wobble of uncertainty in the center of his personality, which made other people…feel embarrassed by him.

McCarthy is credited with inventing the “academic novel” with The Groves of Academe. This is satire at its best, finding absurdity in the minutia that drive the characters rather than clownish humor in exaggeration. As Commentary Magazine wrote when Groves was first published, McCarthy annoyed the politically correct before the term was even invented: “There is a particular kind of ‘right-thinking’ mind that is reduced to a frantic rage not only by what she says, but by her tone, her metaphorical habits, the very shape of her sentences.” Many have followed McCarthy’s campus novel template, but no one has exceeded her achievement.

OTHER REVIEWS

If you would like your review of this or any other Mary McCarthy novel listed here, please leave a comment with a link and I will add it.

NOTES

This review was first published by Cascade Policy Institute as part of its Freedom in Film & Fiction series.

List: Campus Novels

The Ivory Tower has never tempted me. I have no interest in being a college professor. I wasn't even particularly fond of being a college student. But I absolutely love novels with an academic theme, featuring college professors, set on college campuses. The Campus Novel is my favorite genre.

So this is my list of Campus Novels -- those I have read or want to read. Suggestions for additions to this list are always welcome.

I followed David Lodge's distinction between "Campus Novels" primarily featuring college professors and other faculty, and "Varsity Novels" primarily featuring students. The later don't appeal to me much. There may be a few on here that could cross over, but I think they all fall on the professor side of the line.

Those I have read are in red, with links to reviews if I wrote one. Those on my TBR shelf are in blue. If you have reviewed any of these books, and would like me to link to your review, please leave a comment with a link either here or on my review post and I will add it.

Crescent by Diana Abu-Jaber

Jake's Thing by Kingsley Amis

Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis

One Fat Englishman by Kingsley Amis (reviewed here)

Death of an Old Goat by Robert Barnard

End of the Road by John Barth

The Dean's December by Saul Bellow

More Die of Heartbreak by Saul Bellow

Herzog by Saul Bellow

Ravelstein by Saul Bellow

The Morning After Death by Nicholas Blake

Eating People is Wrong by Malcolm Bradbury

The History Man by Malcolm Bradbury

Possession by A. S. Byatt

The Professor's House by Willa Cather

Wonder Boys by Michael Chabon

Falconer by John Cheever

Disgrace by J. M. Coetzee

The Archivist by Martha Cooley

Holy Disorders by Edmund Crispin (and rest of his Gervase Fen series)

Dreaming of the Bones by Deborah Crombie

In the Last Analysis by Amanda Cross (and the rest of her Kate Fansler series)

The Rebel Angels by Robertson Davies (reviewed here)

What's Bred in the Bone by Robertson Davies

The Lyre of Orpheus by Robertson Davies

White Noise by Don DeLillo

Death is Now My Neighbour by Colin Dexter (from his Inspector Morse series)

The Silent World of Nicholas Quinn by Colin Dexter (from his Inspector Morse series)

The English School of Murder by Ruth Dudley Edwards

The Trick of It by Michael Frayn

Death at the President's Lodging by Michael Innes

The Weight of the Evidence by Michael Innes

A Single Man by Christopher Isherwood (reviewed here)

Redback by Howard Jacobson

Pictures from an Institution by Randall Jarrell

The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova 

My Latest Grievance by Elinor Lipman (reviewed here)

The British Museum is Falling Down by David Lodge

Thinks by David Lodge

Deaf Sentence by David Lodge (reviewed here)

Changing Places by David Lodge (reviewed here)

Small World by David Lodge

Nice Work by David Lodge

The War Between the Tates by Alison Lurie

A New Life by Bernard Malamud

All Souls by Javier Marias

An Oxford Tragedy by J. C. Masterman

The Groves of Academe by Mary McCarthy (reviewed here)

Irish Tenure by Ralph McInerny (and the rest of his Notre Dame mystery series)

The Search Committee by Ralph McInerny

Prisoner in a Red-Rose Chain by Jeffrey Moore

Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov

Pnin by Vladimir Nabokov

The Lost Journals of Sylvia Plath by Kimberly Knutsen

Blue Angel by Francine Prose

Japanese by Spring by Ishmael Reed

Letting Go by Philip Roth

The Professor of Desire by Philip Roth

The Breast by Philip Roth

The Dying Animal by Philip Roth

The Human Stain by Philip Roth (reviewed here)

That Old Cape Magic by Richard Russo

Straight Man by Richard Russo

The Small Room by May Sarton

Gaudy night by Dorothy L. Sayers

Dear Committee Members by Julie Schumacher

Porterhouse Blue by Tom Sharpe

Moo by Jane Smiley

On Beauty by Zadie Smith (reviewed here)

The Masters by C.P. Snow

Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner

The Secret History by Donna Tartt

Miss Pym Disposes by Josephine Tey

Memories of the Ford Administration by John Updike

Stoner by John Williams

The Hair of Harold Roux by Thomas Williams (reviewed here)

Anglo-Saxon Attitudes by Angus Wilson


NOTES

Updated on January 6, 2019.

If you have suggestions for additions to this list, please leave a comment!

Teaser Tuesday: Groves of Academe by Mary McCarthy

Whenever, during the summer, he took a party of students abroad under his genial wing, catastrophic event attended him.  As he sat sipping his vermouth and introducing himself to tourists at the Flore or the Deux Magots, the boys and girls under his guidance were being robbed, eloping to Italy, losing their passports, slipping off to Monte Carlo, seeking out an abortionist, deciding to turn queer, cabling the decision to their parents, while he took out his watch and wondered why they were late in meeting him for the expedition to Saint-Germain-en-Laye.

-- Groves of Academe by Mary McCarthy, which is on the Anthony Burgess list of Top 99 novels. Every sentence in this book is a gem. It is a short book, but I keep rereading sentences over and over because they are so wonderful.

Teaser Tuesdays is hosted by Should Be Reading, where you can find the official rules for this weekly event.