Yikes, Two Months!

 No, I haven't lost that blogging feeling! I woke up this morning, casting about for reasons and excuses why it's been two frigging months. But nevermind. Blog, just blog!

So waaaaaaaaaaay back in March: That was a good month for reading:

1. Little Town on the Prairie - Laura Ingalls Wilder

2. Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less - Greg McKeown

3. Always Young and Restless - Melody Thomas Scott

4. Solutions and Other Problems - Allie Brosh.

5. Who Was Catherine the Great? - Pam Pollack and Meg Belviso

6. Who Is Kamala Harris? - Kirsten Anderson

7. Who Was Walt Whitman? - Kirsten Anderson

Notes:

I always love me some Laura, but the minstrel show is pretty ugh. Also ugh but also kind of horrifying and funny was Pa's dream about going to the barber only to wake and find that a mouse has been chewing off his hair to make a nest.

My takeaway from Essentialism is that if you say no, people will be pissed off in the short term. If you say yes, they won't really respect you for it. This book was too closely related to a very narrow sliver of the workplace and not enough to other avenues of life.

Always Young and Restless was fun as I expected, but there was also more depth than I expected.

Solutions and Other Problems: I'm just not a fan of Allie Brosh's style of art, but I very much enjoy her writing.

Who Was Catherine the Great?  Who indeed! Wow, the authors tackled some extremely grown up subjects here to present a portrait of a complex woman which is satisfying to readers of all ages.

The Kamala Harris biography felt rushed out and was disappointingly short.

Who Was Walt Whitman? wasn't one of my favorites of this series. It seemed a little hazy.

Meet The New Post; Same As The Old Post

All of this may sound familiar:

I'm still reading and enjoying Grant by Ron Chernow and excluding all other books from my life until I'm finished.

I'm still doing NaNoWriMo. Now the writing is starting to feel unwieldy and that scares me. Then I remember that it's OK to let it get out of hand this month. Next month I can edit.

 Mom is still in the nursing home. The doctor wants her to stay through Christmas. Maybe it will help to break this crazy cycle of home/hospital/nursing home.

But what's new?

I'm dreaming of a Bonnethead Christmas! No, not the tin cup and the penny this time. Took a run through the local bookstore today and there are so many new and delectable books, fiction and nonfiction, about Laura and her world.

There's a million things I haven't done, but getting a 2018 calendar isn't one of them. Hamilton is going to grace my wall for a second year.  As soon as I saw it, I didn't hesitate; I exhibited no restraint.

After a certain notorious monster died recently, I decided that I'm finally ready after many years to read Helter Skelter. Some other library patron had the same idea, so I'm on the waitlist.

Recently, I discovered the Broadway channel on satellite radio and I am in love. Problem: I'm listening to show tunes during my commutes to work and the nursing home and that's messing with my resolution to always keep an audiobook on the go. I don't know if I'll start another one before the end of the year but if I do, it will be The Nix by Nathan Hill.

Because I am listening to the Broadway channel so much, I am dreaming books into musicals almost every night. A Little Life. Lincoln in the Bardo. Grant. Even my own fledgling...there was a showstopper called Squawk the Squawk. That's all I can remember. Bye-bye, Tony Award!

April: 7 Books 30 Days Part 2 (I Speak Bonnethead)

The Selected Letters of Laura Ingalls Wilder - Laura Ingalls Wilder, William Anderson, ed.

I can't say enough nice things about this collection of Laura's letters, but I'm sure going to try. First of all, the volume is beautifully and meticulously edited by William Anderson. It's not just editing; it's annotation. Truly a labor of love and scholarship. I'm thinking Pulitzer.

What a great read for nerdy Bonnetheads such as yours truly! I loved hearing Laura's writing voice directly, without the Rose-colored filtering. Speaking of Rose Wilder Lane, there was some good stuff in regards to the writing of the Little House series. I was surprised to learn that it was Laura's brainchild to have the situations and the prose itself 'grow up' as Laura Ingalls became a young adult. Rose seemed to be all for keeping the entire series on a much younger level, which seems ludicrous now. Judging by the letters on Laura's side, they nearly came to blows over The Shores of Silver Lake. Laura won, for which we can all be glad.

 In the early 1930s, when she was broke and back in Mansfield, Missouri, Rose asked her parents to tell her stories about the homesteading days. Laura and Almanzo complied, probably thinking that they were just passing the evening. Rose took the information and turned it into a short novel, Let the Hurricane Roar (1933) and called her protagonists Charles and Caroline.

 Laura was frosted. Firstly, she was in the beginning stages of plotting out her series and had planned to use the material herself (she used the grasshopper plague and Pa losing the crop and having to go away and find work in The Banks of Plum Creek.) Secondly, Charles and Caroline??!!  Even to the end of her life, she was still impatiently explaining to fans that LTHR was a fictional story and had nothing to do with Ma and Pa, and Rose's choice of names was "unfortunate". (The book now shows up as Young Pioneers and the main characters are David and Molly.)

OK, I admit it: I'm not done with Rose yet: Only ONE LETTER from the 1940s from Laura survived among her papers. It doesn't make sense, since by then Rose had quit Mansfield and was living in Danbury, Connecticut. Up to that point, the two had exchanged letters every few days except when they were living together. Rose must have had a Laura bonfire, which makes me feel angry enough to shake a double desk to pieces after drawing an unflattering caricature of her and writing a mean verse about her on my slate.

Speaking of Laura's letters, they are gems of brevity. She manages to be informative, warm, witty, caring and thoughtful in the space of five sentences. She did write longer letters to Almanzo when she traveled west to San Francisco with Rose, and they are so full of description and observations and the pure essence of Laura-ness that had I been Almanzo, I would have pitched a tent at the mailbox.

Laura's readers often had questions about what became of the characters in her books. Interestingly, the girl based on Nellie Oleson moved to New York (presumably after her failure to get Almanzo interested in her) and married a man who stole some money and ended up in prison. Cap Garland (the young guy you can tell that Laura was crushing on for at least two books in the series) had some kind of accident and died young.

What surprised me most was a questionnaire that Laura filled out, listing her favorite books from childhood. From a list of 100 books provided, she checked only two, Lorna Doone and Uncle Tom's Cabin. Her reading background was downright scanty, consisting of Tennyson's Poems and stories from Youth's Home Companion and presumably, The Bible. I like to think that this contributed to her strong storytelling voice and she didn't have to struggle through imitating several writing styles before finding her own voice.

What else? The Hard Winter was Laura's working title for The Long Winter, but her editors thought that The Hard Winter was "too grim" for young readers.  They evidently ran themselves ragged trying to offset the grimness, because that cheerful cover for TLW is just so so so wrong.

Kudos to editor William Anderson for turning up so many letters from so many sources. My very favorite of Laura's correspondents (besides the young boy from Japan) was the renowned children's book editor and author Ursula Nordstrom. I wish I could have read Nordstrom's side of the correspondence; she was one of the earliest Bonnetheads and Anderson briefly quotes one of her letters praising Little Town on the Prairie in which she says that when Nellie Oleson shows up at the school in Dakota Territory, it was so perfect that she nearly burst into tears.

I've got to wrap this review up somehow. In one of the letters, Laura gives one of her fans her gingerbread recipe. Baking's not really my thing, but I've got to try it. While I'm firing up a "moderate" oven and assembling the ingredients, you should go out and find a copy of The Selected Letters of Laura Ingalls Wilder.

Fiction and Nonfiction Pairing #nonficnov

Last week I read On the Way Home, Laura Ingalls Wilder's 1894 diary of  her 650 mile trip with Almanzo (her husband) and Rose (her young daughter) from South Dakota to Mansfield, MO.  If you think a lot about the Laura/Rose collaboration on the "Little House" books (which I do, call me Bonnethead, I don't care) this is a nice specimen of both voices shown to their best advantage without one crowding out the other.

On the Way Home (published in 1962) begins with a "setting" by Rose Wilder Lane:

 Farming has been a bust for Almanzo and Laura. Rose has gone to live with Laura's parents because Laura and Almanzo have been seriously ill with diphtheria. After recovering, they have determined to leave South Dakota and settle in Mansfield, MO, which is being touted as the apple capital of the world. Almanzo is picking up work here and there, and Laura is back making buttonholes for a dollar a day. Finally, they have enough saved for the trip and a down payment on some property. They pack the wagon, say goodbye to the Ingalls family and they're off.

The next section is Laura's diary, in which she wrote a few lines every day. On the whole, it's a no-frills account, sober reporting. Laura makes note of how much hay is going for in each town, as well as the price of an acre. She also gives her sometimes tart impressions of the people they meet and the states they pass through. She didn't care a bit for Nebraska, but loved Kansas. At one point, she says that if she and "Manly" don't like Missouri, they will come back to Kansas.

For a child, this would be eye-crossingly boring reading, but I've gotten to an age at which I enjoy Laura's plain, unadorned voice here as well as in The First Four Years and Pioneer Girl. This newfound appreciation in no way diminishes my love for the "Little House" series, but some of the pings and flourishes seem intrusive now.

After the Wilders get to Mansfield, Laura's diary ends and Rose's narrative picks up again, which is a good thing because there was some real-life drama which gives the book some needed tension. Rose reins herself in, minimizing the pings and flourishes. She's a wonderful, powerful storyteller.

Little House on Rocky Ridge by Roger Lea MacBride is the fictionalized version of On the Way Home. MacBride was Rose's lifelong friend and the executor of her estate. He did an admirable job of capturing the tone of the original books written by Laura and Rose.

Dreaming in Literature: Buttonholes?!

I woke up shaking from this afternoon nap:

In my dream, I had somehow landed in Walnut Grove or De Smet, Dakota Territory.  Anyway, I knew for sure I was in Laura-land.  I didn't know what else to do, so I went to school.  They were all on lunch recess.  There was Laura.  She was a teenager.  She didn't look like Melissa Gilbert.  She looked like this.

After all the girls found out that I wasn't living with my ma or pa, Laura decided that I needed a job.  "You can make buttonholes for Miss Beadle," she told me.

I thought Miss Beadle taught school, but I didn't say anything.  Maybe she sewed on the side.

Laura had everything arranged in minutes.  "You can start right away.  I've got chores, but Ma will be over to check your buttonholes."

Problem:  I had no idea how to make a buttonhole, and not even a ghost of an idea of how to begin.  Scissors?  Thread?  All of the other girls knew how to make buttonholes, except Nellie Oleson, who said she didn't care to know.  I didn't want to admit that I was anything like her.  

Suddenly, I was upstairs at Miss Beadle's, and I had a pile of shirts to buttonhole before suppertime.  Feeling nervous, I dropped the thimble several times.  I was still working out on which finger to wear the thimble, when Laura sent a message that Ma was busy but Mary would be over to check my buttonholes.

Mary?  Mary was blind, but obviously she knew her way around a buttonhole, too.  I could hear her climbing the stairs.  I was frantically looking for a shirt that had been finished.  She wouldn't be able to tell if I had done it myself or not, and that would give me time to figure it all out.  

Not a stinking shirt in that whole room had a single finished buttonhole, and Mary was getting closer.  I panicked and decided to sneak out on Mary and go ask Nellie's advice.  Maybe she wasn't so bad after all.  She couldn't be any worse than buttonholes.

No Bonnethead

I love the Little House books.  I can barely remember not loving them.  Like Amy in Beverly Cleary's Mitch and Amy, I liked to dress up in my mother's dresses (she had a yellow-and-white cotton summer dress with a full skirt that was just right) and play Little House on the Prairie.  I was always Laura.  My younger  brother got to be Mary or Nellie Oleson, or sometimes, Jack the bulldog.  In sixth grade, my first attempt at novel writing looked a lot like On The Banks of Plum Creek.  I was such a little calico freak that I secretly wanted a tin cup, a stick of candy and a penny in my Christmas stocking.

I always wanted my mom to like the Little House books as much as I did.  She watches the TV show from time to time, but never seemed interested in the series of novels.  I always believed they'd be right up her alley since they featured no talking animals, were based on true stories from Laura's girlhood and had plenty of illustrations.  I never gave up hope of bonding with her over the adventures of the Ingalls family.

Last summer, she seemed mildly interested when I was reading Wendy McClure's memoir of her Laura obsession, The Wilder Life   When McClure mentioned that Laura and her family actually lived for one whole year (1868-69) in Chariton county, the place where Mom was born, her interest spiked and we spent a couple of hours roaming the back roads between Rothville and Mendon, looking for the plaque that marked the Ingalls' brief homestead.  As we rode along, I knew she was ready for her first foray into the books. I would usher her into the world of Lit-Laura.  After waiting around more than 40 years, our Bonnethead time had come at last.

I didn't waste much time getting to the bookstore.  Ideally, I wanted to begin at the beginning with Little House in the Big Woods, the first book in the series.  (Actually, I wanted to buy the whole set right then and there, but I thought she'd be intimidated)  No joy.  The bookstore was fresh out of LHITBW, but they had Little House on the Prairie.  That would work.  It had the same name as the TV show and it's the most perfectly structured book in the series.  I brought it home to her, but before she could begin reading, my sense of going in order was making me crazy, so I went to the used bookstore and got Little House in the Big Woods.  The pig's bladder balloon!  Butter making! Laura's corncob doll, Susan! Charlotte! Pa's stories!  She couldn't miss out on all that.

Mom picked up LHITBW and started reading.  I was reading my own book, but I was also watching her read.  I wanted to be ready when she bespoke her enjoyment at intervals.  After a few pages, she put the book down and picked up her word search puzzle book.  No more reading that evening.  Aaaah, I thought.  She's savoring.  When she went to the bathroom, I quickly checked where the bookmark was: Page 30.

"Ma liked everything on her table to be pretty, so in the wintertime, she colored the butter."

The bookmark didn't move over the next few days.  What was going on?  I would find out.  One evening, my friend and former husband, Mr. Bybee, came over for a visit.  During a lull in the conversation, I told him that Mom had started reading the first Little House book.

"It's corny, " Mom said.

"Corny?"  I repeated.  "What do you mean?"  Mr. B. looked a little worried.  He knows how I feel about Laura and the gang.  After all, he was the one who gamely drove me to Mansfield, Missouri to see The Laura Ingalls Wilder museum back in the 1990s. He knew I wasn't going to take a judgment like "corny" lying down.

"Well, all they talk about is boring stuff like smoking meat and making butter step-by-step.  It's corny.  I guess they think kids don't know about any of this."

I was perturbed, but interested in her use of the plural pronoun.  After all, the Little House books were a joint effort between Laura and her daughter, Rose.

"Did you get to the part about the pig's bladder?"

Mom snorted.  "Yes."

"Oh," I said.

Corny?!  Dammit, I had screwed up!  I should have started her out with Little House on The Prairie where the Ingalls family didn't do chores --  they just got up and moved and got the hell across the Mississippi before the ice broke! 

Long story short:  The bookmark stayed at page 30 for the next 6 weeks, and it was still there when I walked out the door for the airport and as far as I know, it will be there until time immemorial.  I'm bound to sail my prairie schooner alone.  I love my mom, but she's no Bonnethead.