Sayers, Augustin, Turgenev, Behn, Cecil, Dostoievsky, Morrell, Hourani

Since my last post, I've read Hone's Dorothy L. Sayers, Saint Augustin's Catechese, polemique, philosophie; David Magarshack's Turgenev; Janet Todd's Secret Life of Aphra Behn, Albert Hourani's History of the Arab Peoples, Stephanie Seymour's Ottoline Morrell, Avrahm Yarmolinsky's Dostoevsky His Life and Art, and The Cecils by David Loades. For magazines, I've read two issues of Eclectic Reading, and one issue each of The New Yorker, The Economist, and OK Magazine.

I didn't even know who Dorothy Sayers was (a crime writer, among other things), so reading her life was a revelation. But I have two other books about her and I don't think I'll read them -- I think I have an idea of who she is. Saint Augustin was relaxing to read. It was a recent translation from the Latin, and given that I had read a lot of theology in the past, I could follow these texts from a Father of the Catholic Church. The writings were intended to be pastoral, anyway, so they are usually more accessible. I read Turgenev with interest, since I had read in the last couple of years the memoirs of Herzen, but the Dostoevsky biography was sad. He was imprisoned in Siberia for four years, he was an epileptic, he was a compulsive gambler, he was in debt...I guess it's easy now to see the genesis of Crime and Punishment and The Idiot...I was glad to read of Aphra Behn, I'd never heard of her, but I also thought this book ought to have been entitled The Possible Life of Aphra Behn, as the author uses historical context to speculate on what might have been. In the end, I found that a little disappointing.

Albert Hourani's book deserves its accolade as a classic. I found I learned more about the history of Arabs in the chapters covering the early, post-Prophet years than in the chapters of more recent times, but it was excellent. Finally, I read Ottoline Morrell and The Cecils for pleasure. The Morrell biography filled in a lot of gaps for me, as I had heard the name repeatedly as that of a great eccentric. turns out she was an impoverished member of a very rich family -- Mother failed to leave her as much money as her brothers. It must have been very difficult. I had read a review of The Cecils commenting on how great events were barely mentioned, but having read about the Tudors at great length, I liked a book focusing on the great secretary and his successor son.