Gift from the Sea

Finished Gift from the Sea by Anne Morrow Lindbergh. I purchased it at the Kerrytown Book Fair one year. I found it to be rather dated in its discussion of the inner life of womankind. This is not surprising since it was written in 1955. The shell motifs used to define each chapter are clever, but I'm afraid a found the book a bit dull.

Years of Grace

Finished Years of Grace by Margaret Ayer Barnes, which won the Pulitzer in 1931. It follows the story of Jane Ward, a fourteen year old girl, living in in Chicago in the late 1800s. We follow Jane as she grows up, experiences the three loves of her life, and sees the world around her change drastically. It was interesting to see certain products like saccharine and Karo appear in homes. The reader also sees the landscape of Chicago change as well. It's a grounded story. The characters are very real as are their situations. A great family saga novel. I really enjoyed it.

There were times when the book reminded me of The Forsyte Saga. Imagine my delight when Jane is at the reading of her father-in-law's will and remembers the passage "Soames Forsyte would cut up a very warm man."

Another List

According to The Big Read the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they’ve printed. Hmmm...probably true, but let's give it a try.

Below is a list of the top 100, with instructions for how to post the meme on your blog.

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you LOVE.
4) Put a line through the books you HATE.
5) Post your list in your blog.

1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6. The Bible
7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12. Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19. The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20. Middlemarch - George Eliot
21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25. The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34. Emma - Jane Austen
35. Persuasion - Jane Austen
36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis
37. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40. Winnie the Pooh - A A Milne
41. Animal Farm - George Orwell
42. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46. Anne of Green Gables - L M Montgomery
47. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48. The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49. Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50. Atonement - Ian McEwan
51. Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52. Dune - Frank Herbert
53. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66. On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68. Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69. Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72. Dracula - Bram Stoker
73. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75. Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78. Germinal - Emile Zola
79. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80. Possession - AS Byatt
81. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83. The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - E B White
88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94. Watership Down - Richard Adams
95. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98. Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

45 read and 7 on my TBR list. I'm pleased to see so much children's literature on the list (14).

A Far Cry from Kensington

Finished A Far Cry from Kensington by Muriel Spark. It was not originally on my summer reading list, however, the Anglophiles Anonymous group I belong to on Shelfari decided to read it together, so I picked it up at the library. A somewhat irreverent book, it features one of the quirkiest cast of characters I've ever encountered. Mrs. Hawkins, the narrator leads us through the tale of these characters, some residents of the rooming house where she lives, others colleagues from her "job in publishing." Mrs. Hawkins is extremely capable, extremely reliable, extremely patient, until one day she loses her patience and calls a hack writer to his face what she has called him in her head for a very long time. This phrase, while pretty accurate, causes her to lose several jobs and starts a chain of bizarre events, that while comic, are rather tragic as well. This was a weird book. Spark employs the phrase a few times too many for my tolerance, but otherwise it was a quick and amusing read. The only other book by Spark that I've read is The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, which was excellent of course.

The Pickwick Papers

Finally finished The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens. It was his first novel and consists of many loosely related adventures of the members of the club. It is easy to see the embryos of later, larger works taking shape in this book, in particular Bleak House and Little Dorrit. Pickwick himself is a lovable, benevolent character who often seems to get himself into scrapes. His manservant Samuel Weller is the real gem of the book. So funny and so logical, he is the antithesis of Jeeves, and yet he seems to get things straightened out very well. He's a character I wish I had as a personal friend.

The Borrowers

Finished The Borrowers by Mary Norton last night. Considered a classic of children's literature I found it a little dull. That may be because I would read about two pages each night before I fell asleep, so the story didn't really get going for me until the end. I do like things in miniature, so when The Boy brings the Borrowers items from the abandoned doll's house thinks perked up a bit. I enjoyed Norton's Bedknob and Broomstick a bit more.

Dream When You're Feeling Blue

When stuck at Logan Airport for four hours last week I wandered into the Borders there and bought Elizabeth Berg's Dream When You're Feeling Blue. This is the second time I've purchased a Berg novel in the airport. Last year it was A Year of Pleasures. I'd had my eye on this latest book ever since it came out last May. Set in Chicago during World War II, it's the story of the Heaney sisters, their family and the men they love who've gone to war. At times it made me think of Little Women and the sacrifices the sisters make during the Civil War. At other times it reminded me of Woody Allen's Hannah and Her Sisters since there is a lot of relationship juggling going on.

The book was a quick and heartfelt read. Berg obviously did a lot of research, not just historically, but through letters, memiors and personal accounts, in order to deliver the very human story of this novel.

Shen of the Sea

Well I finally finished Shen of the Sea by Arthur Bowie Chrisman. It won the Newbery Medal in 1926. It is a collection of Chinese folktales with block print illustrations. Like many of the early Newbery medalists this book was slow for me. The stories themselves were amusing, but I have a hard time getting through collections of stories since they lack a common narrative thread.

Cock a Doodle Doo

Cock a Doodle Doo by Berta and Elmer Hader won the Caldecott Honor Medal in 1940. It is the story of a chick who for some unknown reason hatches in a nest of ducklings. The mother duck accepts the chick as her own, but the chick has a hard time trying to live the life of a duck. Eventually the chick runs away towards the sound of a rooster crowing. It is a dangerous journey, but he finally makes it to the farm yard and grows up with other chickens. While slightly reminiscent of Hans Christian Andersen's The Ugly Duckling, this story is never about appearances, it's more about ability and a sense of belonging.

Berta and Elmer Hader were a husband and wife team who wrote and illustrated many books. Their book The Big Snow won the Caldecott Medal in 1949. Elmer Hader illustrated the cover of Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath in 1939.

Anne of the Island

Finished Anne of the Island by Lucy Maude Montgomery, the third and so far the best of the Anne of Green Gables books. Anne is at Redmond College pursuing a B.A. She and her chums rent a cottage in town and share many triumphs and setbacks. For those interested in Anne and Gilbert this is a suspenseful book. That's all I'm going to say...

A Little Maid of Nantucket

I really enjoyed A Little Maid of Nantucket by Alice Turner Curtis. This is one of a series of twenty five books she wrote about girl characters living in colonial settings. The main character Prissie is brave and daring and helps to signal Nantucket boats that are heading towards British war ships. Curtis' research of the setting is thorough. I found the book to be an exciting read and would recommend the series as great books for girls to read.

I purchased my copy, published in 1926, last month at the Ann Arbor Antiquarian Book Fair. I was very excited to find it there since I had been unable to get the book through interlibrary loan. Soon after I purchased it the library notified me that it had become available. Out of curiosity I went down and picked it up. It was a library binding edition reprinted in the 1950s with dreadful illustrations. So glad I found the original.

The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate

The Pursuit of Love and it's sequel Love in a Cold Climate by Nancy Mitford (published together in this one volume) were the most fun I've had in terms of reading since Christmas. These coming of age between the wars novels are laced with eccentric characters behaving with delightful absurdity. The narrator Fanny, the only grounded character we ever meet, is someone I would have liked to known. Uncle Matthew, with his gross intolerance of everything, this obsession with playing opera on his gramophone and his cracking of bull whips on the lawn at dawn, is probably the most lovable lunatic since P. G. Wodehouse's Roderick Spode. I don't want to say too much more because I don't wish to give anything away. I can recommend these novels very highly to anyone who enjoyed reading Dodie Smith's I Capture the Castle, is an anglophile and/or likes to laugh out loud.

The Marvelous Land of Oz

Finished The Marvelous Land of Oz, the second of L. Frank Baum's 14 Oz books. It was delightful. I read The Wonderful Wizard of Oz aloud to my daughter about eight years ago and at the time was surprised by the violence of the book. I suspect she was just too young for it. There did not appear to be any unnecessary violence in this book. It's very fanciful and humorous, with unique characters who are brought to life by a magic powder. Jack Pumpkinhead and the sawhorse are especially amusing. The illustrations for this and all of the following Oz books were drawn by John R. Neill, who years later actually wrote a few Oz books himself. These black and white drawings are so charming and plentiful, they really added to my enjoyment of the book.

There are many feminist undertones to the story. Tip, the main character of the book, is really a princess transformed into a boy (unbeknownst to him/her), Jinjur's army of girls which dethrones the Scarecrow seems a bit of a joke with their vain priorities and their knitting needles for weapons. However, Glinda's army of women with sabers is very professional and efficient.

Glinda, Tip, the Scarecrow, the Tin Man (aka Jack Chopper), Jack Pumpkinhead, the Highly Magnified and Thoroughly Educated Wogglebug and the Sawhorse are all trying to locate Ozma, the lost Princess of Oz. They suspect that Mombi the witch knows where the princess is and try to question her about this. Mombi works various transformations of herself and others to fool Glinda. Glinda is too clever to be fooled for long and at one point remarks that no self respecting sorceress would work a transformation because it is dishonest. This line really stood out to me.

When I was little I used to be dropped off for story hour on Saturday morning at the Children's Room of the Nantucket Atheneum. They had all the Oz books in hardcover on a shelf. I used to look at them lined up, with a character's face on each spine, and long to read them all someday. I guess I will.

The Ageless Story

Finished The Ageless Story by Lauren Ford. It won the Caldecott Honor Medal in 1940. This is a strange book. It begins with a letter from Ford to her goddaughter, telling her about Gregorian chants and how they were almost lost during the Renaissance. Next follows the legend of Saint Anne followed by the story of the life of the Christ Child in the words of the Holy Gospel according to Saint Luke. The text is quite small and tight. After all this text there are facing pages with illuminated Gregorian chants (score included) and very detailed illustrations for The Ageless Story with captions underneath. The illustrations are the oddest part. They depict the story of the birth of Christ and his boyhood, but seem to be set in 19th Century New England.

When the angel appears to Saint Anne in the garden there is a large green watering can with a red "A" on it (um, hmmmm.....bizarre Hester Prin reference???) When the Virgin Mary is born there are patchwork quilts all over the bedroom. Houses in the background of the illustrations are white clapboard with green shutters. When the angel appears to the Virgin Mary, Mary is dressed in an Amish style outfit with a halo above her little white cap. Joseph appears in several pictures in what looks like a mohair coat and carrying a red and green carpet bag. As Jesus grows to be a young boy the family is shown sitting in a New England parlor with a grandfather clock, a kerosene lamp and ornate wallpaper on the wall. I'm sure that these illustrations are engaging for children in their gentleness and intense detail, but the whole thing seems a bit surreal to me.

The Forest Pool

Finished The Forest Pool, written and illustrated by Laura Adams Armer. It won the Caldecott Honor Medal in 1939. Set in Mexico, it is the story of Diego and his friend Popo who try to catch an iguana to have in the little zoo they have planned in the garden. The illustrations are soft and vague and vividly colorful. After a failed attempt to lure the iguana home with an orange from the garden, Diego's father brings the iguana home for Diego to hold. In the end the iguana runs away into the woods. Diego's mother tells him, "The iguana must live in the dark woods my child. It is not good to keep him in a zoo....You must learn, too, that everything must be free to live in its own home in its own way." Well said.

Another interlibrary loan, this book came from the Education Library at Wayne State University in Detroit. The edition I read was printed in 1938 and has the same cover you see here. Laura Adams Armer also won the Newbery Medal in 1932 for her book Waterless Mountain.