A Gentleman in Moscow

Towles, Amor. A Gentleman in Moscow. New York: Viking 2016. Print.

First Sentences:

At half past six on the twenty-first of June 1922, when Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov was escorted through the gates of the Kremlin onto Red Square, it was glorious and cool.

Drawing his shoulders back without breaking stride, the Count inhaled the air like one fresh from a swim.

Description:

OK, I admit I fought against continuing to read Amor Towles' novel, A Gentleman in Moscow after the first few pages as is my usual practice. It was recommended by a friend as her all-time favorite, a praise that is hard to ignore. But the action was non-existant, focusing on a single character living in a luxury hotel. Not the type of book to hold my summer reading interest. 

But I was so wrong. A Gentleman in Moscow grows on you slowly, embracing and relaxing you like a warm bath. And once I'd accepted the reality that Gentleman was not a piercingly hot shower of a thriller, I settled in to luxuriate in this world of style, grace, and people with interesting personalities and potential. Soon I was completely engulfed and found that the book just kept getting better and better.

In the early 1900s, Count Alexander Rostov, an aristocratic Russian, left his home in the elegant rooms of the Metropol Hotel in Moscow to live in Paris in the years prior to the Russian Revolution. But when he returns to live again in Moscow, he is detained and tried by the new rulers for the crime of representing the old order of aristocracy. He is labeled "a Former Person."

Count Rostov is sentenced to remain forever in Moscow. Specifically, he can never step foot outside the luxurious Metropol Hotel ever again. He is moved from his suite to a small attic room on a deserted floor of the hotel, allowed to take only a few bits of furniture and some clothes. 

When you exile a man into his own country, there is no beginning anew. For the exile at home ... the love for his country will not become vague or shrouded by the mists of time. In fact... these men are likely to dwell on the splendors of Moscow more than any Muscovite who is at liberty to enjoy them.

As a gentleman, Count Rostov accepts his fate and vows to "master his circumstances." While the months and years pass, his lifestyle and the hotel workings remain civilized, while hints of a new Russia filter into this intimate world.

For his part, the Count had opted for the life of the purposefully unrushed...He was wise enough to know that life does not proceed by leaps and bounds. It unfolds. At any given moment, it is the manifestation of a thousand transitions.

His daily life consists of partaking in the elegant amenities of the hotel. He visits with the staff in the hotel's restaurants, front desk, barbershop, switchboard, and sewing room. Armed with a pass key, the Count explores hidden "rooms behind rooms and doors behind doors," where once he secretly eavesdropped on the scintillating debate of the All-Russian Union of Railway Workers to amend their charter's use of the word "facilitate." 

For what matters in life is not whether we receive a round of applause; what matters is whether we have the courage to venture forth despite the uncertainty of acclaim.

He still savors the food at the Metropol's elegant restaurant, although he must suffer through the insensitive service of an untrained waiter, and drink unknown wine from bottles that have had their labels removed to promote equality among all vintages. On the roof, the Count learns that the honey from the bees living under the roof tiles changes its taste with the seasons, moving from hints of lilacs to orange blossoms. Even waiting becomes a worthy topic for a gentleman to contemplate:

Like the wheeling of the stars...That is how time passes when one is left waiting unaccountably. The hours become interminable. The minutes relentless. And the seconds? Why, not only does every last one of them demand its moment on the state, it insists upon making a soliloquy full of weighty pauses and artful hesitations and then leaps into an encore at the slightest hint of applause.

We readers wander through the Metropol with the Count, taste his food, converse with his friends, reflect on his past life, and observe the Russia he knows along with the new Russia he is learning about. It is a delightful way for us to be absorbed into the mind and life of a truly civilized, mannered aristocrat who always knows just what to say and do in any situation and with any person.

Maybe this all sounds dull and confined. But there are many characters who move in and out of the Count's cloistered life, providing highly interesting scenarios and challenges that play out over the years. As always, no matter the situation or person he encounters, Count Rostov remains elegant, unflappable, and the conqueror of his circumstances.

Who would have imagined [said Mishka, Rostov's best friend] when you were sentenced to life in the Metropol all those years ago, that you had just become the luckiest man in all of Russia.

Happy reading. 

Fred

Other book recommendations
About The First Sentence Reader blog

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If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Crisp, Quentin. Manners from Heaven: A Divine Guide to Good Behavior  

No one is more proper, more scathing, more humorous than Quentin Crisp. Here he writes short essays on a variety of social situations and how a gentleman should handle each in a stylish, self-confident manner. Wonderful. Highly recommended. (previously reviewed here)

The Soul of an Octopus

Montgomery, Sy. The Soul of an Octopus. New York: Atria 2015. Print

First Sentences:

On a rare, warm day in mid-March, when the snow was melting into mud in New Hampshire, I traveled to Boston where everyone was strolling along the harbor or sitting on benches licking ice cream cones.

But I quit the blessed sunlight for the moist, dim sanctuary of the New England Aquarium.

I had a date with a giant Pacific octopus. 





Description:

I know nothing about octopuses except that I saw one once while snorkeling in Puerto Rico, and that I don't like to eat them. But then I recently read Jim Al-Khalili's Aliens: The World's Leading Scientists on the Search for Extraterestrial Life which stated we should not presume we will be able to communicate with extra-terrestrials when we cannot even understand a complex, thinking animal on our own earth: the octopus.

So I turned to Sy Montgomery's brilliant The Soul of an Octopus. Naturalist author Montgomery is offered the opportunity to observe scientists and octopuses at the New England Aquarium and later in the wild. Her observations and stories about octopuses (not "octupi" since the name derives from the Greek, not Latin) from the researchers are astonishing:

• An octopus can manipulate locks, squeeze out of almost any container, move across a room, enter another tank and then slide into a drain to explore the world or escape;

• They enjoy being petted and will rise to the top of their barrel-shaped tank to be touched by a human and touch back with their suckers. But be careful as they can grab an arm and easily pull an unsuspecting person into the tank. And they can bite with a dangerously sharp beak due to exploration, fear, or hunger;

• They lay their eggs onto a spiderweb-like netting they create, and tend the net until the eggs open.

• They need physical and mental stimulation, so are given toys, hoses, and locking cubes which they like to disassemble

Montgomery forms relationships with aquarium octopuses Athena, Kali, Rain, Octavia, and Squirt, observing and interacting with them from outside their tanks, noticing their daily emotions, and checking their responses to various stimuli like music. She even learns to scuba dive in hopes of seeing a wild octopus outside the zoo environment.

Who knew an octopus could hunt using various strategies? That an octopus can carry around abandoned shells to use as temporary protection, and even move rocks to shore up a defense for their cave? That they are solitary creatures who only interact with other octopuses to mate? Fascinating observations and stories emerge on every page.

So little is still know about these creatures, but clearly the discoveries made by the New England Aquarium and Montgomery are slowly revealing the intelligence, curiosity, affection, and creativity of these animals.

I loved this book and highly recommend it to anyone seeking to learn about another sentient life here on our very own earth. A very rewarding book on many levels.

Happy reading. 

Fred

www.firstsentencereader.blogspot.com

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If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Sroksnes, Morten. Shark Drunk: The Art of Catching a Large Shark from a Tiny Rubber Dinghy in a Big Ocean  

Everything you always wanted to know about great white sharks from the author and other scientists studying them off the coast of San Francisco. Maybe this sounds boring, but really it is extremely interesting and exciting. (Previously reviewed here.)

Manners from Heaven

Crisp, Quentin. Manners from Heaven: A Divine Guide to Good Behavior. New York: Harpercollins. 1985. Print

First Sentences:

Nothing more rapidly inclines a person to go into a monastery than reading a book on etiquette.

Description:

Wait, you're recommending people read a book on manners? In the case of Quentin Crisp and his brilliant Manners from Heaven: A Divine Guide to Good Behavior, the answer is a definite "Yes." When an author is clever, witty, a brilliant observer of people and their actions, and a terrific writer to boot, what is not to recommend? And in these months of shocking behavior and words from presidential candidates, a books about manners is timely.

But first you should recognize the difference between "etiquette" and "manners." For Crisp, etiquette is a list of rules of behavior, usually to keep one class of people separate and superior to an unknowing class lower than them in society. It is a  "form of exclusion...designed to make people (particularly those not of one's 'class') feel ill at ease and out of place." 

Manners, on the other hand, "are a technique of inclusion, a way of ensuring that in our company no one will ever be made to feel he is an outcast by reason of his birth, education or occupation."

I am more concerned with how manners can be employed to cope with, or outwit, the affronts of racism, sexism, hooliganism -- and the terrible things which people do to one another in the name of love. 

And what could be better than a book that describes common, albeit awkward, situations situations that can be gracefully addressed by good manners? Unwanted telephone calls? Getting rid of guests? Parenting? Lawsuits? Sex? Getting your own way? Here's just a few of Crisp's mannerly commentary on our behavior and strategies to improve our actions and words:

- Since it is absolutely essential that no one should ever be made to seem boring or repetitious, you must avoid any suggestion that you are weary of what they are saying.  

- We are not free, however, to rebuke other people nor speak badly of them to others. To rebuke someone presupposes that we are above him in some way.

- The war between the sexes is the only one in which both sides regularly sleep with the enemy....we live in an age where no one can be trusted to behave themselves where sex is concerned. 

- Whenever someone says to me, "But what do you really think about me (him, her, it)?" what I really think is that it's time to go.

- Never say to anyone who is less than twenty-five "Drop in any time," because that person may be back tomorrow, reading more hospitality into your words than you meant....I've been guilty of unexpectedly visiting people who'd said, "Drop in any time," without realizing that that was English for 'Goodbye.'

- It often happens that when we think we're making whoopee we're only making a whoops instead. Saying "no" to someone who has already rummaged through our drawers is tricky, but take heart -- even Rome, once sacked,did not have to sacked again and again.

-  We must at all times seek out those people and situations most conducive to bring out out the best in us, and keep to a minimum our contacts with people who merely drain our energy. 

Story after story from Crisp reveal the difficult situations we all find ourselves in and how to gracefully extract oneself without offense. But the difficulty of smoothing the seas of human interaction can be taxing. Crisp recounts one particularly trying man who had invited Crisp to his home for a weekend. The host's awful behavior forced Crisp to flee early:

I hightailed it back to my New York room where I had a good cry and then did four crossword puzzles in a row to restore some sense of civilization.

And don't forget to use "Crisperanto," the author's mannerly speaking used to create a pleasing impression while still conveying the speaker's true mind. 

I lie altruistically -- for our mutual good. The lie is the basic building block of good manners. 

A wonderful, intelligent, funny, and truthful book well-written and insightful. Highly recommended.

Manners are a way of getting what you want without appearing to be an absolute swine - or at least a way to getting something of what you want without giving total offence to other people.

Happy reading. 

Fred

www.firstsentencereader.blogspot.com

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If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Crisp, Quentin. How to Go to the Movies 

Crisp shares his opinions on current and past movies, stars, changing cinematic morals, and his encounters with film actors, actresses, and directors. Witty, caustic, and always outrageously honest. 

Tessaro, Kathleen. Elegance

A self-described plain woman finds a 40-year-old style book written by a French woman that promises to help any woman achieve poise and grace. Lessons are tried with success and, of course, unexpected consequences.