This has been a somewhat long hiatus from blogging due to being down with flu. That may have suggested to readers that I was suffering from serious symptoms. But in actual fact, after the first two days, I was almost back to normal. ‘Almost’ in the operative word here. My temperature was back to almost normal but I could not get rid of a low-grade fever and had a residual dry cough. The latter is for me a common consequence to a flu, not to be shaken for a couple of weeks.

But what really kept me from blogging was sense of blahness that left me with no enthusiasm for doing anything, such as everyday chores or even an appetite. In that condition, the enthusiasm to write, which comes usually comes easily to me, deserted me until today. The fact that it took me this long to get back to normal may mean that this was a different flu variant or that as I get older it will take me longer to bounce back.

It is not that these days were totally wasted. I did find that I could enjoy reading and so took the opportunity to read books that I should have read a long time ago and watched some films and TV shows.

I first read Howard’s End by E. M. Forster. It is a story set in the early 20th century and centers around two upper middle class families the Schlegels and the Wilcoxes and the latter’s home on the outskirts of London that gives the book its name. it deals with the norms and behaviors of people of that class. The Schlegels consist of two young unmarried sisters who enjoy the freedom that inherited money enables and enjoy concerts and book circles and the cultural life that London provides. It also discusses their attitudes, seen by them as progressive’, towards people of the petite bourgeoisie, those who have lowly clerical jobs and struggle to get by. The latter is represented by someone named Leonard Bast who aspires to the intellectual life and is fascinated by the sisters but cannot afford to be a part of that world and is acutely aware of it. However the impulsive and headstrong younger Schlegel is determined to try and improve his lot. He becomes her project and her misguided patronizing efforts lead to to complications that form the basis.of the book. The Wilcoxes are a more traditional family that runs into the Schlegels while they were both holidaying in Europe and lives become intertwined because of the younger Schlegels impulsive short-lived engagement to their son.

While I enjoyed the book, I cannot say that it is a great one. I found the character of Bast and his wife to be poorly drawn, mere plot devices for the author to discuss the class distinctions that are such a feature of English life and the nature of the changing mores of the period leading up to the First World War. I do recall seeing a film based on the book a long time ago and may watch it again because I recall it as being pretty good. It had a stellar cast and was the product of the Ismail Merchant-James Ivory-Ruth Prawer Jabhwala triumvirate that has brought many similar dramas about English society based on classic novels of the time to the screen. Here’s the trailer.

I also read The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton and it was excellent. It offers a close look at the small and tightly knit wealthy society of New York City in the 1870s that is bound by strict rules about who belongs and who does not and how they should behave and how they should be treated if they do not conform. Its chief protagonist is a young lawyer Newland Archer who is to be married to May Welland, both solid members of society. Archer is detached enough from his environment to be amused at how trivial the preoccupations of his society are and yet at the same time is unable to break from it. And yet, his strong feelings for May’s more Bohemian cousin Ellen threatens everything. There is a film based on it with a stellar cast that I have not yet seen and look forward to doing so.

Here’s the trailer.

My only Edith Wharton novel up to this point had been Ethan Frome. This had been lying around the house because it was an assigned textbook in my daughter’s high school and I picked it up. That book was relentlessly depressing, with one calamity after another afflicting the title character so that the book starts out gloomy and gets steadily gloomier. I avoided Wharton after that, which I now see was a mistake.

I also watched the film Between Two Temples. It deals with a cantor (played by Jason Schwartzman) who goes through an existential crisis and finds himself unable to sing. He is asked by his old music teacher (played by the delightful Carol Kane) to tutor her through her bat mitzvah which she never had as a child because her parents were Communists. I expected more from the film but it was just so-so.

Here’s the trailer.

However I did enjoy the Netflix series Nobody Wants This in which Kristin Bell plays a woman who with her sister hosts a podcast in which they talk frankly about sex and their sex lives. She falls in love with Adam Brody, who is an up-and-coming rabbi in a big temple who is up for the head rabbi position. His giving up his Jewish fiancé for a non-Jewish sex-talker does not go down well with his traditional family, especially his mother, and the series explores how Bell and Brody navigate their way through the cultural minefield. It is pretty funny.

Here’s the trailer.

I have now started reading Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential that takes the reader behind the doors that separate restaurant diners from the preparers of their food and am thoroughly enjoying it.

This post has the feel of a ‘What I did during my summer vacation flu break’ book report but that’s ok. I just wanted to let everyone know that the time wasn’t entirely wasted.