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.