Astronomical Observations

Halfway through Mike Brown’s How I Killed Pluto, my son is still enthralled by the story of discovery of Kuiper-belt objects. Kudos to Mr. Brown for his skill in making this astronomy accessible and interesting enough to hold the attention of a stubbornly non-book 11-year-old boy. And his mother. (Will you lose all respect for me, dear reader, if I admit I did not know what the Kuiper belt was until I read about it in this book? I even had to look it up so I could pronounce it correctly.)

Meanwhile, I am halfway through Edith Pargeter’s massive Brothers of Gwynedd. More than once, as the dramatic story thread has seemed to get lost in more prosaic history retelling (and hey, I’m a big fan of history), I have worried I might just put the book down. (Dear reader, I have done this many times before. My attention span is not what it once was.) But I haven’t! I feel compelled to keep turning the page (or in this case, pushing the “Next Page” button on my Kindle). I even know what will happen, having recently read Marc Morris’s biography of Edward I, and it isn’t nice. All this to say, I can’t give enough credit to Pargeter’s masterly writing style. She’s just that good.

Exciting Things

1. Learning Connections
As in, after I read Mark Kurlansky’s The Story of Salt with the kids, then found the adult version, Salt (which Number-One Daughter insists looks and sounds like a novel, with that kind of title); and the day after I read about how salt was used for embalming in ancient Egypt (different grades for different classes of people), the kids and I started reading a book about ancient Egypt (100 Things You Should Know About Ancient Egypt, by Jane Walker) and found a spread about embalming which of course mentioned salt. Oh, and it happens that Number-One Daughter is studying ancient Egypt in school right now, and had only a day or two before described (with relish, at the dinner table) how the embalming process required that the brain be removed through the nose with a hook, and the organs placed in jars. Yep. Read that in the book, too. I’m pretty sure learning is taking place here, a lot of it mine…

Or how about this one: One night, in a book called Animals Under the Ground, by Phyllis J. Perry, Princess Two and I read about the kangaroo rat, and how it lives in the desert but gets all the moisture it needs through the seeds it eats. A little later the same night, Number-One Daughter and I found this passage in Scott O’Dell’s The King’s Fifth:

…[F]rom a pocket in her skirt she took a small, ratlike creature, with long back legs, and held it up in the palm of her hand.

“What is it?” I asked.

“An aguatil. It lives in the deserts and never needs to drink water. It does not like water. Its name is Montezuma.”

I doubted her story but it was true. In the days to come, when horses and men thirsted, this ratlike creature thrived, getting by some means from the seeds it ate, the water it needed.

I also found it handy to have Animals Under the Ground nearby when the younger two and I started reading The Wind in the Willows, for the photos of moles and badgers. Have I ever mentioned how much I love books?

2. New Yarn Store
Friend Jill took me to her new discovery yesterday afternoon. A lovely, old-fashioned storefront, dangerously close to home, filled with gorgeous yarns of every shape, color, texture. Heavenly. I bought a small ball of rainbow-colored wool that was just enough for a baby-sized beanie, and some variegated green supersoft cotton of whose possibilities I am still dreaming…

3. Impending New Releases
In 2 weeks: the Percy Jackson movie
In 8 weeks: Megan Whalen Turner’s latest book featuring Eugenides, the Thief of Eddis, titled A Conspiracy of Kings. Love, love, love these books.

4. Return of the Scrabblepoem Challenge
That’s right. Stay tuned for the official announcement, complete with rules, coming this Friday!

Having survived the laundry

and spent a week back in the groove, I can now write about our post-Christmas trip and family reunion in Branson, MO. There were twenty-one of us—sisters, brother-in-law, nephews, mother, aunt and uncle, cousins— staying in three houses on the beautiful 40-acre wooded property of Tall Pines. The best new experience: relaxing in the outdoor hot tub with snow falling all around. The worst new experience: driving twisty mountain roads in dark fog.

In town, I picked up the 100th anniversary copy of Harold Bell Wright’s The Shepherd of the Hills, which is apparently quite famous and what stirred up people’s interest in developing the Branson area around the turn of the last century. At least that’s what the man at the Toy Museum told us. He also told us that this book inspired former President Ronald Reagan to become a Christian. Anyway. After wandering through case after case of model cars and Star Wars figures and toy guns and way too many familiar childhood toys that are now, apparently, antiques, we found the Harold Bell Wright part of the museum, which houses some of his old furniture and several manuscript copies of his books. Were it not for Princess Two tugging me along, I would have spent more time here. Along with the manuscripts were large cards with typed commentary from Wright himself, describing his writing process, as well as period advertisements for the published works. An interesting glimpse into the business of writing in days long gone by.

Part of our reunion involved a belated Christmas exchange of gifts, and I received two more books (my family knows me well): Reflections on the Psalms, by C. S. Lewis, and Joseph Plumb Martin’s A Narrative of a Revolutionary Soldier. So now I have an even larger cozy stack of books to read by the fire.

Speaking of reading, I finished Margaret Frazer’s The Reeve’s Tale, and found it decent though not wow reading. I had trouble getting attached to any of the characters. But then I have been spoiled, as far as mysteries go, by Ellis Peters and Dorothy L. Sayers. Last night I started Robin Paige’s Death at Blenheim Palace, hoping…

Book Bounty

Joy of joys, I received new books for Christmas presents. As I tried to explain to my husband (who was giving me strange looks all the while, though by now—we’ll be married 18 years tomorrow—he should be used to it), it isn’t just what is inside them, it’s the paper, the covers, the colors, the smell, the whole physical experience of books…of being surrounded by books…

Ahem. Anyway, the first book I received was Bernard Meehan’s beautifully illustrated work on The Book of Kells. Now I can indulge my passion for illuminated medieval manuscripts at will.

Next, I received a facsimile copy of the 1862 edition of Catherine Winkworth’s Lyra Germanica, which contains her English translations of German hymns. Especially nice about this volume is the old-timey typeface with the Ss that look like Fs (which generally puts me in more of a Revolutionary than Victorian mood, but good nonetheless). I think this book will definitely help keep me inspired to learn/write about that fascinating Victorian lady.

Finally, I received the slow-cooker cookbook Fix-It and Forget-It 5-Ingredient Favorites, by Phyllis Pellman Good, so that even on those nights when Princess Two has ballet class and my son has Lutheran Pioneers, and my husband has a meeting, we can still eat!

The above are all mine (all mine!), but to just mention the library: I finished reading the two Maureen Ash Templar Knight mysteries The Alehouse Murders and Murder for Christ’s Mass. Though I did make it all the way to the end of both books, I don’t think I’ll be seeking out any more of Ash’s titles. The mysteries were interesting, and the historical setting (13th-century England) one of my favorites, but in the end the writing was too plodding and tedious. So, I am moving forward to the 15th century for Margaret Frazer’s The Reeve’s Tale.

Terrific #10 (updates)

Reading update:

I’m still suffering from too many books and too little time, in the middle of three nonfiction books of varying lengths. 1. I’ve followed Tony Horwitz and Captain Cook to Alaska, and we’re on the captain’s final, fateful voyage. 2. I’m learning a little French horn history and taking armchair lessons from author Jasper Rees and horn virtuoso Dave Lee. 3. Through an elementary-level biography, I’m developing a fascination for 19th-century scientist Michael Faraday. (The fact that he was a young man during the Napoleonic wars is, I believe, not coincidental to my fascination.)

The book I managed to finish reading is the Kay Winters/Larry Day picture book Colonial Voices: Hear Them Speak. This book introduces us to various denizens of Boston on the day of the Boston Tea Party, December 16, 1773. We meet people of different occupations and different loyalties through simple yet poetic language. Winters does a nice job of showing that many factors played into people’s feelings about the building Revolutionary fever; and that for some people, like the Native American basket trader and African-American slave, the colony’s taxation-without-representation grumblings were largely irrelevant. The book is rounded off with historical notes and a bibliography. The title of the book is a bit misleading, for the “colonial voices” are all from only one day in one colonial city; but I think we could easily extend the trades, feelings, personalities, and issues to the pre-Revolutionary era in general, especially for the northern colonies.

Writing update:

Unfortunately there is not too much going on here. I keep casting nets, but most of my ideas are either too slippery or too small, and escape back into the wider sea. My “inventors” project is starting to solidify, if ever so slightly. Patience, patience, patience. I also started drafting a short tale that will NOT EVER turn into anything longer. It is JUST FOR FUN.

Windswept midweek updates (#9)

Weather update:

March is roaring in like a lion. My house is shaking.

Reading update:

1. Out of three current reads, I’m farthest along in Tony Horwitz’s Blue Latitudes, in which the author retraces Captain James Cook’s “voyages of discovery.” So far we have been to Tahiti, New Zealand, Australia, and the Pacific island of Niue. Just arrived on the big island of Tonga. The best of this book is the way Horwitz weaves the history in with his modern experiences. The bittersweet, disorienting feeling of reading Cook’s 18th-century descriptions and then seeing the modern-day places is akin to that of being lost in a good book and having to return to Real Life.

2. I read another chapter of Jasper Rees’s The Devil to Play. Looking forward to more humor, horn history, and horn-relearning commiseration.

3. I started reading an elementary biography called Michael Faraday and the Electric Dynamo, by Charles Paul May. The depth and imaginative style hark back to an earlier age in children’s biographies (copyright 1961). I compare this interesting and leisurely read to another children’s book on Faraday, the altogether frantic Faraday: Pioneer of Electricity by Brian Williams and David Antram. The latter reaches out to the video-game generation (copyright 2003) by presenting snippets of biographical fact alongside splashy caricature art and brief explanations of how the science works. On every spread I found my eyes jumping all over the page, reading each little paragraph and sidebar, then going over it all again with a feeling that I had missed something. Is this how children think? Is this how we’re training them to think? Perhaps the series titles of the two works say it all: “Immortals of Science” versus “The Explosion Zone.”

4. Lest anyone think I am against recent picture-book biographies, I delighted in A River of Words: The Story of William Carlos Williams, written by Jen Bryant and illustrated by Melissa Sweet. Fascinating art, thorough (for a picture book) biography, and best of all, I am now hungering to read more about Williams and more of his poetry. I hope it works like this on kids, too!

Literature-into-movies update:

Over the weekend I watched the 2002 film version of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest. It was mildly entertaining, though not as funny as I remembered. Ah, the jaded palate. The very best part (besides Colin Firth’s looking so young) was Rupert Everett’s pitch-perfect aristocratic voice. Speaking of Rupert Everett. . .

I also watched (again) Disney-Walden’s take on C. S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (Everett voices an animatronic fox). I reflected, as I watched, on how I’ve always taken musical scores for granted. This movie, as well as the sequel, would be much reduced without Harry Gregson-Williams’s wonderful—and majestically horn-laced—score. I already had the Prince Caspian soundtrack. I felt compelled to download this one, too. (Piano note: I’m making pretty good progress with “Evacuating London.”)

Writing update:

My muse is apparently suffering from a multiple-personality disorder. I wrote a short newsletter article yesterday. Otherwise, I am thinking again of women hymn-writers, and of 19th-century inventors (hence the Faraday biographies). I suggested to (one of) myself that I could work on a separate project every day, and perhaps in 20 years or so I could have not one, but seven complete books.

Midweek updates #8

1. Reading update:

I’ve been enjoying Tony Horwitz’s Blue Latitudes: Boldly Going Where Captain Cook Has Gone Before. I’m a big fan of 18th century history in general, and blue-water sailing adventures in particular, which is why I chose this Horwitz volume over Confederates in the Attic, recommended by my good friend and book connoisseur Wendy. (I’m sure I’ll get to that one, too, someday. The American Civil War is maybe my third-favorite historical period.)

And speaking of 18th century, I picked up two books at the library this morning. First, The Adams Chronicles, by Jack Shepherd, about the clan of John Adams the American founding father and second U.S. President. Second, a newer picture book, Colonial Voices: Hear Them Speak, written by Kay Winters and illustrated by Larry Day. Both books are research material for a certain writing project (see #3).

Yes, I know I’m already in the midst of reading two other library books (Blue Latitudes and Robin McKinley’s Chalice), and there’s another I requested through interlibrary loan waiting for me (The Devil to Play: One Man’s Year-long Quest to Master the Orchestra’s Most Difficult Instrument [i.e., French horn], by Jasper Rees), and then there’s the pristine paperback of The Mabinogion Tetralogy, by Evangeline Walton. Oh, and a book called Me to We, by Alan Nelson, that I’m supposed to be reading for a church-team thing. This may be the literary equivalent of emotional overeating. Or indication of some other psychological disorder in which having piles of books all over the house makes me feel secure and happy.

2. Hubris update:

Speaking of too many books and not enough time, I received my Chronicles of Narnia piano-vocal-guitar books. I sat down at the keyboard and realized within ten seconds that there will be no “just sitting down to play these songs for fun.” I will have to work at them before they sound like anything, just as I am having to hack my way through the French horn part for Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” (to be performed with our high school/community band in May).

3. Writing update:

Out of yesterday’s dreary gray sky, I had a glimmer of insight into a story I back-burnered sometime last summer. As I sat down to make follow-up notes this morning, it occurred to me that perchance I’d had the wrong character as protagonist all along. Does this sudden insight have anything to do with a discussion on optimism and unwatched kettles boiling that I’d had with itsybitsyblogsy via her blog? Hmm. Anyhow, as critique-group sister Kim would say, I intend to “follow the whisper.”

4. Mixed metaphor update:

My apologies for the preceding paragraph. It just came out like that. I can’t fix it right now because I have books to read and instruments to practice!

Midweek updates #7

OK, I just made up that number. I don’t know how many updates I’ve done before, but I thought I should start keeping track. Seven is a good number.

Reading update:

I actually finished reading two books in February, which beats my January record by 100%. The first is The First Year of Homeschooling Your Child, by Linda Dobson. This is related to a momentous, intimidating-liberating decision we’ve made about our children’s education. It’s a heartening overview of different homeschooling options, and I’ve dog-eared lots of pages for further investigation. Next up on this topic is Teaching Your Own, by John Holt.

The second book I finished is Empires of Light, by Jill Jonnes, an intriguing history of the early days of electricity in America. I have never been a big fan of Gilded Age history, so there was plenty of unexplored territory here, especially regarding the scientific and business achievements of the inventors George Westinghouse, Thomas Edison, and Nikola Tesla. The book kept bringing home to me how fundamentally different an electrified world is from what went before—so much we take for granted, when even the United States has been completely “electrified” for fewer than 100 years. Although Jonnes does not do much moralizing (and it’s an era ripe for moralizing), she does finish with these thought-provoking observations:

For all the immense gains and almost magical gifts that electricity bestowed, there were, of course, some small losses, felt only by a few. The world, now powered by machines, became far noisier…Natural sounds, just plain silence, were drowned out by man-made din…The American night sky, once truly black and blazing with billions of glistening stars, decade by decade became steadily more permeated by man-made electric light.

I began thinking, through the latter parts of the book, how the human generation and control of electricity—just one part of the scientific revealing and codifying of nature’s mysteries—has helped to quash our human sense of awe and wonder. Is it merely coincidence that the Romantics came after the Age of Enlightenment? There is only so much reason the human brain can take, before we begin longing for some wildness and beauty that we can’t quantify or dissect (or maybe that’s just me?). Jonnes quotes the following lines from Charles Dickens, from when he first saw the (pre-tourist age) Niagara Falls in the 1840s:

Great Heaven…what a Fall of bright-green water!…I felt how near to my Creator I was standing….Peace of Mind, tranquility, calm recollections of the Dead, great thoughts of Eternal Rest and Happiness…

I suppose there are such regions of nature, heart, and spirit still open to us, but it seems they must grow harder and harder to find.

Writing update:

I have switched gears (O fickle muse!), and am once again working on the sequel (imaginatively called, in my header, “Sequel”) to TS. I was surprised to see that I had saved the file as recently as last November. I am trying VERY HARD to shut up that nasty critic who wants me to explain what the point of all this is. SHUT UP! I’m seeking Joy here, lady.

Otherwise, in my real life, I have promised Number-One Daughter’s sixth-grade teacher to work up some Fairy Tale/Mother Goose “commercial spots” to fit in with the spring play. Perhaps the Three Pigs advertising their homebuilding business, or Big Bad Wolf advertising his security company.

And yesterday, I drafted an 800-word devotion for an upcoming ladies-only church event. I’m afraid it may be a bit too dense for tea and crumpets. I’ll have to let it sit a few more days.

Sixth day of Christmas books

What could be better than books for Christmas? Recycled books for Christmas!

Friend, fellow writer, and critique-group sister April, who once upon a time taught college English, has been streamlining her collection and brought me these beauties. These are vintage 1960s editions, with pretty marbled cloth covers. The eight volumes cover Greek, Roman, Medieval, Renaissance, and 20th-Century culture, as well as The Enlightenment, The Age of Reason, and Romanticism. I know these are going to be a great resource for my website, Lit for All, and for my creative writing projects. Not only that, but just looking at them makes me feel happy (and smarter). Can’t wait to see how smart I’ll feel after reading them.

Thanks, April, and Merry Christmas!

Third day of Christmas books

I gave this book as a Christmas gift to my boys…

The Dangerous Book for Boys by Conn and Hal Iggulden (whose names are pretty dangerous in themselves). I discovered this book while browsing my favorite internet bookstore, and thought it would make good father–son bonding material. It includes how-to instructions on such important boyhood arts as making a paper airplane, hat, boat, and water bomb; making a simple electromagnet; building a tree-house; skipping stones; playing table football; and the list goes on. I was also drawn to the fact that sprinkled among these how-tos are chapters on history, such as famous battles through the ages, the story of the Wright brothers, an overview of the golden age of piracy, some Shakespeare basics, the story of the Declaration of Independence (this is the American version of the originally British-published book), and more.

Boy #1 (my husband) has been perusing the book in leisure moments; he just plucked it off my desk on this rainy Saturday morning. He’s anticipating summertime now, and the chance to build that great tree-house. One boy conquered: but the true test will be if Boy #1 can use the book to entice Boy #2 (our nine-year-old son) from his new Nintendo DS…