And That Was April, Twenty Twenty Four

Only three books read in April:

1. Crazy Rich Asians - Kevin Kwan. Novel. Audiobook. So much satire and so much fun. Alamak!

2. Who is Taylor Swift? -Kirsten Anderson. Nonfiction. OK...so this book goes from Taylor's birth in 1989 and alllll the way through 2023 and mentions almost all of her hit songs and her boyfriends. Somehow, Travis Kelce doesn't show up at all. Not even a shadowy drawing of a football player wearing a red jersey with 87 on the back. Interesting!

3. Knife -Salman Rushdie. Memoir. Rushdie writes about the 2022 knife attack in which he was stabbed 15 times and lost an eye. The book follows his recovery and reactions to the attack, including a long, imaginary dialogue with his 24-year-old assailant, who seems to have gotten the half-baked idea from watching a few YouTube videos. A year after the assault, Rushdie defiantly returns to the venue and does the reading he had prepared when calamity struck. This gives the book a nice shape, but I'm sure he is still getting over this horrific event. I admire his toughness and resolve.

 

My completed reading seems scant, but behind the scenes, I've been working on two books:

The Sunne in Splendour - Sharon Kay Penman. 1982 historical fiction about The Wars ofu the Roses, and particularly about Richard III. It's very long and just as compelling. I wonder if George R.R. Martin read it before he started the Game of Thrones series. I'm often reminded of GoT as I'm reading. After finishing The Sunne in Splendour, I plan to tackle Penman's five-book series about Eleanor of Aquitaine, Henry II and their sons.

Emma - Jane Austen. Novel. I read this back in college, but I didn't really "get" Austen until many years later. I'm familiar with the "mystery" in the novel, so it's fun to search out the clues Jane Austen sprinkles in. Emma is my favorite of all her books. I still have Mansfield Park left to read, but don't know if I'm feeling that brave yet.

May, 2023 Reading: Finally Finished Tess!

May was the Getting Stuff Done month, reading-wise. Instead of floating like a butterfly from book to book to book, I stayed with the ones piled up on the coffee table. However, my book buying tendencies ran amok. Amok af. I know the reason: Bookstore anxiety. I fear that if I don't buy something when I go into a bookstore, it will fail.

Seven books read this month. 6 out of the 7 were library books. 

Books bought -- I'd tell you the number, except that I don't know the number. Somewhere between amok and infinity. The corner curio cabinet in the living room had to be repurposed as a bookshelf. I like it better this way. The knickknacks that were there before never looked quite right, although the cat found them attractive. She now probably thinks that I'm tearing her playhouse down room by room.

Here are my books read for May:

1. The Farewell Tour - Stephanie Clifford. Novel. In 1980, Lillian Waters, or "Water Lil", as she is known, is a 58-year-old country music singer trying to make a last comeback after a diagnosis of polyps on her vocal chords. As she travels across the country, her life story is told in alternating chapters. There's also a mystery surrounding her early years in Washington State and an abusive but shadowy older sister. Good details about country music throughout the book. Good storytelling.

2. Madly, Deeply - Alan Rickman. Diaries. In spite of the footnotes, I didn't always know what or who Rickman was talking about, but I still enjoyed his musings. My favorite thing was his incisiveness about why a movie worked or didn't work. 

3. Abridged Classics - John Atkinson. Humor. So much fun. Classic novels distilled down to a few words. Favorite examples: 

War and Peace/Everyone is sad/It snows. 

Moby-Dick/Man vs. whale/ Whale wins. 

Robinson Crusoe/Old-timey Gilligan's Island. 

Mysteries of Udolpho/Gothic Scooby-Doo. 

The Canterbury Tales/ Medieval version of  "99 Bottles of Beer" with sex and poop jokes. 

Ethan Frome/Farmer's life can't possibly get any worse./Hey, a sled!

 Jane Eyre/Workplace romance gets fiery. 

Charlotte's Web/Clever web designer saves a pig.

4. How to Keep House While Drowning - KC Davis, LPC. Self-Help. (Funny aside: I was initially interested in this book because I thought it was a novel with one of those quirky and evocative titles.) KC Davis conceived this book a couple of years ago. She gave birth during the pandemic, and the support systems she'd set up for herself suddenly vanished. Did I mention she also had a toddler? She was in survival mode, and this book is for people who are in that mode whether it's from new parenthood, isolation, depression or they just don't know how to keep house. I appreciate her assertion that rest is important, there's no such thing as laziness, care tasks are morally neutral, and my favorite maxim of hers: "Anything that's worth doing is worth doing half-assed." The 5 things tidying method is the perfect hack for making sense out of chaotic surroundings. Another valuable tip is to try to do things for your future self. Life can get overwhelming, so I'm glad I read this one.

5. Writers & Lovers - Lily King. Novel. I read Euphoria a few years ago and absolutely loved it, so when this book came out, I was wary about reading it, fearing disappointment. I shouldn't have worried! Now I want to reread Euphoria and then go romp around in Lily King's backlist. 

6. Forget the Alamo - Bryan Burrough, Chris Tomlinson, and Jason Stanford. Nonfiction. Although the seemingly flippant title might be off-putting to many, this book is thoughtful and well-researched as it examines the origins of the Alamo and how the defenders grew to nearly mythical status. What were they defending? Were they really heroes? Should the Alamo be a shrine? Is there a richer, more nuanced, and more inclusive story to tell? The authors tackle these questions and bring the reader from those first Southern men who struck out for Texas up to present-day San Antonio. And Phil Collins, too! A captivating read.

7. Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy. Novel. It took YEARS, but I finally finished this book. Wondering if Hanya Yanagihara read this, studied this as she was writing A Little Life. I suspect she's a bit of a Hardy girl since the main character in A Little Life is called Jude. Anyway. I despised Alec D'Urberville. That was easy; he is a moustache-twirling villain. A slimy bastard. A stock type. But who I really hated was Angel Clare, the "nice guy" Tess falls in love with after her bad encounter with Alec. Also frustrating was Tess's streak of fatalism and her dogged insistence on suffering so that she wouldn't do anything further to inconvenience Angel Clare after her confession of being a "fallen woman" on their wedding night. But yeah, Angel is the real villain of the piece. Tess was well-rid of him and didn't know it; that's the tragedy. When all is read and done, this may turn out to be my year for reading classics, but I'm not sure. It's going to take me a while to recover from this one.

February, 2020 Reading: A Nice Mix

I always make a preliminary sketch in my mind of what my reading month will look like, and guess what? The end-of-the-month sketch hardly ever matches up! It's like drawing a picture of Brad Pitt and coming up with Laurel and Hardy. Of course I can't complain; I had a great reading month. Not as many books as I had hoped -- and I always hope for 10+ a mostly futile hope -- but a nice mix. Nothing I disliked or DNFed, which is always a bonus.

1. Outliers - Malcolm Gladwell. I think this may be my favorite Gladwell book so far. Gladwell takes a close look at people who became supremely successful in their fields. Are they one-of-a-kind special cases that sprang from nowhere? Gladwell investigates and finds that along the way, there were people and circumstances that helped these people achieve their zenith. It doesn't happen in a vaccuum. For example, with hockey players, the earlier you're born in the year, the better your chances are of ascending to the NHL. The Beatles played eight hour gigs night after night in Hamburg, providing them with the now-familiar 10,000 hours of practice to become experts. Same with Bill Gates. He went to an affluent high school with an involved PTA who bought computers, and he had the opportunity to spend thousands of hours getting to know them. What about Asians being better at math? Does it all go back to rice farming? And how is rice farming different that the farming generally done in the United States? And how does that impact our education system? A fun read. My brain always feels pleasantly hopped up after an outing with Malcolm Gladwell. I'm sorry it took me so long to discover him.

2. Me - Elton John. This is everything a memoir should be: Warm, gossipy, honest, funny, slightly self-deprecating. Also, I could actually hear Elton John's voice in my mind's ear. I'd been looking forward to reading Me for months, and it was such a treat. If I were to rank my reads for February, this would be number one.

3. LaRose - Louise Erdrich. I'm not sure and I'd have to look back through almost 30 years of keeping records of what I've read, but I think this is the first book I've read by Louise Erdrich. The novel begins with a tragedy that impacts two families, one family's attempt at atonement, and the ways they move through their grief. Erdrich's prose is as clear and clean as water. Her writing is heavily character-driven, which I love, but sometimes, LaRose seemed overly people-y; I had to turn back to earlier passages to remind myself about who this character was and how they were related to the main characters. Adding to my enjoyment, there was one section featuring the two male protagonists that reminded me of Raymond Carver. It took a while, but I'm now a Louise Erdrich fan. Looking forward to reading more of her novels. Many thanks to Unruly Reader for sending LaRose my way.

4. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee. I revisited the classic novel for the first time since 9th grade English class, and it was like reading a whole new book. I honestly did not remember huge sections. This is probably because of the amount of time elapsed, and also because as a 14-year-old, I wouldn't have had as much background knowledge (don't educators refer to this as scaffolding?) to retain relevant and sometimes subtle interactions. Also, multiple viewings of the 1962 movie probably took its place. It's one of those circumstances in which I'm okay with that.

5. Patti LuPone: A Memoir - Patti LuPone. I enjoyed this book in much the same way I enjoyed Me. Patti LuPone is delightful. She makes you feel as exhilarated and exhausted as she is during the run of a musical. She's delightful (oops, already said that. oh well, it's true!) and bitchy and not at all shy about settling scores. She's definitely earned that privilege. I would welcome a second volume updated to include the musical War Paint, in which Christine Ebersole as Elizabeth Arden faces off against Patti LuPone's Helena Rubinstein.

Sprinting Towards the Finish Line 2019

Wind in my hair! Apples in my cheeks! Sweat in my shoes! 

Yes, it's nearly the end of the year and I'm scrambling to finish three more books by midnight December 31:

Middlemarch - George Eliot. This is doable. I'm 73% in, and I have a 4-hour layover in Denver. Gotta finish. Must finish to make my own personal goal of reading Middlemarch every ten years since 1999.

Black Beauty - Anna Sewell. BB was my choice for the above challenge, BOOK BINGO BLACKOUT in the category Classic I've Never Read. Cakewalk, right? Should I say Caketrot? No, because it's really not. So far, the horses have really looonnnggggg conversations about all the ways humans can be cruel. I'm not even that far along in the novel yet; Black Beauty is still having a great life, if you can overlook that bit business. I've already had my big shock though: Black Beauty is male! I never realized.

Spam: A Biography - Carolyn Wyman. I'm reading this for Novelty Book in BOOK BINGO BLACKOUT.  It's a compilation of history, trivia, cartoons, recipes, and articles about an interesting foodstuff. Put together in a patchworky manner that hearkens back to the days of 'zines, it's fun, and like it's subject, tolerable in short doses. I'm determined to finish, and perhaps even try one of the recipes.

I'll return to BOOK BINGO BLACKOUT at the beginning of the year to discuss my outcomes and to look with fresh eyes upon a whole new bingo board of challenges.

Meanwhile, Merry Readmas and Happy Book Year!

Falling Into the Readathon: Shiny New Things

Readathon Days are here again! The skies above are...

Well. Never mind about the skies, which are sort of gloomy and overcast. I'm focused on my stack of books for the next 24 hours.

In my previous post, I discussed all my half-read projects like Frankenstein and the Sontag biography, but a funny thing happened on the way to the Readathon: I was once again seduced by the shiny and new. Blame it on The New Yorker, which keeps appearing mysteriously in my mailbox. I don't know why. I love it, but I didn't subscribe to it. I guess I give off a heady bookworm scent that defies conventional borders.

Pictured above, this is my shiny new object: Lucky Per, a 1904 novel by Danish writer Henrik Pontoppidan. (His name makes me smile, but I tremble every time I type it, for fear of misspelling it.)

Why did I feel compelled to go out and get Lucky Per? The usual reasons: It's old and obscure. There are good, strong whiffs of Realism. And yeah, this Everyman edition is so stinking cute. I'm not that hard to figure out, am I?

Okay, time for that first cup of coffee in my beloved Korea mug.

My plan is to read the last 150 pages of Sontag, then move onto Frankenstein, then soak my eyes in a vat of Visine.

Happy reading to all the Readathon participants. As always, I wish Dewey could be here with us, but I feel her spirit.

i have no wrist but i must blog

not spraining, but fracturing...on groundhog day, of all days. i woke with some trepidation on the 3rd.

at first, i was going to wait until i could type properly, but that's another whole month. to HELL with that. if bauby could blink out all of the diving bell and the butterfly, then bybee can tap out a left handed post.

 my brain doesn't like this one bit. well, boo effing hoo, brain.

so yeah, my wrist, the floor. it was the convergence of the twain, as in the poem by thomas hardy, which is actually about the titanic and the iceberg. you see what i'm saying, of course.

you can't keep a good bookworm down, or even a mediocre one for long. here's what i've read/been reading this year.

1. her again: becoming meryl streep. nonfiction. michael schulman. i loved this look at the genesis of an acting genius. i eagerly await a volume 2.

2. $2.00 a day: living on almost nothing in america. nonfiction. kathryn j. edin and h. luke shaefer. bleak, but necessary reading. recommend pairing this with hillbilly elegy.

3. the green mile. fiction. stephen king.  uncle stevie delivers the goods in this depression era mashup of weird tales and charles dickens.

4. in the great, green room: the brilliant and bold life of margaret wise brown. biography. amy gary. i love the title, but the way it was written left me cold. i've got more to say about this book, but i need both wrists.

5. the art of x-ray reading. nonfiction. roy peter clark. fun, educational. clark profiles several writers and their greatest hits and shows why the prose is so effective. he really breaks it down and inspires. favorite chapters- shirley jackson, nabokov, flannery o'connor, sylvia plath. the whole book was a delight.

ok...so that was january. i haven't yet finished a book in february. here's what i'm working on.

parade's end by ford madox ford. i chafed against this novel for the longest time, but now it owns me. so very glad i audiobooked this one. finally on the last book of the omnibus, last post. i think what finally swayed me was the realization that christopher tietjens is played by benedict cumberbatch. that's MUCH better.

consider the fork - bee wilson.  wilson explores technology in the kitchen through the ages. fun stuff.

captains and the kings. novel. taylor caldwell. i couldn't resist... only 54 cents today feb 13th on amazon. kindle edition. caldwell always puts me right. she's my go-to when i'm off-kilter.

margaret wise brown: awakened by the moon.  biography. author???????????  i was so disillusioned with the new mwb bio that i had to try the older one. so far, so good.

chernow biography of george washington. slow going.

i need to stop typing now.

Halloween Week Reading Part Two

Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde - Robert Louis Stevenson.  I finally got around to reading this 1886 novella, and I was a little disappointed. The idea was brilliant, but Stevenson's choice to have everything filtered through Jekyll's lawyer, Utterson, gives the story a stogy, constricted, airless feel. The story gets back on track and finishes strong in the last part, but meanwhile, what a slog.

Rather than the text, I wish I had picked up the Classics Illustrated version pictured above, or taken in the 1930s Fredric March movie.

 Next October, I think I'll read Valerie Martin's 1990 novel, Mary Reilly which tells the famous tale  from the viewpoint of a female servant in Henry Jekyll's house.

Then You Can Start to Make it Better

2015 is just barely underway and I'm already in my second book slump! Last weekend I felt the slumpiness coming on and I deftly fended it off with the fresh and witty Farewell, Dorothy Parker by Ellen Meister. I love the idea of a series with Mrs. Parker as a ghost. The quips flow like alcohol, but Meister did her homework and the reader gets to see the Dorothy with a strong social conscience and unresolved personal issues. The specter is also...hmmm, how can I put this delicately? Horny!

Anyway, a fun read. If I'd had any sense, I would have gone on with Meister's just-released follow-up Dorothy Parker Drank Here. But no. I must have shown the soft, white part of my neck because the next week found me mired in slumphood and moving through these three books as if swimming in molasses:

1. A Game of Thrones - George R.R. Martin. I am enjoying the story, but I've hit a wall. It's not Martin. It's me.

2. Vincent van Gogh - Naifeh and Smith. I'm halfway through, but it's hard work even when I'm not in a slump. I don't understand. Naifeh and Smith have an engaging style. I fairly whistled at my reading when I read their biography of Jackson Pollock which is also a lengthy tome.

3. Burmese Days - George Orwell. I threw Orwell into the mix because I've learned over the years that he can fix anything. Also, in these last days of my expat life, I thought it would be something to hang onto and ride out this arid interval. No joy.

Thursday found me moodily clicking through my blogroll. Everyone can read but me. I happened upon my longtime favorite Shelf Love and Teresa was talking about A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara and how it's dark and depressing. She mentioned Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure.

 I sat up straighter and ceased scowling. In one of those flashes that illuminate everything, I knew that it was time to read Jude. Jude would get me out of this reading slump. I searched my Kindle and found a copy that I had downloaded during a short-lived fervor to read only 19th century authors.

Now it's Sunday afternoon. So far, so good. Or bad, as is the case with Jude Fawley. Actually, he's on an upswing because his barbarous wife Arabella has just decided to quit him and emigrate to Australia and he's once again free to pursue his studies. I've just started Part Second, as Hardy calls it and I'm reading! Really really reading. What a relief.
 

Readathon: Hour 6

Pages read: 22
Snacks: Salad (carrots, cucumbers and cherry tomatoes)
Blogs visited: 0

For my second book, I thought I'd try The Vicar of Wakefield by Oliver Goldsmith. I'm 4 chapters in, but don't know if I'll stay with it for this Readathon. I may have to back out of the 18th century if I get too tired.

Thanks to the friends and cheerleaders who have popped in to say hi and give encouragement. I'm going to read for a couple of more hours, then I'll be out there cheering.

Their Eyes Were Watching God

I find Zora Neale Hurston so fascinating and I loved this novel. It's difficult to know which one to talk about first.

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According to the introduction to the novel by Henry Louis Gates, Zora Neale Hurston was a well-known and respected novelist and essayist for a couple of decades, but the top male writers of that time like Richard Wright and Ralph Ellison were critical of her work. It didn't help that many of her male characters weren't portrayed in a flattering light. Furthermore, Hurston dared to mention that prejudice about skin color existed among blacks. These things certainly rankled, and Wright took Hurston to task for writing the shuck and jive kind of stuff that condescending white readers might expect from African-American writers while he and Ellison and others were writing seriously about the horror of being a person of color in America.

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What Wright & Co. failed to grasp was that Hurston's work had a scholarly basis. She was an ethnographer -- an anthropologist specializing in dialects and folklore. She studied at Columbia University with Franz Boas, one of the pioneers of anthropology. One of Hurston's classmates was Margaret Mead, who would go on to do some noteworthy cultural studies. Hurston would go on to do research in the south and in places like Haiti, where she wrote Their Eyes Were Watching God in 1937.

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Unfortunately, Hurston and her work fell into obscurity, probably because she didn't fit in with writers like Wright, Ellison and James Baldwin. Late in her life, she wrote freelance articles and worked as a maid and at other odd jobs. She died penniless in 1960 and was buried in an unmarked grave. About 15 years later, Alice Walker, who viewed Hurston as a spiritual mentor and muse found the grave and put up a marker. (It's interesting to note that another Harlem Renaissance writer, Nella Larsen, suffered a similar fate and has only recently been rediscovered.)

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Their Eyes Were Watching God is told in flashback. A woman named Janie comes walking back into her small hometown after a significant absence. She walks past all the neighbors who are on their front porches gawking at her. She goes into her house and shuts the door and her best friend, Phoeby goes to check on Janie, bring her some supper and yes, find out what's been going on. Janie uses this opportunity to tell Phoeby her life story. (This device seemed a little artificial, but it really works.)

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From the first, Janie had an idea that marriage could be love, romance, sharing mutual adventures, etc. Her grandmother who brought her up and has had an impossibly hard life tries to discourage that type of thinking. When she realizes that her death is imminent, she "protects" Janie by marrying her off to an older man who basically just wants her as a farm hand. After a year or so, Janie runs off with an admirer, Joe, just as the husband asks for help in moving a manure pile.

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Joe and Janie move to Eatonville where Joe opens a store. Hurston's portrayal of the culture in that town is rich and humorous and quite attractive to Janie, but Joe wants her to be his trophy wife and no joining in the chat and fun that goes on right outside the store. After 20 grim years of marriage, Joe dies, leaving Janie well-off. Many men want to marry her, or as she tartly notes, her bank account, but she takes up with Tea Cake, a young harmonica-playing drifter 10 or 12 years her junior.

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Even though the couple have several problems -- Tea Cake gambles, drinks, occasionally beats Janie and both have jealousy issues -- Janie finally feels she's found the marriage she always wanted, and she's got a co-adventurer as well as a lover. Janie and Tea Cake go "on the muck" in the Florida Everglades. Everything goes well until the Okeechobee hurricane. During this part of the novel that Hurston's dramatic storytelling gifts are magnificently showcased.

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Their Eyes Were Watching God is a powerful book. There are one or two scenes in Eatonville in which I felt that Hurston the ethnographer got the better of Hurston the storyteller and it slowed the story down a bit, but that's a very minor gripe.

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Reading this novel makes me so glad that it (and its author) was rescued from near-obscurity and raised to its proper place as a classic American novel during the late 1960s and early 70s. I was also pleased to see how profoundly Alice Walker was influenced by Zora Neale Hurston. The Color Purple with its rich use of dialect, strong female characters (as well as some scoundrelly male characters) and epic storytelling is a perfect homage to Zora Neale Hurston.

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Would I read more of Hurston? I'm almost sure that nothing could top Their Eyes Were Watching God but I'm eager to read more, especially some of her essays and Dust Tracks on a Road, Hurston's 1942 autobiography.

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Because I read this book during the week of February 14, I'll always associate Their Eyes Were Watching God with Valentine's Day and count Janie and Tea Cake among my favorite couples in literature.

A Whale Of A Confession

I was going to blame all of this on Eva because she brought it all to the front of my mind again, but really, I can't fault her for things that started before she was born.

In the summer of 1985, I began to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Yes, I was going to graduate. Filled with hopeful joy (joyous hope?) I signed up for two upper-level English classes: "The American Renaissance" (Emerson, Hawthorne and Melville) and "Seminar: Jane Austen" (all 6 of Austen's novels, including the juvenalia and her uncompleted work).

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Before the 8 weeks was up, I had severe eyestrain, a perpetual headache and for the first time in my life, I hoped never to read so much as a recipe or the back of a cereal box for as long as I lived.

Luckily, I had a few weeks to get my mind right before the fall semester started and I would be taking a once-a-week night class called "The American Novel". The class was a decade-by-decade look at some of the greatest hits in American Literature. The professor presented us with our reading list on the first evening. My eye fell on the first two items with dismay:

Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The House of the Seven Gables

Melville, Herman. Moby-Dick

Aaaarrrgh! I was stuffed to the gills with those two! Luckily, I had read The House of the Seven Gables in the "American Renaissance" class. Moby-Dick was a different matter. We'd read (and read and read!) practically everything by Melville in that same class -- Typee, Billy Budd, The Confidence-Man and the one I hated most of all: Pierre -- but no Moby-Dick.

No way. No more. I decided that I would read all of the other books on the list with great care and attention, but not Moby-Dick. I was still pissed at Melville for Pierre. If readers could break up with writers, then we were quits. Splitsville. In the end, I bought the Cliff Notes for Moby-Dick and watched the 1956 John Huston movie with Gregory Peck as Ahab and that was as far as I was willing to go for Melville.

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Until now.

I still cringe at the thought of Pierre and since there's a copy of it in my library, I have the opportunity to cringe before that as well, but all distasteful cringing aside -- Hermie, I'm not angry anymore! I haven't been in some time. When I read last month

that Eva was reading Moby-Dick, I resolved that now was the time to kiss and make up with Melville.

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2010 will be my year to rectify a literary wrong and read this 1851 classic. Eager to strike while the resolution was hot, I found a copy last weekend at What The Book? and it's up next in my reading queue.

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How strange...I almost typed Queequeg instead of queue.

My Brother's Books: R.M. Ballantyne

When I went to visit my brother and his family last month, I couldn't help taking a look at their bookcase. Wow, I saw some pretty books there. I know, all books are pretty. But these were stunning; I was salivating. There was a colorful row of about 10 multicolored cloth-bound books with gold lettering on the spines.

My brother saw me peeping. "That's the series I'm reading now. Christmas present from my family."

"What are they?"

"Adventure books!" my nephew said. "You can read them; they're not inappropriate." I had to smile; I knew where that was coming from. I felt like telling him: "Kid, reading inappropriate stuff is the beauty part of being an adult," but his mom is of the helicopter persuasion and there were more important things at hand so I kept my lip buttoned and focused on my introduction to R. M. Ballantyne. How had I missed hearing about this guy? How did he get past my Tough & Cool Inner Bookworm?

Robert Michael Ballantyne (1825-1894)was a 19th century Scottish juvenile author who specialized in adventure. Ballantyne seems to have done his research first-hand, taking journeys to places anywhere "from the Arctic to the South Pacific". His tales stressed "Christian character in the face of adversity." In his day, he was a bestselling author, often churning out 3 books a year. I didn't do an exact count, but he seems to have written more than 50 novels. His first hit, The Coral Island (1857) was read and admired by boys everywhere, especially little Bobby Lou Stevenson, who grew up to write Treasure Island. In a poem that prefaces the story, Stevenson pays tribute to "Ballantyne The Brave".

According to Wikipedia, Ballantyne made a mistake in his first book about the thickness of coconut shells, so after that, he was determined to do scrupulous research on the topics and settings in his novels. For example, he had worked as a young man in "the wilds of Canada", which provided material for several books, he worked with London firemen for Fighting The Flames and tin miners in Cornwall for Deep Down. A fan site, started by a 16-year old Ballantyne enthusiast has a cool world map that has stars on it representing various locales around the globe where 20+ of his novels took place. When you click on a star, a brief summary of each book is displayed.

All of his books apparently feature young men who are tweens or early teens who are facing some kind of life challenge and following the example of role models around them, they learn to keep cool and courageous, never waver in showing gallantry and let God be their compass. The last is one of the reasons Ballantyne fell out of fashion in recent years, and also why he's come roaring back more than a century after his death.

From that first moment at my brother's bookcase, I was intrigued by Ballantyne, but slightly put off by what I assume is heavy religious content. I was picturing Elsie Dinsmore except Elmer Dinsmore. Then, when my brother and I were corresponding about Ballantyne, he sent me a little snippet from the web describing Ballantyne's work that included this caution: Ballantyne describes incidents in a graphic manner. Parents may want to preview. Finding out that this guy in all his piety still had the power to alarm mommies made me determined to be courageous and gallant about the religious didacticism and read him myself. Although I can't get my hands on those gorgeous books, Ballantyne's works are available at Project Gutenberg.

Tuffi is practically in rapture because we'll be adding another 19th-century author to plug up the abysmal gaps in our literary knowledge, I'm pleased because I've discovered (well, my brother has -- a damned unlikely source, too! Who'd have thunk it?) an author that's rather obscure (or is Ballantyne obscure? Is it possible that I'm just late to the party?), and both Tuffi and I are pretty jiggy knowing that we've gained awareness of an important link in juvenile fiction. It's a lot to chew on. Thanks, Bro.

Shirley

I haven't read The Professor or Villette yet, so I can't say for sure, but it seems as if with Shirley, Charlotte Bronte was trying something a little more ambitious with what would be her final novel. She's not always successful, but her attempt is interesting.

Bronte's novel is a historical one, set about 30 years earlier, when the Luddite riots were doing a great deal to cause social unrest in England, and Napoleon was stirring things up abroad. Robert Gerard Moore has moved from France back to Yorkshire, where his father was from, determined to remake the family fortune through trade. He is equally determined that it shall be accomplished through the use of new machinery. This decision is unpopular with the working people of the village, who have been thrown out of work by such developments as well as too many bad harvests.

Robert is a strong and outspoken man of many opinions. He's also quite good-looking and young "not yet thirty". Most of the time, thankfully, Bronte's got him speaking in English, so he's both intelligible and intelligent. Think Mr. Rochester, and you'll have a good picture of Robert Gerard Moore. When he's present in the pages of the novel, he makes it all quite interesting. Although he seems hard and uncaring to the workingmen, he's got a sensitive side that he likes to keep on the down-low. Constant threats are being made on his life, so readers worry about him and his safety.

So with such a terrific introductory character, who does Bronte turn to and focus on the most? Caroline Helstone, the niece of the rector, is an orphan of sorts and in love with her cousin by marriage, the abovementioned Robert Moore. He loves her as well, but they're both too well-bred to discuss their feelings. Plus, Robert feels as if love must stay on the back-burner until his financial woes are straightened out.

Anyone with half an eye can see that he's distracted, but Caroline, who's got a terrible case of low self-esteem, tortures herself daily, wondering if Robert loves her or not. Is she going to die an old maid? She won't marry anyone if she can't have Robert. She worries about it for chapters and chapters AND chapters and "her cheek becomes thin and pale".

On some level, Caroline realizes that she's driving herself crazy, and decides that she'd like to go away and become a governess. Her uncle nixes the plan, and about that time, he decides that Caroline can't hang out with the Moores any more because he doesn't like Robert's politics. So Caroline's cheek gets paler and thinner.

About this time, the owner of a neighboring estate comes home to live, and Caroline is summoned by her uncle to go with him and be neighborly. It's 21-year-old Shirley Keeldar, the title character, and she's the antithesis of Caroline: plucky, confident and rich. She's highly intelligent and doesn't really care much for polite society, but can charmingly work with it if she's absolutely forced to. At this time, Shirley was a man's name, (the popularity of this novel caused it to gain favor as a woman's name) and she often has fun with this fact and will cheekily ask the men she's dealing with to refer to her as "Captain Keeldar."

Shirley and Caroline become fast friends, but when Shirley lends Robert a large chunk of money to help him through his financial bind, Caroline bleakly assumes that the two will end up marrying. This causes her cheek, well, you know.

While Shirley is off enjoying herself on holiday, Bronte leaves us with Caroline who falls into bed sick for months, and no one (in the novel) is sure which side of the pearly gates she'll end up on. She would probably perk up if Robert visited her sickbed, but he's off in London, trying to make money. Caroline is forcibly pulled back from death's door by Mrs. Pryor, Shirley's kind ex-governess and now her companion. Mrs. Pryor accomplishes this fact by revealing a deep secret to Caroline. She's still abed for chapters, but it works; she lives to fret on. She revives her governess scheme, but Mrs. Pryor tells her some personal governess-in-hell stories that switch her off the subject for good.

When Shirley returns from holiday, Shirley's uncle is determined to see her married. After all, a woman can't run an estate by herself! He starts running rich suitors by her, and Shirley turns them down one by one, with well-reasoned arguments that have her uncle progressively purple with rage. He's convinced that left to her own devices, she'll become an old maid (which doesn't seem to bother Shirley in the least) or make a mesalliance (she's not thinking of it, but since it bugs her uncle, she devils him with the possibility). Bronte is really funny and sharp in this part of the novel, which is decidedly feminist.

Uncle brings his whole family and moves in with Shirley so he can keep an eye on her till she's safely to the altar, whenever that may be. Along with the family comes Louis Moore, who tutors Shirley's cousin, Henry. Louis is also Robert Moore's brother. The first couple of conversations between Louis and Shirley are a trifle barbed. You know what that means. It means that we're up to page 500-something, and Charlotte Bronte's got to work like the devil to establish why Louis is worthy of Shirley and get the two of them from slinging intellectual insults to falling in love.

Luckily, Shirley is bitten by a possibly mad dog. (She's really a cool customer; she walks herself with her bleeding arm into the laundry where the maids have been ironing, and when no one's looking, picks up a little iron and cauterizes the wound with nary a whimper.) She says nothing to anyone about the incident. Of course, she worries that the dog was rabid, and that she, Shirley, might...and yes, her cheek grows thin and pale.

Louis notices that cheek, pries the facts out of her, and reassures her that the dog was most likely not mad, and then they begin to be friends and confidants. Actually, Louis was also Shirley's tutor in the past, and she finds an essay of hers that he saved in his portable desk alllll those years! (The reader is treated to this lengthy essay verbatim. I find it difficult to believe that even the most ardent admirers of Charlotte Bronte's work wouldn't be nodding off or in open revolt at this juncture.)

But wait! Robert's back from London! Uh-oh! Who's that Luddite with a gun? Is Caroline going to visit Robert's sickbed?

Written during and after Emily, Anne, and Branwell Bronte died, the portraits of the two main characters, Shirley and Caroline, are based on Emily and Anne, which gives the book an added dimmension of literary excitement. Bronte describes Shirley's personality in loving and meticulous detail, and it's almost as effective as seeing an author interviewed on Book Talk. The reader can see the personality behind a book like Wuthering Heights. I don't know for sure, but Louis is probably a cleaned-up version of Branwell. I'm basing that opinion on the fact that Branwell worked as a tutor, like the fictional Louis.

My problems with Shirley are:
1. Shirley shows up too late for a title character. And there's no foreshadowing or mention of her. She's dropped into the novel with an almost audible thud.
2. Louis shows up waaay too late as well, and you can see strain as Charlotte Bronte struggles against time to make the reader love him. Because of this rushed awkwardness, I could never really warm up to him; he was pushed towards the reader the way Shirley's suitors were pushed at her by her uncle.
3. Caroline gets too much "air time". She's lovely and good, but passive and boring. (I hope Charlotte Bronte wasn't exactly accurate with this portrayal; I'd hate to think Anne Bronte was that much of a snooze!)
4. The lapses into French were annoying, but that's more of a problem with my edition than a gripe with Bronte.
5. Bronte presents her readers with exciting social unrest then drops it for long periods of time in favor of watching Caroline's cheek and listening to her sighs.

I wonder if this novel is taught in women's literature classes. It would be great for students to study a heroine who's really got her shit together, instead of a heroine who is driven mad by yellow wallpaper or a heroine who is trying to decide to return to boring hubby or take a permanent dip in the ocean.

Regarding my Bronte challenge: Three more to go! Whoo!