A Shropshire Morning
Title: A Shropshire Lad
Author: A.E. Housman
Publisher: Penguin (Classics)
Genre: Poetry (English Journeys)
I know I just posted on this very same title yesterday, but I’ve been reading through it over my morning coffee on this cold, rainy day, and I couldn’t keep myself from sharing the best parts.
| A. E. Housman (1859–1936). A Shropshire Lad. 1896. |
| XLVIII. Be still, my soul, be still |
This melted me to my core. Melted me into a state of beautiful stillness, and I couldn’t keep that to myself. It’s so calming, so true, and so utterly gorgeous.
Not just for his poetry itself, Housman is inspiring because his work is so good and back in 1896 he was essentially self-published. Publishers turned this beautiful work down over and over again until finally he decided to publish the title at his own expense. Originally he wanted to call it The Poems of Terrence Hearsay, but was encouraged to change it. Sales lagged until about 1899 when the Second Boer War broke out and profits have surged for Housman’s work during every time of war since – especially World War I. Though this surprised the poet, it is not surprising to me… the entire work is about loss. There is much solace in reading about loss when you have lost or anticipate it soon.
Don’t be surprised if Housman is revisited often on this blog.
Shropshire Lasses (and dog)
Title:A Shropshire Lad
Author: A.E. Housman
Publisher: Penguin (Classics)
Genre: Poetry (English Journeys)
A few years ago I became completely hooked on the Penguin Great Ideas series. I think they’re wonderful pocket sized source documents to keep around the house. I also love the Great Journeys… and now, I have a small collection of English Journeys as well.
The kiddo and I love scampering through the woods. We also love reading outside. These little paperbacks are the perfect books to tag along for our wooded adventures and frolics in the park.
Not to mention that, today, I think Housman became my favorite male poet – a title previously held by William Carlos Williams. The two are nothing alike. But I am nothing like who I was when William Carlos Williams was awarded his place on my mental pedestal.
Where William Carlos Williams amused me with “This is Just to Say”:
I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the iceboxand which
you were probably
saving
for breakfastForgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold
I was in middle school when I discovered this. For some reason I found this bluntness endearing. I thought, “What a wonderful jerk to address poetry with such sarcasm.”
I don’t want poetry to be sarcastic anymore. I don’t appreciate the uncaring witticism the same way.
I do, however, love this:
Oh, when I was in love with you,
Then I was clean and brave,
And miles around the wonder grew
How well did I behave.And now the fancy passes by,
And nothing will remain,
And miles around they’ll say that I
Am quite myself again– “A Shropshire Lad: XVIII”
Ok, well, it seems it’s always the jerk lines that appeal to me. But at least it’s not about stealing plums anymore. Housman has real heart and soul as he describes landscapes and lovers, crickets and dead soldiers, the woods and the very real feelings of longing for something that has gone. All so beautiful and natural; and the pattern in which he writes lends itself to easily reading it aloud outdoors while the kiddo plays.
The dog seemed to enjoy it too. He stopped to look at me every time a poem ended as though I was denying him the chance to be included in the written word of humans.
The Bridge of San Luis Rey
Title: The Bridge of San Luis Rey
Author: Thornton Wilder
Illustrator: Jean Charlot
Publisher: Heritage Press
I didn’t care for Wilder’s work. It didn’t capture me. It left me pretty uninterested. I just wasn’t feeling it. I was, however, feeling the edition.
I read from the Heritage Press edition. Beautiful blue cover, fine blue buckram boards with gold. I love reading books on acid free paper and I really enjoyed the color lithographs.
Lithograph illustrations are gorgeous in general and Jean Charlot’s work was the most enjoyable part of this title to me – aside from a few lovely quotes. There’s no denying that Wilder has a way with words.
“She had a new way of fingering a wine-glass, of exchanging an adieu, a new way of entertaining a door that told everything.” – pg. 97
Monday, Half Price Books in Humble will be hosting a book club meeting. It starts at 7:30 pm and we’ll be discussing this title. It’s fairly short, only 137 pages long, and can be read quickly if you’re interested. I’d love to hear from people who are passionate about this title – always curious to know what makes something classic to the world that simply didn’t move me. After all, it won the Pulitzer in 1928.
Little Tiny Novels
Title: The Newton Letter
Author: John Banville
Publisher: David R. Godine
Genre: Fiction
Length: 81 pages
After publishing my novella (roughly 130 pages long), my editor and I decided to make the sequel to my novella much longer. The publisher wants a full length novel, but in our attempt for length we started to believe that length would equate higher quality.
Reading through drafts we found that for the sake of propelling the story and actually achieving the higher quality work we were looking for, large chunks of filler might have to be scrapped. So I set out to read some great short work, to make myself feel better about not being Kate Morton. And though I am no where near ever going to have the talent of John Banville, Panlo De Santis, John Steinbeck, or William Kennedy, there’s something to be said about reading these and knowing that a finished product is all about quality over quantity.
“When your story is ready for rewrite, cut it to the bone. Get rid of every ounce of excess fat. This is going to hurt; revising a story down to the bare essentials is always a little like murdering children, but it must be done.” – Stephen King, “The Horror Writer Market and the Ten Bears,” November 1973 WD
John Banville makes me crazy jealous. I want his brain in my brain ever so briefly… just long enough to write something amazing. Because everything he touches is amazing. Even just an 80 page bit of story written before I was born reads like his full length prize winners.
The lesson in this for me (because almost every book I read teaches me something) is that while doing these edits for the second edition of my novella, I also need to edit in some breaks between paragraphs. Visually there are some things that don’t flow. I can thank my first edition readers for pointing this out. Even if I pout a little bit, I am so grateful for all the criticism on my first work. I’m pouting that I wasn’t more diligent about catching these things before you read it, not that you caught these things. Anything any reader of mine tells me is something I truly do ponder in great detail.
“The worst advice? ‘Don’t listen to the critics.’ I think that you really ought to listen to the critics, because sometimes they’re telling you something is broken that you can fix.” – Stephen King
I want even my first work to be better. I want my second work to be even better than the first. Whether I achieve the length of a traditional novel or not, I hope the second book achieves the complete story arch of a traditional novel. Hopefully, one day, when I’m old and gray, I can write something I’m happy with. It won’t be John Banville, because I’m not him, but in the meantime I can adore him a lot and work a lot harder.
Like Calligraphy
Title: Voltaire’s Calligrapher
Author: Pablo De Santis
Publisher: Harper
Genre: Fiction
Length: 149 pages
You know it’s been a rough week when you’ve managed to 1. worry your best friends 2. drive your husband batty 3. inadvertently offend your readers 4. write not one, but two overly pouty blog posts and 5. manage to take a whole week to read 149 pages.
Especially when those 149 pages are so delicious.
Not just delicious, witty and divine.
De Santis doesn’t just write about calligraphy and a master calligrapher. He manages to make his words sound like calligraphy. And his story is woven with the same sly craftiness as runaway ink.
Normally, I would recommend someone read this in one sitting over a cup of the best dark coffee blend they have. I didn’t do that. I spent a week sucking down a chapter at a time – and his chapters are only a page to three at best.
There are castles and print shops, automatons, and poisonous fish… dark corners and forbidden candlelight… Oh my! What terrifying fun! You won’t regret diving into the adventure.
Poetry and Paint
Title:The Road Not Taken and Other Poems
Author: Robert Frost
Publisher: Dover Thrift Edition
Genre: Poetry
I have a hard time reading poetry silently. When I’m reading it in my mind, my eyes tend to skip over the words like stones on water.
But aloud – that’s a different story.
Nothing calms us faster in my house (the kiddo and I) than poetry, painting, and a little Alt-J in the background. I don’t know how I survived sadness and melancholy before Alt-J was a part of my world.
The latest masterpiece – age 3.
This week we read through a Dover Thrift Edition of Robert Frost: The Road Not Taken and Other Poems. Like most people, kiddo will probably be far more familiar with The Road Less Taken than any of Frost’s other poetry. We don’t just read it out loud when we paint, but out on the trails in the woods too. Poetry is appropriate for painting, Frost is great while tromping on leaves. He just has a woodsy feel to him.
Starting a new piece during a poetry day.
Moonhorse
Weekly Low Down on Kids Books
Title: Moonhorse
Author: Mary Pope Osborne
Illustrator: S.M. Sealig
Genre: Children’s Picture Book
I saw this and couldn’t pass it up. Mary Pope Osborne invades my house again! I love her.
I enjoy her complete ability to offer facts and history and in this case astronomy in the form of fiction. To pique a child’s interest in a nonfiction topic with a bit of fantastical fairy tale.
I’m trying to get more detailed and specific when I offer these reviews of my child’s favorite books, but she doesn’t always seem to understand the questions. Or perhaps, I don’t understand the beautiful simplicity of her answers.
Me: “Did you like this book?”
Kiddo: “Yes!”
Me: “What did you like about it?”
Kiddo: “The white!”
Me: “Because the horse is white?”
Kiddo: “With the red.”
The little girl in the illustration is wearing a red dress. I think bits of the story were lost on my three year old today, she was drawing her own pictures and sucking down a cup of milk. I think ultimately, what she may have been trying to tell me, in her distracted three year old way, is that she liked the illustrations and the use of muted color. But I don’t want to put words in her mouth.
If you’re building an astronomy unit study for anyone under ten, this is a nice bedtime story to add to your week. Personally, I wish the poetry of the tale was rhymed more, but I have a natural inclination to the sing-songy way of things.
Stuck in Love
A Movie Review for the Bookish at Heart
I was watching Stuck in Love, and probably about halfway through it, when my husband walked in and said, “You enjoying your book movie?”
It took me a minute. This movie was about a man who spends three years of his life waiting for his wife to return to him – even though they are divorced and she has married someone else. This movie is about the third year and how he handles the emotional struggles of his two nearly adult children. And yes, I realized after my husband posed the question, this movie is about four writers – lots of book lovers – and has many literary references.
Greg Kinnear’s character has won two Penn Faulkner Awards. His oldest daughter is 19 and has just published her first novel through Scribner. His younger son, also having been groomed to write his whole life, is a poet and short story writer obsessed with Stephen King. Jennifer Connelly (the ex-wife) can be found reading Joan Didion in bed. Books are tossed around the set like old friends and are active characters in the movie as well, perched on shelves and end tables, strewn across laps at the beach.
I had not noticed until my husband pointed it out. I had not noticed because it was so familiar. I had not noticed because I live with these stacks of souls trapped in bindings all over my house. Sitting at the kitchen table, watching the sun come up with my coffee, I look out at my table… just here, in the kitchen of all places, I have 10 books, a journal, and a day planner, piled around me. You’d think this was a proper writing desk except for the bowl of orange slices and blueberries, my daughter’s play dough bucket, a United States place mat, and a container of markers.
Granted the houses in Stuck in Love are much nicer than my own. Slightly bigger and the bookshelves are proper built-ins made of mahogany or some-such beautiful woodwork. The end tables were no doubt not retrieved from a neighbor’s discard pile. Yes, that black stone tile end table pictured here on the right came out of the trash. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with it and I could care less that it doesn’t match anything else in my house – I shall pile books on it. (Even though I’m supposed to keep all my books in the library and not let them trickle into the rest of the house. Keeping them out of other rooms requires a lot of daily maintenance.)
The people in Stuck in Love aren’t just richer than me, they’re probably much braver than me also. The daughter actually takes creative writing classes in school – whereas I took the safe route and studied marketing. They do what they feel – which results in a lot of really bad decisions. But one thing we do have in common, which I found really refreshing in a secular story, is have a permanence view of marriage. (You don’t find a lot of anyone who shares this worldview, not even among Christians: http://www.sermonaudio.com/sermoninfo.asp?SID=11309913170).
I found a lot of online critics who gave this movie a ‘rotten tomatoes’ rating (the soundtrack, however, gets glowing reviews from everyone). I am not with them (except for the soundtrack lovers). I found it marvelous. It’s a beautiful story about genuine people with a lot of bookish bits. I gave it 5 stars on my Netflix account. I will re-watch it. I will probably compile a list of the character’s books at some point and add them to things to move up my TBR pile (the patriarch can be seen reading Jeffrey Ford as well, but I didn’t catch the title).
Not just for the book lists, the movie is filled with little quotable quotes, little tidbits for book-nerds and writers. Maybe that’s why I like it so much. That and I love that the dad teaches his kids to journal, that he allows them the privacy to write. I love that writing and reading are treated as means to live by, ways to learn, and how to pinpoint your emotions about your reality.
Something so obvious, that I didn’t catch at first glance and my husband did at a brief glimpse, this is a movie for book people.
Papyrus – truly a thriller
Title: Papyrus
Author: John Oehler
Genre: Suspense, Historical Fiction
Length: 326 pages
I’ve wanted to read this book since the second I saw its cover. Mainly because John Oehler wrote it and I really enjoy his writing. I read and reviewed Aphrodesia awhile back and I swear I blushed for a month, so I knew Oehler’s writing was phenomenal. Add my obsession for all things Egyptian, and I was completely sold.
Many times this level of anticipation won’t work out well for a reader. There’s too much pressure on the book. How could it possibly live up?
Papyrus took my expectations in stride and out did itself.
Historical fiction all the way, there are still two different timelines – the ancient past (the 18th Dynasty of Egypt) and the not so ancient past (1977, during the war between Eritrea and Ethiopa). I enjoyed the banter and flirtation between these timelines and the story. It was woven together well and never missed a beat or left the reader feeling out of sorts with the rhythm of the tale.
In 1977, Oehler’s Rika Teferi is both a scholar and a warrior of Eritrea. This was an attribute so enticing for my black belt and book nerdy self that I spent two hours in a local Starbucks devouring this book instead of watching the Broncos beat the Patriots on Sunday. I loved her for her strength, her beauty, and ultimately for her intelligence.
Dive into ancient Egypt and Queen Tiye is completely riveting, especially since most my academic studies have focused on Hatshepsut and Nefertiti. It was refreshing to have Akhenaten’s mother be the focus, as I don’t think she is as common a fictional pursuit as other Eqyptian Queens. (The only one I can think of off the top of my head is Pauline Gedge’s The Twelfth Transforming – also stellar writing, but I was apparently so disappointed with the story it seems I have given that title away.) I do not own any nonfiction work devoted primarily to Tiye either, but Oehler’s version of her offered a pretty tempting reason to go find some.
As always Oehler handles the story arch with such grace and ease – I am jealous. He writes stories where things happen. Not just anything, but powerful and exciting things. Foreign countries, different times, bombs, planes, diplomats, ancient manuscripts, tombs, revolutionaries, romance…! His books are award winners with good reason and he is one of Houston’s best kept secrets. It is amazing to me that this was Oehler’s first novel.
Get Me Out of Here
Title: Get Me Out of Here
Author: Rachel Reiland
Genre: Memoir/ Psychology
Length: 447 pages
There was no hope for this book – it is so fascinating and so full of raw heart and soul of a person and her mental illness – my copy is obliterated with underlines and notes in margins. I read all 447 pages in less than a 12 hour period, without shirking my life responsibilities, and gave it a five star rating. I recommend it to anyone trying to understand the inner workings of a mentally ill brain.
“One of the saddest facts isn’t that there is still a child within you but that you’re so ashamed of that child. What’s even sadder is that you have always been ashamed of that child, even when you were one.” – pg. 141
Anakalian Whims 