Kiss Myself Goodbye - Ferdinand Mount

Sub-title: The Many Lives of Aunt Munca

My love of genealogy is really a love for a good story.  Family lends itself to telling stories and genealogy helps reveal those that might have been lost had I not sought them out.  In this story about his aunt, the author uses his considerable writing and research skills to charmingly peel back the curtain on the life of his flamboyant, daring, larger than life aunt.  

Munca was the name she insisted he call her, rather than Aunt something.  After Munca died, a cousin had encouraged him to search for the real story of his aunt's life.  What a life it was! What fascinated me was how he used the same records that we would collect as genealogist to track her path through the world.  He wove her residence, marriage, divorce and other finds into his quest to unravel the truth of the stories she had told him.  Mount was the editor of the Times Literary Supplement so he knows how to engage a reader.  

Another appeal of the book is that the writer is English - through and through.  He writes for those who known England and it was a challenge to immerse myself in the language, locations and lifestyle of the upper class British elite of the time. I chuckled at the term "Paternal Discrepancy" that genealogist term a non-parental event or NPE, which the author claims may account for no less than 3.7% of all births.

 A great read highly recommended, genealogist or not!

Quotes

"How fragile it all is, how brief anyone's hold on property, or money, or life itself."

"What you don't know can sting the heart worse than the worst thing you do know.  And go on stinging, because while knowledge brings some sort of ending, not knowing never ends."

"How seductive it is, this idea that you do not need parents to make you happy, or to make the best of yourself.  On the contrary, to be a heroine, it is better to be free of these nagging, fretting figures in charge of you, and to forge on through life unencumbered.  Far from orphanhood/adoption being any sort of handicap, it's actually a launch-pad."

Published: 2020  Read: October 2021  Genre: Biography

The Flying Carpet - Richard Halliburton

Sometime in the past I'd read about the adventure stories of Richard Halliburton and added his name to my TBR list.  In a dusty old bookstore on our way back from Alaska this summer, I finally found one of his books.

Richard Halliburton was a son of well-to-do English parents who in the 1920s explored the world on foot, by sea and land and wrote about his adventures.  He was a superstar who wrote in a romantic, exaggerated style that won the fascination of the public in his day.

The Flying Carpet was the name he gave to his bi-plane that he used to travel from California to NY and then transport by ship to England where he embarked on a world tour of exotic locations from Timbuktu to Persia and Turkey and on to the Taj Mahal and Mt Everest, eventually returning to the U.S.

I was transported to the time and places and attitudes of the 1920s and thrilled with his spirit of can do optimism and daring-do.  If I run across other of his writings, I'll read them as well.

Published: 1932 (originally) 1982 ed.  Read: 2019  Genre: Adventure

Listen! The Wind - Anne Morrow Lindberg

This is the first-person account of the Lindbergh's flight in 1933 across the southern Atlantic Ocean from Bathurst (now called Banjul), Gambia on the western shoe of Africa to Natal, Brazil in South America in 18 hours.  It was one leg in a series of trans-oceanic trips taken to explore the various routes.  It's quite short and the bulk of the story is their preparation and false starts before leaving from Africa.  I appreciated how Anne was treated as an equal partner, even flying the plane for part of the trip.  Her musings on waiting and disappointment when they couldn't leave from the Cape Verde Islands are like being in her head as she reconciles her feelings and regains her optimism. 

This volume was privately published as a book of the year by a small publisher, Westvaco in 1990.  There is a lengthily explanation of the typeface, front pieces, and end papers styled to reflect the Art Deco period of the 1930's and has its own case.  A joy to read and admire.

Published: 1990 (this edition, originally 1938) Read: July 2018  Genre: Non-fiction