Dear Arthur - Stick with Holmes, This Just Wasn't Your Jam

Despite rumors of unrest in the region, a group of sightseers in Egypt venture too close to Dervish territory, leading to them into the clutches of radical Islamic guerillas. These unfortunate tourists—of American, Irish, British, and French backgrounds, along with their Egyptian servants, tour guides, and “bodyguards”—are forced to travel farther away from friendly territory to a fate of slavery, death…or (for the women in the group) worse. With the chance of rescue dwindling with every sand dune they pass, their only hope is to convert to Islam under duress…or to escape.

Reviewing Elizabeth Goudge's "The Dean's Watch" and "Gentian Hill"

After discovering Elizabeth Goudge through Green Dolphin Street—originally the movie, then reading the book itself—I decided that this was definitely an author whose bibliography I would exhaust. Goudge’s writing is unique, complex, and thoughtful. The plots are secondary to the characters, almost each of which is developed in exquisite (sometimes excruciating) detail. The writing is dense, sometimes dry, and so her books aren’t given to binging several in a row.

As I’ve slowly made my way through her bibliography, I’ve finally made it far enough to start recognizing a pattern. Mentally, I can stack her books in distinctive piles:

There is, of course, the Wow I Can’t Believe This Book Actually Exists It’s Like the Holy Grail of Reading pile, which contains Green Dolphin Street and The Rosemary Tree.

Unfortunately, there is also the I Really Tried to Like This For Your Sake, Elizabeth, But Let’s Be Honest I Don’t pile…God So Loved the World, The Child of the Sea and The White Witch are hesitantly, tentatively placed here. A Book of Comfort is also here, not because I didn’t have parts that I enjoyed, but rather that there was just so much that was dull and humorless and failed to strike any chord with me, that I would forget that I’d even read if I hadn’t written a blog post about it!

Finally, there’s the Elizabeth You Have Betrayed Me pile, where the books are not only “meh” but downright impossible for me to think about with a trace of fondness. It’s a small stack, but one that seems to have a general rule that governs it: the children’s books. That’s right, Little White Horse and I Saw Three Ships. That’s where you belong!

And now I have two more books to add to their respective piles.

Modern Medieval: The Literature of Chretien de Troyes

As I’ve written before--probably more than once--Erec et Enide is one of my favorite Arthurian stories. I was excited to begin reading other Arthurian romances by the same author, Chrétien de Troyes:

• Cliges
• Lancelot
• Yvain
• Perceval

And, for the most part, he lived up to the hype. One thing that de Troyes does (that I haven’t noticed much in other “original” Arthurian tales) is give his characters introspection. For instance, when Cliges first meets his true love, Fenice, de Troyes devotes several pages to each of them, relating their inner dialog in almost stream-of-consciousness fluidity.

Reviewing “The Clocks” by Agatha Christie

It started out with such promise. 

A young typist with a shadowy past is assigned to go to 19 Wilbraham Crescent. Said typist, Sheila Webb, goes to said address…and finds a corpse surrounded by clocks. Just as she has discovered the dead man, a blind woman comes in—the real owner of the house, Miss Pebmarsh. Sheila goes hysterical and runs out into the street, bumping into marine biologist Colin Lamb—who, luckily, is actually a British spy who has friends in the police force, and thus can instantly become a first-person narrator.

Third-person narrative takes turns with Colin as he joins Detective Inspector Hardcastle on the routine rounds of interviewing all the possible suspects, most of them neighbors who are Rather Suspicious. Somewhere along the line Christie remembered that she meant this to be a Hercule Poirot novel, so she has Colin also coincidentally be old friends with the famous detective. Colin visits Poirot at his home, where Poirot is going bonkers from boredom. After a rather awkward diatribe of various mystery writers, Colin finally gives Poirot the Cliffs Notes of what has happened so far. Poirot proceeds to stay in his flat for almost the entirety of the book, only showing up at the end as a Belgian ex Machina to solve the crime without doing any legwork.

Reviewing "God So Loved the World" by Elizabeth Goudge

“The life of Our Lord is like a great symphony. It has three movements, with a silence between each when we are left wondering what is happening. The first movement is the music of his babyhood and boyhood, the second of his ministry and suffering and death, and the third of his resurrection.”

~ Elizabeth Goudge, God So Loved the World, Chapter 4 , page 39

My reading habits do not naturally gravitate towards books that are retellings of true historical events. If truth is stranger than fiction, it is also more important and meaningful. What fictionalizations do accomplish, however, is making something come alive in our imaginations, so that historical events are not just some facts laid out in dry terms in an encyclopedia or textbook, but instead were real actions involving real people with feelings, hopes, dreams, fears, and failings.

Writing about Biblical events is an even more perilous undertaking. Even watching a VeggieTales interpretation of a Bible story can lead one into a misconception…and not just that David and Goliath were not, in fact, an asparagus and pickle (respectively). So if I avoid fictionalizations of history, that goes double, usually, for Biblical fictionalizations.

Reviewing "The Question that Never Goes Away" by Philip Yancey

Why?

If there is a good, all-powerful, all-knowing God, WHY do bad things happen?

In a world that often feels like it’s spinning out of control, it’s easy to ask this question. And even when life seems to be going alright, the question never quite goes away.

Reviewing "The Sittaford Mystery" by Agatha Christie

Originally titled The Murder at Hazelmoor, The Sittaford Mystery possesses all the needed factors to make a quintessential Agatha Christie whodunit:

• Locked room” murder situation
• Small English village in the country
• Variety pack of suspicious characters
• Distracting fear of foreigners
• Level-headed police investigator
• Charismatic and beautiful young woman
• Ace reporter helping said young woman with an independent investigation
• Lots of random red herrings

Reviewing "Moon of Israel" by H. Rider Haggard

After the colossal disappointment that was She, I was dubious about trying another H. Rider Haggard novel that wasn’t part of the Allan Quatermain series. It was a pleasant surprise, then, when I read Moon of Israel: A Tale of the Exodus. In fact, I was immediately impressed when I read Haggard’s forward, which detailed where he got his historical information for this story from Sir Gaston Maspero, Director of the Cairo Museum and one of the first "serious" Egyptologists (as opposed to tomb raiders and sensational adventurers). As an Egyptology geek this intrigued me.

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.

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.)

Reviewing Agatha Christie's "A Murder is Announced"

I read A Murder is Announced by Agatha Christie in tandem with The Rosemary Tree. While thematically and stylistically different, the setting of 1950-something English small towns sometimes made me mix up the two.

In this Miss Marple mystery, several characters are introduced reading the paper in their separate homes, and finding the strangest announcement that a murder is to occur at Letitia Blacklock’s house at 6:30 that night. For some reason a ton of people decide to show up, assuming it’s a joke or theme party of some kind. But since this is Agatha Christie, we readers all know that no matter how frivolous the warning, the murder itself is dead serious.

Reviewing "The Swoop!" by P.G. Wodehouse

“It will be news to the Man in the Street to learn that, with the possible exception of the Black Hand, the Scouts are perhaps the most carefully-organised secret society in the world.”

The Swoop is one of the few PG Wodehouse stories that does not involve:

     a) A love-stricken chap

     b) A beautiful girl

     c) An overbearing aunt

     d) Theft or attempted theft at a stereotypical country house

In fact, it is very unlike most PG Wodehouse books I’ve read, in that it doesn’t include a lot of the twists and turns and mistaken identities and broken engagements and other convoluted situations from which Jeeves is ever extricating Bertie Wooster.

Instead, this story is about Clarence Chugwater and his fellow Boy Scouts as they oust an invasion on England from…well, everyone. Despite being different from the other books I’ve read by Wodehouse, there are still the hijinks, the lightning-quick wordplay, and the over-the-top characters.

A List of Recommended Winter Reads

In my previous post I explained the why Winter Reads are—or should be—different from the usual Summer Reading fare. Winter Reads should take advantage of the fact that (if you’re in the Northern Hemisphere like me) you are cooped up inside during long nights and cold days, and finally turn to those books that require a bit more focus and patience to appreciate. In this post I’ll present some books I’ve read in winters past. Without further ado, and in no particular order, my recommended winter readings include:

Not Everything Is Open To Interpretation

Reading Is Like a Puzzle

Language is a fun but convoluted thing. For example: emotions are real things that affect our lives, but when it comes to putting what one feels into words (even just words thought rather than spoken aloud or written out), it’s not always easy to thoroughly and accurately describe those feelings.

If we can’t even use words to explain these things to ourselves, it’s no wonder that we have difficulties communicating with each other! Luckily in most cases we can rely not just on words, but also on gesture, inflection, tone of voice, facial expression, to explain what our words mean.

What also helps is if we’re talking to a friend or family member or coworker who knows us, and therefore can fill in the gaps or “autocorrect” any mistakes in speech or writing that we might make. This is why, when at a loss for the right word, we can say to them, “Oh, you know what I mean!” and assume that yes, they do know, or at least can make an educated guess.

So reading, in addition to being symbols made of lines and dots on paper and screen to be deciphered into words, assigns the additional task to the reader of interpreting the words into actual meaning. It’s communication without the safety net of hearing the writer’s voice or seeing their face or gestures. Sometimes the reader has no knowledge of the writer at all, and so can’t interpret sincerity from irony with any real confidence.

Emmuska Orczy's Lord Tony's Wife - A Parody - Part 2

Last we left our heroes, Lord Tony (friend and sidekick to the Scarlet Pimpernel himself) and French aristocrat Yvonne de Kernogan in oblivious marital bliss. But Yvonne's British-hating father is intent on having the marriage declared null and void, and marry her off to the rich Frenchman Martin-Roget. Unbeknownst to everyone, Martin-Roget is actually Pierre Adet, a Revolutionary who has sworn revenge against the de Kernogans because of the unjust death of his father...

Scene 6

DE KERNOGAN: Oh my daughter how I’ve missed you!

YVONNE: Dad? Are you feeling okay? You’re looking all sentimental and suspiciously not furious with me for marrying an Englishman against your will. Also, how can you have missed me? It’s only been like 16 hours since I eloped.

DE KERNOGAN: How can you say such hurtful things about your loving papa? You know I’ve always had your best interest at heart.

YVONNE: So what was all that “You’d better marry Martin-Roget or else!” stuff?

DE KERNOGAN: I only wanted you to marry Martin-Roget because he was rich and handsome and French and awesome (although those last two things are so alike it’s redundant). If I’d known you already had a boyfriend I would have supported your decision.

YVONNE: I told you I was in love with Lord Tony! And us getting married should be no surprise to you. After all, look at the title of this book! I’m Lord Tony’s Wife!

DE KERNOGAN: Still, there was no need to keep this a secret from your old man, to get married in the middle of the night rather than in pomp and circumstance! I didn’t even get to give you away at the altar!

YVONNE: Well, Dad, I guess I’ve completely misjudged you on account of you behaving like a controlling jerk all my life. I’m so sorry! Here, stay with us for a while and completely ruin our honeymoon.

LORD TONY: I told you we should have gone to Niagara Falls.

DE KERNOGAN: Okay, you’ve talked me into it. But just so you know, *cough cough* I’m not feeling all that good. You know how frail and sickly your poor elderly father is, and how close to death…you know what I think I want to go home and die in my own bed.

YVONNE: Oh no!

DE KERNOGAN: Don’t you worry about me. *cough cough* Weak and helpless as I am, I can make it home on my own…probably.

YVONNE: Father you can’t go alone! Tony, is it okay if I escort my father home?

LORD TONY: Sure! What can go wrong?

Emmuska Orczy's Lord Tony's Wife - A Parody - Part 1

As with the other Emmuska Orczy Scarlet Pimpernel books I’ve read thus far, Lord Tony’s Wife did not disappoint me in its entertainment value. This is a novel placed during the French Revolution and decidedly pro-aristocracy, but political leanings aside this novel—along with the others of its genre—is good, hyperdramatic, swashbuckling fun. And because of this, it's also extremely fun to summarize, hence the "sweded" drama below.

In this installment, one of our hero the Scarlet Pimpernel’s sidekicks, Sir Tony, takes center stage with his love, Yvonne. But, as with almost all Pimpernel novels, the cunning, daring, proto-Batman legend plays a pivotal role. Also back for more punishment is the Pimpernel’s sworn enemy Chauvelin. As their cat-and-mouse game continues, poor Tony and (not really a spoiler alert) his wife end up as pawns while the dogged Chauvelin once again tries to trap his nemesis.

Our story begins with Pierre Adet, fiery revolutionary and son of the decent local miller, stirring up a mob to go after the local aristocrat, le duc de Kernogan. Just as the reader begins to hear the “Kill the Beast” song from Beauty and the Beast, along comes a carriage, driven by faithful servant Jean-Marie, and conveniently carrying the duc’s only child, the beautiful and headstrong Yvonne:

Scene 1

YVONNE: Jean-Marie! Why have we stopped here?

JEAN-MARIE: Because I just got a tipoff that there’s a mob at the crossroads.

YVONNE: So?

JEAN-MARIE: They have scythes and spades and axes.

YVONNE: What’s your point?

JEAN-MARIE: I think we should send a scout to see what’s going on.

YVONNE: So what you’re saying is you’re afraid of a few murderous bloodthirsty revolutionaries.

JEAN-MARIE: Yup.

YVONNE: Jean-Marie, that’s silly! I’m the proud and feisty daughter of the local aristocrat and therefore have nothing to fear from such aristocrat-hating scum. Take me home, Jeeves!

JEAN-MARIE: But my lady…

YVONNE: If you don’t take me home you are disobeying my orders and therefore should just go join those rebels! Also, I will fire you.

JEAN-MARIE: Fine. But don’t get mad when…

PIERRE: Oh ho ho, what do we have here?

JEAN-MARIE: Nothing. Just me and some random anonymous non-aristocrat person taking an evening cruise suspiciously in the direction of the de Kernogan estate.

MOB: It’s totally de Kernogan’s carriage! Let’s see who’s inside!

YVONNE: Hum, I’m starting to think that maybe my cowardly servant was right.

MOB: It’s de Kernogan’s daughter! Let’s throw her into the mud like her kind has done to our people all this time!

YVONNE: Yeahhhh definitely starting to regret my pride and fearlessness.

PIERRE *breaking into the carriage* I’ve got you, my pretty!

YVONNE: EEEK YOU’RE LIKE THE DEVIL HIMSELF *faints*

JEAN-MARIE: I’m getting outta here! *drives away* Hum that wasn’t as hard as I thought. I wonder why I didn’t just drive full speed through the mob, to begin with? Oh well, I’m sure this little incident will have no long-lasting consequences….

Reading and Other Media

Perhaps ironic for a book review blogger to admit, but I feel rather out of touch when it comes to feeding my love of books with technology and social media. One of my friends keeps urging me to get into BookTube, where she says YouTubers discuss or review books via video. There are also podcasts, websites (such as Sparknotes, Amazon, Google Books, and Goodreads), blogs like this one, forums, and of course the zeitgeist-obligatory Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr pages.

I've seen many of these in passing, usually when searching for more information on a particular book. I'm more likely to delve deeper into things like Facebook or YouTube if a book is particularly obscure and therefore hard to find sources of criticism or reviews on it. While I really would be interested in spending more time surfing literary-related interwebs, I've come to the sad conclusion that I simply don't have enough time. One could, I think, spend all of one's reading time on reading (or listening or watching material) about reading or about books instead of actually reading those books. And, since I've got my own blog, it's more of a priority to read published material. 

Unless I were to pioneer a new trail and become a blogger who blogs about other people's blogs and reviews their book reviews. 

Prydain is NOT Middle Earth

There are several similarities between Lloyd Alexander’s The Chronicles of Prydain and J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings:

Ø  Epic fantasy story-line with a theme of Good vs. Evil and the fate of the world is at stake.

Ø  Villain is a largely unseen enemy working behind the scenes or from afar. Arawn and Sauron even sound somewhat alike. Mordor and Annuvin are also alike in being a sort of realm of Death.

Ø  Though not uncommon in all fantasy novels or even ancient mythology, both series have special enchanted objects. Some, like the Ring of Power and the Black Cauldron, serve as MacGuffins for the characters to pursue. Eilonwy’s magic bauble and the Palantir are seemingly-innocuous magical objects that turn out to be much more powerful than the characters believe at first. And then there are the special swords: Narsil in The Lord of the Rings, and Drnwyn in The Chronicles of Prydain, both of which are meant for specific people to wield and are used as symbols of the power to defeat evil.

Ø  Both books involve “fantasy” beings such as wizards, dwarves, and giant animals (although Llyan is way preferable to Shelob in my humble opinion!). There are also the Cauldron-born, Huntsmen, and the Horned King, which could easily be compared with orcs (specifically Uruk-hai, as both the Cauldron-born and Uruk-hai are “manufactured” warriors), ring-wraiths, the Wraith-king.

Ø  Like the stewards of Gondor, the Sons of Don have kept the evil at bay for a long time before the story begins.

Ø  Caer Dallben, a sort of farming sanctuary, seems to share the same timeless safety as the Shire, and the value of simple living and fruitful labor that Taran eventually learns is a lot like the Hobbit mindset.

Ø  Many characters bear similar characteristics or serve similar roles:

o   Aside from Arawn – Sauron, the best example of this is the commonalities between the warrior-prince Gwydion and Ranger/heir apparent Aragorn.*

o   Eilonwy – Eowyn

o   Gurgi – Gollum

o   Doli – Gimli

o   Dallben – Gandalf

o   Magg – Wormtongue

o   King Pryderi – Saruman

Ø  SPOILER ALERT BELOW

No seriously I'm about to spoil the ending

I'm warning you

If you haven't read the book this is your last chance to stop here and not find out the ending

Okayyyy here goes:

The Chronicles of Prydain: The Covers

Yes, I am still talking about Lloyd Alexander's The Chronicles of Prydain. You're welcome.  

Today I want to show you all the pretty...or not-so-pretty...covers. Most of the problems with the not-so-pretty covers are related to the art being dated, as all five volumes were published in the sixties, and the sixties, seventies, and eighties have not necessarily aged well.  

This is a collection of all five novels, but the image itself is lifted from a climactic scene in 

The High King, which makes it spoilerific. 

 

I've never seen this cover in person, and the details of images online aren't extremely clear. What I like about it: the Horned King (a villain of The Book of Three rearing his black stallion ominously in the background, with Taran and Hen Wen in the foreground. What I don't like about it: all that shafts-of-sunlight-in-a-magical-waterfally-glen is giving me Disney's Bambi vibes for some reason. And it sort of derails the ominousness achieved by having the Horned King in the first place. 

The Chronicles of Prydain: The Companions

This doesn't really fit my idea of The Companions themselves,
but it does remind me a bit of King Smoit and how I imagine his army "practiced" for battle.

One of the best things about The Chronicles of Prydain are the characters. Each is written with such care and obvious affection on the part of Lloyd Alexander, and each is very different from each other so that their interactions are dynamic and interesting no matter what the circumstance. There’s Gwydion, a warrior Prince of Don who is always compared to a shaggy gray wolf. There’s Achren, the beautiful but wicked and perhaps ancient enchantress and former queen of Prydain itself. There’s Dallben, an enchanter who is supposedly wise but spends most of his time either napping or cranky because someone woke him from a nap (although there is one extremely awesome chapter in The High King where he blew these preconceptions of mine out of the water). There’s Coll, a great warrior who just wants to get back to tending the turnips in his garden. There’s Orddu, Orwen, and Orgoch, three mysterious women who can appear as hags or beautiful women and perhaps represent the Fates, who are both horrifying and hilarious in their kindly attempts to turn the heroes into toads (or worse….Orgoch’s habit of licking her chops tips us off that she’s the grim reaper one).

Then there are characters like the good-natured but cotton-headed Prince Rhun, the philosopher-potter Annlaw Clay-Shaper, the resourceful family man Llonio, the pessimistic and hyperchondriac Marsh-wiggle watchman Gwystyl, the giant music-loving cat Llyan, the obnoxious former giant Glew, the very convincing villain Dorath, the sarcastic messenger-crow Kaw, Medwyn the animal-lover and possible Welsh interpretation of Noah, and the boisterous King Smoit. I haven’t even mentioned them all, but you get the idea of what a colorful cast of characters peoples the fair land of Prydain.  

But most importantly there are our heroes, the Companions: