booktastic

I’ve posted this once before on one of my previous blogs… but it’s worth posting again. Some time back I was in the process of applying to a Graduate school’s English program, and I noticed that they had a recommended list of reading you were supposed to have completed before enrolling in the undergraduate English program (i.e. in High School.) As an exercise, why not check and see if you are ready to enroll in a undergraduate level English course by crossing off the materials below that you’ve already read? (Um. I’m apparently almost ready.)

Just to be all open and above-board, I’ll mark the ones I’ve already read with a smiley face.

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READING LIST: HIGH SCHOOL

Fiction

Alcott, Louisa May. Little Women

Bronte, Charlotte. Jane Eyre

Bronte, Emily. Wuthering Heights

Carroll, Lewis. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Through the Looking Glass

Cather, Willa. My Antonia or Death Comes to the Archbishop (I read “O Pioneers!” which evidently wasn’t important enough for the list)

Cooper, James Fenimore. The Last of the Mohicans

Crane, Stephen. The Red Badge of Courage

Defoe, Daniel. Robinson Crusoe

Dickens, Charles. Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, A Tale of Two Cities

Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan. Some Sherlock Holmes stories

Eliot, George. Silas Marner (again, I missed out: I read “Middlemarch” instead)

Fitzgerald, F. Scott The Great Gatsby

Golding, William. Lord of the Flies (I refuse to ever read this book)

Hansberry, Lorraine. A Raisin in the Sun

Harte, Bret. “The Luck of Roaring Camp,” “Tennessee’s Partner”

Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Scarlet Letter, “The Minister’s Black Veil”

Hemingway, Ernest. The Old Man and the Sea, A Farewell to Arms (I read “A Moveable Feast” instead)

Huxley, Aldous. Brave New World

Irving, Washington. “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” “Rip Van Winkle”

London, Jack. The Call of the Wild

Maugham, Somerset. Of Human Bondage

Melville, Herman. Billy Budd, Benito Cereno

Orwell, George. Animal Farm

Poe, Edgar Allan. “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” “The Masque of the Red Death,” “The Fall of the House of Usher,” “The Purloined Letter,” “The Cask of Amontillado”

Salinger, J.D. The Catcher in the Rye

Scott, Sir Walter. A novel (Waverly, Rob Roy), Ivanhoe

Shakespeare, William. Julius Caesar, Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth

Swift, Jonathan. Gulliver’s Travels

Steinbeck, John. Of Mice and Men or The Pearl

Stevenson, Robert Louis. Treasure Island, Kidnapped or Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Twain, Mark. Tom Sawyer or The Prince and the Pauper

Wells, H.G. War of the Worlds or The Time Machine

Wright, Richard. Black Boy

Poetry

Arnold, Matthew. “DoverBeach”

Browning, Robert. “My Last Duchess”

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”

de la Mare, Walter. “The Listeners”

Dickinson, Emily. “Because I Could Not Stop for Death,” “I Like to See It Lap the Miles”

FitzGerald, Edward. The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

Frost, Robert. “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” “Mending Wall,” “The Death of the Hired Man,” “The Road Not Taken,” “Birches”

Gray, Thomas. “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard”

Housman, A.E. “To an Athlete Dying Young,” “When I Was One and Twenty”

Hunt, Leigh. “Abou Ben Adhem”

Keats, John. “Eve of St. Agnes,” “La Belle Dame Sans Merci,” “To Autumn”

Kipling, Rudyard. “A Ballad of East and West,” “Mandalay”

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth. “The Village Blacksmith,” “Paul Revere’s Ride,” The Song of Hiawatha

Marvell, Andrew. “To His Coy Mistress”

Poe, Edgar Allan. “The Raven,” “The Bells,” “Annabel Lee,” “To Helen”

Sandburg, Carl. “Chicago,” “Grass”

Shelley, Percy Bysshe. “Ozymandias”

Tennyson, Alfred. “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” “Crossing the Bar”

Whitman, Walt. “I Hear America Singing,” “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry,” “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d”

Wordsworth, William. “My Heart Leaps Up,” “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud”

~~~

Well, that’s the list. I’m contemplating now whether I should embarrass myself by showing how well I scored on the list of books you’re supposed to have read before enrolling in a graduate level course. — Mrs. Hall

I was once in an Agatha Christie play; possibly her most famous play, The Mousetrap. I was featured as Molly, the young housewife (and, if I may say so without blushing too much, the ingenue of the play). It was an enjoyable experience, so it may come as somewhat of a surprise that, until last year (some eight years after the production of said play) - I had never, ever read an Agatha Christie novel.

I don’t know why. Possibly because I tend to avoid things that are overly popular on the supposition that “if everybody likes it, it can’t be any good” (a supposition that proves itself at least partially wrong when you consider the popularity of things like chocolate.)

But then I suddenly picked one up last year. I suppose it has to do with this mystery kick that I’ve been on: I was at the bookstore near where I worked at the time (Mustard Seed Christian Books - an unpromising name for a bookstore that I actually came to sincerely enjoy visiting) picking up a couple theological texts, when I happened to notice a copy of the Agatha Christie novel Murder at Hazelmoor (also published as The Murder at Sittaford) on the discount rack.

One dollar, it was tagged. I picked it up - it looked like a quick read, it was a mystery, and one couldn’t beat the price in this area of the world - so I threw it upon my stack of Thomas Mertons and beat a hasty retreat.

Oddly, of all the books I had picked up at that store, that was the one I was the most curious about… possibly because it was the one book I knew the least about. I had cracked it open and read the first couple pages before I even finished my lunch break that day.

The plot, as I recall it, is this: a group of people are at a dinner party and decide to have a seance (as they just randomly did in those days). It’s all fun and games until the “spirit” announces that a certain acquaintance of the group has just been murdered - which rather casts a pall over the party. Distressed, one of the party goers goes to check on the friend, and discovers that he has, indeed, just been murdered.

I wouldn’t say that Murder at Hazelmoor was the greatest work of fiction I’ve ever encountered - but it was an enjoyable book. Exciting in spots, intriguing in spots, and the mystery was fundamental to the plot (an issue I take with lots of modern mystery novels, as I’ve mentioned before, is that the mystery is almost incidental to the plot). It was good, light mystery reading.

However, despite my enjoyment of this book and the volume of Agatha Christie’s work, it has taken me several months to pick up another one… possibly because I really didn’t know where to start. I abhor reading books out of sequence, so I had to do some research before I could start with Miss Marple or Hercule Poirot. I picked up a Poirot novel a few months back under the impression that it was the first, and quickly discovered that it was not - and had to lay it aside as a consequence.

However, this year I am making solid progress. I found a book that was the first of three in a series by Christie - The Secret Adversary, a “Tommy and Tuppence” book. (Christie evidently only did three books featuring the characters of Tommy and Tuppence - a pity, as I rather enjoyed the characters in this first book.) I followed this up immediately with Murder at the Vicarage, the FIRST Miss Marple novel, which I have almost finished.

I suppose the point of this meandering is that Agatha Christie novels really are good. Oh, not good in the “well-honed brilliant writing” kind of good - in sheer writing quality I would say they are above average, but only just - but they are good mysteries. She keeps you guessing, gives you clues, eggs you on, lays out red herrings… and so far, of each book I’ve read, some aspect of the resolution has come as a surprise. I may have guessed the murderer once or twice - but something else still took me unawares, so I have to give her credit.

I guess that here is another instance of something being deservedly popular.

I have a shameful confession to make. When I was a child, I owned the complete set of Paddington Bear books…

And I never read them.

I don’t know why I never read them. After I learned to read I became a voracious reader and consumed almost every book I owned and many I didn’t (thanks, West Plains Public Library) - including an entire series of rather crappy “Solve it Yourself” mysteries and “Choose Your Own Adventure! ” books.

But not Paddington. There were just a handful of books I owned that I never read (including Misty and King of the Wind because I could just never get into a book about a horse. I liked horses, like all eight year old girls do, but I was never interested in reading stories exclusively about them. I mean, who cares what a horse is thinking about? In my experience growing up on a farm, horses think about two things: eating and finding things they can use to knock off/crush the people riding them. But I digress.)

I don’t remember why the books never interested me. I was always interested in the British Isles, so it kind of surprises me that I didn’t take to the books… I seem to recall, at some point, asking my Mother where they had come from and if she had ever read them; I don’t remember her reply, except that it can’t have inspired me to read them. But I do remember what happened to those books - I wound up giving them to the children of some friends of ours who were even more poor (poorer?) than we were (!!). They were excited to get them.

And so I have gone through my life Paddington-less. The story would have ended there, but for the fact that recently I was searching for audiobooks to download from the public library website. I searched, on a whim, for “Stephen Fry” (a British actor of whom I was overly fond at one time; he was half of the team of Fry and Laurie, the other half being Hugh Laurie of House fame)  - and discovered that Stephen Fry was the narrator for a copy of A Bear Called Paddington, available for download. Somebody else had it checked out, so I patiently waited my turn for it, and downloaded it last week.

It only took me a few hours at work (data entrying) to finish it… but it was delightful. This kind of story was made to be read by someone like Stephen Fry: so quaint and distinctly British, with lots of emphasis on subtle puns and wordplay. Mr. Fry has an amazing speaking voice and was able to do all the different characters (with different accents and intonations, depending on the case) perfectly.

As far as Paddington goes… I am very sorry, now, that I did not read these books as a child. This one at least was very cute and enjoyable, and I even chuckled out loud a couple times. As far as the narration by Stephen Fry goes - it was fabulous.

If you’re in the mood for a sweet, light, enjoyable, entertaining book - and want to hear it narrated by a great voice actor - buy or download this copy of A Bear Called Paddington!! – Mrs. Hall

After that particularly heavy book last book, I definitely felt that something lighter was in order for my next reading experience.

But I didn’t put a whole lot of thought into it. On the way out the door, I wound up snatching the first thing off the shelf that I hadn’t already read all the way through - Myths to Live By by Joseph Campbell.

I haven’t read this book all the way through before (despite starting to do so once or twice) because the beginning of this book appears to be simply a rant against religion. All religions. The Bible, the Koran, the Vedas and everything:  apparently totally made up and fakey with no basis at all in fact and people who believe in them are being primitive and stupid and holding back progress (according to Joseph Campbell).

Hence the fact that when trying to read this book in the past, I usually put it down after the first couple pages. I mean, why on earth would I want to read a book that literally calls me stupid? It would be one thing if it were even decent arguments against religion (if there is such a thing); instead, it’s simply “we haven’t found  archaeological evidence for such-and-such at this point; therefore, such-and-such never happened.”(Ruling out any future archaeological discoveries, of course. And let’s not even discuss the question of whether consensus on world events between wholly unrelated cultures — such as the Israelites and the American Indians — is a form of evidence. But that’s getting into Velikovskian territory: Velikovsky was more or less the Anti-Campbell in this respect, and that’s a whole other story…)

Mr. Campbell obviously lived in a much simpler world. (A world where my father, as a teenager consulting his high school guidance counselor, was told that there was no point in studying to become a paleontologist because “all the dinosaur bones have been dug up already.”) They hadn’t found hard evidence yet, so it didn’t happen. He doesn’t even take into account that some so-called “myths” had actually been at least partially substantiated by archaeological finds even at the time of the publication of this book (I’m thinking in particular of how stories about Troy were considered mythic… until they found evidence of Troy). And let’s just ignore all the interesting findings in the field of Biblical Archaeology in the last forty years. A literal reading of the Bible is silly to Mr. Campbell (how could Noah possibly have fit two of ALL THE ANIMALS IN THE WORLD onto a boat?? PSHAW! A child could see through that one…) so it’s all completely false. Yes, Mr. Campbell. You sure got me on that one. Boy, is my face red.

On this reading, I was determined to get past all this stuff in the first couple pages. Once I read on, past the section where Mr. Campbell is simply bad-mouthing Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists and every other religion under the sun, I got to his best known thesis: “What I would suggest is that by comparing a number [of myths] from different traditions, one might arrive at an understanding of their force, their source and possible sense. For they are not historical. …They speak, therefore, not of outside events but of themes of the imagination. And since they exhibit features that are actually universal, they must in some way represent features of our general racial imagination, permanent features of our human spirit - or, as we say today, of the psyche… about which, in fact, it will be necessary for us to know if our conscious minds are to be kept in touch with our own most secret, motivating depths”(p.24).

This is important, as he points out earlier, because apparently even though all religious and myths stories can “no longer be taken seriously by anyone with even a kindergarten education” (p.8), “in this there is serious danger. For… such literally read symbolic forms have always been - and still are, in fact - the supports of civilizations, the supports of their moral orders… With the loss of them there follows uncertainty, disequilibrium… there is nothing secure to hold on to, no moral law… there is everywhere in the civilized world  a rapidly rising incidence of vice and crime, mental disorders, suicides and dope addictions, shattered homes, impudent children, violence, murder and despair” (p. 9).

So, in short, religion is totally false… but knowing about it without believing it’s true, simply looking to it for its deeper psychological meanings, somehow keeps us from becoming dope addicts. (He does not explain why, if all religion is false, we should care whether or not we become dope addicts or not. There is no reason on earth why we should try to live good lives or be nice to each other if God doesn’t exist, which is of course a key flaw in the reasoning of those who would “evangelize” for Atheism. But, again, I’m digressing!)

He then analyzes several similar myths from different regions and says what they might say about the human psyche. Now, this is very interesting stuff; I have always been interested in both mythology and this form of reading between the lines for a deeper human meaning.

But, as you’ve probably guessed from my comments, I’m rather critical of his outright dismissal of a factual basis for religion and mythology. Can’t Jesus have existed and his story mean something symbolically to the innermost part of your brain?

The answer, of course, is that it can. The essence of Campbell’s theory - that mythological and religious stories have important meaning for the human psyche - totally works (and indeed, only has relevance) if there is factual and/or truthful underpinning for the stories in question.

And so, I’m going to make a concerted attempt to finish this book. Hopefully now I’ve gotten past the worst of his religion-bashing and am into the part that holds interest for me: comparative mythology.  This field really does fascinate me. And hopefully it’s not outright boring for you either, because if I do finish this book I will probably be discussing it again at some length. — Mrs. Hall

I made the mistake of trying to do Christmas shopping today. Well, I guess in spirit it wasn’t a mistake: after all, if I wait much longer, Christmas will be upon me and I’ll be out of luck and probably out of money. No, it was a good idea to try to shop today.

I guess the mistake was that I tried to go to places that I like to shop, because I mainly find things for myself. On my lunch break, I ran down Michigan Avenue and went into the Borders next to the Water Tower. I saw lots of books that I would like, and a whole lot of books that I could potentially have bought for my sister-in-law (she’s easy to shop for… but fortunately or unfortunately, I’ve already finished picking out her gifts) but nothing for the person on my list who is the hardest to shop for: my father in law. He has intensely simple needs - and whenever the man wants something, he buys it himself! Gift shopping for him is enough to drive a person to distraction.

Oh, in book-related news: if you’re at all a fan of Jan Karon’s Mitford series, you’ll find a couple jems in Borders’s bargain book isle. They’ve got both In This Mountain and Shepherds Abide - both, I believe, either $4.99 or $5.99. I would have picked them up myself but I already have both!

I wound up coming out with a potential gift for my mother-in-law, something for my siblings and a surprise for Mr. Hall (a book he has admired in the past, Postcards from the Boys by Ringo Starr. It’s a rather interesting book of… you guessed it… postcards from the other Beatles. And get this - it was only $4.99 on the bargain book rack!) but nothing for my father-in-law. Bah!

My trip to Kohl’s this evening after work was similarly uninspiring, and I came away very disgusted at their insufficient supply of men’s thermal underwear. I also came out of Kohl’s exhausted, and promptly missed a bus. Lately when I’m tired I’ve been rather fragile about the most minuscule things, so missing that bus almost drove me to tears… But I comforted myself, thought about the good confession I’d had last night; thought about the lovely way my church had set up for the Eucharistic adoration and the amazing hum of energy in church whenever the blessed sacrament is displayed; thought about the shirt I had bought at Kohl’s (uh… for myself) and waited, and sure enough another bus came past less than ten minutes later. Thank God for small miracles. The bus ride home was brief, quiet, and I was able to read without any motion-sickness problems. Again, thank God.

I had stuff to do upon getting home (like writing this blog, doing dishes, taking a shower, doing laundry), but I was just too tired… it’s been a long day and a long week. So I heated up some left-over meatloaf and macaroni, settled down on the couch an opened up the book that I’ve been reading. On a spur-of-the-moment whim this week I decided that, although I have a lot of other books I should be working on, it was time to pick up the next book in the Mitford series, In This Mountain. It’s the seventh book.

I don’t think I’ve read one of the Mitford books since June or July. Maybe even before that, I don’t recall. But anyway, I opened up this book at the beginning of the week; I had a bit of trouble getting into the first few pages, and I actually began to think that this was going to be the first of the Mitford books that I didn’t get totally wrapped up in…

I was wrong, of course. Jan Karon wins again. After getting home I spent the remainder of the evening reading it, and am almost half way through now. I think that Shepherds Abide, the eighth book, may be the last, so maybe I ought to be dragging my feet a little more… Ah well, no time to worry about it now. I’ve taken my shower and written my blog, so now I have some dishes to do. — Mrs. Hall

As predicted, I finished A Christmas Story in roughly an hour and a half of straight reading. I feel kind of bad talking about it right now, as I was also recently reading the book Unplug the Christmas Machine, and one of the first things it mentioned was how Christmas is being messed up by the fact that people build up to it longer and longer but celebrate it less and less. (You know: stores encourage us to start building up to the day beginning in August now, so we build up and build up and build up - and then, BOOM, December 26th it’s all over, and we’re left depressed and empty feeling with a saggy tree that we feel obliged to leave up for a few extra days. Back in olden times, Christmas was a feast that you built up to for a limited amount of time [Advent] and then celebrated it for days and days… You know, I really should look up the exact quote from the book. My version is somewhat unwieldy.)

However, I also ascribe to the Ebeneezer Scrooge school of Christmas, which is that “I will honor Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year.” So, rather than reading A Christmas Story as an attempt to build up to Christmas, I’m using it as a chance to make Christmas here, now, and every day. I feel even the authors of Unplug the Christmas Machine could agree with that sentiment.

… Anyway, I’ve rambled enough, so I’d better get back to the point, which is that I just read The Christmas Story. In case you didn’t know, this book actually did not exist before the movie: the movie was based on several short stories taken from Jean Shepherd’s book In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash. However, the interest has been great enough that they finally took the stories out of that book and assembled them together under the title of the movie, e.g. The Christmas Story.

In this compendium, you’ll find the true stories of the Red Ryder BB gun, the Bumpuses, the Old Man’s “major award” and so on. Some facts are different from the film - for instance, the holiday feast that was consumed by the Bumpus hounds was actually an Easter Ham, not a Christmas Turkey.  But the stories also enlarge on facts stated in the film but not fully explained: who knew that the gifts featured prominently at Christmas (the can of Simonize, the zeppelin) were Ralphie’s gifts to his family?

Criticisms: I wouldn’t call this book “laugh out loud” funny - because I didn’t. However, I did smile a lot, and I did actually chuckle out loud at one point. Though it’s worth mentioning… I found some moments of the book darker than the film. The story of the bully Grover Dill (Scut Farkas in the film) read like an essay on the savagery of man… Of course, it’s possible that it wasn’t meant to be taken seriously. And a minor criticism (not really of the writing, since this book wasn’t even compiled by the author - it may even have been assembled after his death) is that, with the exception of the story of the Red Ryder BB gun, the stories in this book are not actually Christmas stories. But, as I said, that’s not really a proper criticism of the writing.

In the end, would I recommend this book? Yes. It was a light, enjoyable (and FAST) read. As a Christmas book I would give it three out of five stars because only one of the stories has anything to do with Christmas - but don’t let that put you off. If you want to really get a Christmas experience out of it, I’d recommend you do the following: skip the Red Ryder BB gun story (which is the first in the book), read the others, and then finish the book by reading that. That’s how the publishers should have arranged it, if you ask me! — Mrs. Hall

It may be too early to talk about this…. but it occurred to me this morning that it’s been several years since I read the book that used to be my Christmas tradition — The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus by L. Frank Baum.

I suppose this tradition ended with my marriage and leaving of the parental home, largely due to the fact that I never actually owned a copy of this book — the one I read as a child belonged to my parents’ library.

However, I always think about this book at Christmastime and rather wish I had a copy.

Yes, that’s the L. Frank Baum of Wizard of Oz fame; one of his less popular, non-Oz books was this completely fictionalized biography of Santa. When I say “completely fictionalized”, I’m implying a whole lot more than the semi-mythic stories about the actual Santa Claus, St. Nicholas. This book contains no mention of his bishopric (yes, that’s a real word, and it’s not at all dirty) or the story of him saving the girls who were going to be sold into slavery by throwing bags of money through their window. You see, in L. Frank’s version, infant Claus is abandoned in the woods, is raised by a tiger and a nymph, learns lessons about good and evil and is finally granted immortality by the elves. His being a bishop - or a catholic - or even religious at all - really doesn’t figure into the story.

As a general rule, I take issue with “Christmas stories” that remove all the religious aspect from Christmas. However, I believe L. Frank simply wanted to give Santa a suitably mystical and magical origin, and did it the best way he knew how; I doubt that this book was intended as a tract of paganism any more than The Marvelous Land of Oz was intended as an argument for the acceptability of gender reassignment. (If you don’t know what I’m talking about… Well, that’s a whole other post.)

In retrospect, the book may be a touch on the bizarre side… but I cannot describe how much I enjoyed reading it as a child. Even as a teen - when reading the book became the work of an afternoon, rather than days - it still held a certain glamour for me. The beautiful illustrations, the sweet text…

But, as I mentioned, I haven’t read it in years. It’s rather perplexing to me that I haven’t managed to pick up a copy for myself in spite of liking it so much… Maybe I’ve been waiting for somebody to give it to me as a Christmas present.

Incidentally, this book was made into a rather trippy Rankin Bass film, The Life & Adventures of Santa Claus. Oddly, where I found the book charming and magical, I found this clay representation rather disturbing and nightmarish. But maybe that’s just me… If you didn’t find this claymation epic scary, I’d be delighted to hear from you.

Anyways, if you’re looking for some Christmas Reading, you should probably try to find yourself a copy of The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus. It’s a really fast read, has L. Frank Baum’s characteristic wit and charm - and, though it may not have any connection whatsoever to the “factual” biography of Santa - who couldn’t stand a little more mythical, mystical magic this Christmas? — Mrs. Hall

I’ve been in a Victorian mood lately. Granted The Beekeeper’s Apprentice is WWI, not Victorian, but one of the main characters is essentially a Victorian character - so, same difference. I wanted to immediately pick up the sequel to that book, Locked Rooms, but as luck would have it, Bookmooch hasn’t got it. I shall simply have to track down a library copy.

I just received another reading recommendation from the friend (Mrs. Gooch) who recommended The Beekeeper’s Apprentice; it’s called Silent in the Grave by Deanna Raybourn.  This book has a lot going for it: it’s another mystery,  another from the Victorian era, and at present the recommender (Mrs. Gooch) is batting 100%. So I have resolved to look it up immediately. Of course, Bookmooch doesn’t have that either!

I suppose this means a trip to the library is in order. I would do that today, but today is another one of those nasty semi-rainy days… and Chicago has apparently decided that winter starts this week. After a week of 60-70 degree weather, it’s suddenly 30 degrees outside.

I’ve already done my grocery shopping and weekend errands, and I just don’t feel up to going out again, so I guess I’ll just stick with A Christmas Story for the weekend. I’m not sure what I’ll use for my transit reading this week, but my “audio” reading will continue (even more authentically) with this Victorian mood I’ve been in; I downloaded an audiobook of Dickens’ Bleak House . This is one of the four or five Charles Dickens novels that I haven’t read, so I’m quite looking forward to it. The only problem with it is that Bleak House is a pretty long book, somewhere in the region of 900 pages… so the audio book (especially the unabridged version I picked) is apparently SEVEN MILLION HOURS LONG. Oh well! I would never consider an abridged version of a book (sacrilege!), and listening to it for five to eight hours a day at work… I should get through it before the rental period expires. At the end of the month. — Mrs. Hall

I finally finished The Beekeeper’s Apprentice! On my bus ride home last night I read so much that, upon arrival at home I only had about 40 pages left to read… So, even though it cost me an hour of sleep, I stayed up and finished it because I had to know what happened.

And now it’s done, and I am sad.

As I said already, at first I was afraid this was going to be one of those “woman smart - man dumb” books. I had strong misgivings when the heroine of the book, Mary Russell, first encountered Mr. Holmes. He had been retired for twenty years, you see, and living out in the country raising bees (hence the title). And, of course, the first thing she does is go, “I’m smart and sassy!” (I’m extremely broadly paraphrasing) and showed him up in something… I don’t think I could have handled two-hundred-something pages of that.

But it wasn’t. Oh, there were a few moments of that, but this is more of a story about a partnership between two equally smart crime-solvers than a feminist tome.

Other fears: I was afraid that this was going to turn out to be another of those books where the author has Holmes doing a lot of things that he would never possibly do. In that respect, I was relieved; I feel that the portrayal of Holmes in the book was extremely faithful to the original. And I was also afraid that the book was going to be very mean to Watson. It initially was a bit crispy about him, but wound up being nice.

Regarding this book as a mystery: At first, I felt that the mystery didn’t exactly flow. It felt more like a series of short stories (which isn’t a bad thing. I mean, that’s in keeping with the form of some of the original Holmes stories). However, by the end it wound together into a cohesive whole. Plus, as far as my main complaint about modern mysteries (that they don’t spend enough on the solving of the mysteries) - this book left me pleased. Although they did occasionally take a hiatus from mystery solving, the issues were never wholly forgotten - and when they were working on it, they really were working on it, not just pulling the typical move of modern mystery sleuths (who we may refer to as “hunch followers”. There is a story behind this which I will relate later).

So anyway, to get back to the point - yes! This book was successful as a novel, as a period novel, as a book written to be faithful to someone else’s work, and as a mystery. I enjoyed it so much, I want to share it; I think I will send my copy to my sister-in-law, Miss Hall. I will definitely be looking up the sequel, which I think is called Locked Rooms.

However, that takes time - and this morning I immediately needed new reading material. So - with seconds to spare before running for my bus - I snatched up my husband’s copy of A Christmas Story from the bookshelf because it was the first thing at hand that I hadn’t read. It’s kind of a shift from a period mystery to an anecdotal tale of a child’s Christmas, but I suspect it will be both enjoyable and a quick read.  Well, I should say that I know it will be those things: namely because I only read for an hour and yet I’m already about half way through the book. It’s very like the movie (in tone; I find myself automatically hearing it in Jean Shepherd’s voice) and yet has a lot of other detail and amusing anecdotes. I haven’t laughed out loud yet, but I did smile a lot - and on a smelly, packed bus, that’s definitely something. — Mrs. Hall

I mentioned yesterday that Orson Scott Card is one of my favorite “straight Sci-Fi” authors. I use the term “straight Sci-Fi” to distinguish from the kind of Sci-Fi that Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett create: you know, humorous Sci-Fi. Mr. Card sticks to the serious, with the funny cracks very few and far in between. Since humor is one of the main things I used to look for in my reading, an author would have to be very good at other things (creativity, originality, dialogue, scenarios) to attract my attention.

Orson Scott Card’s writing has all of those things.

The first book of Mr. Card’s that I ever encountered was his book Wyrms. This is one of his earliest novels, I believe, if not his first. My encounter with this book was seeing it left on the coffee table when my mother checked it out from the library when I was about eleven. I didn’t read it at the time because it was in the “grown up” Sci-Fi section, and I was still steering clear of that and keeping to children’s and YA books.

A couple years later I had abruptly decided I was grown up (thirteen year olds will do that, you know) and was browsing the adult Sci-Fi section when I came across Wyrms again. It looked promisingly lurid (one had different priorities as a teenager), so I picked it up and read it.

I am not sure, in retrospect, that I should have been reading that book. Yes, it was about a girl about my age - but, really, it was not age appropriate reading. Certain scenes from that book remain with me vividly to this day. The flesh of a man’s hand slipping off like a glove…

No, I’m not crediting Orson Scott Card with my screwed-up subconscious (I reserve that credit for Stephen King). However, I am crediting him with creating a magnificently vivid, complicated, compelling story in that book. Absolutely not for children, of course - that particular book is riddled with sexuality and graphic violence, as I recall - but still an excellent read. I picked up a copy the other day and discovered that the first few pages of the book drew me in immediately. That’s a mark of good writing - when you flip it open idly, and find yourself not wanting to put it down.

Since then, Orson Scott has made an even bigger name for himself by writing the “Ender” series. Now, I had never heard of the Ender books until I was in my twenties and one of my boyfriends recommended the first book, Ender’s Game, to me. I vaguely recalled Orson Scott Card from my previous experience, so I figured it would at least be entertaining - if somewhat lurid - and read the thing.

What I discovered was not just YA fiction, not just Sci-Fi - and was definitely not lurid. Ender’s Game, I can confidently say, is a classic.

I’m not easily impressed with Sci-Fi, so don’t think that I’m praising it lightly. For me to use the term “classic” - it has to meet some strong criteria. It must have compelling characters, a believable situation, must be readable by a larger audience than just Sci-Fi geeks, and a story that transcends the time period that the book was written in and manages to resonate for years - decades - to come.

Ender’s Game does that.

I predict that this will be considered one of the classics of genre, if not one of the classic books of the generation: it kind of is already. It has more or less transcended the genre and is often carried in the “straight” fiction area of bookstores, and in both YA and adult.

Orson Scott Card has written sequels; there are the direct sequels, Speaker for the Dead and Xenocide, and also books about side characters, beginning with Ender’s Shadow (considered the fifth in the series, but really starting a series in itself). The direct sequels are worth reading if you liked Ender’s Game although not quite as compelling. The Shadow books went a bit further than I was interested in going: the only one I finished was the first, Ender’s Shadow, which was more or less Ender’s Game but told from a character who stood three feet to the side.

But I’m getting off the point, which is that whether or not you like Sci-Fi, if you like good reading, you could (and should) read Ender’s Game. It is a superb novel.

Now, for Sci-Fi and Fantasy buffs, there are several other series that you may want to check out; notably, the Alvin Maker books and the Homecoming series. The Alvin Maker books are a fantasy series that take place in an alternate version of the United States (think cowboys with magic); and the Homecoming series is about a group of people who live on a foreign planet who come to the conclusion that people used to live somewhere else (another planet) and want to get back there. I have only picked up the Alvin Maker books, but I read the entire Homecoming series while I was in college.

(Let me sidetrack a little bit to mention that Orson Scott Card is a Mormon. If that concerns you, don’t worry; he’s not slipping Mormons into everything he writes. In fact, there are all kinds of religions in there - even ones that directly contradict Mormonism [such as Catholicism, for instance] and are still presented favorably. However, I was rather surprised when, after reading the Homecoming series, on a random afternoon I picked up a copy of The Book of Mormon and started reading it… and found the opening story almost was almost identical to the scenary in Memory of Earth. There’s nothing really wrong with that, I suppose: I mean, people incorporate Biblical and mythic stories into their writing all the time… And it must be said - not casting aspursions on Mormons, you understand - The Book of Mormon makes decent Sci-Fi/Fantasy reading.)

I’m not saying that all Orson Scott Card’s books are classics. After reading the whole Homecoming series, they kind of began to blend into each other and I could see the patterns in his writing and characters and scenarios he likes to re-use. (I am particularly perplexed by the repeated theme of narrowly-avoided sibling incest). And, honestly, the reason I’ve never read the Alvin Maker series is that I’ve just never been able to get into it. I’ve picked up Seventh Son two or three times and got as far as chapter three, but always wound up putting it aside.

However, I’ve never read an author whose entire cannon of books has been classic (with the possible exception of Harper Lee). I love the books of E.F. Benson, but there are a few of his that I like more than others. I liked the Hitchhiker “Trilogy”, but I was never fond of the fourth book in it. In short, Orson Scott Card is like all other authors, in that some of his books are simply better than others.

However - unlike all other authors - some of his books exceed simply being “better” and enter into the realm of classic. I highly recommend Memory of Earth, Wyrms, and (for the writers amongst us) his very entertaining non-fiction work How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy.

And I INSIST that you read Ender’s Game. You’ll be glad you did. –Mrs. Hall