This afternoon I watched the NHL Winter Classic. The Boston Bruins faced the Pittsburgh Penguins at Fenway Park. The Bruins, the team with the best record by a comfortable margin this year, beat the Penguins, 2-1. It was a very good game, IMO, and the transformation of Fenway Park into an ice rink was interesting to see. I was rooting for the Bruins, a team I have no real feeling for. But I was rooting for them because I just don’t like the Penguins. Probably because, back in the day, the dumped Jaromir Jagr on the Caps, and then set up a rivalry with their combo of Crosby and Malkin. That’s long time ago. But I just don’t like them Penguins.

That’s on the one hand. On the other hand, I have always been fascinated with Penguin Books. No, not the books published today, but the soft cover books published from 1935 to 1961, with the single color covers – orange for fiction, purple for mystery, red for travel and adventure, and so forth. About 30 years ago (that’s a guess), I started purchasing these old Penguins, and eventually I would buy them wherever I saw them for sale, hoping that I wouldn’t buy one that I already had. I didn’t read any of these books (or maybe only a few), but I kept them together and they multiplied, until today I seem to have about 730 of them at last count.

A little over a year ago, I decided to read them. I have read about 10%.

There are very few of them that I can’t get through productively. And the majority are books that I have not read by authors whom I don’t know.

Over the last two days, I have read my first Penguin of 2023. I read “Foreigners” by Leo Walmsley. I never heard of the book or the author. And, were I not in the grip of my Penguin reading, I never would have heard of either.

It’s a great book. Walmsley, born in 1892, is enough of a name in British writing that there is actually a Leo Walmsley Society, which is holding its next annual meeting in May in Robin Hood’s Bay, a seaside town in North Umberland, England. South of Newcastle. Walmsley grew up here.

“Foreigners” is one of a series of memoirs of Walmsley’s childhood. It is a short book (219 pages), written in the first person, and tells the story of a scrappy English kid (he doesn’t say how old he is, but I would say somewhere between 11 and 13), who has a tough schoolmaster who likes to box children’s ears, friends and friendemies who like to fight each other (fists and kicks) when they are outside of school, financially struggling parents, and seafaring friends (it’s a fishing village). There are a accidents and scandals and tragedies, there are many fights, and problems with parents and officials. It’s written in the first person like all of these things have just happened, but the writing itself is so professional that it gives away the author’s maturity (he was in his early 40s).

Some new words to learn – scaur, coble, thwart (a noun) and others. And you really get a picture of what Robin Hood’s Bay is like. A very attractive part of the world, to be sure. Google it.

For more Penguins, stay tuned. The next book on my pile is “The Root of Heaven” about Romain Gary. Gary was an interesting guy. Born in Vilnius (when it was Wilno, or Vilna), he lived in France where he became a diplomat and author. He married Jean Seberg, the actress, but they divorced after he discovered her affair with Clint Eastwood (among many others). Seberg committed suicide (barbituates) when she was 40. Gary did the same (gunshot) about 10 years later. Yes, it is true. You learn so much from Wikipedia.