Greetings, fellow humans! This is a good week, particularly and especially so because Hamlette is throwing a blog party all around the theme of fictional siblings. So what do you guys think I am going to do? I am going to squeeze time to write up a little appreciatory list of some of my favorite siblings in books into my busy schedule, that is what I am going to do.
And here the list is. Nothing fancy or exhaustive, just the ones that came to mind and the words that came to mind to say about them while I was sitting in a barn at work waiting for turkeys to show up. (As one does.)
Alexei, Ivan, & Dmitri Karamazov
So, the brothers Karamazov are adult siblings. They’ve gone their different ways in life. They don’t necessarily approve of each other’s choices. Also, none of them actually have the same mother.
Anyway. It doesn’t matter. Because they’re still brothers. They still care about each other. They will listen to each other’s problems. They will tell each other the truth when no one else will. They will hide things from each other more than from strangers because they are ashamed, because they respect each other’s opinions.
It’s just so real.
It’s so people-caught-in-a-dysfunctional-mess-of-a-family-trying-to-care-for-each-other-and-make-it-work-anyway.
I especially love that Dmitri has to work up the courage to ask Alyosha his question. Because he needs the honest answer and Alyosha is the only one he can trust to give it…but this also means he knows Alyosha will be honest and he’s scared of that. That’s very true to my experience of siblings. Y’all can depend on each other 100%. It’s great, but sometimes it’s also intimidating.
Barbara & Dick Grahame
The best. Love.
Okay. Barbara and Dick are sister and brother in New England during the Revolutionary War. Dick is trying really hard to do a good job doing…counterinsurgency? Sort of? He’s in the Continental Army. He’s doing his best. He’s slightly full of himself and slightly insecure at the same time, and he really does get better.
Barbara is trying not to kill her aunt. Her aunt is the worst. Barbara is also trying to save her brother and outwit a terribly intelligent enemy who is in her house.
Barbara is awesome.
Barbara and Dick working together are also awesome. (THE BEAN POT. THAT IS ALL.)
Also their confidence in each other and the way they tease each other and how well they work together…I love them dearly. I almost wish the whole book (that would be The Sherwood Ring) was just Barbara and Dick solving problems together. Wouldn’t that be spectacular?
Maki & Tsanu
Sibling love drives the whole plot of Emily Hayse’s beautiful Alaskan fantasy Seventh City. Maki’s and Tsanu’s interactions in the book are actually quite limited, just because of the plot being what it is. But their care for each other is nonetheless palpable. I love the protectiveness they have over each other: Tsanu has older-brother-for-baby-sister protectiveness, and Maki has younger-sister-for-older-brother protectiveness. These are very different flavors of protectiveness and both strongly present. Also I love their pride in each other.
Also, Maki disguises herself as a boy and joins a strange group of soldiers and accompanies them on a dangerous winter journey far, far out of her homeland, just to maybe be there to save her brother’s life. It’s just…beautiful.
Julia, Betsy, & Margaret Ray
There are several sort of iconic girlhood books that every young girl reads and loves, right? There’s Little Women, there’s the Little House books, there’s Anne of Green Gables. You know. I read and loved all of those, but I must say that my particularly special series, as a girl, was always the Betsy-Tacy books.
I have reread them as an adult and, lemme tell you, they hold up.
But something that sticks out to me more as an adult—or possibly it’s just more prominent in the later books when the characters are older—is the relationship between the three Ray sisters.
Julia plans to be an opera singer, cannot be dragged out of bed in the morning, and likes to have lots of beaus on a string.
Betsy has a charming smile that distresses her because of the gap in her teeth, plans to be a writer, and doesn’t really know why you’d want a bunch of beaus on a string but does want just one—maybe; maybe she just wants to be crazy with her friends and somehow get through school with her grades intact.
Margaret doesn’t need boys because she has sisters and cats, is quiet and full of dignity, and prefers horses to automobiles.
They are incredibly different from each other and have incredibly different dreams. They nonetheless rejoice in the fulfillment of each other’s dreams as if in the fulfillment of their own. And beware the avenging sister of the sister you have wronged. There’s a lovely bit—I can’t remember; I think maybe it’s in the very first book?—when Betsy and Tacy are shocked to find Julia and Katie (their older sisters) mad on their behalf and sticking up for them. They’re very young at this point and tend to think of their older sisters as annoying people who don’t always want to play with you and probably think they’re older and cooler than you, so it’s lovely to see them realize, oh, our older sisters care about us! And they can solve problems we can’t!
Cyrus & Antigone Smith
First of all, how cool is it to have a brother named Daniel who has visions, a sister named Antigone who tries to save her brothers, and a youngest brother named Cyrus who explodes out of nowhere to topple ancient institutions and rulers?
Anyway, it’s not that I don’t like Daniel, but the sibling relationship I love in N. D. Wilson’s Ashtown Burials books—one of my favorite things about the entire series, in fact—is that between responsible-older-sister Antigone and frustrated-younger-brother Cyrus.
Something you commonly see—and yes, I eat this up—is an older brother who’s very protective of a younger sister. Because…yeah. What’s slightly more rare, I think, is an older sister who’s very protective of her younger brother. And what’s even more rare than that is a realistic portrayal of just how powerless you really are as an older sister.
Antigone can’t control Cyrus’s decisions. She can’t make sure he’s safe at all times. She can’t make a world where he grew up with parents or where he listens to her when she’s right and he’s being reckless or where he will never face anything that she’s not strong and competent enough to save him from. Constantly, she has to watch her brother deal with things no kid should have to deal with, and that’s all she can do. Watch. She’s so caught up in trying to deal with what’s happening to her brothers (especially the little one, for whom she feels responsible) that she forgets that she also is dealing with things she shouldn’t have to (and doing it very much alone, because Cyrus forgets that too, because thirteen-year-old boys are thirteen-year-old boys).
But Antigone and Cyrus stick together, physically when possible, confident of each other’s love no matter what. Even if they are the only two boxing monkeys, the boxing monkeys will always number at least two (well, three actually; we do love Nolan too).
As unlikely-to-happen-in-real-life as the events of these books are, the sibling bond is one of the strongest and realest I’ve ever read. I really, really love it.
Rosalind, Skye, Jane, & Batty Penderwick
I have one sister who is Skye, another who is Batty. They insist I am a conglomeration of Jane and Rosalind (crazy writer and responsible eldest), so I guess this book (The Penderwicks, by Jeanne Birdsall) is just a book about us.
It’s definitely a book about real sisters. Squabbles, secret meetings, clashing personalities, adventures, taking-care-of-certain-things-so-Dad-doesn’t-have-to-know (we’re not lying to him, he just doesn’t have to know), having each other’s backs.
It’s also a book about loving real people, not idealized versions of them. Skye, like my sister, is blunt, is genuinely not as emotional as other people and can’t stand being expected to feel ways that she doesn’t feel, and has a very hard time being nice to a little sister that annoys her a lot. This isn’t ideal, but it’s who Skye is, and her sisters love her and stick up for her anyway.
Batty is shy, behaves oddly because of it, has attachment issues due to having lost her mother so early, and is just more comfortable around animals than people. Some characters understand this and are very kind to her. Some understand but have a very hard time not being unkind because it’s annoying (Skye). Even Skye, though, is angry when Mrs. Tifton thinks there’s something wrong with Batty.
There is nothing wrong with Batty. I don’t think you want to fight all three Older Penderwick Sisters, so you’d best agree.
Doug, Christopher, & Lucas Swieteck
It’s the saddest thing in the world when a screwed-up parent screws up the relationships of his kids. Doug’s father, of Okay for Now, is definitely screwed up. That’s about the best you can say of him.
It’s the most beautiful thing in the world when, flying in the face of all odds and all expectations, the kids try to be better than their parents. With a lot of eye-opening suffering and a few touches of unmerited, blinding kindness, these brothers start to try to be brothers instead of mini-versions of their father.
Christopher watching the kids, Lucas looking for a job, Doug looking past the past and giving them second chances (that they don’t necessarily deserve)…I HAVE THE FEELINGS.
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Welp, that’s my entry for the We Love Siblings Week blog party! Wholesome sisters and redemption brothers, seems to be what my taste runs to. Here’s the link to Hamlette’s general link-up post, and I now pass the microphone to you, my dear commenters: Have you a particular love for sibling stories? For any of these stories in particular? Would you also yell at a rich lady in her own house to defend your little sister’s honor?
The gist of it: This kid is studying at Harvard to be a lawyer. He gets some sickness that affects his eyes and renders him unable to go back to school until they improve. He wearies of lying around his parents’ house and signs on as a fo’c’sle hand on a merchant ship bound around Cape Horn to trade along the coast of Mexico and California (part of Mexico at the time). This is the 1830s, so no Gold Rush or anything, just packing cowhides on ships until it’s time to sail back around Cape Horn (in the winter. They do this in the winter). Kid keeps a diary and publishes this book about the experience.
We love to see:
Firsthand account of life onboard ship for a common sailor
Firsthand account of what coastal California was like back then
Dana being literally overjoyed at finding a book to read in this guy’s sea-chest (relatable)
Firsthand, balanced account of the power imbalance between captains and crew—why it existed, and how it was abused with little recourse for the victims
Knowing that Dana went on after this to practice law and advocate for sailors’ rights
Them actually surviving the winter voyage (they could’ve EASILY not)
Not being, myself, employed as a sailor in the 1800s (thank the good merciful heavens)
Sometimes Dana’s reflections were really interesting, and some of the descriptions—like of the iceberg fields—beautiful
Less-good things:
I won’t lie, it could get a little slow; but that’s the nature of most nonfiction
In sum: I liked it a lot, as its own narrative and as an addition to my historical awareness. I also think the author is pretty cool.
The Lonesome Gods
The gist of it: Johannes Verne (besides being not afraid) is orphaned as a young child and raised in the desert by solitude, books, and his Cahuilla friends. Once he’s grown, he moves to Los Angeles to get his education under the auspices of Miss Nesselrode, a mysterious and competent lady who liked his father. There are horse roundups, romance, a grandfather who hates him, and a great-aunt who loves him. And there is Tahquitz.
Here for:
The desert
The silent friendship & exchange of books in the house of Tahquitz
Tia Elena, a bit
Jacob Finney, for sure
But mostly the desert
Not a fan of:
A bunch of philosophizing that wasn’t for me
A romance that rose to the level of “I don’t technically dislike it” and no further
Too long
In sum: I am very fond of Louis L’Amour in general, and this wasn’t bad (you can’t write a book about a love affair with the desert that’s bad), but it felt…thin. I wanted it to be the great American frontier epic novel that I sometimes dream of writing, so I could say, great, it’s already been written, I feel no compulsion to do so myself. But now I just feel more of a compulsion than ever. 🙄
Seventh City
By Emily Hayse
The gist of it: Thirteen-year-old Maki’s brother is captured and village burned by a company of the Invaders who’ve plagued her country since she was very young. She sets off after them on their journey north (they are on an almost unsurvivable quest for Inik Katsuk, the Seventh City), determined to get her brother back. They will all encounter things they did not believe existed: from virtue in the enemy to prehistoric monsters.
The good:
Maki as a fierce, loyal, very thirteen-year-old thirteen-year-old spitfire
The fact that, because of Maki being, y’know, thirteen, there were no weird or potentially creepy elements to her travelling with and bonding with this group of male soldiers. (Like, there could’ve still been very bad things, of course. But with Maki being thirteen, there was nothing ambiguous, and I deeply appreciated that since it would’ve so muddied the waters of this otherwise very beautifully and intentionally simple story.)
The found family, it’s so beautiful
The doctor who just wanted people not to die
The guy who just liked his horses and wanted people not to abuse them
The Alaskan northernness. Gorgeous, y’all.
The done-with-a-perfectly-light-touch inclusion of mythical elements
THE ORCA UNDER THE ICE (terrifying)
The theme of Maki realizing she does not have to and cannot carry the world on her shoulders. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen this before in a book. Oh my gosh. I had emotions.
The theme of different people wrestling with the different ways they feel compelled to respond to injustice in the world—whether that is by stark opposition or attempted temperance from a friend’s position—and the conflict between all that—and the validity of both points of view, to an extent
Quibbles:
I didn’t quite love the ending. For two reasons, I think. It wasn’t bad, and the Inik Katsuk reveal wasn’t disappointing or anything, but I guess it felt underwhelming because it didn’t super tie up the themes that we had going
And the other reason is that I felt the captain was…treated a little too leniently. Like. He was a literal madman, and it was not okay the things he did to other people—in pursuit of his quest and otherwise. (He reminded me a lot of Henry Morton Stanley in some ways…I wonder if that was intentional.) It was Very, Very Not Okay. And the narrative obviously recognized that, because we’re in Maki’s head here, but at the same time, to end on such an unqualifiedly heroic moment for the captain just…felt wrong. Not nuanced enough. It might’ve worked if he’d shown any doubts at all that he was 100% in the right up to that point, but he didn’t, which was what made him so frustrating and terrifying, and…and it just did not sit right with me.
I will also say that while this book got about as close to doing historical fantasy well as you can, with real depth to the worldbuilding and an incorporation of real-world cultures that makes everything feel quite historied and lived-in (it definitely felt like real historical cultures and we just changed the names), it begs my question of: why not just use the actual history?? Literally why not?? Would’ve made it better, and it was already good.
Also…Willow. Not that I didn’t like him—he was a dear—but sometimes he wasn’t as appealing as you’d want him to be because the author was so focused on showing his soft side. And I loved his soft side! But I wished his stoic, reserved side didn’t get a little smudged out of existence by the over-focus on the other.
The upshot: Despite that unusually long-looking list of complaints, I loved this straightforward (yet profound, as they have a way of being) MG adventure/quest fantasy, and I honestly wish all my friends who love those things (along with resilient, slightly broken kid protagonists who just need a hug) would read it and love it with me.
The Black Swan
By Rafael Sabatini
The gist of it: Turns out, when the ship Miss Priscilla Harradine and her hopeful suitor Major Sands are sailing on is taken over by pirates, their mysterious and debonair fellow-passenger de Bernis is ALSO a pirate. But he’s a good pirate. We think. He’s trying to save their lives, at least, despite Major Sands’ almost incredible ability not to perceive this.
What I enjoyed:
Sabatini’s masterful prose (as ever)
Priscilla’s character (I do appreciate innocent, virtuous heroines who are also thoughtful, intelligent, and have some steel in them)
de Bernis’s character (it was just fun, you know)
de Bernis’s backstory (exiled Huguenot pirates FOR THE WIN, you guys)
That one pirate, the smart one
Whenever Sir Henry Morgan came in, I enjoyed him
The twists (predictable, but fun)
I…I may have actually liked the romance, a bit. I am a sucker for the kind of relationship where one person thinks they’re not worthy of love and the other one insists on the twin facts that a) sincere repentance and change aren’t negated by “but the things I did before were so bad!!”, and b) it’s my choice too; you don’t get to choose for me whether I love you just because you feel unworthy—and it is incredibly arrogant to try. This book didn’t do anything new or earthshaking with that, but it did do it right (as in, it didn’t conflate forgiveness with not caring that people have done bad things; Priscilla wasn’t over here disregarding her own safety because TRUE LOVE—no, she was judging him in a very clear-eyed way on his actions), which is apparently hard, given the numbers of books I’ve read that absolutely did not do it right.
Qualifying factors in the enjoyment:
Major Sands is the living definition of too stupid to live
I wanted to STRANGLE THIS MAN every time he opened his mouth or had a thought my GOSH
I know it was on purpose and I know it was supposed to be funny, but I was legit contemplating murder. Colonel Klink has nothing on Major Sands, y’all, NOTHING.
de Bernis had promise, but I would’ve liked him a little more fleshed out (and a little less perfect)
It wasn’t…very deep. Which is fine. But it definitely wasn’t, is all I’m saying.
The upshot: A swashbuckling story (that actually mainly takes place on a singular island while they clean their ship—exciting) with predictable twists, a predictable romance, not too much depth, but a lot of fun nonetheless.
The Lost Baron
By Allen French
The gist of it: It’s the 1200s, and Martin and Rosamund are two kids growing up in a quiet Cornwall fief, as a page and a lord’s daughter…except the lord mysteriously disappears one night, and the new lord is prone to moods, and some of his archers don’t treat the village fisherfolk as they should, and there’s a mysterious tunnel in the cliff…
What I dug:
That was a terrible summary up there, but I liked how it was this perfect blend of quiet everyday life and dangerous adventure
Rosamund was wonderful
I liked her and Martin’s relationship as well
The ending was very good
And wow, another book that understands the importance of actual repentance? Again, no new twist, done very straightforwardly, but that was good.
Secret passages in books make all my childhood dreams come true.
Meh:
People are not more “simple” because they are from a lower class.
Nor did everyone in the thirteenth century believe absolutely any superstition they came across.
The instances of the book implying this were few and (at least in the case of the first thing) not egregious; but this grinds my gears.
In sum: You know, I’ve always had a soft spot for MG. Specifically MG adventure fiction. But in recent years, I’ve become far more wary of just picking up anything with that label and expecting it to be good. In fact, I am now surprised when I encounter MG that doesn’t write down to its audience, doesn’t oversimplify its themes, doesn’t skimp on worldbuilding or character development because surely the kids won’t care!, and doesn’t end with a fizz of disappointment because excellent plotting apparently only matters in adult books. Well, this book surprised me and I really appreciated it. It’s not necessarily anything special, but it’s medieval hisfic (not enough of that), it has secret passages (what’s not to love, I’m serious), and it’s just solid.
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Happy late Valentine’s Day, guys. I had a post I meant to post, but I only wrote half of it, so I’ll post it someday uncorrelated with love. Also happy Lent. Boy are there years when I’m glad Lent is a thing, and this is one of them. Hopefully you feel the same. Hopefully you are reading all the good books and staying all the unfrostbitten! Take care of yourselves.
What’s up, y’all? Summer has arrived. (Not really, but 32 feels pretty nice after negative seven.)
I would show you pictures of my puppies (they’re six weeks old and have started wagging their tails when they see me and toddling over to chew on my boots), but I would like all you dear lovely blog-readers to be the people in my life who are not sick of me rhapsodizing over what cute little cottonball potatoface darlings they are. (They are such cute little cottonball potatoface darlings.)
So, instead, have a look of sorts into my mental tbr. (This is a book blog. I think.)
Maya, not too long ago, wrote this post about books she’d never read and books she wanted to read and books she didn’t care to read…and I thought it was a fun look into another reader’s brain. Anyway, although I’m pretty much the opposite of her in how my reading attitude has evolved (I used to think every classic must be worth reading, and now I tend to say “not for me” and even “I’m pretty sure this author is no good and people just like him because they’re pretentious” much more quickly), I thought it’d be fun to make my own list. I made a few changes, but for the most part I just used the categories she did!
The idea really applies to classics, but I’ve shouldered in some things that I don’t consider classics (though others do), or that aren’t well-known but have stood the test of time so they’re doing something right, or simply that are highly praised by some people I know with uppish (used affectionately) literary taste.
First we have the authors whose work I’ve read all or nearly all of, and I know I will return & return: C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, Robert Louis Stevenson, Georgette Heyer (as shamefaced as I am to say it), Lucy Maud Montgomery, Maud Hart Lovelace, Megan Whalen Turner, and Laura Ingalls Wilder. (All the female L and M authors with three names, apparently.)
Then there are those I have at some point realized I have a burning desire to read in full: G. K. Chesterton, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Rafael Sabatini, Charles Dickens, Rudyard Kipling. I want to read all the medieval epics. I don’t even know what all of them are, but I want to read all of them. Including, especially, the full Ulster cycle.
Those I have read just a little of and must return: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Dorothy L. Sayers, Rosemary Sutcliff. Surprisingly, Ernest Hemingway. And Louis L’Amour and E. B. White.
Meanwhile I can scarcely believe I have yet to read any Tolstoy, any of the Finn cycle, El Cantar de mio Cid (but actually I would like to read this in the original language, so it makes sense not to have read it before my Spanish gets better), The Voyage of Saint Brendan, The Voyage of Bran, or Piranesi. Piranesi is oddly specific (and modern) to be here, but it’s strange to me that I’ve never yet read it.
Some authors I very much want to try (but am wary): Wendell Berry, Elizabeth Goudge, Rumer Godden, Leif Enger, Joan Didion.
Some I have tried and don’t care for. I will probably never read anything more by Terry Pratchett, William Faulkner, Charlotte Brontë, Agatha Christie (though I do love Tommy & Tuppence), Flannery O’Connor, Orson Scott Card, or Madeleine L’Engle; and that bothers me not a whit. Shakespeare would once have been included in that list and he may yet come to rest there—we will see.
Some things I once greatly wanted to read, but as time has passed I’ve become content with the knowledge that I probably never will. Such are Red Rising, Wheel of Time, Les Miserables, the works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, and those of most Ancient Greek playwrights & philosophers. (I actually cannot express in words how over the weird admiration-verging-on-worship people have for the ancient Greeks and their works I am.)
And some authors I have never cared to try and never will. Thomas Hardy, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Virginia Woolf, whoever wrote To Kill a Mockingbird.
When it comes to poetry, there are poets I want to spend hours with: Rudyard Kipling, Vachel Lindsay, James Whitcomb Riley, Robert Frost, A. E. Housman, T. S. Eliot, Wilfred Owen. I’d like to spend hours better getting to know Wordsworth and Tennyson too.
Lyricists & poets are in different categories for me. I suppose because I’ve tried both things and think they require different skillsets. So, in addition to the poets, there are lyricists whose discographies I want to immerse myself in: Paul Simon, Bob Dylan, Stan Rogers, Dave Stamey, Andrew Peterson.
And composers I want to get to know intimately: Camille Saint-Saëns, Antonio Vivaldi, Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, Hildegard von Bingen; Ravel, Mendelssohn, & Bach.
Those lists aren’t complete. They’re just what came to me as I was making them. This is a short post, and I am struggling to end it. (Not that that’s unusual.) I really just want to know what would go on y’all’s lists.
Good morrow, my dears! I hope that you like snow and negative temperatures or that you do not have them (I fall into the former category), and I hope that your new year will be a wonderful time. I’m actually very excited about mine, which is something I cannot truly remember feeling about a new year in…many a new year. So that’s nice.
Before we get all “gung-ho” and “eyes ahead” and “looking back is for wannabe salt pillars,” however, let us take just a moment to participate in what is one of my favorite things at this time of year! That would be the Smashing & Dashing Character Awards, invented once upon a time by Cait @ PaperFury, brought to you today by Katie Hanna @ I Am Charles Baker Harris (And I Can Read). We thank them both from the bottom of our hearts, and if you want to host your own awards ceremony, rules and a clean list of questions can be found in Katie’s post.
The most basic rule, and all you need to know to (hopefully) enjoy this post, is: fill out the award categories with characters whose bookish acquaintance you first made in 2023.
All right! Onward, to a celebration of the most memorable characters of the year!
most relatable character
…I don’t…there is…none? This award assumes I read about a relatable character at least once a year. Incredibly bold of it to assume.
I guess I kind of related to Markon’s (Twelve Days of Faery) Tired Dad energy, like way more than you’d expect considering I am not a Tired Dad. (Tired, most assuredly; but dad, no.)
most pure animal companion
It’s no secret I love The Year of the Black Pony. I could wax enthusiastic about the beautiful father-son relationship for ages (the horse is nice too), so when I saw that Walt Morey had written another book, I read it posthaste.
Gentle Ben is another story that centers on a boy’s love for an animal—this time a brown bear cub who grows into a huge, adult, Alaskan brown bear. There are, naturally, problems here. But Ben is the sweetest (and Mark loving him so much is especially the sweetest), and he wins this award hands down.
(But special shout-out to the white stag in Forest Patrol. What a lovely part of that book.)
fiercest fighter
Well, not Henry Fleming, that’s for darn sure.
Let’s jointly give this to Turnbull and MacIan, from Chesterton’s novel The Ball and the Cross. They’re pretty determined to fight, even while the entirety of England is determined to prevent them.
am surprised that i loved you??
I, Protestant that I am, had every expectation of going through my entire life without ever coming within forty feet of a statement like “I love Thomas More”…but good writers and good plays will do Things to your emotions. Robert Bolt is evidently a good writer, and A Man for All Seasons is a good play. Possibly, even, I might say, a masterpiece.
best sassmaster
Manifestly, this is Folly (as brought to us by the pen of Erasmus). Sassier than your grandma when she wants you out of her kitchen, Folly praises everyone from the “smug rogues who count on buying off retribution for their misdeeds with trumpery pardons professing to measure purgatory into centuries, years, months, days and hours with mathematical accuracy” to the merchant or soldier who “no sooner…gives a penny or two of his loot to a pious object than he reckons the quagmire of his guilt is drained thereby, and all his perjuries, debaucheries, murders, cheats, and treacheries redeemed as though by the terms of a bargain; [thinking], moreover, that having redeemed them, he is free to begin over again,” and she is absolutely savage. And therefore hilarious.
She also has this piece of information for us: “Thus, if a man sees a pumpkin and believes it to be a woman, he is taken to be mad, because few make that particular mistake.”
best antihero
I’m being 100% serious here…I’m not sure I read about any antiheroes.
Except Sir Crispin, and he’s not getting this award. Worst antihero, more like.
I mean…Joaquin. I liked Joaquin.
the best friends of all
This realization surprised me, but it can be none other than Joaquin and Annyrose, from Bandit’s Moon.
I dunno, guys, that friendship just touched me.
MG historical fiction has a pretty good track record for writing good friendships, it is true. And Sid Fleischmann is in general strangely good at writing unconventional friendships with mostly comical results that nonetheless warm the cockles of my cold, stony heart.
This one starts with Annyrose, separated from her brother on their journey to California, who falls in with legendary outlaw Joaquin Murieta. Annyrose makes sure to tell him how much she DOES NOT approve of stealing. They don’t approve of each other at all, in fact. They might also, possibly, by the end of their association, go to great lengths to protect each other.
best villain to hate
Bluebeard, from Fly With the Arrow!
…Oh, you’re telling me Bluebeard was supposed to be the misunderstood, morally gray love interest? From whom the heroine was tragically sundered at the end of the book?
Ha! She was rescued, and it was every bit as horrific-all-around as rescuing your sister-who-was-stolen-by-the-fae ought to be, and for that wonderful ending alone ’twas a marvelous book. (I want…actually, hang on, someone give me a Bluebeard retelling from the brothers’ point of view. GUYS. I need this yesterday.)
Something about Bluebeard having some actual humane, childlike qualities made him way more fun to hate, too, but his real crime was all that smirking.
award for best vs worst ya parents
Not YA (because…did I even read any), but if you wanna talk about bad parents…may I present to you Sir Crispin.
Sabatini really wrote a novel (he called it The Tavern Knight) where he was like, “What if I come up with the worst father you have ever heard of, and then what if I make him the main character?”
I really could not stand how Sir Crispin interacted with his son, even as pathetic as his son also was, and the final straw was when he was basically bathed in thanksgiving after learning that his son died.
DIED, you guys. His son DIED and his reaction was “oh thank God *wipes brow in relief*”
!!!
I have no more words.
Also not YA (I don’t think), but technically Ophelia’s father, in Black and Deep Desires, was considerably worse than even Sir Crispin (I just can’t summon the same energy to hate him, for whatever reason—hate him, yes; loathe, abhor, and abominate with every fiber of my being and every gritted muscle of my jaw like Sir Crispin, not quite). He was HORRENDOUS. Killed her childhood dog so he could use it for science. Experimented on people for science. Planned to sell her in marriage…also for science(?).
As for best, the one book I read that I think would roughly fall into the YA category was W. R. Gingell’s Wolfskin, and Rose’s mother was, while a bit overly strict and set in her ways, also a wonderful woman who truly loved her daughters and tried to do what was best for them, even when she didn’t fully understand. (Also she was smart. We appreciate parents who have brains in their heads ’round here.)
ship of all ships in 2023
This is also…not…I don’t…relatable characters and shippable characters do not come along so often as this tag seems to believe!!
It took me a long while to think of this, and “ship of all ships” is perhaps a bit much, but I deeply appreciated Rafiq and Kako’s relationship in Fire in the Blood. Or at least, especially, the unemotional way Rafiq set out to make sure Kako would make it out of the castle okay. That’s what real love looks like, guys.
Also, you know what else real love looks like? Getting along with her siblings, and passing (albeit not without some wobbling and heavy scrutiny) their rigorous tests for “are you allowed to date my sister.” This book got it right.
most precious must be protected
Edith’s dad, from Wormwood Abbey.
Listen, this book was everything I wanted from cozy Victorian fantasy with dragons, and Edith’s father was EVERYTHING I wanted from a minister who took his job seriously and actually believed and lived by the Christianity he preached.
Just how real and organic these characters’ faith was to their lives was a breath of fresh air, but Edith’s dad was especially wonderful. He is so gentle, but he does not stand for people disrespecting his daughter, or disrespecting women in general. And he has faith in his daughter’s ability and judgment, and he shocks his respectable parishioners by suggesting they actually live by the tenets of Christianity, and someone protect this man he is a national treasure.
honestly surprised you’re still alive
Sir Gawain, please take a bow. Like, how did you not get yourself killed doing the dumb things knights feel called upon to do LONG before this.
After the events of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, of course, Gawain is also very surprised he’s still alive.
award for making the worst decisions
Bernis (Southern Mail), for sure.
“What?” you say. “A lonely, misogynistic pilot from the 1920s, written by an upper-class French existentialist, made bad decisions? I am shocked, SHOCKED I tell you!”
But it’s true. Bernis made a series of bad decisions, and then he died. And so it goes.
most in need of a nap
Gloucester. Can this man please have a–NOT THAT KIND OF NAP, SHAKESPEARE–
want to read more about you
Ivan Karamazov, please. Like hello, Dostoyevsky, have you heard of CLOSURE??!?
I just adored Ivan in general. Conscientious, prideful, genuinely extremely bothered by the fact of suffering, aware of his own blind spots but still kinda blinded by them? Like?? What a well-written character. (I mean, it’s Dostoyevsky, so who’s surprised, BUT STILL.)
I was so invested in Ivan’s tussle with God, and then the book just ends like “well, he just fell ill of brain fever! Hope he makes it!” dOsToYEvSKYyyyy–
//
That is for the characters. As for other book-related information about my year, I read 68 of them. 48 were new, 20 rereads. Of those 48 new books, 37 were fiction and 11 nonfiction, so…maybe I’m improving my mind a little? Who knows. (“Nah,” say my sisters.) I read 3 books that were written prior to 1800, which is actually less than last year, and then I got tired of figuring up stats and stopped.
Anyway.
Briefly, before we close, an addendum: real life is full of characters too, and so here are the quotes I happened to write down from real people in the last quarter-or-so of the year:
Jonathan: *reluctantly admits he reads math textbooks in his free time*
Ned: Do you–do you know about reading for fun?
Bailey: Have you heard of fiction?
Ned: Have you ever considered enjoying life?
Squeak: …which means I need to surrender my will to [God’s]. *pause* I’m not a big fan of that.
Bushmaiden (formerly known as H): I don’t–I don’t like being in the heart-breaking business, you know? I tried that already, and it just wasn’t my thing, and I don’t wanna do it again.
Lil K: I can catch [the baseball] if it rolls toward me slowly.
FakeIsaiah: That’s nice to know, considering one of the things I didn’t want to deal with was a violent, blood-hungry pig.
Palestrina: I thought that tree in a bag was a person.
Kurt: So what are we doing today?
Vicki: Crying.
Kurt: Don’t do that! We’re just doing phase diagrams.
Vicki: Why can’t I do phase diagrams and cry?I am multi-dimensional.
Kurt:No! Don’t cry!
Vicki: I’m adding a liquid!
D. Mann: You go out in the backyard, and you’re like, “Welp, the B-2s are at it again.”
Palestrina: I know I’m funny, but everyone else usually doesn’t.
D. Mann: The reason I made a miscalculation is because I’m a genius–
Mr. Shoemaker: *after being asked what he wants for Christmas* Kosher ham and world peace, please.
Palestrina (about Pixie): It’s like she reverse-psychologied herself.
Mr. Shoemaker: Quercus bicolor. *flips leaf to show one color on top, another underneath* Eh, eh? Bi-color? I know that, because I know Latin. I am so good at Latin.
Pixie: Oh boy, I am Eeyore. I really am a live Eeyore…just less cute and funny.
Puppy: *crawls over top of food bowl and lies down on it*
Palestrina: Um–uh–no–dude. You are not doing that correctly.
Pixie: He’s tall for a boy, short for a building.
With that, adieu! What characters have you met this year, both in real life and between the pages of processed trees? Do we share any favorites (or least-favorites)?
This morning was winter’s first snow. Not long after Thanksgiving is a very good time for a first snow. Before is impolite, like a guest arriving to a cocktail party five minutes early, but after Christmas is simply wrong.
It wasn’t much of a snow and was gone by midafternoon. There was more ice than snow, and it came back in the evening. We slid on it while we were putting up Christmas lights.
Christmas lights shining on slick, frost-pale grass are a beautiful sight in the darkness of a six-o’clock evening.
You know summer’s over (for real, this is how I mark it) when your little sister goes back to school. Labor Day is past – you spent it at the library, avoiding the last-of-the-summer crowds, listening to the library ladies commiserate with the people who came in about crowds, and tourists, and boats in all your favorite fishing coves, and people not understanding that this isn’t the big city and we don’t have everything a big city has, and are you really still complaining about the patchy-to-nonexistent wifi? Did you or did you not come down here to get away?
But now school is in swing, the crisp late-summer chill is in the air, the puppies are in your way every step you take down-pasture (this autumn cool makes them wild, and makes their mother as young and wild as they are; even old Susie lifts her head and scents the wind very deeply, as if something exciting is in it and she might – might – answer), and your ewe who had mastitis (it was your favorite ewe) has dried up and is still looking healthy and does not even hate you for what you put her through, to judge by how eagerly she comes up to you, head outstretched for the grain she knows she probably won’t (but she might!) find in your hand…
I love fall. I love it when it ends a disappointing summer, and I love it more when it ends a summer that was good in so many unexpected ways. I’m not going to talk about my summer in detail, for several reasons (one of which is the usual: not-into-sharing-my-life-on-the-internet), but it was a good summer. Not as wildly fun as the past few summers of my life have been – not as intensely hard work as the very last one – but very, very unexpectedly good.
And so now it’s fall and I am continuing on with my life and thinking of some things. I wonder if people do this when they live in places where the seasonal changes are not so marked by outside factors? Of course anyone who lives on a farm knows of spring as a distinct time of vulnerable mothers and their new young, births and hatchings, a time of many hours of work but more of watching and waiting, a time when you watch the buds swell and hope for the rains (they didn’t come this year until nearly August; brown, stunted fields couldn’t empty their cattle into the auction barns fast enough).
And likewise, anyone who lives in a spot where the local tourists come for the fishing and the lake life knows of summer as a distinct season. When the tourists trail back to the city, when the marinas close and there are suddenly no more jobs to be had till next summer, you move on to the next season of the year: time has chapters. It’s always a temptation to set the book down at the end of a chapter and think about it a little bit.
One of the things I’ve been thinking about is the practicality of writing when you’re very busy – and when you’re in a temporary season of life such that maybe it would be a better idea to put writing on hold until you’re done. Better all around, perhaps.
For me, I have found, this is seldom a viable option. It is only really viable if the temporary season is very temporary indeed. For instance, the duration of a summer. I did decide about halfway through the summer to take a break from trying to write until my schedule changed with the fall.
It wasn’t because the time to write didn’t exist; that time just wasn’t placed well in the day. After I’ve been awake for over ten hours, my mind becomes too tired to effectively write (or do math, incidentally). Trying to set aside an hour in the evening to write is very hard and often not very productive; getting up an hour earlier to write is productive, because my mind is fresh and that’s what I want to do when I get out of bed anyway. The reason I didn’t just get up an hour earlier this summer was that I sort of drew the line at having to rise at 4 a.m….not because this is unconscionably early so much as because my chickens WOULD NOT roost a minute before 8:59 p.m. and I need my eight hours.
(For multiple reasons. A very practical one of which in this context is simply that when I don’t get my eight hours, I very quickly lose the willpower to drag myself out of bed at the appointed writing time. If you want to actually succeed in getting up at an early hour…you must make yourself go to bed at an early enough hour. The real self-discipline comes in the night before. That’s the secret.)
I am just as busy now as I was this summer, but I have been writing. (Not quite as consistently as I intend to, because when does that happen? – but still, I’ve been writing, and it’s a relief.) I have my mornings once again…and it really does matter, finding the way in which you can sustainably write.
But I am, as I mentioned, just as busy. I don’t plan to be this busy all my life, or for much more than a year, actually. So why not (you might justifiably ask) put writing on hold for this slightly longer season?
For anyone to whom writing is an enjoyable pastime and nothing more – for anyone who does not have delusions of publication, faint longings after literary fame, or uncomfortably persistent convictions about writing being the Thing You Were Given to Do and thus you really ought to Be Doing It – it might be a very good idea to do just that. You’re not putting it on hold forever – and if you are, so? Life is more important than a hobby – and it’s always good to simplify, to have balance, to not fill your time too full with obligations, even if they are pleasant obligations.
It’s just that I happen to know, from former experience, that removing from my daily round the one thing I enjoy above all others – the one thing that fulfills me, directs my restless energy toward creation rather than destruction or running laps (just, as the Red Queen says, to keep up) – the one thing that I never ask myself “why am I doing this, again? what’s the point?” because I know – removing that thing removes my pleasure in and my motivation to be good at anything else.
Not because other things aren’t also good. The world is replete with gifts. But I know what I am supposed to do with those gifts; I am supposed to fashion their raw materials in my own way, according to my craft. We all are. It’s that thing I mentioned before, the Thing We Were Given to Do.
I may not have talked about this on the blog too often, but something that irritates me very much is the idea that writers are sPeCiAl because we create stories. Storycraft is a craft like any other craft. You do in fact have an obligation to maintain the integrity of your craft, and at your best you do in fact make beautiful things, but so does EVERY OTHER TYPE OF CRAFTSMAN. We don’t have a higher calling than those lowly carpenters and secretaries.
So I don’t want to sound like I think writing is a special craft. But it is my craft. It’s my Thing I Was Given to Do.
Dearest, dearest friends who believe in the concept of vocation: do not let anyone tell you this isn’t important. Do not tell yourself it doesn’t matter what you do in life so long as you are virtuous. Don’t kid yourself that, because you were overly dramatic as a kid and thought you were going to write the greatest, most life-changing and serious works since Virginia Woolf lifted a pen, you have outgrown your vocation.
You haven’t. You have a more realistic view of it now – you understand, perhaps, that your skills lie more in the vein of lighthearted adventure or comic slice-of-life than the dramatic tragedy you once aspired to (and you’ve learned the value of comedy) – but don’t kid yourself that you’re released from the source of the compulsion you once felt to dedicate yourself to this craft, to practice long hours and make yourself better in order to capture the ever-elusive meat of the stories swirling in your brain.
You know now that locking yourself in your room for days to write nonstop is not healthy (I mean, at least eat some food). You know that people and relationships matter and cannot be brushed to the side for the business that “really matters.” You have a day job and it matters, and it matters that you give it your best. It matters that you live life fully and learn other things. But your God-given vocation remains. If he made you a writer, do not dare to stifle that under practicalities and second-best good things.
(I’m talking to my past self too, you know.)
I know now, in a way I did not when I was eighteen, that writing is my Thing I Was Given to Do, and I’d better do it. That’s not a burden. It is a great and subtle joy.
To close off the rambling, have a Theme Song for the summer:
The next section is called Things Said By Actual Humans and is a thing I stole from Sam. I very much enjoy the parts of her posts where she lists funny quotes from real people in her life. I always wish I wrote such things down – so sometime late this spring I decided to stop wishing and do.
There are a lot of quotes, because it’s from spring till now. And I only cut out a very few, where I didn’t think the tone translated at all in text or without knowing context. But I really wanted to share them. So – read through them if you like, laugh if you like.
For context: Palestrina and Pixie are my sisters; you can usually tell which people are from church by context; most everyone else is a coworker or (less often) a friend or random stranger overheard.
Angelina: If God can use a donkey for Balaam, then he can use the Good News translation for Angelina and Tony!
Pixie: I told you, you always pick the ones with bad girls!
Me: There are a lot of bad girls in this show, okay?
Events: *happen*
Pixie: Wait, is the girl not bad?
Dad: She’s bad. *continuing, muttering to himself* All girls are bad.
Pixie *pressed for a verdict on the cookie she’s silently eating*: It’s – very oaty.
H (to me):I mean, we generally text each other once a wee – I can literally SEE you thinking, ‘Well, THAT’S excessive.’
Beatles song: *comes on the radio*
Palestrina: See, don’t these guys just sound like the less-good British version of the Monkees??!
Pixie *with conviction*: I’m never being a golf cart again.
Mom: Well, that one’s definitely giving birth…oh, wait, that’s the ram. It definitely isn’t giving birth.
Preacher: Well, and it’s great that you brought that up, because we’re going to talk about that today –
JD: *vaguely astonished* Shootin’ dogs?
Me (helping her review for an exam): And what was the Council of Trent?
Palestrina: Oh, yes, a really long meeting in response to Luther and his boys.
Pixie: *singing to Palestrina, recitative* It’s okay to bedumb, just accept it.
Palestrina: Dagnabbit, that grass just stabbed me in the eyeball.
Professor to voice student: My only complaint was the way that you used your face.
Palestrina: The key thing for you, Pixie, is that your legs – *impressive pause* – are not noodles.
Pixie: *pondering the ewe’s expelled placenta* Whooooaa. Gross, but amazing.
Pixie: *crooning in her best Randy Travis voice* I need friends who don’t pay their bills on home computers…and who buy their coffee greens already ground..
Me: Coffee…greens?
Pixie: *still singing* BEANS, beans.
All three sisters: *watching P&P’05where Elizabeth and Darcy first dance*
Pixie, as one would say “ho-hum”: Ah, true love.
Palestrina: Sarah thinks he looks like your average white boy.
Pixie: Um, actually he’s Canadian.
Palestrina and I: …
Mom: *doctoring a tick bite on him with alcohol*
Dad: *singing* What do you do with a drunken tick-head?
Me: *having just realized I stuck toast in the oven without turning on the broiler* I’m really smart. Did you know that, Mom?
Mom: *distracted* No, I did not. *long, long pause* I mean yes, yes I did.
Joshua: Don’t play in the maggots, son. {context does not make this any better, trust me}
Pixie: I think he’s perfectly fine-looking! Of course he’s no – *swivels head dramatically to me and wiggles eyebrows* – Jess Harper.
Speaker, earnestly: …and you can too!
His two-year-old daughter, from the audience: No!
Speaker, not missing a beat: Yes, darling, you can!
Pixie, obliviously narrating the events of “Pocahontas” to us: And then Pohonkus went down…
Pescadorito:If someone comes [to the register], I can just pretend I don’t work here. I’ll take off my shirt and walk around like the rest of the people in here.
Little girl: Corn!!! It’s a corn!!!
Her mom: That’s not corn, that’s a grenade.
Magdalena: Wait, the Genealogical Research Society? What the heck, that has nothing to do with frickin’ rocks, dude!
Clyde: I was watchingthat new movie on Netflix, 65 –
Magdalena: About the frickin’ dinosaurs, man? YES!
Clyde: Mm-hmm, it’s really good. I’m halfway through –
Paul: They all die. All the dinosaurs die.
Clyde: Shut up, Paul –
Me {my sisters INSISTED I include this, that’s the only reason it’s here}: She misunderstood and brought her rocking horse.
Joshua: Look, why are we all trying to reach this when Duke is 7 foot 2? Duke, get over here! How tall are you actually, Duke?
Duke: Oh, just 6’1″. I think I look taller because I’m skinny.
Magdalena (5’2″ and very pregnant): Same!
After a stunned moment, everyone: *quiet laughter*
Magdalena: HEY!
Silas: I intended on making this prayer request a gripe session about everything that’s gone wrong in the last three weeks, but I decided not to.
Preacher: Good choice.
Ralph (our neighbor and good friend, my mom’s age): I do pray for wisdom and judgment –
Palestrina: We all hope that prayer will be answered someday.
Me, pointing to a cockroach: Darius, would you like to remove that?
Magdalena, as Darius flicks it into the water: Dude, sick! That’s a – ladybug!
Preacher: And I’d also like to briefly note the historical significance of this passage; it’s the first time Honda is mentioned in the Bible. “They all came together in one Accord.”
JD: Oh, yeah, Ford is mentioned in the Bible too. “They camped by the Ford.”
Preacher: Well, they had to, because it broke down.
Paul: I say we just kill the fish.
Darius: It is literally our entire job to keep them alive.
H *with scorn, to no one in particular*: You’ve never had a drug, Jeremy.
Preacher: So what’s the lesson that we’re going to take home today?
JD: Don’t run away from God, or you might get swallowed by a fish.
JD’s wife: Even in the Ozarks!
Alexander (completely serious): And that is the truth! Have you seen the catfish below the dam?
Pixie: I’m mad at both of you for not marrying Isaiah.
Palestrina: But Pixie, he’s depressed.
Darius (to Clyde): Your work around here is not noticed, but it is appreciated.
Pixie: No, no, you can’t emote yourself, you have to demote yourself!
K: Well, people just died young back then, because they were bad at living.
Jonah: Who named the Paleocene?
Scheherezade: Wait, was it Food Dude?
Jonah: Food Dude?
Me: Yeah, I think it was William Schrimper…
Scheherezade: FOOD DUDE!!!!
K: …and that explains all the minors I’m collecting, does it not?
Ned: Wait, you’re collecting minors??
Everyone: *judgmental silence*
K: …aCadEMiCaLly sPeaKiNg
Dad: So what are we going to do after we finish this meal?
Mom, enthusiastically: Eat another one!
Pixie: I don’t trust bugs nowadays. They just keep getting newer and weirder.
Someone who wrote on a box of streak plates: “CLEANED” STREAK PLATES {to anyone who’s taken a geology lab of any sort: do you feel those quotes in your soul or what}
Clyde: Yeah, but on the bright side, I can do it on my own and actually eat the fish, and not rip off their arms for science.
Pixie: Wait, I always thought ham came from – *stops, looks down, and is suddenly much quieter* – There’s no such animal as a ham, is there?
Guess what I also did this summer? READ BOOKS! (Bet you never saw that coming.)
Sailing Alone Around the World
By Captain Joshua Slocum
This was awesome. Written by the first guy to do it (and he fixed the boat up practically from scratch beforehand too!). Just absolutely fascinating, whether or not you yourself are a sailor. Thank you Blue for telling me about this book!
North from Rome
By Helen MacInnes
How many times a day does Lammiter think about the Roman Empire?
Heretics
By G. K. Chesterton
You know, I think I’m ready to take a break with Chesterton.
I’ll always be very fond of him. It was his blithe and soaringly merry good sense that kept me sane and mostly cheerful throughout one of the harder periods of my life (not just Chesterton by his lonesome, of course, but he was a big influence on my own decision to act and think the way I did instead of…ways that I could have) (and not to sound like my life has ever been SUPER HARD, but Chesterton came in handy when I needed a voice like his whispering in my ear – and the point is I’m grateful, okay?).
But I’ve had less of a desire to read him of late. When I have gone ahead and read him anyway, I have found that while his writing is still all the things I love about it, I don’t crave that kind of writing right now. And so…I think this was my last Chesterton for a while.
It was good. There were delightful quotes and nuggets of wisdom. I disagree with him about a great many things, but I enjoy his perspective, and I enjoy refining my own with his in mind.
I am very sure that he does not properly understand Rudyard Kipling, because England wasn’t Kipling’s home country. India was. Chesterton writes about him as if Kipling doesn’t know what it is to know and love a place as home, when in every line Kipling wrote about India his Pimlico-love for the home he knew and was taken from as a child is palpable.
I shall step off my Kipling soapbox now, but it had to be said.
But also, I don’t think Chesterton has actually ever climbed a mountain. The point of his famous saying “Humility is the mother of giants” is valid, but nobody who actually climbs a peak is feeling large at the top or seeing the world as small…quite the opposite in fact. I climbed a mountain at the beginning of this summer and was reminded of that.
The Shining Company
By Rosemary Sutcliff
Never let it be said that Rosemary Sutcliff does not know how to cause Feelings to be Felt.
This book (inspired by the medieval Welsh elegaic poem Y Gododdin) sort of restored my faith in Rosemary Sutcliff after some less-than-Eagle-of-the-Ninth experiences – she can write tragedy that is not unbearably pagan (or unbearably 20th-century post-Christian)! Or perhaps what I should say is she can write tragedy that is just pagan enough to be wildly, unbearably tragic and yet have its lighter, hopeful elements.
The beginning of this was good, with the establishment of the friendship between Prosper, Conn, and Luned as children and then the hunting of the White Stag being the first crack in the stone that changes the trajectory of their lives.
The middle, frankly, was boring. It was all too generic and not personal to Prosper (the narrator), and it could easily have been so good, a time of deepening the relationships in preparation for the ending or simply of developing Prosper more – instead of making me think I wasn’t going to like the book after all. She wouldn’t even have had to change the events – just how she told them a little.
But the ENDING. Oh, kids, the ending. It didn’t even matter that she wasted her middle. This woman can write. I mean the whole entire ending, too – when they figure out why the war bands didn’t come? When they tell King Mynyddog their story and ask him for his? When Cynan tells the king his three reasons? And when Prosper leaves with him and you know they’re going to Constantinople and other places, you know just a slice of what their lives will be after the end of the tale, and you can imagine so much of it, and you wish (and feel sure he did, actually) Prosper wrote a sequel?
I HAD SO MANY FEELINGS.
It’s very weird, having feelings.
Forest Patrol
By Jim Kjelgaard
This was SO nostalgic to read. I’ve never read it before, but I did read innumerable Jim Kjelgaard books growing up. (Did anyone else grow up on Big Red, Irish Red, Snow Dog, Haunt Fox?? Please tell me! I loved those books SO MUCH.)
I saw this at the library, quite randomly, wanted to read it, didn’t have time, and eventually caved and checked it out regardless. I have particular reasons right now for being interested in forestry and the history of forestry, so a book about a young Forest Ranger written in the 1940s seemed right up my alley anyway. And it was. It was very interesting.
It was also enjoyable. He is a good writer, not at all pretentious, and loves his subject. As I do.
(I do not remember as a kid being as bothered as I am now by all the shooting and trapping of animals, though. I guess now I’ve actually killed animals it gets to me more. Heh.)
A Sand County Almanac
By Aldo Leopold
This book was rather an integral part of my summer. I definitely can’t describe how I feel about it. I probably can’t describe it at all. If you liked One Man’s Meat, you’d like it. (It’s similar in set-up, going month by month through a year on his Wisconsin farm.) Or if you liked the interesting parts of Walden (like when he’s chasing the loon around the pond or watching ants fight on a woodchip). Aldo Leopold is known as the grandfather of conservation, and his thoughts about nature are going to be interesting, even if they weren’t insanely vivid and well-written – which they are. He used a word I didn’t know in practically every chapter, which is not something I encounter often.
I’ll just give you a short passage.
I know, for example, a certain lakeshore, a cool austerity of pines and wave-washed sands. All day you see it only as something for the surf to pound, a dark ribbon that stretches farther than you can paddle, a monotony to mark the miles by. But toward sunset some vagrant breeze may waft a gull across a headland, behind which a sudden roistering of loons reveals the presence of a hidden bay. You are seized with an impulse to land, to set foot on bearberry carpets, to pluck a balsam bed, to pilfer beach plums or blueberries, or perhaps to poach a partridge from out those bosky quietudes that lie behind the dunes. A bay? Why not also a trout stream? Incisively the paddles clip little soughing swirls athwart the gunwale, the bow swings sharp shoreward and cleaves the greening depths for camp.
Later, a supper-smoke hangs lazily upon the bay; a fire flickers under drooping branches. It is a lean poor land, but rich country.
That’s all, guys. Happy fall! I am curious to know what seasons are set apart – and what sets them apart -where you live. And what works for you when it comes to writing. And what random, funny things people say in your hearing! (Are my sisters not characters, though?)
Hello, chums. Do you know what is good for when you have the mental energy of a tired and contrary two-year-old but you’d still like to blog? A tag is what’s good. So thanks, Sam, for this one! (I’m not sure if I can forgive you for hating on Westerns, though.)
Okay, so rules:
no lies allowed. if an answer is too shameful to expose you may substitute the answer with a gif/image of someone drinking tea.
e. g. →
there are optional bonus additions to questions but these are not for the faint of heart.
if you complete the tag having answered every question + the bonus additions (no gifs used), you are dubbed a certified tea chugger, and you deserve a badge to show the world that you are not afraid of a steaming hot cup of TRUTH. (The badge is available on the tag creator’s blog)
tag at least one other person (a tea party with just one is not very fun. trust me.)
untagged persons are more than welcome to fill it out as well (nothing cooler than crashing a tea party).
There we go. I needs must answer all the questions because it is doubtful if I can get gifs to work, what with my tenuous grasp of technology and WordPress’s completely unreasonable vendetta against me.
What is a bad (generally disliked) movie that you actually love?
Prince of Persia! Like, why do people act like this movie is so bad? My sisters and I will die on the hill that it’s a great little story, and FAR BETTER than most movies these same people think are good.
Like. Okay. It’s not a historically accurate representation of Persia. Is it supposed to be??? Does it claim to be?????
Oh, it’s goofy? Yeah, in a purposeful, really fun, self-aware way! (People are so used to blatant self-awareness in media now that I think they’ve rather lost sight of what subtle self-awareness looks like??)
It was based on a video game. You can tell from the action sequences. We think it’s a lot of fun.
Also, it almost goes on for too long, like you think this is the climax, but no, it just leads into the actual climax…but no, that wasn’t the climax either?? When is the climax gonna be? How is this STILL not the climax? It was fun until we worried they’d keep doing it for too long…but mostly they didn’t. And on a rewatch it’s really fun having the cascading climaxes. And the actual climax being what it is, instead of the biggest setpiece, is PERFECTION. Because it’s a story about family and gratitude and loyalty, and the reason it’s so satisfying in the end is because THAT’S what they make the climax of the movie revolve around; they don’t split it, like far, far too many stories do, into an external climax that has little to nothing to do with the theme and a little side-plot thematic resolution when that thematic material was what we cared about the whole time. In this movie, EVERYTHING LEADS TO the thematic resolution, and it’s GOOD WRITING.
Also it’s funny and the lines are good and the characters are good and the brothersssss.
And yes, it’s a cheesy Disney movie (with the inevitable reminder to LISTEN TO YOUR HEART), but it’s a GOOD cheesy Disney movie, so lay off.
What is your most shocking reading habit?
I will DNF at the drop of a hat. Legit reason or “the excessive mentions of cucumbers annoy me unreasonably” or “I dunno, I’m just not feeling it,” doesn’t matter. (I have no shame about this, in case you were wondering.)
Tell us the #1 lie you write in your posts.
“I’m going to start posting more regularly.”
I used to say this a lot, at any rate. I think I’ve kind of stopped. The posts come when they come, and nobody worries about it too much.
Also, if I mention real-life people on here, I give them pseudonyms; usually these are some sort of reference or joke. No one but me is going to get these references, but it keeps me amused.
Tell us the worst character name you’ve ever thought up. (Bonus: Share a character name you find ridiculous in a book or movie.)
This has got to be Maple, intrepid heroine of that LOTR-ripoff fantasy novel I drafted 30,000 words of when I was thirteen (as you do).
(30,000 words and this thing was BARELY getting started by the way. It was going to resemble LOTR in length not least.)
I never figured out the worldbuilding super well—I think I was waffling between “there are twelve different universes, each can only be accessed via magic” and “there was originally one world; a catastrophic event in the Middle Ages split it into two, sundered magically and again only accessible through certain magic doors/ways.” The point is, the story takes place in the world that’s not ours, but the heroine’s mother came from our world and she named her daughter Maple because she loved maple trees so much but there weren’t any in this other world. Maybe the daughter was redheaded, I can’t even remember. Regardless, it’s the stupidest-sounding name and I don’t know why I ever thought it was a good idea. YOU CANNOT JUST NAME YOUR DAUGHTER A RANDOM NOUN. IT’S WEIRD.
Like, I’m super fond of chocolate. What if I just named my daughter Chocolate? Or Sailboat? NO, SARAH, YOU CAN’T DO THAT, THAT’S WEIRD. (I’m sure you would say to me, justly.)
(Bonus: in a book called When Christmas Comes, a book that’s mostly pretty serious, this random Russian assassin character is named “Popov.” I…just. No. Don’t do that.)
What is the real reason you procrastinate writing your work in progress?
Mental fatigue. I often technically find myself in possession of a half hour in which to write; only I already used up my willpower on other things I couldn’t avoid, and now the best I’ve got is to read a book. Even if I sit down and try to write, the mental fatigue prevents me from writing effectively, so I don’t really do that anymore. (Forcing yourself to burnout does not end well or get you very far—I know this from experience.)
Other than mental tiredness, it’s nearly always because I’m coming to a scene or something I want to do really well, and I’m not exactly sure how to do it well, so I just need to sit down and dig in…but it’s HARD. And there’s no guarantee it’ll come out looking like it did in my head. I’ll procrastinate for days on end for this reason. It’s terrible.
What is a genre of music you secretly love?
Oh no.
Oh dear.
I’m just going to say it.
I LOVE COUNTRY MUSIC, OKAY?
I always said I hated it. I always thought I did. I begged Palestrina to stop singing Randy Travis, to turn off STUPID Hank Williams Jr. Those dumb, dumb idiots down in Nashville, singing about beer and girls and trucks with fake twangs and emerald-studded boots. Thank you kindly, but I, a woman, am more than a pretty accessory for your truck, mmkay?
But my redneck roots cannot be denied; there is some country music that I really, really dig. I mean, I’ve always liked certain classics: John Denver’s “Country Roads” can’t be beat, nor can “The Devil Went Down to Georgia.” Hank Williams (senior) isn’t THAT bad, I grew up on Johnny Cash, and we all must respect such legends as Merle Haggard (even if I get him mixed up with H. Rider Haggard) and Kenny Rogers and the Sons of the Pioneers. Nobody DOESN’T like it when the Darling boys come down to visit Sheriff Andy and the instruments come out.
But then—then I discovered my toleration for music that could be labeled nothing but “country” went still further than this. “Amos Moses” by Jerry Reed? It’s hilarious. I love it.
Anything Alabama is actual fire. I’m not lying.
One of the things I listen to on the rare occasion I need to be cheered up (rare because I am in general an obnoxiously happy person) is Home Free’s cover of “Stop, Drop + Roll,” a song which I love an embarrassing amount.
I have a friend who considers Blake Shelton’s “God’s Country” ~her song~, and I so see that, and I so love it. (What also doesn’t hurt that song is those sweet rock vibes.)
And then there’s just Dave Stamey in general. I love the man’s music. I love his voice (though it’s unusual and takes a sec to get used to). The way he can spin a lyric. The way he can weave the guitar and fiddle together in the background—oh my gosh. It’s GORGEOUS.
“Tonopah,” man. Oh, the night is fallin’/Oh, hear Nevada callin’/Hot, dry, and wind-blown country calling me/Out where the shadows run so tall
And the beautiful sunlit desert romp that is “Desert Trails” and the simple melancholy of “The Border Affair” (Mi amor, mi corazon) and the aggressively prosaic yet weirdly beautiful “Buckaroo Man” (this song reminds me of Jess Harper but also of Slim, for some reason?) and the classic “Talkin’ Bronc Ballet Blues.” And oh, guys, one of our favorites (my sister’s and my favorite, that is) is “Spin That Pony,” which it’s very hard to describe why it’s so good but it IS. If you’ve ever seen a very good cutting horse (with a very good rider) work, it’s like that, but also it’s better and you’re jealous you don’t get to see THIS horse or this bit of vanished California culture which Dave Stamey did get to see and put in his song. And then there’s just a fun swing to it underneath everything. Round and round/And round/Round and round…
OH OH AND AND he has a song about Joaquin Murieta (“The Bandit Joaquin”) and I love it dearly. I live in the wild with the bear and wolverine/Over hill and valley I fly as in a dream/I am the ghost/I am the fox/I am the bandit Joaquin
And I guess it has always been silly of me to write off a whole genre just because I don’t like the mainstream examples of it I’ve encountered. Country is just particularly annoying because it’s what’s always being played (where I live)—if I lived somewhere else I’m sure I’d have quite the vendetta against pop—and I get very tired. But country music is actually known for treating themes near and dear to me? Like love of the land, family, the human response to suffering, the working life. So it does make sense that when I find the country music I like, I REALLY like it.
My secret is out. I have only pretended to be sophisticated. In truth I am naught but a Redneck Woman. (Another song I am COMPLETELY ASHAMED to admit I love. My sister and I just…we just think it’s the funniest thing we’ve ever heard.)
If you’re a plotter, what do you really think of pantsers? And if you’re a pantser, what do you really think of plotters?
I fly, joyfully, by the seat of my pants, and I think plotters need to get over themselves and get it through their heads that people have different creative processes that work for them. You’re not a better or more responsible writer than me because you write down what you’re going to write before you write it. That’s GREAT that that works for you. It doesn’t work for me. I’ve tried it. I’m not just being silly and dramatic and wanting to fit a “chaotic writer” aesthetic instead of being responsible. When I do that, my creativity dies. So, in order to continue creating, I don’t do that.
You’re not somehow controlling your own creativity when you outline a book before you write it anyway. You may feel more in control, but those ideas are still coming from somewhere, and you still don’t actually know where. Creativity is a complete mystery. We could all lose our ability to come up with original stories in our heads tomorrow and there’s NOTHING we could do to get it back. It’s literally a gift, which each person according to his or her abilities and circumstances figures out how to use most effectively.
(Obvious disclaimer: This is what I really think about plotters that I think this about, not what I really think about all plotters.)
Share at least three lines of dialogue from one of your earliest writing projects. (Bonus: Give us the good stuff. Your most gruesome butchering of the English language.)
“What is thy name?” asked the queen.
“Saia,” replied Saia.
“Come hither,” said the queen. As soon as Saia was in front of her the queen whispered, “Dost thou know of the wonderful egg of the Tiger-bird?”
“Why, yes,” replied Saia.
“Wilt thou fetch it for me, my child? I shall give thee a reward.”
“But I’m not sure I can!” said Saia. “Why do you want it?”
“It is to conquer the Vupoques. They have terrorized my land and tried to live in it. I must conquer Dark Hollows! Dost thou understand?”
“Yes,” said Saia. “I understand. But—but—I,”
“Try thy best to bring it unto me.”
“Yes, your majesty.”
“But remember, it is a secret. Never tell of it to anyone, save Morning and Brilia and I, unless one aforesaid doth advise thee to. And never let word of it slip to the Vupoques, for then would all be lost.”
“Yes, your majesty,” said Saia and returned to Lady Morning and Brilia, puzzled, and utterly mystified as to why Queen Alexandria would tell her, a total stranger, to get the Tiger-bird’s egg for her.
from “The Tiger-Bird’s Egg,” book one in a fantasy series that was going to have six books (but I only ever wrote three of them) and whose heroine was named “Saia” because I saw it on a truck once and thought it was cool. I was eight (seven?) at the time. (But, like, at least Saia recognizes that it’s weird the queen wants her to get the egg? Though she doesn’t seem to recognize how weird it is that the queen is the only one talking like an eight-year-old’s Howard Pyle impersonation. I’m pretty sure eight-year-old me was like, “Well, that is weird, so I’d better acknowledge it’s weird…and then we can proceed on our merry way and never have the weirdness come up again.” Come to think of it, that is kind of what being a kid is like. “This thing adults are doing is weird, but…I guess we’re doing it? Okay.”)
Tell us the title and artist of the last song you listened to.
This song is a jam and I will not be accepting criticism of that statement at this time.
Which beloved book/movie character do you dislike and why?
Oh…Kaz Brekker? Alucard? Words literally can’t express the depths of my hatred for Alucard, but I feel like he’s not as popular in the literary circles I frequent nowadays as Kaz.
My issue with Kaz isn’t so much that he’s morally grey (which, granted, is an aesthetic I’m not super into) as that he’s…boring.
Like. He’s really boring. He’s realistic, I think (I think this is a big part of why people like him so much, how undeniably—to me insufferably—real his character feels), as that complete twit of a person who, because he’s somewhat intelligent and doesn’t feel himself vaguely bound by moral rules the way most people do, has been successful in proving himself “dangerous” and “ruthless” and “someone to cross at your peril.”
Kaz is both reasonably intelligent and ruthless. But the thing is, he’s not nearly as intelligent as he thinks he is, and he’s really not as ruthless as he thinks he is, either? He’s like…the perfect wish fulfillment stand-in for a certain specific type of Reddit user. He gives me big-fish-in-a-small-pond vibes. Edgelord vibes. He’s that kid (except that kid is in his late twenties, usually, in real life).
And, you know, I don’t really find people like that annoying, to be honest. What I find them is mind-suffocatingly boring. At the mere thought of having to talk to them, or just listen to them (or read from their POVs), a loathsome fog of complete and painful disinterest descends upon my mind…
This is not an exaggeration.
Then add on that Kaz isn’t the nicest person. Add on that, while Inej loves him with a certain measure of selflessness, he only loves her because her presence, help, and love for him give him pleasure. (He doesn’t actually love her; he loves what he gets out of her. And no, the complete STUPIDITY that was the unnecessary cliffhanger ending of Six of Crows does not change my opinion on this.) Add on, moreover, that how Inej feels about almost dying is irrelevant; he’s mad that he almost lost his human security blanket so he’s gonna tear some guy’s eyeballs out and never talk to her about it (this is not romantic, do you guys understand how not romantic this is??)…I just don’t like him. I really don’t like him. I’m both bored and nauseated by him, which is a combination most characters can’t achieve, so props to Kaz for being uniquely hateable I guess?
Tell us the title and topic of a post you have left in draft.
It’s difficult for me to remember, to be honest. At one point I was going to write one called something like “A Writer’s Completely Infallible Guide to Writing, Chapter 1: Show Don’t Tell,” which was going to be very serious and helpful and not even a little bit snarky. I still might do that, who knows.
What is a book you pretend you’ve read/would like to read but know you never will? (Bonus: Share a time when claiming you’d read a classic/well-known book didn’t end well.)
I am not 100% sure I finished Oliver Twist or Cyrano de Bergerac in their entireties? I’ve definitely talked about them as if I have…and I might have? and I’ve never not understood what people are talking about? and I’ve definitely read a sizable portion of both of them, including the endings?…so yeah?
As far as pretending to want to read a book I know I’ll never read…sometimes I do just let people take away the impression that I am convinced I ought to read To Kill a Mockingbird one of these days. Am I going to read To Kill a Mockingbird one of these days? Nope! No more than I am going to read The Giver or The Great Gatsby.
(There have been times when I’ve unwisely admitted to reading a book, but never when I’ve claimed to have read one I haven’t. That…like, not to sound like a goody-two-shoes, but I wouldn’t…lie? Also it just seems like a bad idea, like you’re bound to get yourself in trouble doing that. And I don’t understand what the point would be. What would be the point of that, actually? Does anyone know?)
Tell us the title and topic of the most embarrassing post you’ve ever written. (Bonus: Include. The. Link.)
“Favorite Fictional Couples.” What it sounds like. Here’s the link but if you click on it I’ll kill you. I was very new to blogging and I just…don’t know what I was thinking. Also I don’t know why some of those couples are even on that list???
(Another older post that I probably should be embarrassed by but am not, at all, is “The Writer’s OTP Challenge,” wherein I had indecent amounts of fun alternately making fun of and squealing over my own character couples. You gotta go read about Brian and Caisida’s touching romance, guys. You gotta. You can’t miss the drama of Marty and Aunt Louisa, and also Jennifer and Fred are mentioned!! From back when that story was just a wittle baby.)
And that is that, my dear Dormice, Hatters, and Hares. The secrets have been revealed. The tea has been spilled. Since I imagine her blend of tea to be both unique and delightful, I think I will invite Eden to this tea party, if she so chooses…and with that, my children, may you run fast enough to keep up and never paint a rose bush the wrong color.
Friends and countrymen, I come to you today…to talk about books. Seven of them, to be precise, all of which I have read. Ain’t I as honest and diligent as the day is long?
In these books we learn many things (such as what sorts of head-chopping contests not to get yourself into, also how to accidentally outwit pirates), but mostly we learn that the consequences of caring about the truth are generally rather unpleasant.
You should probably do it anyway, but keep that in mind.
Something to also keep in mind is that I suppose you might say I spoiled A Man for All Seasons, so beware of that. I didn’t think of it as spoiling at the time, because…well, it’s rather like that time I was talking with a friend about Fawkes and realized that this friend had not known all along what was going to happen to Guy Fawkes at the end. If you know about Guy Fawkes, you know how it’ll go. If you know about Thomas More, you know how it’ll go. If you don’t, it’s spoilers.
A Strange Habit of Mind
••Andrew Klavan••
It’s basically a murder mystery with espionage undertones, because the main character is an ex-spy (ex-assassin?) investigating a tech mogul. My aunt lent it to me after neither of us liked the first book (When Christmas Comes, not necessary to read first really) much, but she liked this a lot more and wanted to know if I did too. Which I did.
Not that I didn’t still have problems.
Problems:
Navel-gazing. (If you’re thinking about putting a bunch of navel-gazing in your story, and you’re not Dostoyevsky, just don’t.)
Why is everyone so lustful? Society is what it is and people are what they are, but this does not mean that every single person has to be lusting after every single other person they encounter, now does it? It’s not a moral issue, it’s—how is this realistic? And when even the benign elderly therapist is restraining herself from slobbering all over the main character (literally half her age), you’ve got yourself a real bad case of Mary Sue there, son.
But it isn’t simply everyone else lusting after Professor Cameron Winter (our debonair protagonist). It’s him lusting after everyone else too. Which doesn’t mesh at all with the attempt to set him up as some sort of old-fashioned gentleman. That’s not how that works. My standard for old-fashioned goes a little further back than the 1940s, okay?
Winter’s “strange habit of mind” is…I guess…assessing a situation with complete objectivity? It makes more sense than it did in the first book (“I have communed with myself for three hours and now I magically know the answer. I didn’t figure it out using logic or anything; it was just something my mind did, ~a strange habit of mind~” was all I got from the first book), but it’s still…what is it, exactly?
Despite problems, I did enjoy the book, for which there are also reasons.
Reasons for Enjoying the Book:
I’ve decided that Villain Whose Villainy Consists in Benevolently Playing God (And Inevitably Spirals Out of Control Therefore) is one of the best types. Such satisfying stories you can tell, and it’s all too rare as a villainous concept, I think.
Cameron Winter sort of reminds me of Lord Peter Wimsey? With his guilt and his carelessly brilliant (but sort of ashamed of its own brilliance) intellect and his agnosticism.
All the poetry quotations and references! There was even a T. S. Eliot one, though since Winter is all about the English Romantics, there was obviously a lot more Wordsworth and Shelley.
I have so much respect for anyone who quotes “Ozymandias” to a drug lord, I’m just saying.
The Recruiter is a very interesting character all around. His way of speaking, his Christianity (which may or may not be warped…but is certainly both sincere and humble; like I said, he’s an interesting character), his lack of Winter’s guilt because in the end he has a less rosy view of human nature than Winter does, his hardness.
The plot was satisfying, including in how it fetched up, which is always nice and especially so in a mystery.
King Lear
••William Shakespeare••
And thus another domino falls in my plan of slowly reading through all of Shakespeare so I can say, and no one can contradict me, that I hate him. With once again the awkward addendum that I didn’t hate this one. But don’t worry! I’m sure I’ll hate the next one!
A Summary of the Experience:
A deep and abiding satisfaction with Cordelia’s inability or refusal (it was kind of both) to put her love for her father on parade as proof of its reality, her reluctance to thus parade it being an indicator of its reality, the realism of how dumb people react to that
Me feeling like a dumb person for at least the first two acts because I could not follow the political intrigue or remember who was who (Kent? France? Burgundy? Gloucester? Who married who? Which one had the sons with the indistinguishable names?)
But this was also my copy’s fault. It utterly failed to distinguish the beginnings and endings of scenes properly. I was well into the third act before I realized I wasn’t still laboring through the first.
Me also being confused because is this person actually insane? Or just pretending? Was pretending, now actually is? Was, now isn’t anymore? I have lost track.
I read Julius Caesar when I was a wee one, and I read a smidge of an introduction or afterword or some such thing, wherein it was stated that it was unusually dramatic for Caesar to get stabbed actually onstage. NOT AS DRAMATIC AS PUTTING OUT PEOPLE’S EYES ONSTAGE, WHICH IS WHAT THIS PLAY DOES.
“Frankly, Regan and Goneril were sexier than Kaz [Brekker].” Becky said that to me once, a long time ago, and I kept thinking of it as I read this, and it got progressively funnier to me as I read. For reasons.
So yes, I liked the play.
Things I Liked:
Cordelia
Gloucester (love him so much)
Edward (or was it Edmund? I can’t keep their names straight) had some issues, but I liked his general thing, y’know?
The way Lear came to realize all the things
Regan and Goneril being…Regan and Goneril (horrible. But entertaining).
Redemption and family love and stuff
Some absolutely beautiful lines, some very strong lines (Holling Hoodhood would approve) not lacking in wit
But Okay, What I Did Hate:
((Spoilers from here on out by the way))
Okay, so Everybody Dies The End is a stupid plot to begin with.
But it’s especially stupid when part of Everybody is Gloucester, who was saved from committing suicide by his son and now the second he can actually be with his son he dies because his heart bursts with joy or something dumb like that. Gloucester has been through A LOT. He can deal with finding out that there is at long last something in his life that’s not completely horrible. He deserved better.
Cordelia’s death might could be argued to be necessary to drive the point fully home to Lear that this is what happens when you cast off the people who actually love you and listen to flatterers, but hasn’t that point already been driven so incredibly far home???
It’s just unsatisfying, on a story level, for all the good characters to die at the end in a story like this. Lear maybe, sure (if your name is the title of a Shakespeare tragedy, you’re sort of doomed, right?), but not EVERYBODY. It feels authorially manipulated.
Shakespeare’s jokes-your-mom-wouldn’t-approve-of are generally unnecessary, but I’m not sure I’ve ever come upon an instance so totally out of place as the one (1) time when the Fool directly addresses the audience, which he never does elsewhere in the play, nor does anyone else, for the sole purpose of making a frankly rather convoluted and not very good joke that will “make the maidens blush” or whatever. I mean. Good golly. *smacks forehead*
Betsy’s Wedding
••Maud Hart Lovelace••
I have at long last finished all the Betsy-Tacy books!
Feels good. My favorites remain the first one, Betsy in Spite of Herself, and Betsy and the Great World, but this one is about a pair of newlywed writers living their best life in Minneapolis while WWI rages in Europe, so it’s rather wonderful too. It took me a while to warm up to it (I think just because I was slow to forgive Joe for how much I disliked his behavior in Betsy and Joe, even though it’s been years and water under the bridge), but I do think in the end I liked it well enough to keep it and round out my collection.
Tacy is ever the best of friends.
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
••Anonymous; translated by J. R. R. Tolkien••
I don’t have much to say about this one, except that I really, really liked it. The poetry is alliterative, with shorter rhyming lines at the end of each section. The language is sometimes rather beautiful (especially in the hunt sections, it’s like crashing along through the wet wild woods in the thick of it yourself)–always vivid, usually strong, and just…just rather lovely, to a lover of words.
And as for Gawain himself, he’s ever so Gawainish.
The Ball and the Cross
••G. K. Chesterton••
An atheist newspaper editor writes an article that is less than respectful of the Virgin Mary. A Catholic, newly arrived in London fresh from his Highland hills, smashes his shop-window. The two proceed to fight a duel (with swords) over the existence of God. Society proceeds to be very much astonished that anybody nowadays actually cares that much about, like, anything.
A Random Assortment of Thoughts:
I like the opening chapter with Michael and Professor Lucifer very much.
James Turnbull is my second favorite atheist (my first favorite being of course Ivan Karamazov).
It reminded me of The Napoleon of Notting Hill (or a little of The Man Who Was Thursday) in its dystopian dreaminess. I really don’t like dystopia or dreaminess in fiction, so that bothered me off and on, but not enough to matter.
I quite liked how Chesterton ended up resolving, in the mouth of MacIan, the two opposing facts that a) it’s good Turnbull and MacIan care about their beliefs, and b) killing people over differences in beliefs is, like, something we shouldn’t do?? It was hard to see how the two notions fit together until MacIan had his little revelation, so I liked that.
But WHERE did the notion that the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre was in any sense “provoked” come from? Where? Show me. I will wait. The Huguenots did nothing–literally nothing!!–that could by any fair use of the term be said to have provoked the indiscriminate killing of THOUSANDS (so the river ran red with their blood) of men, women, and children in the streets of Paris.
I don’t care that MacIan’s point was that massacre is evil nonetheless. Nonetheless what??? DON’T ACT LIKE THE HUGUENOTS SOMEHOW ASKED FOR IT. THEY DID NOT.
*stews*
I’m really not completely sure, either (heads up for spoilers, mate), how I feel about a miracle occurring at the end. On the one hand it gives us the lovely bit about Turnbull preferring a fact even to materialism. On the other hand I’m just not really sure I like it as a thematically satisfying conclusion to his journey.
I do like Professor Lucifer as a villain, and he’s very satisfying in the role.
Swallows and Amazons
••Arthur Ransome••
About summer and SAILING
Also camping, which isn’t as good as sailing but still good
Set in England, which it took me an embarrassingly long time to figure out
Quietly well-written, quietly funny
Altogether a refreshment to the spirit.
One of the things I loved so much about it was this uncanny accuracy in so many little things from the children’s point of view, like:
John being embarrassed and disgusted at the grown-ups cheering them
John’s oldest-child precautions for his siblings’ safety and the specific flavor of his guilt about the staying-out-all-night episode (since he did take precautions)
The flavor of Susan’s second-oldest-child guilt about the same (since she wasn’t in charge of the precautions)
Titty’s joy at being left alone on the island
“oh crap we really can’t see anything in this dark, why did we think this was a good idea?” (It’s always so much harder to do things in the dark than you think it’s going to be!)
The perfect selfishness of the Amazon sisters expecting their uncle to play with them. He couldn’t possibly have something better to do.
The exact relationship with grown-ups and which things they say that annoy the children because they’re breaking the game (and that they don’t express this disgruntlement except sometimes afterward to each other)
The exact proportion of in-the-game and real-life in how the children talk. They don’t believe their game is real, but they are completely immersed in and satisfied by it in a way you never are after a certain age.
The passion to have actually discovered something new
How everyone takes care of the youngest
That list is horrifically long and pedantic, but I just adored how accurate to childhood and summer adventures the book was. It really was a refreshment.
A Man For All Seasons
••Robert Bolt••
Sir Thomas tried so hard, y’all. He tried so hard.
He steered the perfect line between his principles and discretion in his speech and had need of every inch of discretion and still died for his principles. I like stories like that a lot. I think because I agree with the premise that there always comes a time, if people are truly out to get you, where tact gets you nowhere and it still comes down to a raw choice between dying (or whatever unfortunate thing) for what you think is right or giving in to the people you think are wrong, but also because it’s frustrating when someone’s own flaws seal an otherwise up-for-grabs fate. That’s a valid tragedy, but not a tragedy I like to read much. I prefer the other story, and I prefer the other theme, which I don’t really think gets explored enough.
Something I also thought was really cool was the definite echoes of Christ’s trial, where they try so hard to catch him in his own words and in the end resort to perjury because they can’t.
(And one can’t help admiring that part of Sir Thomas More, despite being…not ambivalent, but conflicted, about him as a historical figure. I take no issue with how he’s depicted in this play, though. It’s very good and incredibly sympathetic.)
Anyway, the playwright had a keen eye for human nature and a keen ear for human dialogue, and it was a stunningly good play. I was picturing the whole thing vividly as I read, something I usually have trouble with when reading plays. Would recommend.
So have you read A Man For All Seasons? Please talk with me if you have. Please go read it and then talk to me if you haven’t. What historical massacre gets you particularly up in arms? What is your definition of an old-fashioned gentleman?Are you ready for summertime? I hope so.
My answer for this changed the day I discovered thrift stores (the day, that is, I discovered you could buy things besides creepy china dolls and blue jeans at thrift stores), where you can get hardbacks for nothing or little more than paperbacks. Also, you can get very, very old hardbacks. Very, very old paperbacks tend to just be a problem because they fall apart, but old hardbacks have character, and style, and solidity. And I like the way they feel reading better.
But both are excellent, really, and have their proper places.
Did you have a favorite comic book or graphic novel as a kid, and if so, what was it?
So, no. I was barely aware of the existence of these things as a kid, and I definitely wasn’t interested in them.
And I’m still not, because I am woefully un-visual, but I’m pretty sure I discovered The Silver Eye when I was a teenager, so that’s the closest answer I have for you. As I have explained elsewhere, I love The Silver Eye a lot.
It was like…my secret teenage fandom. I knew no one else who read it, and I just secretly ate it all up and thought about it at odd hours of the day and wondered if everything was going to turn out okay for Apen and what was up with Joshua. I would never exchange being able to actually talk with people about my favorite stories, but there’s something very nostalgic about being completely immersed in a story that it feels like only you know about. I guess because that experience was basically my childhood.
What is your favorite devotional or inspirational book, and why?
Erm.
I’m trying rather hard to remember if I’ve ever read one of these. What’s the definition? Do weirdly specific things about theology, like some of Lewis’s or Sayers’s writing, count? Does Chesterton count?
If that sort of thing counts, then my favorite is Dorothy L. Sayers’s The Mind of the Maker. Very helpful and refreshing to a Christian writer. (At least, a Christian writer with my brain.)
Would you rather have to read only one book for the rest of your life or never get to reread a book?
I am the exact sort of person this question was built to torture.
I…uh…don’t…know?
Argh, this question legitimately makes me want to die. Because reading one book, only one book, over and over forever and ever…no. But never getting to reread my favorites? A.k.a. the thing I like best about reading??
If I just picked one of my very favorite books and took up other hobbies—spent more of my time on music and plants, say—that sounds pretty okay. I could deal.
But I’m not sure how well my writing ability would hold up if I just, like, stopped reading. It did not hold up well at all that time I stopped reading for two years. So…if never rereading a book is the price for being able to write…?
But is it?
Listen, I’mma just go with only rereading one book. It sounds more endurable, somehow.
WAIT, BUT WAIT. Does this apply to nonfiction too? You just said “book.” I was excluding the Bible, because that makes the answer obvious, but are we talking other nonfiction as well? If I wanted to research something, I would have to rely wholly on oral testimony and newspaper archives because those aren’t really books and…but if I couldn’t reread, then even if I found a great book I’d have to make sure I took truly excellent notes because I couldn’t go back to check…
SAM I HATE YOU AND THIS QUESTION IS IMPOSSIBLE.
I’m still going with rereading one.
AAARGHH.
Least favorite literary villain?
Do I know what this question means? No, I do not. Villain I hate the most? Or villain I dislike most in his function as a villain? Those are sort of…opposites.
“Favorite literary villain” makes way more sense to me as a question than this does, Sam. 😛
We’re going with villain I hate the most.
Which really should be Aetius Nimrod (from The Silver Eye), because he’s that evil, but it can’t be him because he’s too much fun.
Okay, so I’m not completely sure I don’t hate anyone else more, but I just reread Scaramouche and…literally there is no villain more objectively unbearable than the Marquis La Tour d’Azyr. I want to stab him with forks. I want Andre-Louis to stab him with forks. (Swords are an almost-acceptable substitute for forks.) But more than all that, I want him to admit he’s wrong. Admit he’s immoral. Say, “yes, this isn’t right, I’m only doing it because I have the power to and morals don’t depend on your position in society,” not just keep justifying everything. He won’t admit he was wrong and it drives me up the wall! That he can stand over the body of the young man he just killed (while that young man’s best friend is kneeling beside it in shock) and have the unmitigated gall to defend himself on ethical grounds—
*has a conniption and dies*
I can’t stand him. Marquis La Tour d’Azyr gets the prize.
What is your favorite romance trope?
The one where one is super damaged and doesn’t trust people, and the other one is anything from cinnamon roll to trickster to tough and closed-off but proves to the damaged one in complete silence and by actions only that they are To Be Trusted and Legitimately Care and would, in fact, Save You at My Own Expense? Is that a trope? I love it.
If you could spend a day with your favorite author, what would you do with them?
Well, who is my favorite author? That’s the implicit, completely-brushed-over dilemna here.
With Tolkien, I would take a long walk, wherever his favorite place to walk was. And in the evening we’d just sit around by the fireside and talk about any folkloric or linguistic knowledge I could get out of him, along with his theories about literature.
With Dostoyevsky I’d…take a walk around whatever Russian city we happened to be in and stop at a tea shop and have tea. That sounds like a great time.
I think I’d like to spend a day gardening with Megan Whalen Turner. No idea if she gardens. But yeah. Talk about Ancient Greek influences and likeable unlikeable characters while pulling weeds from a cucumber bed.
I would go horseback riding with Ralph Moody, have Helen MacInnes give me the locals’ tour of New York City (or…we could sightsee a cool historical place in Europe? That’s a hard choice. I’d love to jaunt around Athens with her as well…), and I’m not really sure what I’d do with A. A. Milne. I’m not sure what he’s like, or if I’d like him. But I think it would be highly diverting to go to Ascot Races with him, and perhaps the theatre afterward.
What is the longest book you’ve ever read, and did you like it?
Probably The Lord of the Rings, and yes, rather.
Do you have a favorite poet, and if so, who is it? When did you learn about them?
It’s always been tied between two for me. I’ve mentioned Rudyard Kipling before and will doubtless mention him again, so today let’s talk about Vachel Lindsay.
The flipside of me being too un-visual to appreciate comic books is that I love poetry, at least the kind that sounds good read aloud. Vachel Lindsay wrote his poems with that exact purpose in mind; he performed them himself and there was even a period of his life where he tramped across the countryside trading song and poetry of his own making for food and shelter. And also begging, because even at the turn of the century people weren’t super keen on song and poetry from random young men met on the side of the road, apparently.
He’s a fellow Midwesterner (state of origin: Illinois), his poems are deliciously auditory and celebratory-of-the-common-man-ish, and…I just really love both the way his poems roll off the tongue and linger in my mind. I will literally never forget the ending of “General William Booth Enters Into Heaven” or some of the lines of “The Leaden-Eyed.”
The first one I ever heard of, as a little girl, was “The Moon’s the North Wind’s Cooky,” which is amusing but not my favorite of his moon-poems. That would be “Old Euclid.”
“The Chinese Nightingale” is also lovely. I think, though, if you could only read one, I would most recommend “General William Booth Enters Into Heaven.” It’s the ending that does it for me.
Have you ever cried over a fictional death scene, and if so, which one(s)?
Ah, yes, I have. It was the one in Great Expectations, you know which one I’m talking about if you’ve read it, and don’t pretend you don’t.
Also the one in Little Women, also a thing in Doomsday Book that is very much related to death if not exactly a death scene, and there were misty eyes when first I read the endings of both A Tale of Two Cities and Johnny Tremain.
Am I a sap or what? That’s a lot of crying. Most of it happened prior to my fourteenth birthday, but still this question has caused me to expose myself and I do not like it, Sam-I-am.
Y’all, the ewes do all the work, but I do all the worrying, and lambing has tuckered me OUT. I cannot write an outro. Just…tell me what your answers to these questions are. I’d love to know. I thought they were super fun questions, which is why I filched them.
Hi, kids, and happy Easter! I feel like blogging, inexplicably, so here is a draft I dragged out and dusted off. It’s about romance. Why romance, you ask? Because spring is the time for love, obviously!
Just kidding. Spring is the time for animals being born. None of them are born yet, but they’re about to be born and it’s exciting. Leaves and fruit tree buds and daffodils are all exciting. I love spring.
This post is about romance because it is. That’s all. A curmudgeon (me) evaluates four common romance tropes. You can read it if you like.
LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT
Defined as: the act of seeing an attractive human being and immediately cherishing feelings of the tenderest kind for this human being, feelings that will definitely never ever fade or go away or be affected by hormones because this is TRUE and PURE and NONE HAS EVER TRULY LOVED BEFORE.
Often marked by: the pressing of one’s company on the victim by means of painfully obvious stratagems, following the victim around with sheep’s eyes (a figure of speech), considering the victim the very pinnacle of perfection in both mind and body, and disregard of practical matters like the victim’s name or interests on account of how what matters is she’s PERFECT and I LOVE HER.
My opinion: I kind of both love and hate this one, to be honest. I really do hate some iterations of it (teenager would die for hot guy she’s barely exchanged two insults with?), but I feel like other iterations get a lot of undeserved hate.
Because, okay, you say it’s unrealistic? But it’s not? One often knows from a single conversation that one is going to be good friends with a person. One sometimes even sees someone from across the room, thinks, “This person looks interesting. I’d love to talk to her,” and then later falls in with her and has one of those conversations I mentioned in the previous sentence. This is how friendship frequently starts, so why isn’t romance also allowed to start like this?
Well, it does start like that, whether it’s allowed to or not. I know people.
And realistic or not, I think in any case I’d find a certain brand of doe-eyed male sighing over the Perfect Woman he met two minutes ago and now hopes to marry…hilarious. Because it’s hilarious, okay? (As long as the relationship does not proceed along those lines forever, obviously. As long as he isn’t creepy, and she eventually responds with interest, and he eventually stops idolizing her without ceasing to cherish her, you know?)
FRIENDS TO LOVERS
Defined as: the situation in which both parties to a longstanding friendship discover in themselves mutual love of another sort, whereat they proceed to angst about it for a while before giving in and marrying one another
Often marked by: bland friend chemistry that turns into even blander romantic chemistry, angst about ruining the friendship, angst about the other party not feeling the same, sundry other friends winking obnoxiously and smirking that it was meant to be since they were six and they’re the only ones who don’t know it yet
My opinion: Yeah…I don’t love this one. It can be good, but it’s more often bland. People sometimes do fall in love with their friends, but also sometimes people stay friends. I really value friendship and don’t like when I see it treated as the lesser cousin to a much greater, more special kind of love. Actually, you’re both special.
(But did I read Percy Jackson and the Olympians in my impressionable teenage years? And do I think Percy & Annabeth are the pinnacle of How to Do This Trope Right? Yes, darlings, yes.)
ENEMIES TO LOVERS
Defined as: the process whereby two people with opposite goals (potentially that involve killing each other) fall in love despite all the reasons not to
Often marked by: attempted murder, sick burns, fierce glares that almost end in fierce kisses, betraying one’s country/family/honor for TRUE WUV, “am I horrible person??”, and “why are you such a horrible person?? I wouldn’t care except you’re attractive and it’s confusing”
My opinion: Um, so enemies-to-friends is one of my favorite storylines. (Give me alllll the Kamet-and-the-Attolian content and help now I really want to reread Thick as Thieves). So this has potential. However, I think I’m really only okay with it if it’s enemies-to-friends-to-lovers rather than enemies-to-attraction? help?-to-lovers because the latter just…just…I don’t know exactly how to articulate my objection to this, but no?
I guess the best way to explain is to first explain why I hate the Nina/Matthias romance in Six of Crows. Matthias is a guy who’s grown up in an extremely bigoted culture, taught to hate and dehumanize people like Nina. His character has great potential, through his forced closer association with Nina, to realize that he’s wrong and that she is every bit as human and valuable as him and from thence to fall in love with her. Except Leigh Bardugo SKIPPED THE MIDDLE BIT. The middle bit was important, guys. Without the middle bit, Matthias is just a jerk lusting after a hot girl that he is STILL DEHUMANIZING. And that, in a nutshell, is the kind of enemies-to-lovers romance I am not about.
FIXING THE PLAYER
Defined as: the process whereby an innocent-yet-intelligent girl (it’s always the girl, because…we’re all Victorians here, I guess?) is initially repelled but slightly fascinated by the morally bankrupt love interest, whom she redeems from his whoring ways in the end by the sheer power of her pure and womanly love
Often marked by: “oh dear, we’re in a Georgette Heyer novel, aren’t we?”
My opinion: Georgette Heyer books are definitely not the only ones that utilize this HORRIFICALLY COMMON trope and actually those tend to be my not-so-favorite Georgette Heyer books (I like the ones where they’re both great, chill people and whoops, my ward ran off into a snowstorm! I accidently wrote a book casting you as the thinly disguised villain before I got to know you! we are all going to gallivant around Georgian London foiling abductors and fighting duels and definitely not being escaped Jacobites in hiding!), but yeah, no, I don’t like this one.
I think I understand the appeal—anyone who thinks girls don’t have that fixing instinct has either not met many girls or not observed them very closely. My sister has never even dated someone to fix him, but sometimes she has had to take a step back from certain of her male friends (I don’t think it matters that they were male…but they were, so yeah) because (as I tell her and she knows) they have made and are continuing to make poor life choices, and until they actually want to change, they are not going to. You, dear sister, continue to be a good friend, but don’t invest yourself in what has to be their struggle. You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink and there’s no sense drowning your own self trying.
My sister, seeing that in herself, has talked to me about how she’s grown to understand the girls who date a guy thinking they can change him. She used to think they were crazy. But now she gets it—it’s not that you’re arrogant and think you have the power to change him; it’s just that you want him to change so much, because you care about him, and you have seen your influence impact him positively in small ways so why not big ways? Guys like having a girl invested in changing them; they just don’t like doing the actual work of changing. So they’ll encourage you in your endeavors yet never wholly sign on, and it becomes easy to deceive yourself.
In fiction, it’s even easier to carry on the deception because reality never has to come knocking. The girl can fix the player, living out this deeply ingrained fantasy a lot of women have, and it can end not in disillusionment or abuse but instead in a healthy (??) romance!
Except that even in these fantasies it often isn’t healthy.
One of the few Georgette Heyer books I passionately hate is Venetia. The heroine’s attitude, when she goes after the hero toward the end, is very clearly that she’d better hurry or he’ll move on to someone else.
……..at least she’s going into it with her eyes wide open??!!?!? But please, don’t.
The player should at least have to actually get fixed. Bare minimum, in my view. Apparently not in everyone’s.
Personally, I don’t buy every claim of changed character either. He’s gonna cheat on you in five years, girl. Not because you stopped being all the things he was attracted to, but because he’s a player. That’s what, through inclination and repetition, he has built his character to be. If he changes, great. But if he falls in love with you, that doesn’t mean he changed. It can be the catalyst, but unless there was work put into this so-called change, temptation overcome, something…color me skeptical.
A lot of this obviously applies more broadly to the Bad Boy, Good Girl trope in general as well (which is a topic for another time), but it’s specifically relevant for fixing the player, I think, because fixing the player is about a character change that’s fundamental to romance—i.e. commitment. And exclusivity. And choosing someone above all others.
Love is a tether. You either accept that that is what it costs or you reject it and go on to find that there are worse tethers in the world and that freedom is not everything. People like redemption stories, so they like to see the player find that out.
I’m not about fixing the player in general, but Georgette Heyer’s novel Frederica is one of my absolute-favorites-bar-none of her works. It is also, pretty much, about fixing the player. I like to think it’s because of how well it does the thing I just said.
WELL…I GUESS THE VERDICT IS, ROMANCE ISN’T COMPLETELY TERRIBLE ALL THE TIME, AND IT SHOULD BE EXCITING BUT ALSO WHOLESOME, TO PLEASE ME, AND THE TWO ADJECTIVES ARE NOT MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE. WHAT DO Y’ALL THINK ABOUT THESE TROPES???
Sixty-Something Trees 