#9 ...my fancy gave her eyes of blue...

Today's a doubleheader day, two poems for the price of one!

My first poem is my favorite of Shakespeare's sonnets. It's not one of his more romantic sonnets, not something a lovestruck hero and heroine would recite to each other. It's earthy, honest, and realistic, and that's what I like best about it.

The second poem is Lewis Carroll's take on the same idea. In both cases, the poets are speaking of their loves and realizing they may not be beautiful, but they love them regardless. So often in literature the ideal woman is held up to be one at the pinnacle of beauty, and it's refreshing to read a poem where the speaker's saying "Yeah, you know, she can crack a mirror but I love her anyway."

Sonnet 130
by William Shakespeare

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damasked, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground.
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.

My Fancy
by Lewis Carroll

I painted her a gushing thing,
With years perhaps a score;
A little thought to find they were
At least a dozen more;
My fancy gave her eyes of blue,
A curly, auburn head;
I came to find the blue a green
The auburn turned to red.

She boxed my ears this morning--
They tingled very much;
I own that I could wish her
A somewhat lighter touch;
And if you were to ask me how
Her charms might be improved,
I would not have them added to,
But just a few removed!

She has the bear's ethereal grace,
The bland hyena's laugh,
The footstep of the elephant,
The neck of the giraffe.
I love her still, believe me,
Though my heart its passion hides;
"She is all my fancy painted her,"
But, oh, how much besides!

Author review: Kate Seredy

Every spring, I reread two particular books---Kate Seredy's The Good Master (1935) and The Singing Tree (1939). These are two rightfully-acclaimed children's books that were each awarded the Newberry Honor award for excellence in children's literature.* I first read them back in elementary school, probably around the age of 7 or 8. They were favorite books of my mother, who bought me my own copies. Needless to say, I promptly fell in love with them and reread them every year.

Kate Seredy was born at the end of the 19th century in Hungary. She served as a nurse in WWI, then afterwords got an art degree and teaching certification. She moved to America and quickly made a name for herself by illustrating children's books. One of the editors she worked with suggested that she write a story herself, one about her experiences growing up in Hungary before the war. The Good Master is that book, and won immediate acclaim. The Singing Tree is the sequel.

(side note: I'm including the pictures for the original hardcovers, rather than the reprinted paperbacks I own. The original hardcovers are absolutely gorgeous and much more worthy of inclusion)



The Good Master is about two Hungarian children, cousins Jancsi (YAN-zsee) and Kate. Jancsi's father is the titular "good master", the primary landowner of the area. He has an enormous ranch on the Hungarian puszta (plains), and Jancsi, an only child, has grown up there. When he's ten years old, his cousin Kate from Budapest comes to live with the family. Jancsi and Kate have never met. Jancsi, who has never been to the city, imagines that Kate will be a delicate princess with ethereal beauty and manners. What he gets is a mischievous tomboy with dirty knees and a propensity for pranks. He realizes pretty quickly that this is much better than the princess he was hoping for---Kate ends up becoming his best friend and playmate. The book follows their adventures during the idyllic pre-war period, around 1912.

What I like best about The Good Master is its depiction of Hungarian customs. Kate, having lived in the city her entire life, is only familiar with Western ways. Her new life in the countryside immerses her in the traditional ways of her people, and she learns all about Magyar culture. We see the traditions of Easter, of county fairs, of harvest and Christmas. We learn about life on the farm, about the importance of their way of life to the Magyar people. Through Kate's conversations with her uncle's shepherds, we hear several traditional Hungarian folk tales. This is a book that just brims with beauty.

A critic accused The Good Master of lacking relevance, saying it failed on two levels. Firstly, that it depicts Kate as going from a girl who loves riding horses at the beginning of the book, to one who's happiest weaving and cooking by the end of the book. Clearly, this is an anti-feminist book. Secondly, that children today can't relate to it, that it's mawkish and sappy and outdated. My response to the first is this: yes, I'm sad when Kate grows up and has to leave off her tomboyish habits. It would have killed me, had I had a horse of my own, to have had to have given him up at a certain age. BUT. That's the way things were back then, and The Good Master accurately depicts that. Saying we shouldn't read it because it's wrong is like saying we shouldn't read Uncle Tom's Cabin because slavery is wrong. We learn about things by reading about them. When I read this book to my children someday, I'll use that particular plotline as a starting point for conversation. What was life like back then for girls? How is it different today? Why is it important that things have changed? And on the second matter, if children today can no longer appreciate sweet, old-fashioned books like The Good Master, then I'm raising my children in the Yukon. I'm already disgusted enough by things like Bratz dolls and Gossip Girl and I don't even HAVE kids yet. A book that shows ten year olds acting like ten year olds seems far more worthy to me than one where they act like streetwalkers and frat boys.

Sigh. Anyway, I absolutely adore this book and have so many happy memories of reading it throughout the years.



The Singing Tree is a little more bittersweet than The Good Master because it deals with the effects on WWI on Kate and Jancsi's lives. Both their fathers and most of the young men of the village leave to become soldiers. Kate's father is taken prisoner in Russia, Jancsi's is missing and presumed dead. Jancsi must take charge of the farm and become the Young Master, and the family, with their role of community leadership, takes in as many people as they can to help. A troop of Russian prisoners arrive to help with the farm work. A group of German children come to stay to get away from the fighting in Germany. While the war does not directly come to the farm, its effects are felt by the Nagy family in many different ways. It's a sober, sad, and yet ultimately moving depiction of the ending of one age and the beginning of another.

The Singing Tree is definitely meant for older readers than The Good Master. In addition to war, the book also deals with topics such as anti-semitism, socialism, hatred and forgiveness. As with The Good Master, I think this makes it an easy way to discuss such things with children. I especially like the fact that the book doesn't try to portray one side of the war as good and the other as bad---it simply says that war's awful no matter which side you're on. As somebody with ancestors on both sides of both WWI and WWII, I appreciate that neither side of my heritage is demonized.

After I reread the books last month, I decided I'd finally give some of Seredy's other books a try. The one that looked most appealing was this one:



Philomena is the story of a 13 year old girl from a tiny village in what's now the Czech Republic but was, at the time of the story, the Austro-Hungarian empire. The tradition in Philomena's villages is for girls, upon turning 13, to go to Prague to work as maidservants. By the time of their traditional four years there, they've learned everything they need to keep house, and return to their village as attractive candidates for marriage (yes, I can hear the feminists screaming from here).

Philomena's time in Prague, however, is complicated by her search for a missing aunt. It's a very comic story, somewhere in between a picture book and a chapter book, and more or less one long romp from beginning to end. Philomena's an appealing, likeable protagonist and the conclusion to her story and her search is satisfying and almost fairy-tale-like. Do I like it as much as The Good Master and The Singing Tree? No, but that may just be because I don't have the history with it that I do with the others. I don't know. It lacks the depth of the chapter books, but it is charming in its own right.

The best part of the three books are Kate Seredy's illustrations. She was primarily an artist and saw her stories merely as something to go with the art she created, rather than the other way around. I have such strong memories of the artwork from the The Good Master and The Singing Tree--it's beautiful, accessible, and instantly recognizable as hers. She makes a concerted effort to infuse her illustrations with Hungarian details, and that was the part that fascinated me the most as a child:



In the picture above, the three men are in traditional Hungarian dress. They are performing "the calling", the Hungarian tradition by which people are invited to a wedding. It's that kind of vernacular detail within the illustrations that I like the best, and Seredy's books are brimful of folk art and beauty. Her illustrations of the horses within the story (Father's Bator, Jancsi's Barsony, and Kate's Milky---and yes, I've remembered and loved those names all these years) are breathtaking and worthy of printing and framing. Its even occurred to me to have some of her folk-art illustrations transferred into needlework patterns. Nothing is beneath her notice as an illustrator; she makes everything beautiful, even the chapter headings.

Anyway, I adore Kate Seredy's work and intend her books to be a pivotal part of my children's library. They are just plain GOOD books. I suppose they're old-fashioned. They're certainly sweet books with happy endings (which apparently is a terrible thing these days). The highest acclaim I can give them is that they are books that uplift me---by the time I've finished reading them, I'm reminded about the beauty around me, about what's worth cherishing in life.

*Seredy won the Newberry award itself in 1937 for The White Stag, a mythical retelling of the life of Attila the Hun and the settling of the Huns and Magyars in Hungary. Wikipedia describes the plot thusly: For generations the tribes of Huns and Magyars had moved westward, obeying their Pagan Gods' orders to follow a White Stag to their promised homeland. They could see the White stag but could never catch it. I've never gotten around to reading this, but it's on my list of books to buy for my future children.

#8 ...it is laughter and contentment and the struggle for a goal...

I have another Edgar Guest poem for you today. I do love the simplicity of his poems, and how they exhort us to think about what really matters in life. Granted, this is something different for everyone, but I think the basics should be the same---finding happiness in loved ones and purity of spirit, rather than material goods or the acclaim of others.

I have trouble remembering this at Powells, however. Walking out of there with a big stack of books makes me happy, indeed.

I don't agree with EVERYTHING he says in this poem--I think there's a great deal of benefit to be gained from travel, but that's splitting hairs--but I think the general intention of the poem is correct.

What I Call Living
by Edgar Guest

The miser thinks he's living when he's hoarding up his gold;
The soldier calls it living when he's doing something bold;
The sailor thinks it living to be tossed upon the sea,
And upon this vital subject no two of us agree.
But I hold to the opinion, as I walk my way along,
That living's made of laughter and good-fellowship and song.

I wouldn't call it living always to be seeking gold,
To bank all the present gladness for the days when I'll be old.
I wouldn't call it living to spend all my strength for fame,
And forego the many pleasures which to-day are mine to claim.
I wouldn't for the splendor of the world set out to roam,
And forsake my laughing children and the peace I know at home.
Oh, the thing that I call living isn't gold or fame at all!

It's good-fellowship and sunshine, and it's roses by the wall;
It's evenings glad with music and a hearth fire that's ablaze,
And the joys which come to mortals in a thousand different ways.
It is laughter and contentment and the struggle for a goal;
It is everything that's needful in the shaping of a soul.

#7 ...though God knows when we shall meet...

Sorry for the late posting today! I had a spectacularly absorbing book with me and spent my breaks reading instead of posting. Anyway, here it is a few hours later.

Today's poem is by one of my favorite WWI poets, Winifred M. Letts. I posted her "The Spires of Oxford" last year, along with two other WWI poems ("The Soldier" and "The Mother"). Like I said last April, WWI poetry is one of my favorite genres. It's hideously depressing, I have to admit, and rightfully so. But in the midst of all that madness and tragedy, a handful of poets were able to create these beautiful expressions of the human experience---not only of soldiers, but of their family and loved ones and those left behind.

The Call to Arms in Our Street
by Winifred M. Letts

There’s a woman sobs her heart out,
With her head against the door,
For the man that’s called to leave her,
— God have pity on the poor!
But its beat, drums, beat
While the lads march down the street,
And its blow, trumpets blow,
Keep your tears until they go.

There’s a crowd of little children
That march along and shout,
For it’s fine to play at soldiers
Now their fathers are called out.
So its beat, drums, beat;
But who’ll find them food to eat?
And its blow, trumpets, blow,
Oh, its little children know.

There’s a mother who stands watching
For the last look of her son,
A worn poor widow woman,
And he her only one,
But its beat, drums, beat,
Though God knows when we shall meet:
And its blow trumpets, blow
We must smile and cheer them so.

There’s a young girl who stands laughing
For she thinks a war is grand
And it’s fine to see the lads pass,
And it’s fine to hear the band,
So its beat, drums, beat,
To the fall of many feet:
And its blow, trumpets, blow,
God go with you where you go.

#5 ...where flash the legions of the sun...

Today, you get a double treat, folks!

The first poem is from my beloved Edward Arlington Robinson, the tragic figure of American poetry and winner of three Pulitzers for his work. I posted two of Robinson's poems last year ("Miniver Cheevy" and "The Dead Village"). This is the only one of his that I'm posting this year, but I urge you to check out his other poems. "Richard Cory" is particularly haunting and "Aunt Imogen" absolutely breaks my heart (perhaps because I can see it as a possible future for myself). I suppose what I like best about Robinson's poetry is the sense of being on the outside looking in, a feeling I'm quite familiar with. I don't say that to paint myself as some sort of similarly tragic figure, because I'm not and I don't feel like I am. But in being a hearing-impaired person in a hearing world, I do experience a feeling of being separate from the people around me in a lot of ways, and so I understand that feeling of separateness that permeates a lot of Robinson's poems.

Anyhoo. Today's poem is quite short and simple and full of visual imagery of "endings'--sunset, death, final days.....In spite of how brief it is, it has a powerful impact for me. It also reminds me quite strongly of the poetry of J. R. R. Tolkien, both in tone and imagery. Maybe I just feel that way because I watched part of The Return of the King on TV last night and therefore have The Lord of the Rings on the brain, I don't know. But I thought I'd pair Robinson's poem with one of Tolkien's that looks at the end of things in a different way.

I don't think I need to talk about Tolkien at all, do I? He's awesome. 'Nuff said.

The Dark Hills
by E. A. Robinson

Dark hills at evening in the west,
Where sunset hovers like a sound
Of golden horns that sang to rest
Old bones of warriors under ground,
Far now from all the bannered ways
Where flash the legions of the sun,
You fade--as if the last of days
Were fading, and all wars were done.


Journey's End
by J. R. R. Tolkien

In western lands beneath the Sun
The flowers may rise in Spring,
The trees may bud, the waters run,
The merry finches sing.
Or there maybe 'tis cloudless night,
And swaying branches bear
The Elven-stars as jewels white
Amid their branching hair.

Though here at journey's end I lie
In darkness buried deep,
Beyond all towers strong and high,
Beyond all mountains steep,
Above all shadows rides the Sun
And Stars for ever dwell:
I will not say the Day is done,
Nor bid the Stars farewell.

#4 ...we can make our lives sublime...

Happy Easter, everyone! I picked today's poem with the holiday in mind---it's not strictly an Easter poem, or even an overtly religious one, but it seemed fitting to me. It's something I like to reread whenever I'm discouraged by things going wrong in my life, and it helps to bolster me up and renew my spirit.

I've been a Longfellow fan since fifth grade, when my class was required to memorize the first stanze of "Paul Revere's Ride". I can still recite it today, in case you're curious! Anyway, I realized at the time that I loved his style of writing, and I've since fallen in love with many of Longfellow's other poems.

Longfellow is one of the most famous poets in American history, and one of the most highly regarded. He wrote lyric poetry, usually with a very musical undertone---this is poetry that fairly begs to be read aloud. We're still studying these poems over a hundred years later, and they're rightfully acclaimed.

A Psalm of Life
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Tell me not in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream!
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.

Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou are, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each tomorrow
Find us farther than today.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.

In the world's broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
Be a hero in the strife!

Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant!
Let the dead Past bury its dead!
Act, - act in the living Present!
Heart within, and God o'erhead!

Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sand of time;

Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o'er life's solenm main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.

Let us then be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.

#3 ...what is the self amid this blaze?...

Today's poem is a little different than most of the others I'll post. While it contains my chief criteria for a good poem (rhyming lines, albeit only somewhat), it's distinctively modern and murky and I don't normally like poems like that. But there's a more personal connection to it.

I first came across it without realizing it was actually a poem. In the movie Star Trek Generations (for the nongeeks, the one where Captains Kirk and Picard meet), the film's villain quotes a line from the poem to Captain Picard:

"They say time is the fire in which we burn. Right now, Captain, my time is running out. We leave so many things unfinished in our lives. I know you understand."

I was entranced by that line, time is the fire in which we burn, but eventually forgot about it. I didn't see the movie again for many years, but when I did, that line jumped out at me again. This time, I googled it and discovered it was from a poem by Delmore Schwarz.

I won't lie. The poem doesn't make much sense to me. It's about a man walking through a park and remembering people he used to know. Beyond that, I'm lost. I'm sure it's deeply symbolic and meaningful and I'm Just Not Getting It, but....whatever. I can take my own meaning from it and that's enough for me.



Calmly We Walk Through This April's Day
by Delmore Schwartz



Calmly we walk through this April's day,
Metropolitan poetry here and there,
In the park sit pauper and rentier,
The screaming children, the motor-car
Fugitive about us, running away,
Between the worker and the millionaire
Number provides all distances,
It is Nineteen Thirty-Seven now,
Many great dears are taken away,
What will become of you and me
(This is the school in which we learn...)
Besides the photo and the memory?
(...that time is the fire in which we burn.)

(This is the school in which we learn...)
What is the self amid this blaze?
What am I now that I was then
Which I shall suffer and act again,
The theodicy I wrote in my high school days
Restored all life from infancy,
The children shouting are bright as they run
(This is the school in which they learn ...)
Ravished entirely in their passing play!
(...that time is the fire in which they burn.)

Avid its rush, that reeling blaze!
Where is my father and Eleanor?
Not where are they now, dead seven years,
But what they were then?
No more? No more?
From Nineteen-Fourteen to the present day,
Bert Spira and Rhoda consume, consume
Not where they are now (where are they now?)
But what they were then, both beautiful;

Each minute bursts in the burning room,
The great globe reels in the solar fire,
Spinning the trivial and unique away.
(How all things flash! How all things flare!)
What am I now that I was then?
May memory restore again and again
The smallest color of the smallest day:
Time is the school in which we learn,
Time is the fire in which we burn.

#2 ...our manners may not be the best...

I've been familiar with the poetry of Edgar Guest for some time---he was a very prolific poet in the first half of the twentieth century and his poems are in just about every collection of American poetry out there. I read a good number of them, when I was a child, and recently found a three inch thick volume of his collected poems at Powells that has made me very happy!

Today's poem is one from that volume, and while it IS sentimental and optimistic (typical of Guest's poetry and something that brought him a great deal of scorn from more critically regarded poets), I love the simple imagery of it---a family sitting around the dinner table, enjoying themselves. It makes me think of happy family dinners as a child, before my siblings grew up and moved away. I remember sitting anxiously in my chair, waiting for my turn to talk about what had happened at preschool. Reading this poem makes me smile, and that matters far more to me than reading some cynical, "serious" award-winning poem.


The Perfect Dinner Table
by Edgar Guest

A tablecloth that's slightly soiled
Where greasy little hands have toiled;
The napkins kept in silver rings,
And only ordinary things
From which to eat, a simple fare,
And just the wife and kiddies there,
And while I serve, the clatter glad
Of little girl and little lad
Who have so very much to say
About the happenings of the day.
Four big round eyes that dance with glee,
Forever flashing joys at me,
Two little tongues that race and run
To tell of troubles and of fun;
The mother with a patient smile
Who knows that she must wait awhile
Before she'll get a chance to say
What she's discovered through the day.
She steps aside for girl and lad
Who have so much to tell their dad.
Our manners may not be the best;
Perhaps our elbows often rest
Upon the table, and at times
That very worst of dinner crimes,
That very shameful act and rude
Of speaking ere you've downed your food,
Too frequently, I fear, is done,
So fast the little voices run.
Yet why should table manners stay
Those tongues that have so much to say?
At many a table I have been
Where wealth and luxury were seen,
And I have dined in halls of pride
Where all the guests were dignified;
But when it comes to pleasure rare
The perfect dinner table's where
No stranger's face is ever known:
The dinner hour we spend alone,
When little girl and little lad
Run riot telling things to dad.

#1 ...and books I long have loved beside me there...

This year's kickoff poem is one that has brought me a lot of peace these past few months. I stumbled across this poem from Grace Noll Crowell on a blog last year and was just enchanted. It's simplistic, certainly, and the feminists will probably be in an uproar over it, but I adore it. I want to find that kind of happiness without needing a trip to Europe or a Land Rover.

Bonus points: Grace Noll Crowell was born in Iowa in 1877 and raised there. Her poems were published in the 1920s and 1930s, many in Good Housekeeping, and allowed her to support her family. She became one of the most published female poets of the 20th century (and yet I'd never heard of her), and is most famous for her inspirational poems, several of which have been turned into hymns.

I Have Found Such Joy
by Grace Noll Crowell

I have found such joy in simple things;
A plain, clean room, a nut-brown loaf of bread
A cup of milk, a kettle as it sings,
The shelter of a roof above my head,
And in a leaf-laced square along the floor,
Where yellow sunlight glimmers through a door.
I have found such joy in things that fill
My quiet days: a curtain's blowing grace,
A potted plant upon my window sill,
A rose, fresh-cut and placed within a vase;
A table cleared, a lamp beside a chair,
And books I long have loved beside me there.
Oh, I have found such joys I wish I might
Tell every woman who goes seeking far
For some elusive, feverish delight,
That very close to home the great joys are:
The elemental things--old as the race,
Yet never, through the ages, commonplace.

I took him with me.

As you know if you know me, I've been on a John Wayne kick for the past month and a half. I've really been enjoying his movies, and I was a little worried about going through withdrawal while traveling.

So what did I do? I ditched two of the books I'd planned to bring on the trip, and brought these two instead.


The Young Duke,
by Howard Kazanjian

Yes, that IS a smoking-hot 20 year old John Wayne on the cover. And yes, that very loud sound you heard about three weeks ago was my jaw crashing through the floor of Powells when I saw this picture of him. Hubba HUBBA.

In spite of the "young" in the title, it's not just a biography of John Wayne's early years. It covers almost his entire career, although the emphasis is on the his life up to his 50s. I found it nicely informative, although the author was definitely a huge admirer of Wayne's and tended to gloss over some of his more scandalous actions (the affairs, the chain smoking and drinking, his two divorces, etc).

But as an easy introduction to the life of one of my new favorite stars, it was a good read. I read it during our days at sea, sitting on our balcony with my feet up. It kept me from going into withdrawal. And whenever my eyes started to cross from the lack of good looking men on the ship, I just pulled the book out and stared at the cover.


Hondo,
by Louis L'Amour

Of the ten or so John Wayne movies I've seen now, Hondo is one of my favorites. I really loved his character in it, the eponymous Hondo Lane, so I was eager to give the book upon which the movie was based a try.

It was my second Louis L'Amour book. The first, Down the Long Hills was assigned reading in 6th or 7th grade and I liked it so much that I bought my own copy. This one......ehh. The movie and the book are almost EXACTLY alike, down to word-for-word lines. But the book just didn't have the charm for me that the movie did, and L'Amour had a few authorly quirks that annoyed me. He repeatedly called Hondo by his full name, even multiple times within a paragraph, and it came off like he was in love with his own name-choosing cleverness.

The right way to write a paragraph:
"John Wayne was a smoking hot actor who was primarily known for his Westerns and war movies. Although Wayne died several decades ago, he's still an immensely popular actor and his movies are still very much enjoyed by audiences today. Wayne is buried in an unmarked grave in southern California."

The wrong way to write a paragraph:
"Hondo Lane looked over the edge of the cliff to see a group of Apache riding through the canyon. Hondo Lane crept quietly backwards to his horse. There was no one in the territory who could walk as quietly as Hondo could. Hondo Lane had learned the hard way how to survive."

Am I right or is that just plain annoying? Okay, that's not a verbatim passage from the book---I don't have it on me and had to paraphrase. But that's almost exactly like how L'Amour writes.

Anyway, the plot is thus: Hondo is a messenger for the US Cavalry, based in the southwestern territories during the Apache uprising. He's part Apache himself, and spent a period of his life living with them; thus, he knows their ways and is able to use that to help save the lives of a number of white settlers.

During his rides, he meets a young woman and her young son and quickly falls in love with her. Inadvertantly, he ends up killing her never-do-well husband and this, of course, throws their perspective relationship into turmoil. This is complicated by the Apache uprising, the Apache chief's fondness for the little boy, and the Cavalry's decision to evacuate all settlers from the area.

I'm home now and will probably stick to John Wayne movies instead of books, but these two were for the most part enjoyable!

Two bad habits.

I have the bad habit, as a reader, of sometimes dismissing a book by its cover. Literally. And of making sweeping generalizations.

For instance: I don't like fantasy, because all fantasy is cheesy and has sworcerers and all the women in fantasy novels are dressed up in outfits like Princess Leia's slave girl bikini and sometimes there are magic crystals and all the made-up lands have weird languages and unpronounceable names. This particular sweeping generalization kept me from giving many decent, relevant fantasy novels a try for the longest time. I didn't read Lord of the Rings until I was in college, for Pete's sake!

During the five years in high school and college that I worked in a bookstore, these beliefs were both supported and eventually broken down. I was always fascinated, when shelving in the fantasy section, by how similar so many of the books looked and sounded, and by how truly terrible the cover art was on so many of them. One such book I always noticed and puzzled over was Arrows of the Queen, by Mercedes Lackey.



Arrows was the first book in a trilogy set in a kingdom called Valdemar. I loved the idea of the heroine being a small, scared girl with curly brown hair and brown eyes. But my brows went up at the cover art (pastels, I noticed with horror), and they nearly reached my hairline when the back cover informed me there were sentient horses.

Now, I'm a horse-crazy girl. I was when I was six and I remain one today. But I've never gotten into talking, thinking horses as an entertainment source---no Mr. Ed, no Artax* or Fledge** or Shadowfax***. Even Black Beauty never resonated with me the way The Black**** did. So the idea of sentient horses had me pretty leery, and for the longest time, whenever I shelved a new copy of Arrows, I would give it a lingering glance and then put it away.

Once I realized my time in the bookstore was coming to an end, I went on a bit of a book-buying spree. I bought a tall stack of books using my precious, long-lamented employee discount, and one of those was Arrows of the Queen. I know, crazy, right? But I just couldn't dismiss it from my mind--something about it stuck with me, in spite of the pastels and talking horses. I sat down with it one night and pretty much did not move from the spot until I finished it.

Okay, it's a WONDERFUL series. I reread all three books (second is Arrow's Flight, third is Arrow's Fall) at least two to three times a year--there's something about the world Mercedes Lackey has created and the people she fills it with that really resonate with me. Additionally, she writes incredibly strong female characters and these are badly needed in fantasy literature (there are much more of them today than there were 25 years ago, when Arrows first came out). Talia, the heroine, becomes one of the most important people in the kingdom, which is ruled by a just, capable queen. No shrinking violets, they.

The plot is as thus: Talia is a 13 year old girl from one of Valdemar's remote, puritanical border sectors. Her people are strict, joyless, and think girls should be uneducated and restricted to marrying and birthing children. Talia dreams of a life beyond that, but can't see how it will ever happen. More than anything, she wants to be a Herald, a messenger of the Queen. Then, circumstances force her to run away from home, and while on the road, she's met by a Companion (the sentient horses). Companions are the mounts of Heralds--they are intelligent beings, and while they don't literally speak out loud, their bond with their riders is such that they can speak mentally to each other. Companions, in effect, choose their riders, and only people with a selfless sense of duty and desire to serve will be Chosen, because being a Herald is a thankless, dangerous job. In return, Heralds and their Companions share incredible bonds---to have a Companion is to have a lifelong, built-in best friend who loves and trusts you no matter what.

Talia is Chosen by Rolan, who bears her away to the capital city of Haven. There, Talia discovers that she is to become the Queen's Own Herald, the highest ranked Herald of all---one who will serve as the Queen's most trusted counselor. She spends the rest of the book in school and training, learning to grow into her responsibility and position, overcoming adversity, and learning for the first time what it's like to be a part of a community that loves and supports her. Truly, beyond the relative thinness of the plot in this first book, the characters are what keep me rereading it. I LOVE the community of Heralds, I miss them when I'm not reading it, and I wish I could be friends with them myself.

Another book that I'd rolled my eyes at numerous times and yet somehow ended up purchasing in that last, frenzied year of employment was Alanna: The First Adventure, by Tamora Pierce.



While Arrows was more geared towards adults, Alanna was solidly young-adult. I was kind of turned off by the book's mention of magic, by the implied inclusion of a talking cat (sigh), and by the staggering realization that there were (at the time) twelve books in the series. So I spent four years not giving it a chance and one month frantically reading the twelve books as quickly as I could. Humble Pie, table one.

The twelve books can actually be divided into three separate series. In chronological order, they follow the adventures of Alanna (The Song of the Lioness quartet, books 1-4), Daine (The Immortals quartet, books 5-8), and Keladry (The Protector of the Small quartet, books 9-12), three girls who live in the kingdom of Tortall. I actually read Alanna's first, then Keladry's, and Daine's last--and while it didn't confuse me to read them somewhat out of order, I'm sorry I did because it kind of spoiled a particular romance for me.

Alanna of Trebond is a young 11 year old girl being sent to learn magic, while her twin brother Thom is being sent to learn knighthood. The only thing is, Alanna would rather be a knight and Thom would rather be a mage. They switch places, and Alanna, disguised as a boy, travels to the capital. There, she spends three years as a page learning the art of warfare---everything from weapons, to history, to law, to equitation, to courtly graces. It's not until the end of her time as a page that it's discovered she's a girl, and chaos erupts. Girls can't be knights, naturally, it's unthinkable. She must prove that she has every right to be there, and that she's just as capable as a boy of protecting her kingdom. She must endure incredible hardship and prejudice to do so, but of course she's triumphant.

Daine's series is connected to Alanna's, but definitely separate. She's a young girl with the gift of communicating with animals, and her series follows her education in building and utilizing this gift, and how she uses it to serve the kingdom. The characters from Alanna's series show up periodically in it--Alanna is a full-blown knight by now, as well as married and with children--but the primary emphasis of the series is on Daine and her gift.

Kel's series is my favorite of the three. After Alanna's success in completing her training, and her near-mythological status as a fearsome warrior, the laws of the kingdom are changed so that girls can become knights as well. Keladry is the first girl to take advantage of it, but she finds out that in spite of Alanna's success, the feelings and prejudices of the kingdom are still against her, and she has to fight even harder than Alanna to prove herself. I found Kel to be the most personable of the three heroines (though all are enjoyable), but I think I liked her series the best of all because of the wonderful relationships she has with those around her---her family are supportive, the knight she serves as squire was one of my favorite characters from the Alanna series, and there's a heartwarming reversal of sentiment in one of the more virulently unfriendly characters (warning: have kleenex handy).

Anyway, this long-winded post is really just my way of saying: Don't judge a book by it's cover, or assume all fantasy novels are the same. Sometimes you just need to give them a chance.


*The Neverending Story, by Michael Ende
**The Magician's Nephew, by C. S. Lewis
***Lord of the Rings, by J. R. R. Tolkien
****The Black Stallion, by Walter Farley

You CAN take it with you.

I'm going on a cruise next month, and will also be spending a few days in Orlando before and after the cruise itself. All told, I'll be gone for twelve days. My main packing fear isn't that I'll run out of clean underwear, or that I'll be over/under-dressed for any given event. It's that I'll run out of reading material. You may laugh, but there are few things more miserable for me than being stuck on a flight and having to twiddle my thumbs, or lie sleepless in bed with nothing to read.

So! I am taking four books with me on the trip. I can hear my parents (well, one of them for sure) groaning from here. I can easily finish one book on the way to Orlando, and another book on the way back to Portland, so that leaves two books for 10 days of vacation. Even if I only read for a little while before bed, or for half an hour at a time on our stateroom balcony, I think those two books should safely see me through the trip. Worst comes to worst, I can always buy more books! (cue another groan from a parental direction)

Here's what I'm taking:



The Singing Sands, by Josephine Tey. I read her The Daughter of Time, one of my all-time favorite books, for the first time five years ago, yet for some inexplicable reason it has taken me this long to buy another of her books. I actually made the split-second decision to get it yesterday, when researching the lost city of Ubar. Apparently this book centers around my beloved Inspector Alan Grant as he stumbles across a poem referencing this mythical city. I'm pretty excited! I got a used copy in excellent condition from Powells for little more than a song, and it'll probably be the first of these four books that I'll read.



The Art of Detection, by Laurie R. King. I'm a rabid fan of King's Mary Russell mystery series, the first book of which (The Beekeeper's Apprentice) is another of my all-time favorite books. This title is the most recent of King's Kate Martinelli series and centers around a female homicide detective working in present-day San Francisco. I haven't been too interested in this series before, but The Art of Detection crosses over with the Mary Russell series and that's enough to get me interested! It's a fairly recent book and there aren't any used paperbacks available, so I got my copy from Borders with a nice 30% off coupon.

I spent about $10 total on the two books above, but the second two books I'm taking are from my "already own, haven't read yet" pile.



His Majesty's Dragon, by Naomi Novik. This one has been getting serious buzz for awhile, and is in the works to be made into a film directed by Peter Jackson (of Lord of the Rings fame). That alone would be enough for me to buy a copy, but I actually bought it well-before that particular tidbit of news broke. This is a novel about the Napoleonic Wars, but with dragons! I love books that take a well-established historical topic and give it a twist, so I think this one will be a big hit.



White as Snow, by Tanith Lee. This is a dark, fantasy-tinged fairy-tale adaptation that blends Snow White with the story of Demeter and Persephone (my favorite Greek myth). I bought it over Christmas break two years ago, right before I moved up to Portland. I was envisioning plenty of free time and a lack of reading material, so I went on a bit of a book-buying spree that Christmas. What I failed to realize was how wholly Powell's would earn my devotion and take over my bookshelves, with the end result that I still have not yet read this book. That shall be changed! I'm looking forward to it, even though I have a pretty good idea there's no happy ending.

I'll try to follow up after I get back with a review of these books, just in case any of you want to look one or two of them up!

More favorite fairy tales....

I think I've posted a time or ten before on this blog that I'm a fan of fairy tales. Picture books, modern-day adaptations, young adult versions, I love them all.

I've also posted a few times about my favorite fairy tales: Beauty and the Beast; East o' the Sun, West o' the Moon; Tam Lin. All three are extremely popular right now and there are many adaptations of each currently available.

I'd like to mention three fairy tale-like books that aren't quite as well known. All are beloved favorites with me, and my copies are beginning to show wear and tear from having been reread so many times.

The Ordinary Princess
by M. M. Kaye



I first read this as a child. It was out of print at the time and my copy was a battered library book that looked like it had been run over by a tank. Still, I was enthralled. The heroine was a princess, the seventh daughter born to a king (said to be very lucky--a nice change from the usual attitude towards daughters in fairy tales) and given the fantastic name of Amethyst Alexandra Augusta Araminta Adelaide Aurelia Anne. All the fairies in the kingdom come to give Princess Amy their blessings. The last, fed up with the other fairies' extravagant gifts, says "You shall be ordinary!" And so she is. Princess Amy grows up plain, untalented, snub-nosed and freckled. Eventually she runs away from home and tries to live the life of an ordinary girl.

I won't give the ending away, but as a child I found it very satisfying and enjoyable, and that hasn't changed in adulthood. The book's been reprinted since and my copy is a handsome hardcover version with the author's original illustrations. M. M. Kaye is more famous for her novels for adults: specifically The Far Pavillions and Shadows of the Moon (one of my personal favorites), but this charming, sweet, old-fashioned story for children shouldn't be overlooked. It has a wonderful message in that the hero falls in love with the princess not because she's a princess, and not because she's beautiful (because she isn't, and there's no miraculous bestowing of beauty later on), but because she's a good, decent person. This is definitely something that will be read to my children someday.

Seven Daughters and Seven Sons
by Barbara Cohen and Bahija Lovejoy



I came across a small paperback of this title while working at the bookstore in high school. It's one of the rare Middle Eastern stories on the market right now and is based on an Iraqi folktale from the 11th century. The heroine is Buran, the middle of seven daughters. Her father is mocked for having no sons and no money to dower his daughters. His brother, on the other hand, has seven sons and a thriving business. When the brother refuses to help out, or to marry his sons off to their cousins, Buran makes a momentous decision. She will disguise herself as a boy and leave to seek her family's fortune.

Buran is a very appealing heroine. She is smart and courageous and doesn't let her status as an "inferior" girl keep her from helping her family. In the course of the story, she builds up a trading empire, amasses a fortune for her family, and even wins the heart of the prince of the land. She also manages to enact a satisfying and bloodless revenge on her heartless uncle and arrogant cousins. There's enough of a Middle-Eastern flavor to this story for it to feel like something out of The Thousand and One Nights, but it's still accessible and enjoyable for Western readers.

The Blue Castle
by L. M. Montgomery



This title is a newer favorite. Back when I was in college but still living at home, I used to make a weekly circuit of all the thrift stores (Goodwill, Salvation Army, St. Vincent de Paul) for used books, often-times picking up paperbacks for ten cents each. One such book was The Blue Castle. I adore L. M. Montgomery's famous Anne books and decided to give The Blue Castle, one of her few titles for adults, a try. Naturally, the paperback sat on my bookshelf (or more probably, in a stack of "to be read" books on the floor) for years. It wasn't until I was packing for one of our many moves that I thought about the book again. I was sitting on the floor and putting books into boxes when I came across it. I was trying to decide to keep it or get rid of it, so I decided to give the first few pages a try.

Several hours later, long after I'd lost feeling in my legs, I finished the book. And packed it most decisively in the keeper box. It's the story of Valancy Stirling, a 29-year-old spinster living with her oppressive family in Edwardian-era Canada. Valancy is deeply unhappy with her life and spends her time daydreaming of a blue castle and the handsome man who will love her. When she hears from her doctor that she has less than a year to live, Valancy makes the momentous decision to leave home and try to find what happiness she can. She ends up living in a cabin in the woods with the reclusive Barney Snaith (yes, an awful name), and elements of Bluebeard's Chamber are woven into the story before it reaches a satisfying, fairy-tale-ish conclusion.

There are certainly many more fairy tales for children, young adults, and adults out there, and just because the genre is typically associated with children doesn't mean it should be overlooked by adults. All three of the books above are as entertaining and ultimately comforting to me now as they were when first I read them.

Housekeeping.

Just a few notices of sorts:

Over the weekend, I'm going to try and repost some book-related posts from my personal blog so that they'll be here as well. I haven't tried this before so it may take me a little bit of fiddling to accomplish. If I can get it done how I'd like, then you'll be able to find all my book-related posts in one place!

You may jump for joy now. Go on, I'll wait.

Secondly, April Poetry Month is in the distance, slowly approaching. I have some poems in mind already for my poem-a-day posts, and I'm having a good time collecting some more! In another two and a half months, you can get your daily poetry fix here!

Thirdly, comments are still not working, so if I have time left this weekend I'm going to contact Blogger tech support and see if they can fix that.

Fourthly, I have LOTS of ideas for more book posts, and it really is a goal for me to post more regularly here. Stay tuned! Good things ahead!

The Small Woman

Shortly before Christmas, I finished reading The Small Woman, by Alan Burgess. This is a novel based on the true life experiences of Gladys Aylward, an Englishwoman who traveled to China as a missionary in the 1930s. She fell in love with the country and the people, got swept up in the war between China and Japan, and spent the rest of her life serving the Chinese people.



The book was immensely popular, and a year after it was released it was turned into a film called The Inn of the Sixth Happiness, starring Ingrid Bergman and Curt Jurgens.



I actually saw the movie before I read the book. It's one of my mother's favorite movies, and she tried for years to get me to sit down and watch it with her. I'd seen a few scenes here and there throughout the years and had decided it wasn't an interesting movie, so I resisted her efforts rather strenuously. Finally, she played her trump card: if I liked the movie, she'd buy it for me (this also worked with The Naked Jungle).

I ADORED the movie. It was one of the most sweepingly romantic films I'd ever seen, and in spite of the questionable casting (Western actors playing Eastern characters, via dark hair dye and eyeliner) it made it onto my list of favorites, too. So I was rather eager to give the book a try, and picked up a cheap paperback copy at Powells for a few dollars.

Well. Hmmm. It was a good book, let me say that first, but I found it ultimately disappointing. The book and the movie are considerably different, and what I loved best about the movie (the romance) was lacking in the book. As well, the ultimate ending is left vague and open to interpretation in the movie, but is depressingly specific in the book. In the end, even though I could admire the book for its excellent rendition of wartime life in China, and one woman's sacrifices to fulfill her calling, it's not a book I'll probably reread. I just liked the movie, inaccurate though it was, so much better.

The Small Woman is worth reading at least once, if only for the historical value and a discussion about race and values, but my recommendation would be to pop some popcorn and watch the movie instead.