MAILBAG: BOOKS AND BIRDS.Jendi Reiter writes:

If you’re obsessed with “betrayal-for-the-good/man without a country/adherence to a moral code over and against all one’s personal loyalties and all one’s sense of self; attempting to maintain a sense of self after that choice”

you should read this:
“Ninety-Three” by Victor Hugo.

I read this book (in the original French, back when I was capable of that!) because Ayn Rand, another obsession you and I share, wrote an essay on it. It’s been on my mind again lately as an example of a morality of works versus a morality of grace — similar to contrast between Valjean and Javert in Les Miserables.

Don’t know if you like mysteries, but Ruth Rendell would probably touch a nerve with you, especially “Make Death Love Me” and “The Brimstone Wedding” (written as Barbara Vine).

Clio writes:

Failure: almost anything by Ruth Rendell could be said to be about failure. But especially good on that subject are A Fatal Inversion; The House of Stairs; and A Dark-Adapted Eye, all of which concern the effects of long-ago crimes or sins and how they wreak havoc (and bring failure) on all concerned in them. [Eve adds: Ooh, this “out of the past” theme is also a huge obsession of mine. Will definitely check out Rendell.]

Inability to understand oneself: Rumer Godden: Kingfishers Catch Fire.
Richard Adams: Girl in a Swing (I’ve recommended this to you before, I think. Oh, well.)

Realistic parenting: Rumer Godden’s books are very strong on parenting, both realistic and not-so-. See esp. The Battle of the Villa Fiorita, about a (self-deceiving) woman who is a good mother but made irresponsible by passion. Also Godden’s Greengage Summer, in which the mother is an excellent mother, but too unworldly.

Evilescence: Try The Raj Quartet (also suggested before) and the character Ronald Merrick, who is also a Man Without a Country; and a man who puts his moral code over his personal loyalties in a way that makes this seem wicked. Oh, and he has NO sense of self, having replaced his personal loyalties with a moral code borrowed out of fiction.

Nemesis (I’m cheating, it’s one of my obsessions–the growing awareness of the fate that you subconsciously always knew was coming to you): Gemma O’Connor’s Sin of Omission; Mary Renault’s The King Must Die and The Bull From the Sea–you need to read both to get the full effect.

I go through long phases in which I read the same books over and over, which is why my lists of good books tend to get repetitive. All the same, I think these are worth reading.

[Eve adds: No need to explain! I also love re-reading and am constantly recommending the same books over and over.]

Mark R. writes:

In regards to vultures, you are not too far away from buzzards, hawks, falcons and the occasional kestrel in northern Gaithersburg, MD. Now and then I see a beautiful fox…it sneaks into my brother’s neighborhood at dusk to steal dogfood from outside bowls, I think. There are plenty of deer as well. Often one sees a family dining out late at night in semi-secluded areas.

Steve Sparrow (apt name!) has an owl story–I am reminded of the fun Farley Mowat book Owls in the Family:

About fifteen years ago I was on my way out of town to measure a job and was going pretty fast on our little northern motorway (Christchurch NZ) when out of the corner of my eye I spotted an injured bird on the roadside so I braked and reversed–yes I know it’s illegal world wide–got out of the car and looked down at this pathetic creature glaring up at me. It was a small owl so I put it in a brown paper bag and continued on to do the measure up. Later back in town I took the owl into a pharmicist friend who I knew had an interest in such things. Marg said it looked pretty crook, it had a bung eye, a bung wing and a bung leg. She weighed it out at 130 grams and mixed an appropriate amount of penicillin for a daily dose and said to also give it a few drops of brandy or sherry each day AND IT MUST HAVE A MOUSE TWICE A WEEK. Back home we (me and boy children) put Anthea in a large old disused drawer with a hinged wire front and kept her upstairs in the boys room where most of her day was spent roosting (I think). She nearly died several times in the first ten days but then began to improve gradually. Every second day on the way home from work I would call at a pet shop, never the same one two days running–they might have smelled a rat (terrible pun I know). Me: Do you have any mice? Pet shop person: Yes, what would you like? A boy mouse or a girl mouse? What colour? What size? Me: (mumbling almost incoherently) I’m not too fussed. I hand over sixty cents and PSP puts mouse in paper bag and I hurry away, drive home and run upstairs and ‘liberate’ mouse inside Anthea’s enclosure. Nothing happens for a few minutes until mouse begins with rustling sounds to explore the environment. Anthea on her perch comes to life looks down and immediately swells about twice her size and then drops down on prey and grabs with talons then spreading wings to hide what she’s caught glares out at me. I learned eating prey is a very private matter and was never done under the gaze of anyone. After half an hour I could return to find Anthea back on perch looking full and with mouse tail extending down out of the corner of her mouth. This went on for seven weeks until Anthea was fully recovered and had nearly doubled her weight whereupon much to my wife’s relief we released her (I mean Anthea) back into the wild. One day while I was buying a mouse the PSP ( a stern Dutch lady) asked if I already had a mouse at home and I in all innocence (and truth) said no. Well PSP immediately withdrew her hand from mouse cage and frostily informed me that she would not sell one mouse on its own since it would only die of lonelyness and cold. Who was I to argue so I had to buy two and look after one of the stinkers for another two days before feeding it to Anthea. Well there’s my story and with certain embellishments to it I could make women at parties almost choke on their cocktails while the events were related, so now Eve it’s your turn.

Thanks so much to everyone who wrote in!