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.
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.
That’s what a friend once called February. I thought it apt, this year in particular.
A theme song for February (and also a jam):
I don’t much feel like mini-reviews, so here are the reads rapid-fire:
Finally, finally finished Thomas Pakenham’s The Scramble for Africa. It was good, and I saw a review on Goodreads that called it an odd duck for a history book written in the ’90s since it expounded no theories on why or how things happened but simply told the narrative. Italian dude’s diary entry for the day was this. Ethiopian king’s reported message to general was this. (Have no idea if that actually makes it unusual, but it is what I want out of history books. Tell me what happened, and I can construct my own theories.) It was good. The sheer context for WWI, my gosh.
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s Southern Mail was as lyrical and thoughtful as you’d expect from the author of The Little Prince, but there was considerably more sex. (I don’t actually know what I think of this book. Certainly I do not approve of adulterous affairs. Or hurting little girls??? Certainly Saint-Exupéry paints nature and isolation and A Pilot’s Life with unmatched skill.)
Fly With the Arrow was a Bluebeard retelling that didn’t quite do it for me (I can get over a murdery love interest, but does he have to smirk incessantly?) but there was one (1) fabulous plot twist at the end that almost made it all worth it.
I read Gingell’s Shards of a Broken Sword trilogy. King Markon is the best Tired Dad MC in Twelve Days of Faery, I want a book all about Rafiq interacting with Kako’s siblings from Fire in the Blood (and also all the sentient fairy-tale castles, please), and The First Chill of Autumn was…I don’t know how to describe it. But I liked it. I liked it despite aggressively not caring about the romance but also thinking the romance was important to the storyline?? I liked especially that Dion was the protagonist. Her sister Aerwn would be the normal choice for any old YA fantasy story, but Dion’s story was so interesting to me; she’s not the kind of girl who gets to be the main character, you know? Plus a personality like Aerwn’s at the helm just wouldn’t have lent the story the same quality: Celtic or George-MacDonald-ish or a very specific type of Arthurian or…it’s hard to describe. But weighted with the knowledge of rapidly approaching mortality (and its utter necessity) in a setting that heightens how weird it feels to die when the world is so alive and immortal and piercingly merry.
My aunt spent a very disillusioning weekend with us. She was looking forward to watching a few episodes with us of Alias Smith and Jones, which she remembered watching as a kid, but first she had to find out that the Six Million Dollar Man was a blue-eyed bad guy:
…and then Pete was a bad guy too?
It was a sad time for her.
(The other highlight of all that was when he was being a blustering idiot and the camera showed his wife for a second and my aunt whispered very audibly, “oohh, she’s about to go off on him…”)
I watched I, Robot (2004)with my mom. Enjoyed it. Nothing like the book except that the Three Laws…exist. (And a character has the same name.) They portrayed the “Zeroth Law” as a bad, dangerous thing, which is kind of opposite from what I’ve read of Asimov? Maybe by 2004 we’d gotten a little less optimistic about the millennialist powers of technology than we were in 1950? (Gee I wonder why)
I also watched Mirror, Mirror (2012)with my sister, and can I just say for a movie that was constantly patting itself on the back for subverting fairy-tale tropes, it was…really not very original in how it chose to do so? The really gutsy subversion would’ve been for Snow to not end up with the idiot prince that she loved for no discernible reason, I’m just saying. Also the aesthetic of the movie was not it. Costumes? Gorgeous. Secret place where evil queen rises out of the lake and accesses her magic?? *chef’s kiss* But otherwise, so weird and ugly and the somber color palette did not mesh well with the goofy humor.
Thehumor was funny, though. We were entertained. They would hit the absurd notes at just the right times, in just the right ways. Stupid but entertaining. And hey, I want Sean Bean to be my dad??
A very good thing that happened to me: while I was curled up in the hay in the barn talking to a friend (via FaceTime), a motley assortment of animals (species represented included sheep, dog, and horse) came moseying over to hang out. Our semi-serious conversation was interrupted many times to laugh at the noses of overly friendly beasts snuffling alarmingly close to the camera.
A very useless thing that the dog keeps doing: bringing me daily offerings of dead armadillo parts???? Thank you, Susie. I really needed those.
Reread of the month: The Lord of the Rings. Specifically book 1, or the first half of Fellowship, is what I’ve gotten through so far. I wasn’t planning to reread it since I read it twice in a row a few years back, but it happened and it’s been so nice. I’m so glad Tolkien spent so much time in the Shire, establishing what it is Frodo is willing to spend the rest of the book slowly killing himself for, you know? And I love the interactions of the hobbit friends before things get too terribly serious and the hints of what each hobbit will grow into. I love the creepiness of the Ringwraiths and how wrong that danger feels in the Shire, and how one second you’re terrified, then it’s Gildor and the Elves, then you’re terrified again, then it’s a cozy supper with Farmer Maggot, then you’re terrified again, then it’s respite and refreshment in the springtime house of Tom Bombadil…then the BARROW DOWNS. The Barrow Downs are my favorite, and I understand why they’re not in the movies, but Merry’s sword??? There’s no explanation for that in the movies. Plus the Barrow Downs are a really important character moment for Frodo, and beyond that I’ve just always found them the scariest, most awful, terrifying part of the book…in the best possible way. Really, I love every detail of Tolkien’s world and writing (funny, deathly serious, or somewhere in between), and I think how comforting I find this book (Ringwraiths and all) is the prime example of my sister saying I have a very weird definition of “wholesome.”
I am fine with that.
I love rereading and I need to get back into rereading some of my old favorites, so next wholesome comfort read on the list will probably be Assignment in Brittany because what’s more cozy than Nazis, torture, and family drama?
I bid you adieu with a song I hope will characterize the coming month (and even if it doesn’t, it was beautiful to listen to at the end of this one, not to mention got me through a heck of a lot of credit card receipts):
It’s long, and I rarely listen to music other people put in their posts, so I don’t necessarily expect any of you to actually listen to it, but…you should?? You should listen to it all the way through. Saint-Saëns is a severely underrated composer, and this symphony is beautiful, especially toward the end.
L. M. Montgomery is known (and beloved) for writing iconic female characters. I myself related deeply to Emily Starr as a child; I had multiple friends who latched onto Anne Shirley, the famous redheaded orphan. Fewer people know about Sara (she of the strange storytelling gift from The Story Girl)—or Valancy Stirling, the older heroine of The Blue Castle, but she’s also a universally relatable character to many, with her ordinariness, her simple human foibles, and her desire to truly live.
However, one of her most special characters, for me personally, is Marilla Cuthbert, who isn’t a heroine at all, but the rather grim spinster who adopts Anne Shirley. Most people have read Anne of Green Gables or at least seen the movie (in which Colleen Dewhurst’s performance as Marilla is literal Perfection), so I won’t explain much about Marilla. Just that she never wanted to adopt a girl, finds Anne’s chatter tiring and imagination concerning, wants to do right by the child but loving her is a little too much to ask my gosh, keeps her house spotless, and has something about her mouth that might, if it had been developed, have been a sense of humor.
So, I love Anne. She’s somewhat idealized (I think), but she’s still very real and fragile and vulnerable and genuinely sweet. I can’t do her justice in a tiny paragraph, but she’s well-drawn and wonderful and I love her. I do not relate to her, but I love her.
I also love Matthew. He’s the fan-favorite with my sisters, and it’s small wonder when he is so relatably shy, so adorably taken with Anne, and so generally kind and funny and comfy.
But best of all, my dears—best of all I love Marilla.
I think it’s very interesting that L. M. Montgomery saw fit to pair Marilla with Anne and, further, that she did not villainize her at all. Marilla is never once (that I recall) villainized. Things are often told from her perspective, in fact, and as an adult her harshness makes sense sometimes. She doesn’t know what to do. She’s never raised a child; she doesn’t know how to raise a child; she doesn’t even like children.
And this child insists on loving her brightly, lavishly, heedlessly, with raptures over beauty she wants to share, overflowing gratitude for every kindness, and inexhaustible goodwill.
That’s not how Marilla operates. Marilla doesn’t know how to respond. Overt displays of emotion make her uncomfortable. She’s lived her whole life with set, narrow ways that it is acceptable to express things, and breaking out of that is hard.
But more than social conditioning, Marilla is simply not a “motherly” woman. Her tenderness does not show itself in cuddling or crooning. She’s practical. If you’re hurt, she’ll bandage you up. If you’re having trouble making a decision, she’ll tell you to buck up and make a choice and stick to it.
For Anne (and many women), love is shown in a shower of affectionate, affirming words. For Marilla, it isn’t.
And that…never really changes? Marilla learns to be less harsh, to let in Anne’s love and to love Anne herself. The something about her mouth develops and becomes a most excellent sense of humor. But she never becomes other than she is.
I first read Anne of Green Gables when I was too young to appreciate this consciously. I have since come to realize that it means a lot to me. I see something of myself in Marilla, for one thing, but more than that I see my mom.
Without being as harsh as Marilla ever was (or making me doubt her love for me), my mom is…not like other moms, I guess? I mean, people talk about women, and mothers especially, like they’re this wonderful gift to humanity because they have a very specific set of gifts which, by and large, my mom does not have. My mom is a good mom. She does many things she hates (cooking, cleaning) because she’s a good mom who wants to take care of her children and husband (who…would probably accidentally starve himself if left to his own devices at mealtime). But she doesn’t have a natural gift for these things. Like I said, she hates them. My mom is incredibly smart and incredibly absent-minded. She doesn’t enjoy talking about her children or listening to other people talk about theirs. She wants to talk about Thomas Jefferson or set theory or the theology of the Trinity. Public displays of emotion make her very uncomfortable. She doesn’t tell us she’s proud of us, and she doesn’t brag on us to other people either. She helps us with our practical problems, but she doesn’t hug us and tell us it’s all going to be all right. Nine times out of ten, if you were pouring out your soul to her, she didn’t catch what you said because she was far too deep in thought. “Mothering” in the traditional sense comes hard to her.
But, and I cannot stress this enough, my mom is a good mom. I love her dearly. But because she is not blessed abundantly with the feminine, housewifely gifts, it sort of seems like I’ve never heard her appreciated in the abstract?
Like, women like Marilla and my mom? They exist. They are mothers.
Marilla didn’t have to become an unnatural mirror of Anne to be valuable or properly human. You have to understand how much I appreciate that. L. M. Montgomery was certainly neither a perfect woman nor a perfect author, and I don’t always think she gave certain characters their “due,” but I think that when she did nail a character, she really, truly nailed it.
Like Marilla: dour, sarcastic, private…and loving mother to a child who needed one desperately. Marilla comes to love Anne for who she is, and Anne comes to love Marilla for who she is. And personally, I think that’s rather beautiful.
That’s my entry in Hamlette’s We Love L. M. Montgomery blog party. Later and barer of quotes than I hoped it would be (and more personal than I realized it would be when I had the idea? yikes?), but go check out Hamlette’s blog to see all the other posts and games while there’s still time!
Also, I’m sorry I haven’t gotten around to answering any of your lovely comments yet…for much the same reasons that this post is later than intended. I will get to them, just…not yet, sorry. I hope you all have (as Anne Shirley would say) a simply rapturous week!
You can see I never really know what to title these things, and somehow murder shows up in the titles with concerning frequency. But the title does not lie to you: I did not murder anyone. So that’s good.
What I did do was I got tired of mini-review posts being insanely long, and late, and sometimes split into two. So I decided I would do them every month.
I’ve decided that before. This time I’m actually doing it, maybe.
January was a month of:
sickness
therefore grouchiness
truly, I was concerningly grouchy for pretty much the whole month
(I kinda enjoy being Sophie Hatter, ngl)
driving the skid steer around like a lolloping elephant (I don’t know why this thing is so fun but it’s so fun)
a bald eagle just chillin’ in the backyard (sir, you look amazing. but please don’t eat my chickens.)
being a freelance Expert on Technology and Bookkeeping Principles (I am not an expert in either of these things, but the lady I worked for absolutely thought I was, and it was very flattering and cute and I did my best)
“I’M FROM TEXAS, OKAY??!” <—shouted repeatedly by friend who moved here from Texas a few years ago because apparently we weren’t taking her complaints about the cold seriously enough (For reference, it was about 25 degrees out. Cold shivery winter weather, sure, but not my lungs hurt when I breathe and I can’t move my fingers cold. Darling.)
I watched a lot of movies, actually (5). I really like action movies, actually.
and, obviously, BOOKS
Antigone
Sophocles; translated by Paul Woodruff
So, like, I assume you know the plot of this. I didn’t. It was kind of odd. I’ve never read any Greek plays, but I still know the story of Oedipus and…how Agamemnon killed his daughter? And stuff? (Maybe I don’t know as much Greek theatre as I thought?) If you don’t know it, I don’t know how to help you, because it’s a play and it’s short. Antigone wants to bury her brother. Creon says she can’t. A lot of people end up dying because he won’t just let the woman bury her dang brother.
Muy bueno:
Antigone. I love her
The way it’s super dramatic but also kind of simple and profound
Antigone though. Gosh I love her
I think I like this translation. It seemed like people who know what they’re talking about think it’s accurate to the original Greek, so that’s good, but also it was quite simple and modern. Which you know what. Go for it. Creon saying “shut up” worked for me. Sometimes the poetry comes through better when the language is simple anyway
Anguish! Grief! Despair!
Meh:
I don’t…really have any complaints?
Why can’t ancient Greeks write a happy ending every once in awhile, I guess, but a happy ending would kinda negate the point here. So.
A Man Called Ove
Frederick Backman
A man called Ove just wants to get on with his day without being interrupted by imbeciles and twits. He is constantly interrupted by imbeciles and twits, and also by a very pregnant lady who is not a twit and by a Cat Nuisance.
Muy bueno:
Ove as a young man. The story of how he became a grumpy old man.
Ove’s grumpiness
Ove and Sonja
Ove being solid goodness and grumpily helping people while Sonja is sunshine
Ove wordlessly adoring Sonja and Sonja seeing how amazing Ove is, actually, contrary to appearances, and loving him so much
Ove really, really hating bureaucracy because same
Not since Toph Beifong have I related to a character as much as to the grumpy seven-year-old
“Morbid but wholesome” is a vibe I don’t see pulled off a lot, but I like it
Meh:
There was too much heartwarming-ness toward the end (I’m sorry, I told you I’m the grumpy seven-year-old)
(Also maybe I would change my mind if I reread, because I remember having the same opinion of The Wednesday Wars when I first read it and then deciding I was wrong when I reread it; but for now, too much heartwarming-ness.)
Books with parallel timelines always run the risk of one timeline being way more interesting than the other, and that was the case here: I was far more interested in Ove’s backstory, and Ove and Sonja, than in the current residents of the neighborhood (oops)
Soldiers Three
Rudyard Kipling
I like Kipling’s short stories. The man’s pRoSE, for one thing. For another, his finger is right on the pulse of human nature. Sometimes he obfuscates with jokes or with cynicism (I guess, very dense flippant British cynicism), but…he knows what’s up, is what I’m saying. And he’s funny and at the same time he can be horrifically awful and sad (but more often funny) within a given story, so you don’t ever know what to expect. There is a knife’s edge to Kipling’s writing. (I dote on it.)
This particular collection is mainly about three privates in the British Army in India. Mulvaney is an Irishman with a silver tongue, a canny (probably not criminal?) mind, and a fondness for the drink (his main failing). He is very Irish-ly self-deprecating yet proud, and I really like it. His friends are Ortheris, a Cockney (whom I kind of pictured as Newkirk, whoops), and Learoyd, a Yorkshireman (whom it was impossible to picture as Dickon, however hard one tried, but sorta possible to picture as Sam from Assignment in Brittany). The stories are generally told in the accent of whichever of these three is telling it.
Which some people would hate. I happen to love it.
I prefer Plain Tales from the Hills as a collection, overall, but this had some gems. Notably:
The one at the end with the writer
The Taking of Lungtungpen (I was amused, okay)
Black Jack (exciting, and Mulvaney’s a fun narrator)
The God from the Machine (again, amused)
The Brothers Karamazov
Fyodor Dostoyevsky; translated by Constance Garnett
I know you were impatient to get to the murderers. HERE THEY ARE.
There are some brothers. Their name is Karamazov.
Their dad gets murdered. No one’s saying he didn’t deserve it, but still, you can’t go around murdering people just because they deserve it. It was probably Mitya (Dmitri), the eldest Karamazov brother, who did it; at least that’s what everybody in the town thinks. Dmitri is involved with Too Many Women and it’s a toss-up until literally the last second whether they will save him or damn him. Meanwhile, Alyosha is pure and wonderful and deserves the world.
Muy bueno:
Alyosha
I ALSO love Ivan. Because he’s so…quiet. And rigid. And sincere and cynical and passionate and skeptical and detached and not really detached at all
Ivan toward the ENDING
HOW CULPABLE WAS HE?
POOR IVAN. I WANT TO GIVE HIM HUGS AND SWEATERS BUT I KNOW HE WOULD NOT ACCEPT THEM.
The way characters trust Alyosha to tell them the truth, and he DOES
The way I “get” Ivan’s atheism
How self-destructive everyone is (yes this is on the list of good things)
The way Dostoyevsky describes people, not sparing their glaring flaws
The three brothers’ relationship. Despite how dysfunctional it all is, it’s still kinda wholesome? Even though it’s not
Kolya. This kid. *cries*
Grushenka is actually great
The way the characters get really hung up on things being “Russian,” like they’re very interested in the mysteries of their own national character and I kind of get that. It was interesting, besides, to hear a Russian author through the mouths of Russian characters muse on it, when I personally know so little about it.
Why do I even write? I should just spend my days reading Dostoyevsky. I will never write anything half as good as this.
Meh:
Well, I won’t pretend I liked Katerina Ivanovna. Dreadful woman.
WHAT HAPPENED TO IVAN, THOUGH???
WHAT HAPPENED TO LISE???
Tucker
Louis L’Amour
More murder! Plus: gunfights, self-defense killings, wounds that should’ve killed someone and didn’t, and attempted murder.
Tucker is seventeen when the money he and his dad are taking home to Texas to share out after a successful cattle drive is stolen. Stolen by the very no-good kids Tucker used to hang around with in the teeth of his father’s disapproval, no less. His journey to get the money back and avenge his dad (and prove he’s not afraid of Bob Heseltine—because he’s definitely not afraid of Bob Heseltine) takes him from the Colorado Rockies to L.A. to the Mojave Desert and back. But the West is growing up, and the life of a drifting gunslinger is no life for a bright kid like Tucker…if he can only figure it out in time. And stay alive long enough to figure it out.
Muy bueno:
I do like a good coming-of-age Western.
Tucker meets this old guy in California who tells him a bit about its history (including pre-Gold Rush), and I’ve been so interested in California history recently. I didn’t even know that was gonna be in this book.
It’s so cute how a guy will take up with another guy because he likes the cut of his jib and is ready to drift for a while. Does this actually happen in real life? Probably not. It happens in Western novels and it makes me happy.
Quotes like “Well,” the old man said drily, “you ain’t a total damn fool” and When I was looking and listening in the stillness like that it seemed I could almost feel the mountains changing, for no matter how changeless and timeless they may seem, they are never twice the same and “You should look at you from this side of your eyes.”
L’Amour’s simple but vivid writing
Meh:
I mean, I guess it wasn’t up among my favorite Louis L’Amour books. It didn’t feel so masterful as Reilly’s Luck or The Daybreakers, and I wasn’t as charmed by it as by Silver Canyon or Ride the River…but it was a good book.
It needed more old guy and Consuela, tbh
Pony was kind of terrifying. Not necessarily a bad thing in the context of the book, but did he ever give me the creeps.
Bandit’s Moon
Sid Fleischman
Annyrose Smith, formerly of Louisiana, will seize any chance to get away from the foul and lumpish outlaw O. O. Mary and rejoin her brother Lank at the San Francisco gold mines. She will even ride with the notorious bandit Joaquin, whose hands are stained with blood to the elbows…or something. Not that Annyrose approves of robbery and murder! She doesn’t approve at all, in fact.
Muy bueno:
I kind of think Sid Fleischman has magical powers, actually. I loved both The Whipping Boy and By the Great Horn Spoon as a kid, and this was every bit as fun to read as an adult?
Really though, how is it so fun?
Like there is banter, there is adventure…
There are wonderful characters (both comical and nuanced)…
There is California history (guys it makes me so happy)…
There is Joaquin Murieta…
There is Annyrose coming to grips with the fact that robbery might be wrong, but what happened to Joaquin was also wrong. And…these things are complicated.
“Es destino”
ANNYROSE PLAYS THE VIOLIN (when she has one that O. O. Mary didn’t steal)
There is loyalty and sibling love and found family and AGH
Also. I really liked how Fleischman wove the elements of the Joaquin Murieta story into his version. Very satisfying.
Good MG is in general so satisfying.
Good historical adventure fiction is so satisfying.
I TELL YOU, I WAS SATISFIED—SATISFI-I-IED (to be sung in Simon & Garfunkel voices)
Meh:
I wish there was more of Joaquin and Annyrose bonding. That’s it, pretty much.
Okay, and this isn’t objectively bad, but it may have driven me a little crazy how long the “Wakeen” spelling was stuck with
That is that! Books were read! Opinions were formed! Do you also ship Ove and Sonja a weird amount? Do you disapprove of patricide? (I hope so.) Would you ride with a bandit to find your brother but cough your disapproval when he robbed people?
I’ve been sick recently (you know, along with half the country) and wasn’t getting well very fast, and the resultant rewatching of a bunch of episodes from some of my favorite shows made me want to talk about them. So. Here we are.
These aren’t the only shows I love, or even my only 3 “comfort shows” (as the kids say), but I think they are probably the top 3.
Hogan’s Heroes
This one is a comfort show in the very specific way that the bad guys are always dumb and get outwitted and soundly defeated at the end of the episode (or occasionally they’re smart, but Hogan & Crew still manage to tie them up in knots of their own making), the character dynamics never change and are always full of mean banter that makes my heart happy, and you’re never in doubt that the characters will make it through safely. They get themselves into dreadful situations, but it’s Hogan’s Heroes. The point is to be funny and make fun of Germans.
(I actually know a dear lady who can’t stand Hogan’s Heroes because she’s German and she thinks it’s making fun of Germans. I am part German and I think it’s making fun of Nazis, which is different. I also think it’s making fun of everyone to an extent. I grew up watching Hogan’s Heroes, and I always loved it, but I loved it twice as much after watching The Great Escape.)
(But, also, it’s not making fun of things in a way that makes light of them, exactly? I mean, I suppose it does. But it’s not offensive or irritating in the way that it does. At least that’s always been my opinion and I feel fairly validated by the fact that multiple of the main actors on the show were German Jews or actually survived a concentration camp or fought in World War II, and liked the show.)
The comedy isn’t as mindless as, like, Gilligan’s Island or Friends or something, but it’s a very safe-feeling show. Sometimes you just want a show like that, you know?
Y’all can have your serious, meaningful Code Name Veritys and your All the Light We Cannot Sees and your Catch-22s. I will stick with Colonel Hogan, of the U. S. Army Air Force, directing underground operations within Nazi Germany from his comfy POW camp.
And speaking of Hogan, I must talk about the characters. They’re grand. Bob Crane is just very good. Hogan is likable while being…super manipulative actually and totally selling the authority figure thing. He’s competent and wily but not infallible. His facial expressions and comic timing are impeccable.
My sister loves best Corporal Newkirk, R.A.F, card sharp, pickpocket, seamstress, thrower of knives, impersonator of nasal-voiced German generals, and all-around master of whatever shady Cockney art you can think of. (I love him too.)
(Also, Newkirk is the Pevensies’ uncle on the maternal side, just so you all know. Thank you Megan for introducing this possibility to my mind and hashing out whether or not it could actually work with me. It can and does and I sometimes envision Newkirk getting home after the war, calling on his married sister and her kids and being all like, “guess what I did during the war,” and Peter (he was named after his uncle, obviously), Susan, Edmund, and Lucy are all like, “guess what we did during the war!!!!”)
I have a soft spot for Kinch (the quiet competent one who can actually be counted on to do his job and only talks when he has a perfectly dry little comment to make is a weakness of mine), but I think my favorite is LeBeau. I actually don’t really know how to describe LeBeau. He’s short, he’s French, he cooks amazing things (but I already said he was French), and he can be excitable, particularly about certain topics. He’s also, obviously, the only one who calls the Germans “Boche” and that makes me happy for exactly no reason at all, but it does.
So that’s a description of LeBeau but it doesn’t at all explain why he’s my favorite. I just…really like him.
As a testament to Werner Klemperer’s acting skills (as Colonel Klink, the bumbling, sycophantic, perpetually nose-led, dregs-of-the-Luftwaffe commandant of Stalag 13), my sister Palestrina turned to me recently and said in baffled admiration, “He’s so good at acting him. He annoys even me.”
Major Hochstetter (Gestapo) is a perennial favorite. Escalating cries of, “VHAT IS ZIS MAN DOING HERE????” That is all.
We don’t talk about Maria. “Hogan, DHAAHLING,” is nearly as disturbing as whatever the heck Jabba the Hutt says to Han at the beginning of Star Wars: A New Hope.
Random note that my sister and I were just talking about: we find it hilarious how cavalierly the show sometimes treats death? Sometimes there’s a big bad Nazi who needs to be Solved, and he’s about to drive away in a huff to report to Berlin that Klink is a terrible commandant and should be sent to the Russian front, LeBeau and Carter tinker with his car…he drives off…there is an explosion…Klink is horrified but relieved at the same time…and Hogan smirks and makes some quip. Like. You just exploded a dude.
The A-Team
Ah, this show.
How do I explain it? How do I explain what it is about it?
This is my family’s Official Favorite Show. It is one of the only shows my dad will actually watch with the rest of us. (The other two are Alias Smith and Jones, treated below, and sometimes MacGyver. But Dad just is MacGyver, so that only makes sense.)
I think…it must have started when Palestrina developed a Murdock obsession.
But I mean, who doesn’t have a Murdock obsession? He sings. He flies anything that flies. He has an invisible dog Billy. He talks to his socks. He wears beat-up black Converse hi-tops, a Da Nang tiger flight jacket, and an old baseball cap. Permanent residence: psychiatric ward of the VA hospital. Permanent hobby: making B.A. mad. (Not that it’s hard.) He’s simultaneously the most childish and the most mature member of the team, and I think he’s the one whose loyalty is most obvious. Like, they’re all loyal to each other (Decker thinks he can use this against them. Silly Decker), but Murdock sort of shines with loyalty.
Before I came to the blindingly obvious realization that Murdock is the best, I did flirt with liking Hannibal the best too. He named himself after Hannibal (of the Carthaginians and mountain-crossing elephants). He takes Murdock 100% seriously. He goes around calling people “pal” and “slimeball” with a big cigar clamped in his teeth. He’s every bit as insane as Murdock, but he’s the leader of the team, and when he’s on the jazz there’s no telling what will happen.
His idea of a plan, for instance, is to go (unarmed) aboard a plane with Face and to “assume an offensive posture” toward the six armed men thereupon. He’s sneaking a pilot onboard in the meanwhile, true, but Face reacts about how you or I would–except with more despair, because he knows Hannibal’s really going to do it. Hannibal loves it when a plan comes together.
I won’t go too much into the characters or their dynamics—someday I am gonna write a post about how Leverage and The A-Team are just the same show in different time periods, in which there will be squealing on that topic aplenty—but that is in fact why I love this show so much and why it never fails to make me feel better. Hannibal and Face play off each other so well, but so do Hannibal and Murdock, and so do Murdock and Face, and so do B. A. and Murdock, and so do Amy and Face, and so do…
We love Colonel Decker. The military’s been after the team for ten years on account of them robbing that bank in Saigon (which they didn’t) during ‘Nam, and Decker is the man they assigned to get it done. Decker is not fooled by Hannibal’s insouciance nor by Murdock supposedly being “insane” and “not part of the team.” He doesn’t even make the mistake of thinking Amy Amanda Allen is an innocent reporter. He’s the perfect amount of smart, capable, and ruthless balanced with…well, balanced with Hannibal implying that he’s stupid all the time, because he isn’t stupid, but Hannibal always outsmarts him anyway and he just can’t help himself. And Decker gets harder to fool every time, but he always makes one little mistake, whereat Hannibal chuckles in pure glee and makes his move.
Decker is just a joy. Lance LeGault played him, and whoever Lance LeGault is (the internet says he was a stunt double for Elvis??!?), he did a stellar job.
This show is not as uniformly well-written as Hogan’s Heroes (like…at all, I’m afraid), but it is just as safe-feeling. A car will always flip over in a given episode, but also the people will always crawl out of it, dusty and shaken but otherwise unhurt. A car will also pretty much always explode, but the occupants will have jumped free. So many guns will shoot so many bullets, but no one’s actually gonna get killed. The good guys win. Always. (Except, ish, in season 5. But I don’t like season 5 and mostly pretend it doesn’t exist. “Stockwell” is a name not to be lightly spoken in our household, for it elicits hissings, booings, and all manner of forcefully expressed contempt.)
I can’t exactly put what makes The A-Team so appealing into words. It’s not always well-written (though sometimes it is and the weird conversations between the guys are nearly always great), there are sloppy mistakes, the one-episode characters are usually flat and have awful lines, the bad guys are even worse, and it’s really all very silly. But it’s a group of guys with a van and too many guns playing Robin Hood in ’80s L.A. Their personalities are distinct and odd, and their interactions are real and funny, and they are brothers-in-arms. And I just. Love them.
Alias Smith and Jones
This is, I suppose, the most “serious” show on this list. And it’s not very serious. Sometimes I worry that I am an altogether flippant person.
It’s a western. A…buddy western, I suppose you could say. A cousin western. Hannibal Heyes and Kid Curry are the two most wanted outlaws in the history of the west…but now they’re going straight, and it ain’t easy.
This show walks a fine line—for me, anyway. The line is that I like ostensibly comic (they can, and probably should, be serious underneath) stories much better than earnest ones, but I make an exception for Westerns. I don’t really like comic Westerns. There are exceptions, but overall…nope.
I think this is because I like Westerns so much, and because of what I think the specific strengths of Westerns are, but I won’t go into that now (though I would like to). For now, the important point is that I will always prefer Wanted: Dead or Alive to Maverick or even The Virginian (which is painfully earnest) to Bonanza (which is only painfully earnest half the time, and painfully slapstick the other half). And though I enjoyed Support Your Local Sheriff, it can’t hold a candle to The Magnificent Seven. Or even, like, The Tin Star.
To quote the ever-wise Nutmeg: “A lot of the more comic Westerns…[make] the stern beauty of the West look like it’s not real…it’s just a cheaply furnished stage for an overly melodramatic production.”
Which I do not appreciate, Jeeves. I do not appreciate it at all.
But Alias Smith and Jones is, in fact, a comic Western.
Kind of.
Actually, it’s one of those funny-on-top-serious-underneath stories. (And if you want to know my exact sense of humor…I think this show comes the closest to encompassing it.) But as a Western and as a story about two cousins and an ongoing process of redemption.
Oh my gosh, you guys, I just figured something out. Alias Smith and Jones is a second-chances story. Where they are offered the second chance at the beginning of the story and work it out over the course thereof. I pine, I perish, for such stories.
(IT ALL MAKES SENSE. WHY I LOVE IT SO MUCH. IT ALL MAKES SENSE NOW.)
So anyway, Alias Smith and Jones is a second-chance Western about COUSINS. Obviously a great show. I’m really having a hard time getting anything out. I love so much about this show, and it’s somewhat all connected, and it bottlenecks when one tries to express it through the narrow bottle-top of words.
Okay, so the cousin relationship is very perfect for one thing. Drama-free and doesn’t often come up, but they have complete trust in each other. Mostly. I mean, Curry trusts Heyes to think of some way to get them out of whatever trouble they’re in. He trusts Heyes’s judgment of people (even when he doesn’t), and basically he trusts Heyes to always be the smartest guy in the room. Which is super cute, honestly.
Heyes meanwhile relies on Curry’s fast draw, ability to follow his lead, and general uprightness of character. Not so much his intellect, but Curry can think. Some of the best conversations happen when Curry has Been Thinking. Curry isn’t stupid; he just isn’t Heyes. He hasn’t got a silver tongue or a brilliant mind; he does the shooting while Heyes does the safecracking (they take equal part in the wisecracking); and he does his part and lets his cousin do his part and they rely on each other and they make a sensational team.
Okay, so the thing is that they kind of remind me of my sister and me? Not in the exact dynamics I just talked about (even though there’s some truth to the I-make-the-schemes-Palestrina-does-the-legwork idea), but in the way they relate to each other. The way their relationship is not ever saying anything about it, but being pretty dang upset if somebody hurts the other one. Or puts the other one in danger. Or anything remotely resembling it. “Upset” being quite the euphemism. But also the little things, like their banter—but also not just what they say but how they say it and what they don’t say and how they say that! So much of their communication is nonverbal. Heyes makes a face, Curry makes a face back, Heyes makes another face back, their decision on the matter is settled, discussed, and final. I love having conversations with my sister like this in public places. I love watching Curry and Heyes have such conversations in pretty much every episode.
It doesn’t sound as good to shout, “HEYES’S FACES!” as it does to shout, “FACE’S FACES!” but it would be just as accurate. Heyes’s facial expressions are wonderful. Especially when Curry won’t let something go, and Heyes is trying to silently tell him to drop it, and Curry won’t drop it, and he finally rolls his eyes in despair.
Speaking of Curry not letting things go, he’s not nearly as patient or even forgiving as Heyes, but he doesn’t exactly get mad. I mean, he does, but people don’t know (and some of Heyes’s eye-rolling is for them, not knowing what they’re getting themselves into) he’s mad, because when Curry gets mad he just gets quieter and calmer…and quieter…and calmer… I really like characters like this. I really like them. (And his facial expressions are quite something, too.)
But I also really like Heyes! He’s so…unpretentious! Uneducated (Curry, reading a telegram: “‘A man doesn’t go crawling back’…doesn’t or don’t?” Heyes: “Don’t.” Curry: “And with all his money, too.”) but smart. Knows he’s smart. Doesn’t care if anyone besides the Kid knows he’s smart. Often part of his plan, in fact, for other people to think they’re the smart one when he’s been the smart one all along. He generally doesn’t care about appearances and likes to let Curry do his thing in the spotlight. Often, in fact (as in the case of the aforementioned faces and eye-rollings), tries to get Curry not to do his thing quite so much. Because we are still wanted by the law if you had forgotten, and sheriffs sit up and pay attention when you draw a gun that fast.
That brings me to just how well the actors deliver the lines. The lines are good, but they wouldn’t be nearly so good if the actors didn’t deliver them so well. A friendly sheriff tells the pair, “We’re here to take care of fellows like you,” to which Curry, his eyes on the Wanted posters for himself and Heyes over the sheriff’s shoulder: “We know.”
A lady says to Heyes, “I am sorry about that five hundred dollars you’ll be out,” to which Heyes: “Ma’am, your sorrow doesn’t even begin to equal my own.”
Or Curry, after a sheriff has offered to deputize them: “Great judge of character, isn’t he?”
Or Heyes: “Kid, when a sheriff looks at us, it’s bound to come out fishy no matter how he’s looking.”
It applies to the serious lines too. The delivery is just impeccable. My very favorite episode is The MacCreedy Bust: Going, Going, Gone! wherein Kid Curry gives me feelings SOMEHOW FOR SOME REASON.
It doesn’t make sense, even, because the plot of that one is so simple and really shouldn’t affect me the way it does. But I love the plots. Unlike many (many) Westerns, you don’t know where they’re going to go. They’re interesting; they meander, twist, and turn, and usually fetch up very satisfactorily. (You’d be surprised how much of a difference a good, thought-through plot makes to one’s enjoyment of an episode…especially upon rewatches.) Heyes and Curry, thoroughly unconvinced of their own goodness (which is fair), occasionally play the heroes but more often play the reluctant bystanders who just wanted to earn some money without working too hard and somehow got embroiled nonetheless.
Heyes is smart, but he doesn’t foresee every catastrophe (and sometimes trusts too much to luck). He’s a good judge of character, but sometimes he’s wrong. They would never hurt a lady and would even go out of their way (especially Curry) to protect one, but they’re not above ulterior motives when it comes to beautiful women. They’re good poker players, but not the best.(For the longest time, we could not figure out if they cheated at cards. “I don’t think they cheat…but like, do they though?? But I don’t think they do,” was Palestrina’s final verdict, and my agreement is that Curry certainly doesn’t and I don’t think Heyes does either.)
Speaking of ladies, though, the female characters in this show are excellent. It makes me incredibly happy, because Westerns aren’t exactly bursting with well-written female characters. But the women in Alias run the gamut from…from everything. Whether villains, heroes, or antiheroes, they’re never one-dimensional. There are plenty of antiheroines, and I enjoy them greatly, but I think my favorite instance of a female character being given proper respect by the writers was this missionary girl in the episode Six Strangers at Apache Springs. She was so gentle and earnest and religious, and it was all treated as something good. Both the script and Kid Curry were so…gentle with her. And not in a patronizing way; in a way that recognized how much respect she deserved. (Needless to say, I loved Kid Curry still more after this episode.)
I haven’t even gotten into the returning characters! Or the guest stars! Or the historical references! (But, and maybe I’m just a bad poker player, but I have tried multiple times and Heyes’s five-pat-hands-out-of-25-cards-dealt-at-random doesn’t work and I’m miffed.) Or how good the more serious episodes can be, as well as the comic ones! Or the character development over the course of the series, subtle but satisfying!
The only bad thing about the show (besides a very few quibbles with small parts of individual episodes—and maybe also the whole pilot episode) is that the actor for Heyes died halfway through season 2 and the studio, being (I presume) cheerfully insensitive where cash was to be made, kept production rolling and stuck in a new actor. Who looked and talked nothing like the old actor. I can’t really stand to watch those episodes, because Pete Duel was so perfect for the part, his cousin chemistry with Ben Murphy was unparalleled, and it just makes me sad. But I will rewatch seasons 1-and-half-of-2 till the day I die.
We have a show from the ’60s, the ’70s, and the ’80s, so no one can say my taste isn’t well-rounded, even if it is unorthodox.I’m unhealthily attached to them all. Have you seen any of them? Do you want to see any of them? Do you have a specially selected tier of comfort shows that may or may not earn you respect in the eyes of the sophisticated world?
Winter is camped out on the doorstep, and I am rejoicing at my first day without a sore throat in two weeks, glory be. I wish you all hot mugs of tea and cozy stories at your fingertips, and I leave you with the traditional winter greeting of my family—Stay warm and don’t get et!
Sixty-Something Trees 