On Snowflakes, Paper and Ice

I've been a bit sad this year, because this is the first Christmas in several years that I have not adorned my desk at work with paper snowflakes. Snowflakes, I feel, have been getting a bad rap lately, being used as a term to describe young people who think they are more special than they are. What did snowflakes do to deserve such negative associations?

The tradition of making paper snowflakes is something that comes naturally to children, but for me it  took on another level with home-schooling. My mom got a book from the library, Easy-to-Make Decorative Paper Snowflakes by Brenda Lee Reed. 

Reviewing "The House of Arden" by E. Nesbit

After reading Harding’s Luck and realizing halfway through it was a sequel, I decided I’d better go ahead and read the original story, The House of Arden, while the plot was fresh in my memory. Written by E. Nesbit, both books follow the adventures of children who magically time-travel into somewhat major events in English history, including the Gunpowder Plot, the Napoleonic Wars, and even meeting Henry VIII and Queen Anne (Boleyn).

In The House of Arden the history lesson quality is stronger than in Harding’s Luck, with siblings Edred and Elfrida Arden discovering that they can time travel by reciting poetry and dressing in period costumes. Their goal is the same as in Harding’s Luck: the once-influential and wealthy Arden family has fallen on hard times, having to rent out rooms in their small cottage as their ancestral castle crumbles into ruins. 

Flapper Shakespeare

"One of the most remarkable things about the great writers of antiquity is that they appear to be so modern in their outlook. what we really mean is that they are both ancient and modern at the same time. there are certain things in life that time cannot stale. Hamlet has recently been played in modern dress, an experiment that has met with extraordinary success. Why is this? surely it is because great poetry is concerned with those feelings and thoughts which are innate and unchanging in human nature, and continue to resist the assaults of time and he vagaries of fashion." 

The Study of Poetry by Paul Landis

Chapter 1: The Nature of Poetry, pg. 13

I found this passage interesting because of what I'd discussed in an earlier post about setting Shakespearean plays in other-than-Elizabethan times. Landis has a point. One of the aspects that constitutes great art (literature, poetry, paintings, etc.) is that there is something about it that transcends the time in which is was created, representing some universal characteristic of humanity. Therefore, as long as the core content is left unchanged, it's possible to alter or remove superficial details (such as clothing in the case of performing plays) without damaging the essence of a particular work.

Perfect Little Protagonists: from E. Nesbit's "Harding's Luck"

As luck would have it, I began reading this book completely unaware of anything about it except its author—E. Nesbit. The copy I pulled (at random) from my mom’s bookshelf one night when I was desperate for more reading material (at the time my TBR pile was dangerously short for some reason) was an older hardcover with no dust jacket, no blurb on the back, or really any other indication of what sort of book it was. I’ve read several of Nesbit’s other books for children, so I was sort of hoping this one (it had gilt lettering on the spine) was for adults.

It was not, which I realized as soon as I opened it. This copy was full of illustrations that immediately exposed Harding’s Luck as following a boy protagonist through various adventures. Although disappointed that it wasn’t a more sophisticated story, I wasn’t so deterred from reading it. In fact, for the first several chapters I rather enjoyed it….

Dickie Harding is an Oliver Twist sort of character, a young orphan boy living in poverty with his “aunt” (really just his father’s landlady, who took Dickie in as a sort of ward/servant after his father died). Dickie is crippled, uneducated, and generally unloved. His only treasure is a possession given to him by his father, a silver rattle he calls “Tinkler.” Without really understanding what is missing from his life, Dickie longs for love, relatives, friends, and (on a more general note) beauty. 

Perfect Little Protagonists: from Edward Stratemeyer's "First at the North Pole"

In penning this volume I have had a twofold purpose in mind: the first to show what pure grit and determination can do under the most trying of circumstances, and the second to give my readers an insight into Esquimaux life and habits, and to relate what great explorers like Franklin, Kane, Hall, DeLong, Nansen, Cook, and Peary have done to open up this weird and mysterious portion of our globe.

~ Edward Stratemeyer, from his 1909 preface of First at the North Pole

This was the first novel I’d read by Edward Stratemeyer, and frankly it will probably also be the last.
First at the North Pole, or, Two Boys in the Arctic started out promising, introducing the main character Andy as an orphaned eighteen-year old in Maine, and his struggle to survive in a job recession and with the added dead-weight of his lazy Uncle Si. This uncle showed up out of the blue after his parents died, claimed he was his guardian, and settled into a drunken, loafish lifestyle all the while hypocritically cracking the whip over his honest-working nephew’s back. What’s worse, Uncle Si tries to keep Andy from befriending another orphaned youth, Chet, on the flimsy excuse that Chet’s father was accused of embezzlement and forgery, and had run off never to be seen again…which of course proved he was guilty!

The plot thickens when Andy finds out that he has inherited some land in Michigan, which might prove valuable to the mining corporations who want to take control of that territory. Of course the wheedling Uncle Si snoops through his nephew’s things (after sending him out to find a job), and decides to try to sell it to the first land shark that conveniently shows up pretty much the same time he finds the deeds to the land. Andy discovers the plot and runs away into the Maine winter, taking refuge with his friend Chet while he tries to figure out what to do. They have a few adventures in the woods, trying to hunt to survive and so on, and Andy even manages to lose his papers in the vast expanse of snowdrifts.

So far, so good. The story establishes the protagonist as a “good guy” with an oppressive uncle and difficult challenges ahead. But here the story wavers, because Stratemeyer suddenly remembers the title of his novel, and needs to figure out a way to redirect the plot northward rather than towards Michigan. So he introduces a professor and an explorer. They meet the boys (again, conveniently), and during their conversation the idea of travelling to the North Pole comes up.

Perfect Little Protagonists - Introduction

It’s almost always the case that the protagonist of a story is a “good guy.” That’s why the word “protagonist” is often used interchangeably with “hero.” Strictly speaking, though, a protagonist can be a “bad” person, as long as the reader still roots for him or her. Crime and Punishment features a murderer as its protagonist, yet Raskolnikov is more sympathetic as a murderer than the dogged and manipulative Petrovich who is the policeman investigating the crime.

Subversion and inversion of this concept of “protagonist = good” may be more common in novels aimed at an adult audience. But for children, this concept is sometimes taken to the extreme: the protagonists are perfect to the point of being annoying. This is especially true for older juvenile fiction (pre-1960s), where the “moral of the story” is so heavy-handed that the story itself is sometimes unreadable. 

Feudin’ in Floridy: Lois Lenski’s "Strawberry Girl"

When I was about ten my family moved into a duplex with my grandma. One of its best features was that it had a big backyard. One of the downsides to this feature was that the yard was not fenced in, and therefore was combined with half a dozen other backyards to form a sort of vast green space.

Due to some logistical issues my family ended up living in my grandma’s basement for about seven months while we waited for the previous occupants to vacate our side of the house. Perhaps because of the cramped quarters, or perhaps because there was nowhere to store it, my Dad set up our swing-set before we were even properly moved in.

The other neighbor kids had started to think that we had built the “playground” for them. They would come and use it all the time without asking. Some lady even brought her grandkids to push on the swings. Not that we begrudged them using it (being new in the neighborhood, I was desperate for new friends and was all too willing to share my swingset with them), but my parents became concerned that someone was going to get hurt—fall off the swing, for instance—and then because it was on our property we’d be sued.

So, a fence went up. Actually, the main reason for the fence was because we had dogs who were used to being left outside in the summer. But the neighbors did not take it well, feeling that we were “hogging the playground” to ourselves!

All of this reminded me of a book I had read not too long before the move: Strawberry Girl. This novel by Lois Lenski was fairly well-known when I was a girl, but recently I decided to reread it to see what my younger self found so appealing.

When in Doubt, Try JFIC

It’s been somewhat of a dry spell in my reading life lately. (Granted, my “reading life” is rather redundant, as reading is inextricable from my “regular” life.) I fell seven books behind in my Goodreads Annual Challenge. SEVEN! Unheard of! Perish the thought!

Not helping was the fact that I accidentally left Henry VIII as the last of the Shakespeare plays for me to read--and it was SO boring! This would have struck me as impossible, considering the rather colorful life of Henry VIII, except I remembered that Shakespeare was writing during the reign of his daughter Elizabeth I…and therefore probably cut out the juicy drama in order to preserve her patronage and his head. I will say that it was somewhat amusing, Shakespeare trying to please everyone by making all the characters (Queen Katherine, King Henry, Anne Boleyn AKA “Bullen”) over-the-top noble and innocent rather than crafty and power-hungry politicians. And the end of the play is basically “Hey look Elizabeth I has been born and is now blessed with awesomeness forevermore!”

That said, I was glad to have finished off that most recent, and ultimately disappointing, stack of books next to my bed, and so excited to pull some other books off the shelf that showed more promise.

Along with Manxmouse that my mom read aloud to me, there have been a few books from my childhood I’ve been thinking about recently. These were books I read just as I began to read independently, and I remember reading them over and over…except I couldn’t remember the name of one of them. I knew it had a little girl in it who was excited about going to school…it was set in “olden times” (viz., 1900 or older).

With a little more digging in my memory (“I think the cover was green…), and with an open search browser, I was able to hunt down the title of the book: Schoolhouse in the Woods by Rebecca Caudill.  

Those Magnificent Women and Their Flying Machines: A Review of "Sky Girls"

Writing history is difficult. All events and people tie to other events and people, so the historian/author needs to decide where to “cut off” in order to focus their writing into some semblance of a narrative. There’s a fine line between including so much extraneous information that it confuses the reader and makes them lose track of the book’s central topic, and not including enough details and causing the reader to feel ignorant for not being able to read between the lines.

In theory, Gene Nora Jessen’s book Sky Girls: The True Story of the First Women’s Cross-Country Air Race is the sort of nonfiction, historical book I look forward to reading. There’s something about the era about the Roaring Twenties that inherently ignites the imagination, as technology was just entering modernity, yet very little had been done with it. Everything was open to “firsts.” 

Focus on What Matters

"Many people are going through life "out of breath" because they are involved in so many activities--many of which do not contribute to their life's purpose.... So many agendas will compete for your energy and attention that if you're not committed to your own unique purpose, then your resources will be drained by everything else."

~ Fresh Air by Chris Hodges

Chapter 2: Catch Your Breath, pg 29

I've been feeling so overwhelmed lately, stalked by an ambiguous anxiety that's not caused by one big stressful thing, but rather a thousand little inconsequential chores or errands. 

It's funny how even things that are recreational or entertainment, like reading or hobbies or even watching TV, can warp into yet another thing on the To Do list. For instance, "having" to watch TV because you're trying to clear up your DVR queue.

The same has been true of reading for me as well. At the beginning of the year I challenged myself to read 150 before 2019. While I think this has generally gone well, it has had two shortcomings:

I Was Not Alone

After writing my review of Agatha Christie's Dead Man's Folly, I found this review on the novel's Wikipedia page:

Miss Agatha Christie's new Poirot story comes first in this review because of this author's reputation and not on its own merits, which are disappointingly slight.... The solution is of the colossal ingenuity we have been conditioned to expect but a number of the necessary red herrings are either unexplained or a little too grossly ad hoc. People are never candid about their vices so there is no need to take seriously the protestations of detective addicts about their concern with the sheer logic of their favourite reading. What should be the real appeal of Dead Man's Folly, however, is not much better than its logic. The scene is really excessively commonplace, there are too many characters and they are very, very flat.

~ Anthony Quinton 

Times Literary Supplement 

December 21 1956 (pg 761)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Man%27s_Folly

I'm not sure whether to be encouraged that my amateur opinion was in sync with a professional reviewer's contemporary analysis, or to be disheartened that my opinion is not unique or new in any way!

Reviewing "Manxmouse" by Paul Gallico

...for all his small size and defenselessness, when it came to doing something for others, there seemed to be nothing Manxmouse would not dare.

~ Manxmouse by Paul Gallico, page 111

Most epic stories follow heroes—usually warriors—who go on adventures, quests, and journeys where they protect the weak, defeat monsters and villains, and eventually earn their glorious reward and a place in legend and history.

Manxmouse: The Mouse Who Knew No Fear by Paul Gallico is an epic tale, but its protagonist is a mouse—a fearless, good-hearted mouse, but still a mouse—and the story follows him on a rambling adventure where he protects elephants and tigers and defeats his own fate, before settling down into a happy ending that isn’t quite the norm for epic legends. 

Reviewing “Dead Man’s Folly” by Agatha Christie

As I neared the end of Agatha Christie’s Poirot mystery, Dead Man’s Folly, I was reminded of another mystery writer, Rex Stout. Stout’s Nero Wolfe novels tend to be named in similar ways—for instance, including numbers (especially 3) such as Three Doors to Death, Curtains for Three, Triple Jeopardy, etc.  One of the other common titling “habits” was the title “Too Many ____”: Too Many Cooks, Too Many Women, and Too Many Clients.

It’s of this latter titling habit I thought of when reading Dead Man’s Folly, because there are too many suspects.

I Read This Because of Shark Week

A few years ago I was watching Discovery Channel’s Shark Week when a documentary came on about three men whose plane crashed into the ocean during World War II, and how they had to survive on a life raft for weeks—all the while being stalked by sharks, of course. I actually didn’t finish watching that documentary, since I prefer the more scientific documentaries to some of the Shark Week programs that are aimed more at Jaws-like drama, complete with reenactments filmed by shaking cameras and terse music.

I looked up the story online, mostly curious as to how much was true and how much dramatized. To my surprise, the story was even more dramatic than the documentary; the sharks were hardly the most perilous part!

Shakespeare in Any Other Era

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Malviolio...*

Okay, so I know it's "Michelangelo" in The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, but I adapted it to introduce this post about possibly-incongruous adaptations. Sorry, T.S. Eliot.

The other day I overheard a conversation two ladies were having about Shakespeare. One of the ladies had upcoming plans to see a live performance, but she was already complaining about it.

“When I went to see Much Ado About Nothing they dressed in all modern clothes. I hate that!”

What surprised me about her tone was that it implied she thought it was some new thing, for Shakespearean plays to have a “modernized” setting. She continued,

“It’s just weird, they’re going around in regular clothes, but speaking the same words.”

True, I've encountered similar adaptations and found them confusing. But is it really a travesty to perform Shakespeare—or really, any “ancient” play—as if it were a contemporary setting? Does every adaptation need to be "Shakespeare: Men in Tights"?

Tacitus is Driving Me Crazy

I know that I should be easy on Tacitus for the following reasons:

1. His Histories were written early in the "life" of recorded history. There weren't that many set precedents, such as corroborating hearsay or relating unbiased facts or providing citations of reliable sources.
2. He was Roman, and pretty much anything written in Rome is tinged with propaganda.

But NO, I am NOT going to be easy on Tacitus! Why? Because of this extremely sloppy passage that records the "history" of the Jews:

Should You Read Just Any Old Thing?

As I slowly look through my e-books that have been in “review limbo,” I realize why I haven’t reviewed these books before: they’re dry. Not to say they’re not worth reading or reviewing, but they are rather dense and therefore somewhat hard to comment on coherently. These books are ancient literature, philosophy, or simply novels I read that didn’t resonate as powerfully as other books I was reading at the same time.

Yet while many of these books take a bit more digging to get to the heart of their topics, when you get to that heart you realize how relatable and relevant many of these writers were/are. I’m often surprised by reading (translated) Roman works, because they sound so “contemporary” and the issues they deal with are issues that we still deal with today.

Take the debate regarding the role of books and literacy. Classic literature, in particular, has been criticized for being inaccessible, too long, and generally outmoded. Why force people to read antiquated novels when they could read contemporary fiction so much faster? To answer the question of whether it's enough to read "just any old thing," let's turn to a specific old thing: The Letters of Pliny the Younger. Glancing over the quotations I’d highlighted in this book, I noticed a pattern that had to do with the quality of literature. 

Reviewing "Absent in the Spring" by Agatha Christie

Absent in the Spring is one of the six novels Agatha Christie wrote under the nom de plume of “Mary Westmacott.” While it’s arguable that some of the books Christie wrote under her own name aren’t mysteries, all of the ones I’ve read (and I’ve read quite a few) have been either mysteries, thrillers, or had some sort of puzzle to solve.

This novel shares many characteristics of a usual Christie mystery: an exotic location, some rather stereotypical foreign characters contrasted with equally stereotypical, O-So-Very-British ones, and prose that follows the inner monologue of the focus character.

Yet this novel is very different. What’s fun about reading Christie is that her style is very unique—always engaging, with vivid characters and dramatic plots—but she also experiments with things: writing in first and third person, having the narrator be omniscient in one book, and unreliable in the next, allowing the protagonist to be the villain, and manipulating well-known tropes to misdirect the reader and lead up to a surprising conclusion. In Absent in the Spring, she departs from juggling various motives and storylines and focuses on a small, quiet piece. I'm not sure I would have enjoyed it as much if I hadn't known Mary Westmacott's true identity, but the fact that Christie used a false name for this novel (which focuses on identity) added another facet to my enjoyment of it.

K.K. Beck’s Iris Cooper Mysteries

Iris Cooper is the unflappable flapper, pretty coed sleuth, and protagonist narrator of three novels by K.K. Beck: Death in a Deck Chair, Murder in a Mummy Case, and Peril Under the Palms. When we first meet Iris, she’s just finished traveling around the world with her Aunt Hermione.

Whatever exotic experiences she had on her trip, however, is nothing compared to the adventure that awaits on the trip home. Cruising back to America, Iris encounters a bevy of characters of all ages, nationalities, and personalities. And, as the title Death in a Deck Chair suggests, not all of these characters survive. What unfolds is a sort of frothy whodunnit reminiscent of Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express.

Thoughts on Longinus' "On the Sublime"

It is natural to us to feel our souls lifted up by the true Sublime, and conceiving a sort of generous exultation to be filled with joy and pride, as though we had ourselves originated the ideas which we read.

Though I’ve read quite a bit of ancient Greek/Roman literature, I don’t think I’d read anything by Longinus until this year. His On Good Writing was a suggestion on my Goodreads account, and when I couldn’t find that particular book in either a free e-book or at my local library (I don’t usually purchase books by authors I’ve never read before), I settled for one I did find: a free Kindle book called On the Sublime.

As it turns out, “Longinus” is sort of a placeholder in the author’s byline, as scholars aren’t really sure who wrote this book. Whoever the author was, the book was written in Greek during the first century A.D. (the date is more certain as the work was a reaction against another book of that time), and references other famous works and writers of Classical thought, including Plato, Homer, and Sappho.

Read This, Not That: “With the Night Mail” vs. “The Clipper of the Clouds”

Although Rudyard Kipling’s With the Night Mail: A Story of 3000 A.D. would be a great resource for anyone researching the Steampunk genre, I wouldn’t recommend reading it for any other purpose.

Why?

Because there isn’t really much of a story. There are a few vague characters, the narrator is nameless and devoid of personality, the plot is nearly nonexistent, and the point is completely lost.

This book is entirely forgettable. I should know: I actually read this twice because I’d forgotten I’d read it the first time, and the only reason I realized I’d read it before was because I had highlighted a Oh So Very Steampunk Passage of the text in my e-reader copy.

The bare bones of the story is that the Nameless Narrator is a news correspondent who is shadowing the daily (that is, nightly) workings of an airship. Yes, according to Kipling, dirigible-type aircraft are the mode of transportation of the future. Global travel is so easy that the intertwining of nations has necessitated a universal language so the airships can communicate with one another. The airships run on electricity and some sort of semiprecious gem power. Airplanes, called “’planes” exist as well, but are considered outmoded and unfashionable.

I Claim This Blog Post in the Name of Barsoom, Isn't That Lovely?

Before Life on Mars was the title of a couple television shows, it was the concept of science fiction. While perhaps overdone to the point of triteness today, it was still very much a new concept when Edgar Rice Burroughs began writing A Princess of Mars a little over a century ago.

Burroughs' Barsoom series (that's what the native Martians--er, Barsoomians?--call their red home planet) straddles the line between the science fiction and fantasy genres. Fantasy is one of the oldest (perhaps the oldest, if you include ancient myths in this category), while science fiction is by comparison a newcomer to the art of storytelling. So it strikes me as odd that these two genres, somewhat on the opposite ends of time, are often blended and confused for one another. 

Reviewing “She: A History of Adventure” by H. Rider Haggard

She begins almost like an H.G. Wells novel, as a narrative within a narrative. The Editor is publishing an account sent to him by Horace Holly, a colleague whom he’d met at University years before. It is Holly who really narrates the rest of the book, while the Editor inserts annoying little commentaries in the footnotes intermittently.

Holly is a good but ugly man who lived the majority of his life buried in academia. About 25
years before the main adventure begins, a friend of Holly’s named Vincey comes to him the
night before his death, telling him about his son Leo--whom he’s never seen, being grieved
because his wife died in childbirth--and entrusting Holly to raise him.

Vincey also has a morbid mission for his son to fulfill: vengeance. Vincey explains that his
family can be traced back three centuries B.C., to a Greco-Egyptian priest who eloped with an
Egyptian Princess. The two fugitives found themselves in a strange land ruled by a mysterious
white woman. The woman fell in love with the priest, but the priest refused to forsake his
love for the Egyptian Princess, and in a jealous rage the mysterious woman killed him
“with her magic.”

Reviewing "The Snare" by Rafael Sabatini

The Snare by Rafael Sabatini is one of those books that takes a lot of patience at the start, but once you get past the preliminary setup the rest of the story is totally worth the wait.

Set in Portugal, 1810, the story begins with a lengthy  account of how a Lieutenant Richard Butler of the British Expeditionary Force gets drunk and then invades a nunnery (mistaking it for a monastery famous for its wine production). As if that breach of etiquette and diplomacy weren't enough, Butler makes it worse by running away...effectively deserting his regiment and becoming an outlaw. Upon learning of the "Tavora Affair," Butler's superiors investigate, and because they cannot find Butler, assume he has been killed by the mob of Portuguese peasants that gathered to protect their convent.

Richard Butler is not the protagonist of the book.

The narrative then shifts to Sir Terence O'Moy, the Adjutant-General in Lisbon. Butler happens to be his brother-in-law, but fortunately for O'Moy's reputation no one knows this detail.  Despite being a selfish, stupid, and frivolous person, O'Moy loves his wife Lady Una so much so that he's covered for her brother plenty of times in the past just to protect her feelings.

Books and the Natural World

I recently finished reading two books about animals, the semi-fictional The Wolfling by Sterling North, and the coffee-table companion to the documentary series, Blue Planet II by James Honeyborne and Mark Brownlow.

Why do I do this to myself? I love animals, but reading about them is often depressing. Almost every
dog-centered novel ends with the dog dying and a little of my heart with it. Even nonfiction zoology
books aren’t immune to this, because endangered species make me feel so helpless and wish I could
change the world.

Sterling North is probably most famous for his excellent book Rascal, a memoir of one summer in his
boyhood when he raised a pet raccoon. North’s writing style is wonderful, not only artistic in his
descriptions of the natural world, but also exciting. In The Wolfling he goes back further than Rascal’s
setting of Wisconsin during World War I, and explores the life of a boy named Robbie in 1873.
Based in part on research and reminiscences of North’s father, The Wolfling is nevertheless fiction,
calling itself a “Documentary Novel.”

Reviewing Gerald Morris's "The Squire's Tales" Series

The Squire’s Tales series by Gerald Morris is one of my all-time favorite books. Aside from talking about the first book I read of this series, The Ballad of Sir Dinadan, however, I haven’t discussed it on my blog.

Until now!

To be fair to the reader, I thought it best to wait until I’d reread all ten of the books. Although, there was also the ulterior motive of wanting to read them again anyway, and also the bonus that I could read these VERY fast and thus make serious headway in my 150-Books-a-Year-What-Was-I-Thinking goal for 2018. And because for once I actually had all the series on hand (the previous time I read the entire series, I had to wait for the author to actually publish them, so had entire years of waiting and rereading the first installments), I binge-read them this time, which made for a roller-coaster of emotions…for reasons that will be made clear, if you aren’t already aware of how the original legends conclude.

In this series Morris has taken on the monumental task of retelling the Arthurian (and related medieval European) legends. Many other people have tried, and most fail utterly to do justice to the complexities of the plots, characters, and themes of these ancient stories. While retellings are never quite the same in tone or faithfulness to the original stories, Morris gets closer than most.

Elizabeth Goudge's "The Child from the Sea" and How I Got My Copy

How I came to possess Elizabeth Goudge’s The Child from the Sea was in a very roundabout way. It happened a few years back, while I was working as an administrative assistant at a furniture store. As part of the “staging,” there was a variety of old books that would be placed upon bookcases or other shelving.

Past experience has taught me that treasures can be hidden in the least probable places, so I went through the store reading over the various titles. Most of these books were not very interesting—mostly Readers Digest Condensed volumes and that sort of thing—but among them was a nondescript, black-bound hardcover with “GOUDGE” on the binding.

At the time I hadn’t read anything by Elizabeth Goudge myself, but as she’s one of my mom’s “target” authors and collects all of her works, I mentioned it to her. I remember my mom being a bit horrified that a book like that should be collecting dust, unread and forgotten in a furniture store. She said about as much to one of my coworkers one day when she visited me at work.

This happened to be around Mother’s Day, and my coworker, with the generosity of giving away something that didn’t necessarily belong to him, immediately handed it to her as an early gift.

(Lest anyone accuse either him or my mother of stealing, I “donated” one of my books to take its place upon the shelf—A Geological Survey of Syria or something along that line.)

Reading a Sermon: D.L. Moody's "The Way to God"

In many other Christian books--about missions, theology, or church history--I’ve heard about or read quotations by Dwight Lyman Moody, an American pastor who was a pioneer of evangelistic preaching and founded the Moody Church, Moody Bible Institute, and (perhaps the most familiar to me as a reader) Moody Publishing. Therefore I was curious to find out first-hand who he was by reading one of his books.

“The children of God are not perfect; but we are perfectly His children.”

The Way to God and How to Find It seemed to be a good place to start. Some theology books can get very deep and tangled as they delve into complex issues such as the Trinity or Election. When trying out a “new” theologian, I find it best to gauge whether I like them by reading on a more basic topic, or even one I know well enough to determine whether their opinion is in line with Biblical doctrine.

Reality Ensues "In Darkest England"

“One of the secrets of the success of the Salvation Army is, that the friendless of the world find friends in it.”

Having chosen this book almost at random, from a list of free theology books I found online, I didn’t realize until I was well into this book that In Darkest England and the Way Out was written by the founder of the Salvation Army, William Booth. In fact, one could argue that this book is practically a sales pitch for the (relatively) new charity organization he’d created: the first half of the book describes “darkest England,” the social, economic, and moral problems that undermined their own country (as opposed to the possibly more popular mission field of “darkest Africa” or something along those lines); the second half of the book includes his proposed solutions, including halfway houses, job placement services, and concepts that seem almost modern such as co-ops and communal gardens.

Dissing Gissing: An Angry Review of "New Grub Street"

"It happened to catch my eye in the paper yesterday that someone was to be hanged at Newgate this morning. There’s a certain satisfaction in reflecting that it is not oneself."

This is how Jasper Milvain is introduced in New Grub Street, making pleasant conversation over breakfast with his sisters and mother. One-third through the book, I wished that Jasper was hanged at Newgate. Two-thirds through the book, the I wished I was hanged at Newgate.

There are books (few though they may be) that I actually dislike. And among that handful, New Grub Street ranks high as one I truly despise on myriad levels. I’m reviewing it for two reasons: to warn anyone who is reading this to avoid this book at all costs, and to be able to delete it from my e-reader with the satisfaction of first venting my grievances against it.

In essence, this is a story about writer’s block. Not that this is Gissing’s intended theme--which is something to do with the corruption of writing as an art by publishers and critics into something commercial and petty--but because the majority of the page count is devoted to people having writer’s block, that’s what it really is about.

Good Steampunk is Hard to Find

The obligatory introductory definition of Steampunk: Victorian Science Fiction. This is oversimplified, has many arguable diverging theories, and has many variations (alternate realities, possible futures, not to mention the many related or offshoot genres of Clockpunk, Gaslamp Fantasy, Dieselpunk, etc.), but when one has to explain Steampunk to someone in three words, “Victorian Science Fiction” is what I opt for.

Theoretically, Steampunk is one of my favorite genres. It combines my favorite TV genre (Sci Fi) with my favorite period of literature (roughly 1830-1915). Often Steampunk attempts to “recreate” the brand of sci fi that the original sci fi authors wrote, such as Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea or H.G. Well’s The Time Machine. Other genres tend to get spliced in: Horror, akin to H.P Lovecraft, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, or Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; mystery (particularly Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories); and high adventure (such as the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs or H. Rider Haggard). Historical figures (whose true lives were larger than life) like Nikola Tesla are often fictionalized or at least used as guidelines for the technological wizards that often populate Steampunk stories.

What Do Mother's Day and "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" Have in Common?

As I continue in my brilliantly brilliant plan to overhaul this blog, I seem to have accidentally deleted my original review of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. There are probably plenty of reviews of this classic and much-beloved story swirling around the internet, so many that my paltry offering may not be missed. However, it’s important to me to have it mentioned on my blog.

You see, this was one of the first chapter books I read to myself, and it came about in a rather devious parental way:

As long as I can remember I have either loved reading or have longed to know how to read. My preliterate years were spent pretending to read out of my favorite picture books (which I had memorized), and clearly recall that I would stare at the words—strange symbols of black on white, curls and lines and dots that I knew translated into language—and will myself to understand.

Reading was literally a magic skill.

Just as it’s hard to tell the exact moment a stack of kindling becomes fire, it’s hard to tell when I learned to read. But in any case, I did. Finally I was there! I, too, had this magic power!

Thoughts on “The Man Against the Sky” by Edwin Arlington Robinson

While it’s no longer April, I realized that I had only one more poem on my “list” of pieces from The Oxford Book of American Verse, so might as well finish up with one more poem by Edwin Arlington Robinson, The Man Against the Sky.

Mostly alone he goes

This poem is centered on the idea that there are several outlooks on life—perceptions, worldviews, philosophies—and that each individual has the freedom to choose which outlook they’re going to use as they live.

Even he who climbed and vanished may have taken
Down to the perils of a depth not known,
From death defended though by men forsaken,
The bread that every man must eat alone;
He may have walked while others hardly dared
Look on to see him stand where many fell

The first perspective is that of a one who lives courageously, yet isolated. It brings to mind the proverbial problem that “it’s lonely at the top,” because the deeds of great leaders are often admired without a full comprehension of the sacrifices that were a part of those deeds.

Poetry Thoughts 2018: James Russell Lowell's "A Fable for Critics"

Poems stereotypically deal with weighty topics like love, death, transience, time, art, nature, humanity…and yet, sometimes poems are simply writing that rhymes. Sometimes poems are even funny—and I’m not just talking bawdy limericks, but witty satires. A Fable for Critics is basically a compendium of literary criticism of some of the other poets contained in The Oxford Book of American Verse, which makes James Russell Lowell’s work rather “meta.” And, considering he’s a poet criticizing his peers (perhaps betters?), it can come across as varied tones of tongue-in-cheek sarcasm, passive-aggressive jealousy, and sometimes just plain mudslinging. I loved it.

Poetry Thoughts 2018: John Greenleaf Whittier's "Proem" and "Songs of Labor"

Although sometimes his grammar is a bit archaic and forced, and he has a tendency to use antiquated language such as "thine" and "thou," I really enjoyed the section of The Oxford Book of American Verse devoted to the poetry of John Greenleaf Whittier. Here are a couple of his poems and my thoughts:

Poetry Thoughts 2018: Robinson's "Eros Tyrannos"

A common poem assigned in lit classes when I was in college was My Last Duchess by Robert Browning. In this poem the narrator is a Duke who is giving a tour of his home, points out a portrait of his “last Duchess” (which means she hasn’t been his only Duchess), and the rest of his monologue makes it clear that he not only counts the portrait among his many trophies, but also the woman who holds that position. It’s a rather creepy, sexist, socially critical poem, and despite its morbid subject matter I liked it for addressing a part of life that often gets swept under the carpet.

Eros Turannos by Edwin Arlington Robinson is the first poem since college that has given me the same sort of vibe. When I searched for a translation I found the title means “Love the King” in Greek, though I would interpret it more as tyrant than king, taking the poem’s contents into consideration. In fact, from my one semester of New Testament Greek I took in high school (thanks, Mom!) I would say that it should rather be interpreted as "tyrant love."

Poetry Thoughts 2018: Introduction

It took me a few years, but at the beginning of 2018 I finally finished The Oxford Book of American Verse. From Anne Bradstreet to Robert Lowell, for over 1,100 pages, I sampled what the literary critics and poetry enthusiasts considered the best of American verse in 1950.

Contrary to how I treat my other books, I often break the no-tampering rule and allow myself to write (with pencil, mind!) in them. This is the way I can keep track of my initial opinions and perceptions, and as needed diagram the meaning of some of the headier works. Unlike prose, I have found that my opinion of specific poems or poets may change over time.