Library Loot

Today I'm linking up with this fantastic blog to bring you the books that I got at my last trip to the library.  I think this is a great way to promote libraries and I've gotten some great book ideas from it.
So here are the books that I checked out last time I was at the library.






1.The Egg and I is the first autobiography by the fantastic Mrs. Piggle Wiggle author.  I laughed and laughed at this account of chicken farming in the Northwest Pacific.

2.  A Room with a View is one of those classics that so many people miss out on reading in school.  It's the story of a young girl who leaves proper England for Italy.

3. I picked up Life is Meals on a whim.  It's a cooking calendar, with a one page treatise on such topics as ice cream, Alice Waters, and a poem to Brie (the cheese, that is).

4.  A Red Herring Without Mustard is the third Flavia de Luce book.  I just started it.  It's very good!

5.  I'm continuing my Neil Gaiman reading and thought I would check out this very famous title.  I just recently watched the movie and liked it.

6.  This Rough Magic is written by one of my favorite authors, Mary Stewart.  It is the story of Lucy Waring, a minor actress who goes to Corfu to visit her sister and has a very exciting adventure.

7.  South of Superior is a debut novel about a woman who returns to a little eccentric town on the upper peninsula of Michigan.  She goes to take care of an old family friend, but along the way meets many interesting people and is changed forever.

8.  A Company of Swans is by the very talented Eva Ibbotson.  This is the story of a young girl who lives with her oppressive father and aunt.  The only thing she likes is ballet.  Defying her father and aunt, she goes with a ballet troupe to South America and falls in love with a British exile.  Unfortunately, her father and fiance are following her.

9.  Brighten the Corner Where You Are is a day in the life of a North Carolina school teacher.   It has gotten a lot of critical acclaim, so I'm eager to read it!


And that concludes this week's library loot!  I'm looking forward to repeating this every week.

In Defense of Happy Endings

"As this world becomes increasingly ugly, callous and materialistic it needs to be reminded that the old fairy stories are rooted in truth, that imagination is of value, that happy endings do, in fact, occur, and that the blue spring mist that makes an ugly street look beautiful is just as real a thing as the street itself."- Elizabeth Goudge

Dust baths in the sunshine.

In this post, I mentioned that I loved Agnes Grey so much because there wasn't extreme hysteria and unnecessary unhappiness.  You see, I am a happy-endings reader.  Call me shallow and unwilling to face the brutality of life, my one requirement of a book is that it have some sort of redemption and loose-ends tied up by the end.  So here's why I read books with happy endings and my requirements for a book:

Tom Kitten (named for the Beatrix Potter character)

1.  I read fiction for escape.  If I want to read about something terrible that ended terribly or had no resolution, I will pick up a newspaper.  For me, fiction is a happy place where one can travel to all sorts of places and never leave home, where improbable things sometimes happen, and the antagonists get their just deserts.

2.  The fiction I read doesn't have to be all happiness all the time.  In fact, that would be monotonous very quickly.  Dickens is a perfect example of my favorite kind of reading.  There are some pretty bad situations, but our hero/heroine always ends up with some kind of happy resolution.  So, you say, why doesn't Wuthering Heights make the cut?

3.  I don't like unhappiness simply for the sake of unhappiness.  Wuthering Heights does, in fact, have some small resolution at the end of it, but the rest of the book is about being miserable (loosely speaking).  That's my beef with Tolstoy. Anna Karenina is just 1000 (or whatever it is) pages of desperate unhappiness with a desperately unhappy ending.  If unhappiness contributes in some way to another plot, then I am happy to read about.  But a plot about unhappiness?  Sigh.

I can't get over the lovely crocuses in the front garden.

I have had thoughts going around my head all week about this topic, but couldn't quite figure out how to get them onto paper.  I hope everything I wrote here was clear.  I'd love to hear what any of my readers think about this and what kind of reading they like!  I'll close with another quote about happy endings.

Hordes of Canadian geese flocked to our pond.  I caught a glimpse
of them on camera Sunday afternoon.

“October knew, of course, that the action of turning a page, of ending a chapter or of shutting a book, did not end a tale. Having admitted that, he would also avow that happy endings were never difficult to find: "It is simply a matter," he explained to April, "of finding a sunny place in a garden, where the light is golden and the grass is soft; somewhere to rest, to stop reading, and to be content.”- Neil Gaiman

National Poetry Month

So I'm not really into the themed month thing (Oh look!  National Broccoli Month!  Notepaper Month!  Light Socket Month!)  So, I exaggerate, and, in its defense, the themed month phenomenon has given awareness to many good causes.  However, I saw that April is National Poetry Month on a blog and though, "Hey!  I need to read some poetry!"  I read voraciously, but for some reason, poetry just never makes it onto my list.  Poetry requires reading in completely different way from books.  It requires full attention and the willingness to not always "get" what the point is the first time.  However, poetry is beautiful and I can't remember the last time I picked up a book of poems.  So, here's the list of books that I'm going to read.  I own all of the books, so this goes into my goal of reading more books that I own.  At the end of the month I'll write about how my poetry reading experiment went.    

1.  Collection of Poems by Maya Angelou

This isn't the edition I have, but this is the only picture I could find online.

2.  Poems by Longfellow

Just a boring modern edition.  I have a gorgeous old edition
that smells delightfully musty.

3.  Selected Poems by William Butler Yeats

4.  Collected Poems by Emily Dickinson

5. Poetry by Robert Frost

6. The Apple that Astonished Paris by Billy Collins

And that concludes my poetry list for April.  I've decided to do my poetry reading first thing in the morning over breakfast, starting with Longfellow.  I'm looking forward to my month with the poets!

The Life of Pi

This is a review of an old favorite, rather than a book I have just read.  This book definitely goes on my top ten list of books.  Life of Pi came out several years ago, and many people have kind of forgotten about how good it was.  I however, still think about it quite fondly and was just thinking the other day that I need to get it out and read it again.

Life of Pi is the story of an Indian boy, Piscine Patel.  The story is told by a much older Pi, now living in North America, to a young man who wants to write a book.   Pi's family, originally from India, moves to North America aboard a Japanese cargo ship.  Pi is the son of a zookeeper and so, along with his family, come all of the zoo animals.  One fateful night, the ship that the Patels are on sinks in a storm, killing everybody except for Pi, a hyena, an orangutan, a wounded zebra and, most frightening of all, a 450 pound Bengal tiger.  Now all four very different species have to figure out how to survive on a small life boat in the middle of the ocean.

Quickly, the tiger kills the wounded zebra, then the orangutan, and then the hyena.  This leaves Pi and the tiger to decide who is going to survive.  Both manage to survive together until they reach Mexico, where Richard Parker, the tiger, disappears into the jungle and nobody ever finds him again.  Pi, wounded and very thin, is recuperating in a hospital when Japanese officials come to his bedside to hear the truth about what happened.  Pi recounts his story to the officials, but nobody believes him.  Finally, he comes up with a much more ordinary story and tells it, pleasing the officials.  "Now, which story do you prefer?"he asks in closing to the young man writing the story.

A Happy Thought

Amen to that!  I'll be back with a book review tomorrow.

Reading Cookbooks

It's odd, I know.  But it's a whole other kind of reading.  Not the kind of reading with a beginning, middle, and end, with a plot and an overall message, but I still love it.

The 1964 edition.  This book is almost too tome-ish
to read for fun.  But, seriously, it has pretty much any recipe
that you can think of.

It's the kind of reading you do when you're feeling tired or in need of some inspiration.  Reading cookbooks is perfect for those days when you're all out of books, or don't feel up to sitting down and giving your full attention to a story.

A very amusing read.

I particularly like vintage cookbooks.  They all seem to tell a story about what people were doing in a certain era.  It's fascinating how much you can learn about people through their food.  I wonder what people will say in 50 years when they look at cookbooks from our era.

Cookbooks are fun to read on several levels.  First, they can be read in light of a history book, if you're reading a vintage cookbook.  Seriously?  Tuna jelled in a mold with lime jello and cabbage?!  (I am not making that up.)  They can also be read as a sort of current events book, if you're reading a modern cookbook.  For instance, think about reading a paleo cookbook or a celebrity cookbook.  Then of course, there's the inspiration that comes from reading cookbooks.  I love going through the vintage cake sections and reading about new kinds of cooking.

Just a little contrast between the above vintage
cookbooks and a modern cookbook.
The recipes in this cookbook are delicious, by the way.

And finally, I love the thought of people from all different time periods writing cookbooks so that the concept of how we eat food could be changed just a little for the better.

A picture of cookbook from which my pretzel recipe came.

Rye Soft Pretzels and Fresh Stack of Books

Yesterday I got a lovely, huge stack of books.  I was starting to feel slightly panicked at the thought of my dwindling book supply, but managed to get to the library that Monday afternoon.  I got a fantastic stack and, if they are worth it, I'll review some of them in the upcoming weeks.

On the way home, I suddenly got a hankering for doing a little baking.  So, I pulled out some cookbooks and eventually settled on Good the Grain's (a fabulous cookbook, by the way) rye soft pretzels.  They looked so delicious and I could just imagine curling up in the evening with a hot soft pretzel and a little pile of books around me.

The kitchen table, dirty from rolling out pretzels,
that somehow managed to look pretty in the afternoon sunlight.

I think that these were some of the best soft pretzels that I have ever sunk my teeth into.  They were just a little tangy on the outside, from the baking soda bath, perfectly crusty on the outside, and doughy on the inside, with flecks of sea salt on top.

The pretzels.  Just ready to eat.

And so, that evening, I took a still-warm pretzel, gathered up a small handful of books, and retired to the sofa.

On Reading Classics and The Well-Educated Mind

Here's another thinking-about-books post.  I have always had a soft spot in my heart for classics and wish that they would be read more for interest and less "just because it's a classic".  There are some pretty obvious exceptions (600 pages of the Greek, The Histories by Herodotus, anyone?), but there are many classics that are quite enjoyable just for themselves.

If you don't know where to start in reading classics, I highly recommend Susan Wise Bauer's book, The Well-Educated Mind.  She breaks down classics into several categories: Novels, Poetry, Plays, etc., covering one section in each chapter.  Then, in each category, she lists the most well-known classics and gives a summary, ISBN number, and her favorite edition.  She also includes a set of discussion questions for each category.  The discussion questions are in three sets: Grammar Stage (simply reading through and making notes on what the book is about), then Logic Stage (answering questions about things like structure and style), and finally Rhetoric Stage (what do I think about this book?).

My next read

I have really enjoyed reading the books that she recommends.  I am going through by historical periods, starting by reading all of the ancient writings and now working through the medieval/renaissance books.  I have read everything from Oedipus Rex to The Koran to Dante's The Divine Comedy.  I have learned so much about reading and about history through these wonderful classics.  Not everything is wonderful, but I've been surprised by some very good writing, like the time I read The Birds and laughed my head off.  I have also learned that, with very old writings, translation can make or break a book.  By using Wise Bauer's recommended editions, I've been able to better comprehend and enjoy the writings.

My most recent read

I think that The Well-Educated Mind deserves a place in every home library.  It's a fascinating read if you just want to sit down and read through the whole thing like a novel.  Or, if you have a goal of reading some great books, this book is the first step to reaching that goal.

Lovely Vintage Books

It doesn't matter how good the book turns out to be, just finding those lovely, musty smelling books makes it worth it.  There are cozy little places that sell old books pretty much everywhere.  They're usually in obscure places, but once you find a good old book store, it's almost sure to be a treasure trove.  In this post, I'll list some of the great things about vintage books.  Posted alongside are pictures of pretty vintage books that I have accumulated along the way.

The books are almost always aesthetically pleasing.  Sometimes they have pretty dust jackets or ornate gold lettering, sometimes bright colors or an interesting font.  Of course, the cover of the book is no indicator of how well-written the book is, but a pretty cover makes a book a little more enjoyable to me.

The books are often well-loved.  I have found little notes on the inside, names written in shaky 3rd grade cursive and swirling old man's handwriting.  The pages are often a little dog-eared and the edges of the book are worn.  To me, this is the best review of a book I could ever have.

The stories are usually interesting and give a window into another time.  There is nothing like a book to get you to see a little slice of time through the eyes of someone living through it.  It is also my humble opinion that the stories are more varied and amusing than a lot of modern writing, although that is not to say that there wasn't poor writing long ago.

This week, I hope you are inspired to hunt for an old book, whether it be an old favorite or a new discovery.

Kilmeny of the Orchard

Yesterday, I picked up Kilmeny of the Orchard by L. M. Montgomery, longing for a pleasant read after a rather ghastly book (review to come).  I highly enjoyed it.

Kilmeny of the Orchard is different from any of L.M. Montgomery's other writings in that it is written from a man's point of view.  It is the story of a young man who, just graduated from college, goes to teach at a small country school as a favor to a friend.  This man, Eric, meets a beautiful and mysterious girl name Kilmeny who is mute because of some sad story in her past.  Eric is bewitched by this girl and is determined to help her speak.

This is a very short story, at only 130 pages, and I read it in an afternoon in between various errands.  Despite its shortness, L.M. Montgomery manages to write a spell-binding story that leaves you gripping the book until the end.  It is quite predictable and extremely romantic.  Kilmeny is the exact opposite of the imperfect Anne of Green Gables, but I still enjoyed the book.  And, of course, there is the unfailing happy ending that is included in all Montgomery's books. 

I highly recommend this for a dreary, rainy day.  It's the perfect cozy read for March.

Books About Reading

Just in case you are hankering for some reading about reading, I've compiled a list of books that I have really enjoyed.  Included are more pictures of farm animals.

Kitties in a patch of sunlight.

                           

Books I Have Read

Woe Is I by Patricia T. O'Conner- Okay, this is more a book about writing, but I howled, I tell you, howled, all the way through this book.  If you need a little brush up on grammar, or just are in need of some laughter and entertainment, I highly recommend this book.

Book Lust by Nancy Pearl-  A great book full of book lists.  I like to use this when I'm in a "I can't find anything to read mood.  It's arranged by category: sci fi, fantasy, etc.

Eats, Shoots and Leaves by Lynne Truss- Yet another grammar book; this one is hilarious, too.

How To Read A Book by Mortimer J. Adler and Charles Van Doren- This book is all about the art of reading, from speed reading to inspectional reading.  It's definitely a tome, but a well written tome and I enjoyed it.

The Novel 100 by Daniel S. Burt- An in-depth review of the greatest 100 novels.

Honey for a Child's Heart by Gladys Hunt and Barbara Hampton- There is definitely a Christian undertone, but the books recommended are not really Christian.  I love the book recommendations.  Each chapter is a category like Adventure and Suspense or Mystery.

So Many Books, So Little Time: A Year of Passionate Reading by Sara Nelson-I loved this book.  I checked it out of the library and devoured it.  It is much more autobiographical than any of the books listed above.

A guinea hen

                                                             

On My To-Read List

How to Read Literature Like a Professor: A Lively and Entertaining Guide to Reading Between the Lines by Thomas C. Foster-  Whew!  Yes, that really is the title.

Leave Me Alone, I'm Reading by Maureen Corrigan

Howards End is on the Landing: A Year of Reading from Home by Susan Hill

Anguished English: An Anthology of Assaults Upon Our Language by Richard Lederer and Bill Thompson- Apparently, this is another extremely funny grammar book.

Barn kitty

On Reading

So why do I read?  It's not like every single book that I pick up interests or moves me.  I've even read some pretty awful fiction.  So what keeps me reading?

There are several reasons.

1. I love hearing other people's stories, both in real life and in books.  Even the minutia interests me.  The little tidbits about people that I pick up along the way are part of what makes reading worth it.

Pictures in this post are of some of our farm animals.

                                 

2.  I almost always learn something new when I read a book, whether it's a new name, something about another country, or how to cook a dish that is new to me.

                                       

3.  Reading helps me become a better writer.  There's all kinds of data on this, none of which I can cite at the moment.  I do know, however, that the more books I read, the more I can feel my writing "voice" develop.  With every new book I read, it gets a little easier to write.

                               

4.  I read out of habit.  I have been reading and being read to since I was a little girl, so it just feels natural whenever I have a free moment to pick up a book and start reading.  

                                    

A Handy Website and a Pretty Pillow

I have discovered a magnificent website!  I found it via Pinterest and I have been steadily using it every time I go to the library.  There are several like it, but my favorite is called What Should I Read Next?  All you have to do is type in a book that you loved and it generates lots of titles that are similar.

So check this website out next time you're trying to decide what to read!

In other news, I just finished a beautiful pillow.  It's made from some old fabric from a box of vintage scraps and the front is a piece that I picked up at a sale.  The front was a little too boring and 80s for me, so I just added the pretty patchwork and the buttons to brighten it up.  I have discovered how much I enjoy piecing little scrappy stuff.

I think it looks lovely in the chair at my sunny desk.