Swirl By Swirl
Title: Swirl By Swirl
Authors: Beth Krommes & Joyce Sidman
Genre: Picture Book / Educational
We actually read this one quite a bit ago, I was hoping to review it when I finally got around to purchasing it, but I can’t wait any longer. It’s too wonderful to keep under wraps any longer and it has been an inspiration to my kiddo who now draws swirls and “round ups” into all her artwork.
The book is all about finding math in nature. About how snails, flowers, and everything have mathematical patterns that create functional things we can see. It first page by page identifies all these things… spider webs, tendrils on foliage, the curls of animals’ tails, etc.
Then, it explains the how and why of it all.
Kiddo’s eye lit up at the end of the book every time (we had to read it over and over again before we turned it back into the library). My four year old’s mind was blown.
I want to have this book on hand when she’s older as well, to revisit and enjoy the beautiful illustrations again and again through out her studies. It’s so lovely.
Abuse, Affairs, and Amateurs
Usually if I don’t finish a book, I don’t review it. If I don’t finish it, am I truly the most qualified person to throw opinions on it around to the public.
I’m not talking about books that you CAN’T finish because they are too awful. I’m talking about the ones that I start, I sorta enjoy, and then I simply abandon to read something else – or, I decide that even though it’s interesting, it’s not quite interesting eno
ugh. Or, I just get bored with the topic halfway through.
I used to not be this way. I used to barrel through. I used to treat a book like a ship, me its Captain, and come hell or high water I would make it to its end – together. This practice became cause for some dark moods and much wasted reading time.
I picked up Wedlock when I took a sabbatical from my family (sort of) to work full time in the bookstore for a few months. I saw it on the shelf as I was running history and thought, this looks interesting, and I loved Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire. I thought this one would be similar. And it was. But it wasn’t.
Although the life of Mary Eleanor Bowes is one for the history books, and she was an incredible closet botanist for her time, I found that reading about her life, unfortunately, felt more like reading about Kim Kardashian or Brittany Spears than, say, reading about Marie Curie. The heiress was often in the social limelight, easily wooed by absurd men, and seemed to spend her life being abused by the system. This is to no fault of the biographer, but to the fault of society and the fact that, although intellectuals will complain how enraptured we are as a modern society by celebrities and trashy magazines – the reality is that s
ociety hasn’t changed all that much over the last few hundred years.
Moore’s book includes reports worthy of People magazine and Star. Elite gossip regarding who has married whom, how much money so-and-so is in debt, affairs, bastard children… If these things excite you, this book is for you. It just made me tired. It made me very tired, indeed.
So I gave it up. I was halfway through, and I pulled my bookmark and re-shelved it.
I’d love to do a full on study of her botany research. I’d love to visit museums dedicated to her pursuits outside of her abusive marriage. (Alas, I must be content to surfing the internet for now, visiting other bloggers’ reports) I wish I could see her experimental hothouses where she grew exotic plants. But it seems we are mostly to be doomed to read about her trials of being swayed by sociopaths and used for her money. That’s what makes sensational stories, after all, both now and then.
Most people will hear or read her story and say, “Aren’t we lucky that post suffrage, women now will not suffer like this!” But I don’t feel that way. Women will suffer like this as long as they behave like idiots, as long as they swoon over a seemingly kind word, as long as they can’t keep their panties up. I found myself feeling less sympathetic for Mary’s plight and more and more annoyed that she seemed to just dig her hole deeper and deeper. The simplest version of events, boiled down to all the ways she was victimized can be found here: http://historyandotherthoughts.blogspot.com/2013/03/mary-eleanor-bowes.html. Beating and torturing your wife is never ok. Treating any human the way Stoney treated Mary is completely unacceptable. I’m not saying that these things in her life were not awful. I’m just saying there is much she could have done to avoid additional pain, even in that era.
Although I agree with the commentator below in many ways, it pained me to see – centuries later – Mary’s missteps, all the things she could have done to avoid such a terrible life.
marmeladecatOctober 10, 2011 at 5:38 AMI have just finished reading Wendy Moore’s fantastic “Wedlock”, an account of Mary Eleanor Bowes’ life, in particular, her disastrous marriage to Stoney. What a woman, not only did she survive incredible domestic abuse and terror at the hands of her second husband, who tricked her into marrying him, but also had to suffer the heartbreak of losing her older children because of the dictates of the Georgian society of the time. Yet Mary Eleanor’s spirit was not crushed and eventually she managed to escape Stoney’s clutches and obtain just retribution for all his wrongdoings through the courts. The biography reads like a novel, I have never read a historical account so quickly. I can only recommend it.
I didn’t make it to the triumphs. I didn’t make it to the courts. I was still plodding through the terrible ache of lost children, another affair gone wrong with poor Mary not finding true love with her sexual partner yet again. Tip: Keep your dress on, dear. Don’t “fall in love” so quickly, and if you do, practice some propriety. Knowing that bastards very rarely stay with their mothers, why risk having them? I’m not talking about abortion, that to me is also unacceptable. I’m talking about keeping a marriage bed pure – even if you’ve fled from your psychotic husband, shacking up with someone else isn’t going to make everything right, it just makes it all a little bit worse.
Has anyone else studied the life of Mary Eleanor Bowes? What are your thoughts. What do you suppose she was like aside from the tabloids and history books? What would you say to her? What would you ask her?
I’m filing this one away with Anna Karenina.
February Reads
One of my literary counterparts, Neon Gods, posted a “February Reads” article. In general, she’s more organized, I think, in her reading ventures. We’ve kept track of each other’s reading habits for years, having met on Shelfari about 5 or 6 years ago. Despite my aversion to meeting people on the internet, she has been a pretty stellar internet friend. I’ve never met her in person, and yet she has influenced me – my reading life, atlas – greatly.
My reviews these last few months have felt less consistent than usual, so I thought I’d take a page from her book and do a monthly summary. At least for this last month anyway.
We wrapped up January with One Hundred and One Dalmatians by Dodie Smith. 
The original, not these new media tie ins you’ll find with the Glenn Close movie cover on them. For once I can actually say, No, it’s not the same book! Typically you can tell book buyers that it was just a marketing tactic. They put a movie cover on an old manuscript and sold the same book again. That is not the case with One Hundred and One Dalmatians. Pay attention when you purchase. Also… now that we’ve read the original, I’ve discovered that there was a sequel. Of course, now me must find it and read it too. (Until then, we are tackling The Wind in the Willows as our evening family chapter book.)
As previously mentioned, I read Guide to Wild Foods & Useful Plants by Nyerges. But I also read through A Game of Thrones last month. (And caught up on the tv show.) There’s a reason the masses are in love with George R.R. Martin’s world. It’s impressive. It’s grossly human. It’s epic fantasy. The prude in me would like a little less nudity and sex out of the show – the books are far less detailed in that regard – but from a cinematic point of view, I’m blown away. The sets, the actors, the crew, everyone just seems to have nailed the feel for the world. Clearly, I’m very late to this party – as usual – but I love it. Obviously, it brought a whole new appreciation to this moment from Comicpalooza in 2013:
Yes, that would be me, braiding the hair of the Father of Dragons. I knew what I was doing, knew what we were emulating, but I didn’t really have a full appreciation for it all until now.
Then, I kind of went all self improvement in my reading. I read through The Excellent Wife by Martha Peace and The Homeschool Life by Andrea Schwartz. I don’t particularly care for self-help books, but I do manage to keep them in my life via my “read for every discipline” mentality. No section of a bookstore is left untouched by the end of the year, if it’s a good year.
I also read through Garden Crafts for Kids
Finally, I finished The Gardener’s Bed Book by Richard Wright. I’m not going to touch too heavily on the book here, because honestly, I have far more than an online book review in mind for my experiences while reading it. My favorite thing about a reader’s life are the books written in response to other books. They are like love letters through time and space to people you’ll never meet or know, but feel more akin to than any other humans on the planet. I feel like Melanie Kerr’s Follies Past was her love letter to Jane Austen. I have projects in mind that will be odes to Madeleine L’Engle and Richard Wright. They have moved me so completely and become a part of who I am, it’s only right they are responded to with ink and paper.
Goodnight Goon
*A Weekly Low Down on Kids Books*
Title: Goodnight Goon
Author: Michael Rex
Every parent I know can recite or nearly recite Goodnight Moon. It’s a timeless favorite. I’m not sure why, kiddo loves it, but it has never really moved me personally.
“In the great green room, there was a telephone
And a red balloon
And a picture of a cat jumping over the moon…”
― Margaret Wise Brown, Goodnight Moon
It’s probably the cadence, the familiarity, the simplicity. It’s a lot of things. For kiddo, it’s also because she has the hallmark version that her out of state grandparents was able to record into… so she can flip through the pages and hear the story at her own leisure and will, the most exciting thing for a kid when they can’t read yet.
But to be fair, it’s boring. It’s appropriately sleepy, but I already have a hard enough time staying awake while I read bedtime stories.
I saw Goodnight Goon and took a risk. She loves Goodnight Moon, but she’s also wonderfully weird and gets very excited about monsters. I know my child, though, and sometimes she can be a bit of a purist. I wondered if a parody would be up her alley if it was just up mine.
In a cold gray tomb
There was a gravestone
And a black lagoon
And a picture of –
Martians taking over the moon
She laughed her butt off! She loved every page. Especially the end where the monster is cast under the bed for the night, “Goodnight Monsters Everywhere.”
“He’s under the bed!” she laughs.
“Maybe other kids will like it,” she says.
“Why?” I ask.
“Because they’re little. And the monsters. I like the bat. That’s the kind of monster I like.” Of course, she watches me type the review and also insists that I “put an L in it.”
L
I should have known all would be well. After all, this is a kiddo that adored the The Swamps of Sleethe.
Chinese History at Lunch
Title:The Death of Woman Wang
Author: Jonathan D. Spence
Genre: History
When picking up books at bookstores, there’s always the lovely predicament of what to do during lunch hour. As if any bookworm wouldn’t know what to do during lunch. I like to pluck books that I would otherwise not read, things that probably wouldn’t make the cut when selecting reading material at home, but are intriguing nonetheless.
Chinese history and social commentary via anecdotes and tales from a specific region are fit the bill exactly.
Though Jonathan D. Spence’s The Death of Woman Wang is fairly short, and probably something I’d be able to get through over two cups of coffee at home, at work – with the distractions of barbecue sauce, walking (because I must always do a bit of walking), and a number of other lunch break occurrences – it took me a number of weeks to get through it. (I only work on Saturdays, mind you.)
I have decided that even though I’m not keeping The Death of Woman Wang (I’m in purge mode and not keeping as many books as I have been inclined to in the past), I will read more of Spence’s work in the future. Treason By the Book looks especially fascinating.
[Unrelated note to the book review: I just googled his name to see what else there might be and stumbled across his face. He’s endearingly handsome for an old fellow.]
Spence is a British-born Chinese historian (what an interesting description for a person). He retired from Yale in 2008 – my childhood bestie attended Yale from 2002-2006, I wonder if she ever met him…
He has a warm way of relaying history. He tells stories in a fashion that you’d think perhaps you were sitting around a fire listening to a beloved professor while on some sort of educational retreat. He manages to do this without feeling novelized or ill researched.
I’ve been enjoying my Chinese History lunches, and I’m a little sad that they’re over.
The Year of the Hydra
Reviewing things and taking names!
I’m not really taking names… but I am reviewing a lot these days, and getting quoted on book jackets!
![Year of the Hydra [Back Cover]_Back Cover](https://anakalianwhims.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/year-of-the-hydra-back-cover_back-cover.jpg)
I recently got to read an advance copy of The Year of the Hydra by W.B. Burt. You can preorder it now or wait until February 19th to purchase it. Either way, you don’t want to miss this new release.
The Haunted Bookshop
“It’s one of the uncanniest things I know to watch a real book on its career – it follows you and follows you and drives you into a corner and makes you read it. […] Words can’t describe the cunning of some books. You’ll think you’ve shaken them off your trail, and then one day some innocent-looking customer will pop in and begin to talk, and you’ll now he’s an unconscious agent of book-destiny.” – pg. 121, The Haunted Bookshop by Christopher Morley
Title: The Haunted Bookshop
Author: Christopher Morley
Length: 265 pages
I am constantly haunted by books. As a reviewer your TBR pile grows and grows, but there are books that you want to read that no one is asking you to that sit and lurk until finally they demand that you pick them up.
I purchased The Haunted Bookshop years ago; it was the same time I bought Parnassus on Wheels. Nearly two years after finally reading my first encounter with Morley, I’ve finally been hunted down and captured by his wonderful sequel.
“There’s only one way to lay the ghost of a book, and that is to read it.”
Now that I’ve revisited Roger and Helen Mifflin, however, I just want more. I want to know what happens after this glorious book fetish mystery. After Parnassus on Wheels, it was exciting to see Mr. and Mrs. Mifflin after they settled down. But now I want to know: how does all the inadvertent advertising change the face of Mr. Mifflin’s business. I want to hang out with these fine people until we experience their inevitable deaths. Favorite characters deserve that much, for their fans to sob at their memorials.
Mostly, I adore Mr. Mifflin’s constant book recommendations. As long as people love books there will be books about bookstores, I am convinced, because the truly bookish seek out recommendations from their favorite characters, always. That was the romance, for me, in writing The Bookshop Hotel. I hope in time that fans will see more similarities in my work to Christopher Morley than to Debbie Macomber (of whom my writing has been compared) and the like. Ultimately, however, I’m happy with however I am categorized as long as people are enjoying them.
A Boy Called Dickens
* A Weekly Low Down on Kids Books *
Title: A Boy Called Dickens
Author: Deborah Hopkinson
Illustrator: John Hendrix
As a homeschool family, we’re suckers for the educational picture book. Especially biographies.
A Boy Called Dickens tells the life of Charles Dickens. Obviously there are some creative liberties taken with Dickens’ boyhood thoughts and how he might have come to write certain stories, but that happens with any piece of biographical fiction.
As an adult Dickens fan, you recognize characters peeking around corners and haunting the boy’s subconscious as he works at the factory, tells stories to his friend, helps get his family out of debtor’s prison, and finally returns to school.
When I finished read the book, kiddo said, “Let’s read it again.”
I was out of breath from my strained fake British accent. I’m not an actress, but I like to make story time fun. It takes more effort than I’d care to admit. “No, I’m not reading it again right now.”
“Well, I think we should do the same thing with this one – let other kids read it!”
“You mean you recommend it?”
“Yes.” She gave it a literal thumbs up, with a tongue half sticking out the side of her mouth in thought.
Any biographical picture books you can find are great teaching tools, and you might as well fill them with as much information as you can while they’re sponges. History is easiest to remember as a tale, Dickens world and era becomes one you can touch and taste. Telling it from his boyhood makes it more relatable to a tiny one. Whether you’re a homeschool mom, or just someone who reads to your kids when you can, this book is a great resource; it’s colorful, factual, and engrossing.
(If you’re a seasonal reader, this one is perfectly wintery.)
The Snail and the Whale
I used to do a Weekly Low Down on Kids Books. Well, I used to pretend to do them, and really they were haphazard and sporadic at best, but sort of happened a few times a month at least.
I’m back. I’m back with a mission to share all the marvelous books we’ve been reading. Because, well, we have been reading more than we’ve let on. I know, our silence is stifling.
Title: The Snail and the Whale
Author:Julia Donaldson
Illustrator: Axel Scheffler
I bought The Snail and the Whale on impulse. I’ve been trying to do less of that lately, but it was too darn cute and the kiddo had been working on a snail painting. Plus, I was feeling a little bit guilty over keeping Christmas as sparse as I was.
A few new picture books seemed a good addition to a Jake and the Neverland Pirate lego set (the third set to polish off the Jake collection); but we purposely are trying to keep Christmas gifting simple… “What you want, what you need, what you’ll wear, and what you’ll read.” Accumulatively, we’d like for her to get no more than 4 presents from each category once all the grandparents have pitched in. Ideally I’d keep it to four items total, but I’m practical and I know the family members won’t let that fly.
So she got the rest of her desired lego collection, a Frozen tiara and tambourine, socks, new boots, and a handful of new picture books. There were some stocking stuffers and some other odds and ends – a geode science project for her school work, new paints, a painting apron, some canvases – and they were given to her in waves, not all at once on Christmas day. It gave her time to enjoy each gift before getting overwhelmed with another. We enjoyed it. She was spoiled without being spoiled. It felt like a nice simple holiday, yet kiddo managed to get everything she’d asked for.
Although The Snail and the Whale feels like a summer book – crossing oceans, travelling the world, visiting islands – we were excited to read it while cozied up in blankets and pjs. I can’t wait to read it to her at the beach once it warms up, though.
Working on her Snail painting, which has an actual shell glued to the canvas.
After reading this book for the second or third time, I finally asked kiddo, “So what are your thoughts?”
Kiddo, age four, says, “Other kids should read it, that’s my thought! But how about we put it where people can’t find it. So no one can tear it up.”
I think she was missing the point of the conversation. We started talking about the illustrations and what she thought. She likes the pictures, but thinks they got the font “mixed up.” I think the font is appropriately cute, but she’s learning to read and I think some of the swirly snail words were hard for her to recognize.
The book, however, is wonderful. The rhymes are fun, the pictures are fun. It’s all about adventure, having courage, and taking care of your friends. It’s definitely a great gift book for any little one, no matter what season.
An Eco Never Fails to Resonate
Title: Serendipities
Author: Umberto Eco
Eco never fails me. Except once… I didn’t care for Baudolino. But even after that epic let down, the work stayed with me – if only to prove that even a genius can manage to disappoint from time to time, because reading is a two way street.
The author must deliver, but the reader must be receptive.
Sometimes capturing the magic of that relationship is consistent, sometimes it isn’t…
Nevertheless, Eco never fails to resonate. I remember his name always. His words always mean something. His thoughts and opinions are ones I value and take into great consideration. He moves me.
He speaks of language and sounds, ideas that arbitrary and ones that are not. He writes about the things that speak to my soul every time. Eco and I, though of course he doesn’t know it, have a trust relationship. I trust him to deliver something that will mean something to me, and I suppose that he trusts that what he has to say needs to be said – what he writes is meant to be written.
Authors and books have a way of being there when you need them most. That comfort stays with me always.
Anakalian Whims 