Reading is…

I was going to write, “the cure for all that ails you,” but that would have been too melodramatic. It is amazing to me, though, how having the right reading material can affect my outlook on life.

Two or three days ago, I was suffering from a strange malady. Perhaps it was only a serious attack of the January blahs, or what the sophisticated would call a malaise. One of the most painful symptoms was, I could not find a book to capture my interest. I have been from youth an obssessive reader (if there is no book, I read the cereal box, yes?). For me, books are breakfast-lunch-dinner AND dessert. And suddenly I wasn’t hungry.

It wasn’t lack of choice (many shelves full of my own books, plus some dozen from the library). It was that I found the books’ contents unappetizing. I put aside Daniel Deronda because Eliot’s sarcasm and Gwendolyn’s selfishness got on my nerves. I thought maybe a nice thick fantasy would cheer me up, so I bought Sherwood Smith’s Inda. It made me tired. I was rapidly losing hope. I picked up Treasure Island, still on the library pile. Oh, thank goodness.

Pirates, of course, along with many other essential ingredients: eighteenth century, a young innocent, mystery, high-seas sailing. A story to sink my teeth into.

Voila! Life is tasty again.

Wednesday updates

Reading update:

“She is not really so handsome, if you come to examine her features,” said Mrs. Arrowpoint, later in the evening, confidentially to Mrs. Vulcany. “It is a certain style she has, which produces a great effect at first, but afterwards she is less agreeable.”

. . . . . . .

A little comparison would have shown that all these points are to be found apart; daughters of aldermen being often well-grown and well-featured, pretty women having sometimes harsh or husky voices, and the production of feeble literature being found compatible with the most diverse forms of physique, masculine as well as feminine.

George Eliot, Daniel Deronda

Yes, I am swimming through Daniel Deronda. What is its appeal? I keep having to overcome these sentences that require two or three readings to tease out the sense (not to mention a type size intended for a mouse). Well, the reward is in the kind of humor displayed above. Sometimes I think she’s writing about me.

In other news, Number-One Daughter and I are enjoying nightly doses of Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book (no, not the Disney movie). The book completely captivated me when I first read it a few years back. Kipling’s language is at once majestic and lyrical, and the story includes “…the old verities and truths of the heart, the universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed—love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice” (William Faulkner). All that and more.

The version I own happens to be the one illustrated by Jerry Pinkney. As my son walked by one day, the cover caught his eye, and he said, “Hey, that’s the same guy who illustrated the book we read at school.” We then proceeded to have a brief discussion of whether the style was the same, etc. (I include this incident just in case you teachers out there wonder if anyone pays attention.)

Writing update:

Still enjoying the ride. I have 31 pages of draft! I have a hero about to show up with a black eye and split lip! Does it get any better than this?

Library bounty

Yesterday was my bi-weekly visit to the local public library—the one that officially belongs to our village (though physically located in another), the one I can use for interlibrary loan. What did I bring home?

Daniel Deronda, by George Eliot

I had forgotten I wanted to read this after watching the PBS Masterpiece Theater version a couple months ago. How I love those Victorians. You can’t get a sentence like this anymore: “She who raised these questions in Daniel Deronda’s mind was occupied in gambling: not in the open air under a southern sky, tossing coppers on a ruined wall, with rags about her limbs; but in one of those splendid resorts which the enlightenment of ages has prepared for the same species of pleasure at a heavy cost of gilt mouldings, dark-toned colour and chubby nudities, all correspondingly heavy—forming a suitable condenser for human breath belonging, in great part, to the highest fashion, and not easily procurable to be breathed in elsewhere in the like proportion, at least by persons of little fashion.”

Robert Louis Stevenson: Four Complete Novels, including Treasure Island

If I get a chance, I’d like to peek into The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde as well.

For Princess Two I picked up the latest in Mo Willem’s Pigeon saga, Pigeon Wants a Puppy, which was enjoyed family-wide. Princess Two and I also read together the picture book Turtle’s Penguin Day, by Valeri Gorbachev. Twice in a row (she’s in a penguin phase). Fortunately, the book had short and sweet text, and giggle-inducing art; so I didn’t mind.

In the interest of honesty, I now have to admit that I returned unread Sara Gruen’s Water for Elephants. I got to skimming through it, and it just didn’t appeal to me that day (or the next). It has been some years since I decided I don’t have to finish every book I pick up. Life is too short, and there are too many other books out there.

Tenth day of Christmas books

This Christmas gift is not actually a book, but is based on one…

The Masterpiece Theater DVD of The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins. It has been several years since I first watched this on PBS, and enjoyed it so much I had to snatch up the book. Of course the book was even better—more plot-twisty, more humorous, and so deliciously Victorian in style and language.

The Moonstone is not the first book-into-movie that sent me from the TV to the bookstore. Some of my other favorite books that I read after seeing the movies:

The Buccaneers by Edith Wharton
Martin Chuzzlewit by Charles Dickens
Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens
North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell
The Horatio Hornblower series by C. S. Forester

And still on my books-into-movies tbr list:

Daniel Deronda by George Eliot