The Bungalow Mystery

Finished The Bungalow Mystery by Caroline Keene. This edition is the vintage re-issue by Applewood Books. The third book in the series, it was released in 1930. Unlike The Secret of the Old Clock and The Hidden Staircase, this book is free of racial stereotypes that make the reader cringe. In each of these first books Nancy sets out to help women in trouble, but in this one she also rescues a man who has been a prisoner for two weeks and has been left to starve. She gets a lot of help from her father, Carson Drew, in this story, but is still considered a hero. This was a quick and exciting read.

Food Rules: An Eater's Manual

Finished Food Rules: An Eater's Manual by Michael Pollan. Finished it in one sitting. I love this book. It's a quick and easy read. Each rule has it's own page. The rules are sensible, practical and very thoughtful about what should be considered food. I highly recommend it to anyone who concerned about their health and the food they choose to eat.

Invincible Louisa: The Story of the Author of Little Women

Finished Invincible Louisa: The Story of the Author of Little Women by Cornelia Meigs. It won the Newbery Medal in 1934. For those familiar with Louisa May Alcott, this book is an interesting look at her life and her family members who were models for the characters of Little Women. While the characters of Jo March, her parents and siblings are very clearly drawn from Alcott's family, the inspiration for two of the most intriguing characters, Theodore Lawrence and Professor Bauer, are only vaguely hinted at. This was an interesting read. Although geared for a younger audience, Meigs never talks down to her readers. I think she sometimes makes assumptions about Alcott's feelings in certain situations, but it's clear that she used letters and journals to comprise her biography.

Ozma of Oz

Finished Ozma of Oz, the third book in L. Frank Baum's Oz series. Dorothy Gale, who is traveling by boat to Australia with her Uncle Henry, is washed overboard in a storm and finds herself in the Land of Ev. There she meets and frees Tik-Tok, a mechanical man made of copper. They encounter Princess Langwidere, who has 30 heads to choose from in a cabinet. She puts on whatever head she feels like wearing. She decides she likes Dorothy's head, but Dorothy, of course will not give it to her.

It's no surprise that this is a very weird book.

Ozma of Oz learns that the Queen of Ev and her children have been sold to the Nome King by the late King of Ev. She travels over the poisonous desert, with the Scarecrow, Tin Man, Cowardly Lion, the Sawhorse, the Hungry Tiger and a small army, upon a magic carpet that rolls out in front and up in back. They are all surprised to see Dorothy in Ev and band together to rescue the royal family from the Nome King.

John R. Neill's illustrations are wonderful. Most in this book are in color. His rendition of the Nome King seems almost Seussian to me.

The Loving Spirit

Finished The Loving Spirit by Daphne Du Maurier. Published in 1931, it was Du Maurier's first novel. Set in Cornwall, it is a family saga ranging over four generations of the Coombs, ship builders in the village of Plyn. Janet Coombe has a tender love for her husband Thomas, but somehow knows that the great love of her life has not come to her yet. When it does it is not romantic love, but an extremely intense love of mother for son. While Janet has six children, it is her son Joseph who she forms this bond with. He embodies all of the wildness she felt as a girl and lives as she has always wanted to, but was unable to as a woman. At times their love and devotion to one another is uncomfortable in it's intensity. The story continues with Joseph, his son Christopher and then Christopher's daughter Jennifer. Each of these characters has their own section of the book. Each section begins with an excerpt of poetry by Emily Bronte. The story is vast, sweeping, dramatic and very engaging. One sees the shadows of obsession and destruction by fire that are played out later in Rebecca. I loved this book. I had to borrow it through an interlibrary loan. However, it is due to be reissued in paperback in May 2010.

Sing in Praise: A Collection of the Best Loved Hymns

Honestly, I did not finish Sing in Praise: A Collection of the Best Loved Hymns. It won the Caldecott Honor Medal in 1947. Written by Opal Wheeler and illustrated by Marjorie Torrey, it is a collection of popular hymns. Each has an accompanying story telling of the possible origin of the work, or the childhood of the composer. It seemed a bit contrived to me. Wheeler and Torrey also collaborated on and won the Honor Medal for Sing Mother Goose.

The Yearling

Finished The Yearling by Marjorie Rawlings. It won the Pulitzer in 1939. Set in the early 20th century, it is the story of Jody, an only child, living with his mother and father. Jody craves a companion. He finds an orphaned fawn and brings him home as a pet. The fawn, named Flag, and Jody grow up together amid the beauty and dangers of backwoods Florida. These dangers include flood, rattlesnakes, wolves, bears and alligators. One bear in particular, Old Slewfoot, is brazen enough to walk off with the family's brood sow and several calves. Jody learns the ways of the woods and how to track and hunt from his father. He and Flag continue to grow until they are both really "the yearling." This book is beautifully written and as with any animal story there is sadness and grief, but I enjoyed it immensely.

The edition I read had color illustrations by N. C. Wyeth, an American illustrator of the Brandywine School. He illustrated many classics including Treasure Island, Kidnapped, Robin Hood, Robinson Crusoe and The Last of the Mohicans.

Young Fu of the Upper Yangtze

Finished Young Fu of the Upper Yangtze by Elizabeth Foreman Lewis. It won the Newbery Medal in 1933. Young Fu is thirteen when he and his mother move from the country to Chungking where Fu will apprentice as a coppersmith. The city is crowded, damp and dirty. There are many things to peak Fu's curiosity and he gets into a number of scrapes that way. However, with guidance from his mother, Wang Scholar and his boss and mentor Tang, he grows up to be a clever, brave and talented man.

The edition I read had an introduction written by Pearl S. Buck who won the Pulitzer in 1932 for The Good Earth. Lewis' backdrop of the turmoil, poverty, war, disease, flood, etc of early 20th century China was so similar to The Good Earth that it made me feel depressed. Eventually these things fell further into the background and Fu's character development became the center of the book. Somewhere around the middle of the book I began to enjoy it very much.

Kathleen

Finished Kathleen by Christopher Morley, one of my favorite writers. A group of undergraduates at Oxford find a letter written by a young woman named Kathleen. They begin a writing project in which they piece together a story about her and her family. Their ardor of Kathleen grows. During a holiday break they travel to the town where Kathleen lives and each devise a way to meet her and ask her to be their guest for Eight's Week. Each man masquerades as something he is not. One an antiquites scholar, one a curate, also a policeman and a gas meter reader. The most outrageous of all is one who dresses up as a woman and poses as a substitute cook for Kathleen's family. Here is a man with experience playing female characters in a theater guild, but no experience in the kitchen. The results of this are so hilarious I found myself laughing out loud. At one point while studying a recipe for stuffed eggs, he sees in the list of ingredients "buttered crumbs" and makes a note to set aside extra time for the buttering of said crumbs since that sounds like a tricky business.

While the book is ultimately a bit silly, it was an enjoyable read. My favorite Christopher Morley book is Kitty Foyle: The Natural History of a Woman. My second favorite is Parnassus on Wheels. I recommend both very highly.

The Autobiography of Eleanor Roosevelt

Finished The Autobiography of Eleanor Roosevelt. It is made up of several books that she published over her lifetime, This Is My Story (1937), This I Remember (1949), On My Own (1958) and The Search for Understanding (1961). I am very slow when it comes to reading non-fiction, so it took me many months to read this book. That is no reflection on the book itself.

I think I expected to be captivated by Eleanor's life with FDR, however, they were apart much of the time and she was still evolving into the powerful force for good and change that she eventually became. So it was not until the two books written after FDR's death that I got hooked on her story. The first two, about growing up and life as the wife of a governor and then a president, are filled with polite remarks about meeting various important people and how charming, polite, etc., they were.

The later books document her work with the UN, her travel all over the world and her observations of what she saw. She rarely passes a negative personal remark. She makes no reference to the troubles of her marriage, other than the iron fist of her mother-in-law, she never mentions the alcoholism on both sides of the family. All of those things I learned from a PBS "American Experience" documentary about her.

For twenty-six years she wrote the newspaper column "My Day." Selected articles were published in the book My Day: The Best of Eleanor Roosevelt's Acclaimed Newspaper Columns, 1936-1962. I look forward to reading this someday in daily installments.

The Little Island

The Little Island, written by Golden MacDonald and illustrated by Leonard Weisgard, won the Caldecott Medal in 1947. It describes the changes on a small island that take place when day turns to night or when the seasons change. Golden MacDonald was a pseudonym for Margaret Wise Brown who wrote Goodnight, Moon. Brown and Weisgard won a Caldecott Honor Medal for another book they worked on together, Little Lost Lamb (1946).

The Peppermint Pig

Finished The Peppermint Pig by Nina Bawden. Poll's father is wrongly accused of stealing from his place of work. He loses his job and decides to go to America to try his fortunes there. His wife and children leave their comfortable home in London and move in with Aunts Sarah and Henrietta in the country. Life is different, but not terrible. One day the milkman stops by and offers the family a piglet, the runt, too small to be raised by it's mother. They accept it and Poll and the new piglet, Johnnie, form a very close bond.

As Johnnie grows he becomes housebroken and acts much like a family dog. He follows mother on her daily shopping rounds, plays with all the children and sits and stares pensively into the fire. Before Poll and Johnnie met, Poll was not much of a student, but once she has something to look forward to and to be personally responsible for she becomes more focused and mature and begins to make friends at school.

Time passes and Poll wonders if her father will ever come home. She becomes seriously ill with scarlet fever. It takes her a long time to recover. When she is almost better one of her aunts takes her on a visit where she plays with a basketful of puppies. Her aunt tells her she can take one of the puppies home. Poll accepts the puppy, but is mystified. Her aunt says it's a birthday present, but her birthday has already happened.

Poll enjoys spending time with her new puppy and neglects Johnnie a bit. Johnnie is now huge and slow and not nearly as much fun as the puppy. One day Poll comes home from school and Johnnie is gone. He has been sent to the butcher. Mother owes the butcher money and has been having trouble making ends meet. Poll is stunned. She keeps saying "Everyone said Johnnie was different" and she had taken them at their word.

Poll cannot eat. She does not eat for seven days. One of her aunts takes her to the butcher shop to help her grasp the reality of the situation. Poll takes one look at the hanging carcasses and faints dead away.

This all sounds very cruel when I type it. In context it is not as harsh as it sounds. Poll's character, her thoughts and reactions to things are all so well drawn. It's obvious that Nina Bawden has a very strong memory of what is was like to be a child and feel that the whole world is working against you. Her book Carrie's War is one of my favorites.

The Thirty-Nine Steps

Finished The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan. Gee this was a fun book.

Little Lord Fauntleroy

Finished Little Lord Fauntleroy by Frances Hodgson Burnett. It was her first novel, published in 1886, long before A Little Princess (1905) and The Secret Garden (1911). It's a lovely, funny book originally published serially in Saint Nicholas Magazine.

Cedric Errol is a seven year old American boy who has been raised modestly by his kind and loving mother. Cedric is handsome, sweet tempered, intelligent, fearless and very sympathetic to those in need. One day a lawyer from England comes to inform his mother that due to the deaths of Cedric's uncles, Cedric himself is in line to be the next Earl of Dorincourt. The current Earl, Cedric's grandfather, wishes to have the boy come to England and be raised in preparation for his new role. He wants nothing to do with Cedric's mother. He was very angry when his favorite son married an American and assumes that she is low and mercenary.

Cedric and his mother travel to England. His mother lives in a lodge on the estate and Cedric lives with his grandfather. The Earl of Dorincourt is a lonely, bitter, difficult old man. No one likes him. Cedric's kindly innocence and generosity towards those less fortunate win him great popularity among the locals. His grandfather is puzzled and amused by these gestures of kindness. They eventually begin to rub off on him. The Earl's life changes far more than Cedric's does. He gains the respect and friendship of those around him. He realizes his mistake in shutting out Cedric's mother and then soon has two loving family members to spend his days with.

The Woman in White

Finished The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins. I could not put this book down. It is an intricate tale of deception told in written accounts by various characters in the novel. It is considered the first detective novel written in English. It was published serially in All the Year Round, Charles Dickens' weekly literary magazine. Collins' novel immediately followed the serialization of A Tale of Two Cities, which I just finished last month. This was not intentional on my part, just an interesting coincidence.

The book's villain, Count Fosco, is one of the most wonderful characters I have ever encountered. He is so eccentric, so audacious and yet so well mannered, I cannot help but love him.


At about the same time that The Woman in White was published as a three volume book, Whistler had an exhibition of paintings in Paris and London. One of the paintings, The White Girl, was assumed by critics to be a representation of the title character from Collins' novel. Whistler was very annoyed by this because the painting had nothing to do with the novel. He renamed the painting Symphony in White, No 1. Sadly, today it is often used as cover art for the book.