My devil had been long caged, he came out roaring.

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson

Spoiler Alert: Plot Summary

Dear readers, this is an extremely short work (roughly a hundred pages, at least in my copy) and if you haven't read it, I highly recommend. Therefore, I shall share a collected poem of lines to give you a sense of the thing, but if you want more, you must go and find it yourself. Here is your poem:

- God bless me, the man seems hardly human!
- The moment I choose, I can be rid of Mr. Hyde.
- I have lost confidence in myself.
- You must suffer me to go my own dark way. I have brought on myself a punishment and a danger that I cannot name.
- Ah, it's an ill conscience that's such an enemy to rest!
- Man is not truly one, but truly two.
- My devil had been long caged, he came out roaring.
- Struggle as he might, there was borne in upon his mind a crushing anticipation of calamity.

Spoiler Over: Continue Here

Well now, is your interest piqued? Good. I could see immediately upon reading this why it has made its way into the 'classics'. It's concise, but it packs a great punch, and it's loaded with fascinating explorations of the human character. Go and read it for yourself, then come back and enjoy this brief blobbety-blob. 

Love affair with London
Many works involve cities in some capacity, but I have come to love books that make the city or the country the book centers around into a character of its own. Here's a line about London I loved: 

The fog still slept on the wing above the drowned city, where the lamps glimmered like carbuncles; and through the muffle and smother of these fallen clouds, the procession of the town's life was still rolling in through the great arteries with a sound as of a mighty wind. He's literally describing fog, and I'm like, I want to go! Sign me up!

Going to bed and waking up someone else
Without going into too much detail (and besides, by now you've followed my advice and read it for yourself, so I'm not spoiling anything anyway), things get worse for our protagonist when he stops being able to control his transitions from Jekyll into Hyde. I loved the creepiness of this line:

I had gone to bed Henry Jekyll, I had awakened Edward Hyde.

Especially because it reminded me of this line from Proust:

 So how, then, searching for our thoughts, our identities, as we search for lost objects, do we eventually recover our own self rather than any other? Why, when we regain consciousness, is it not an identity other than the one we had previously that is embodied in us? It is not clear what dictates the choice, or why, among the millions of human beings we might be, it is the being we were the day before that we unerringly grasp.

I thought of how jarring it was for Jekyll to grasp for himself and find Hyde instead, and thought Proust would have a field day exploring that concept. ;)

Lines I Liked
This book is packed with great lines, descriptions, and all-around eerie situations. Here are a few of my favorites. 

• On an acquaintance of Dr. Jekyll - In this character, it was frequently his fortune to be the last reputable acquaintance and the last good influence in the lives of downgoing men.

• His affections, like ivy, were the growth of time. God, I love this line. 

• But now his imagination also was engaged, or rather enslaved. 

• I make it a rule of mine: the more it looks like Queer Street, the less I ask.

• It was no longer the fear of the gallows, it was the horror of being Hyde that racked me.

Words New to Me
holograph - a manuscript handwritten by the person named as its author

conveyancing - the branch of law concerned with the preparation of documents for the transferring of property; the action of preparing documents for the transfer of property

napery - household linen, especially tablecloths and napkins

baize - a coarse, feltlike, woolen material that is typically green, used for covering billiard and card tables and for aprons

turpitude - depravity; wickedness

bravo - a thug or hired assassin

I'm keeping this entry short and sweet, to match the brevity of the work. I'll leave you with these lines.

I had learned to dwell with pleasure, as a beloved daydream, on the thought of the separation of these elements. If each, I told myself, could be housed in separate identities, life would be relieved of all that was unbearable; the unjust might go his way, delivered from the aspirations and remorse of his more upright twin; and the just could walk steadfastly and securely on his upward path, doing the good things in which he found his pleasure, and no longer exposed to disgrace and penitence by the hands of this extraneous evil.

As we roll into a new year, one we cannot stop from coming, try though we might, let us consider the halves of ourselves. Let us think about how we might find a life of balance, where pleasures are not denied, nor is good abandoned. We all have some Jekyll and some Hyde in us. How we choose to navigate the pairing is entirely up to us. 

Happy New Year, and I'll see you in 2019, blobbists!

Woman must have spunks to live in this wicked world.

Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys

Spoiler Alert: Plot Summary
Wide Sargasso Sea picks up before Jane Eyre begins. If you're not familiar with the plot of Jane Eyre, feel free to read my plot summary from when I read that book for the blob here. I suppose telling you this plot will also spoil the plot of Jane Eyre for you, which is a real shame, because Jane Eyre is a great read. Suffice it to say that this book takes place largely in Jamaica and Dominica, with a short bit in England at the end. It provides the grounding and back story for the character of Bertha Mason (here, Antoinette Cosway) and how she came to be connected to Mr. Rochester.
Spoiler Over: Continue Here

I know I didn't really go into detail there (I re-read my Jane Eyre plot summary and I was FAR more detail-oriented at that point in this project) but I think these are both interesting reads, so I don't care to spoil them for you. That being said, I may accidentally spoil the plots in this post, so if you're wanting to read either and haven't, hit the pause button and go read them now. 

I didn't love reading this book, but looking back, I have a real admiration and respect for it. 

"Fan fiction"/Extrapolated fiction
I haven't read much in the way of extrapolated fiction, or 'fan fiction', as I suppose some would call it these days. This book in particular took me back to March, and Geraldine Brooks's exploration of Mr. March's experiences and a more nuanced look at the historical moment. I didn't enjoy reading this one as much as I enjoyed reading March, but I think both are worthy and intriguing explorations of beautiful fictional spaces, and I appreciated the level of nuance that both brought to the table.

Race and confusion
That being said, a relatively big part of my confusion as a reader was tied up in race, and not understanding what race Antoinette was and how this played out in her life. Perhaps some (or all) of this confusion was intended on Jean Rhys's part. Speaking from the "I" perspective, though, I don't do terribly well with confusion, and if you don't ever spell something out for me, I can have a tendency to just plain miss it. 

Looking back on the book having finished it, navigating the racial and social structure of the islands was clearly a critical and challenging part of Antoinette's life (and perhaps Rhys's herself). 

Island life
I loved this passage about their garden, both for its intensity and for the way it reminded me of the overgrown space in The Secret Garden.

Our garden was large and beautiful as that garden in the Bible - the tree of life grew there. But it had gone wild. The paths were overgrown and a smell of dead flowers mixed with the fresh living smell. Underneath the tree ferns, tall as forest tree ferns, the light was green. Orchids flourished out of reach or for some reason not to be touched. One was snaky looking, another like an octopus with long thin brown tentacles bare of leaves hanging from a twisted root. Twice a year the octopus orchid flowered - then not an inch of tentacle showed. It was a bell-shaped mass of white, mauve, deep purples, wonderful to see.

Mothers
The last few books I've read for the blob have had a running theme of mothers who were not, per se, hitting it out the park. In each case, the mother had a lot of things coming at her all at once, so this isn't meant to place blame. But all three (The God of Small Things, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Wide Sargasso Sea) feature narrators who have some pretty serious hardships because of their mother's absence. Here are a few lines to paint a picture of Antoinette's mom: 

On leaving the house for full days at a time as a young child and returning at night: My mother never asked me where I had been or what I had done.

"Did you have a nightmare?'
'Yes, a bad dream.'
She sighed and covered me up. 'You were making such a noise. I must go to Pierre, you've frightened him.'" oh, yes, PIERRE WAS FRIGHTENED. Let's go check on Pierre. CLEARLY You're Fine. 

124 was spiteful.

The house was sad when she had gone.

Lines like this reminded me of Beloved, and the personification of the home itself. 

First impressions
While the islands are packed with beauty and vital intensity for Antoinette, Rochester is immediately put off by them. I loved the contrast of their experiences. 

Everything is too much, I felt as I rode wearily after her. Too much blue, too much purple, too much green. The flowers too red, the mountains too high, the hills too near.

Rebecca and Manderley
Just as the person in the attic is an ongoing mystery in Jane Eyre, the islands act as a source of mystery. The estate's connection to the mystery reminded me of Manderley in Rebecca. I loved these lines from Rochester:

It was a beautiful place - wild, untouched, above all untouched, with an alien, disturbing, secret loveliness. And it kept its secret. I'd find myself thinking, 'What I see is nothing - I want what it hides - that is not nothing.

Is loneliness a fancy or a feeling?
I loved this exchange between Antoinette and Rochester:

Rochester: 'So this place is as lonely as it feels?' I asked her.
Antoinette: 'Yes, it is lonely. Are you happy here?'
Rochester: 'Who wouldn't be?'
Antoinette: 'I love it more than anywhere in the world. As if it were a person. More than a person.'
Rochester: 'But you don't know the world,' I teased her.

and this line from Antoinette later, which reminded me of the way I feel some times given the volatile state of the world (and occasionally my mind): 
"I am not used to happiness. It makes me afraid."

Bertha is not my name. You are trying to make me into someone else, calling me by another name. 
At some point, Rochester starts calling Antoinette Bertha, even though it is absolutely not her name. I was already starting to hate Rochester in this version (which bummed me out a little because I like him in JE) but when he started doing that, I was like, is he gaslighting her? I would go a little bonkers, too, if people just started calling me a different name all the time. Can you imagine if you woke up tomorrow and people were just like, hey, I'm gonna call you a different name now. That's happening.

It also reminded me of this line in 'I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings': 

Every person I knew had a hellish horror of being 'called out of his name'. It was a dangerous practice to call a Negro anything that could be loosely construed as insulting because of the centuries of their having been called n***ers, jigs, dinges, blackbirds, crows, boots and spooks.

and then this one: 

Maya, on a woman named Mrs. Cullinan calling her the wrong name repeatedly, then renaming her "Mary" to suit her: I decided I wouldn't pee on her if her heart was on fire. 

Too bad Maya and Antoinette couldn't team up against Mr. Rochester. I'd like to see that showdown. 

Does adulting mean realizing our Prince Charmings are problematic?
The Rochester in this book adds some nuance (and some real ugliness) to Mr. Rochester's character. Obviously, this is one version of the back story, and perhaps not even a little the way Charlotte Brontë would have imagined it. That being said, I think the more I read, the more okay I become with nuance and complicated characters. Maybe it's just a growing up thing. ;) Here are some lines that capture Mr. Rochester.

No more damned magic. You hate me and I hate you. We'll see who hates best. 

Christophine, to Rochester: You think you fool me? You want her money but you don't want her.

Tied to a lunatic for life.

I hated the mountains and the hills, the rivers and the rain. I hated the sunsets of whatever colour, I hated its beauty and its magic and the secret I would never know. I hated its indifference and the cruelty which was part of its loveliness. Above all I hated her. For she belonged to the magic and the loveliness. She had left me thirsty and all my life would be thirst and longing for what I had lost before I found it. 

Referents and Reverberations
While this book reminded me of many other novels, and had a clear echo in Jane Eyre, the two most poignant connections I felt as a reader were with...

• We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson

It was Christophine who bought our food from the village and persuaded some girls to help her sweep and wash clothes. We would have died, my mother always said, if she had not stayed with us. this line from WSS reminded me of Merricat and Constance. I read this book for one of my book bingos, and I will have to blob on it at some point, because it was soooooooo goood.

• À la recherche du temps perdu by Marcel Proust

'I was never sad in the morning, and every day was a fresh day for me.' this line reminded me of this one from the second volume of Proust - "I was only unhappy for one day at a time."

New terms
glacis - a gently sloping bank, in particular one that slopes down from a fort, exposing attackers to the defenders' missiles

octopus orchid - an epiphytic, sympodial New World orchid native to Central America, the West Indies, Colombia, Venezuela, and southern Florida

obeah - Obeah (sometimes spelled Obi, Obeah, Obeya, or Obia) is a system of spiritual and healing practices developed among enslaved West Africans in the West Indies. Obeah is difficult to define, as it is not a single, unified set of practices; the word "Obeah" was historically not often used to describe one's own practices.

Lines I Liked

• Money is good but no money can pay for a crazy wife in your bed.

• Have spunks and do battle for yourself.

• I feel that this place is my enemy and on your side.

• What am I doing in this place and who am I?

I'm off to a brief stay in green Gretna, and moving onwards to the fictional land of split personalities. Happy happy holidays and have a merry new year if I don't blob before then!

We were careless and wild, and I suppose we could be thought of as a sign of the life the war was being fought to preserve.

A Separate Peace by John Knowles

Spoiler Alert: Plot Summary
This is a story about friendship, rivalry, and what war (or the possibility of it) does to a generation of young men. Our narrator is Gene, a student at the Devon School (situated in a similar physical location to the non-fictional Philips Exeter School). He is spending the summer at the school with his friend Phineas and a small group of boys, and while they have some responsibilities, they find that most of the rules that summer are dramatically relaxed, and they have a sort of kingdom unto themselves. If you haven't read this book, I don't want to spoil it for you, because there's a rather central piece of plot that's critical to the whole book. Well. I've decided. Even though I'm in the "spoiler" section, I'm not going to tell you. You'll just have to read it yourself. Let's just say that the story starts with two young men and ends with one. 
Spoiler Over: Continue Here

More than anything, this book made me miss the state of New Hampshire. While I was living there, I loved many things - my work, my students, the epic snowfalls - the thing I fell in love with more than anything else was the actual state itself. New Hampshire, if you haven't been, is a stunning state, and the lines in the book about 'the open New Hampshire sky' and 'the north country' made me miss it dearly. So consider this blob a love letter to you, NH. 

See you on the quad in fifteen!
Gene is consistently doing what Phineas tells him to, and Phineas's way of expecting behaviors reminded me very much of a certain friend of my sister's (and now mine) who has a similar ability. She used to text my sister in college with things like, "Looking forward to throwing frisbee - see you on the quad in fifteen!" And she would expect her throwing partner, regardless of my sister's previous plans or desires. Here's an example of this with Gene:

At that time it would never have occurred to me to say, 'I don't feel like it tonight,' which was the plain truth every night. I was subject to the dictates of my mind, which gave me the maneuverability of a strait jacket. 'We're off, pal,' Finny would call out, and acting against every instinct of my nature, I went without a thought of protest.

Phineas
Phineas is really the star of this book, so I wanted to share some lines that encapsulate him. Here are a few I liked:

• Although he was rarely conscious of it, Phineas was always being watched, like the weather.

• Finny had tremendous loyalty to the class, as he did to any group he belonged to, beginning with him and me and radiating outward past the limits of humanity toward spirits and clouds and stars.

• To Gene - "You never waste your time. That's why I have to do it for you." heh heh heh.

• Phineas bought things only on impulse and only when he had the money, and since the two states rarely coincided his purchases were few and strange. I love this sentence so much. 

Gene
It's not clear to me if this is on purpose, but Gene is a pretty unlikable dude. He spends some of the book thinking Phineas is plotting against him, then decides that isn't happening, then can't really undo the thing he does while he's laboring under his false delusions. Unfortunately, I think these are two lines that capture him well: 

• Another boy, Leper(Lepellier), on Gene - "You always were a lord of the manor, weren't you? A swell guy, except when the chips were down. You always were a savage underneath."

• Gene, on Phineas - "Once again I had the desolating sense of having all along ignored what was finest in him."

The war
The war is really the other star of this book. The novel unfolds in the years 1942-43, and the war is a permanent lurking presence, just around the corner for the young men and in every way expected. I thought it was fascinating (and disturbing) how Gene describes later that this time really framed his entire perception of the world. 

The war was and is reality for me. I still instinctively live and think in its atmosphere.

It is this special America, a very untypical one I guess, an unfamiliar transitional blur in the memories of most people, which is the real America for me.

America has fought in many wars in my lifetime, but none that involved drafting, and none which were so all-consuming as the world wars were. It feels really important to me that we remember what that felt like, if for no other reason than that we fight like hell to keep it from happening again. Here are a few things that felt like "truisms" for Gene.

• The war will always be fought very far from America and it will never end. This sentence could be true for several of the conflicts and wars we've engaged in, unfortunately.

• Sixteen is the key and crucial and natural age for a human to be, and people of all other ages are ranged in an orderly manner ahead of and behind you as a harmonious setting for the sixteen-year-olds of this world. 

• Everyone listens to news broadcasts five or six times every day. Amusingly, my only reference point for this was 'Potterwatch'. I mean, I listen to NPR on the regular, but not quite that often.

• There are just tiny fragments of pleasure and luxury in the world, and there is something unpatriotic about enjoying them. 

Books this book reminded me of
The Lord of the Flies - when boys are a whole world unto themselves

Doctor Zhivago - in particular, the scene when the boys go dig the railroad out from under the snow

The Catcher in the Rye - there was a really familiar Salinger-esque sense to this novel, which made me like it immediately, but which also made me concerned it was not going to end happily.

All Quiet on the Western Front - the idea of the impact of a war on a generation. In All Quiet, the war is WWI, and his fighting defines his life.

The war has ruined us for everything. We are not youth any longer. We don't want to take the world by storm. We are fleeing. We fly from ourselves. From our life. We were eighteen and had begun to love life and the world; and we had to shoot it to pieces. The first bomb, the first explosion, burst in our hearts. We are cut off from activity, from striving, from progress. We believe in such things no longer, we believe in the war.

Seasons
I loved that Phineas loved winter, as it is one of my favorite seasons. My favorite seasons are, in order, Fall, Winter, Spring, and Summer. What are your favorites, dear readers? I loved this line from Phineas:

The winter loves me, he retorted, and then, disliking the whimsical sound of that, added, 'I mean as much as you can say a season can love. What I mean is, I love winter, and when you really love something, then it loves you back, in whatever way it has to love. 

Words, Wonderful Words
inveigle - persuade (someone) to do something by means of deception or flattery

effulgence - brightness taken to the extreme; one may be dazzled by it, stunned by it, or even overcome by it. Usually used to refer to the sun or some other mega-star, effulgence can also be used more figuratively.

decalogue - the Ten Commandments

Lines I loved

• Looking back now across fifteen years, I could see with great clarity the fear I had lived in, which must mean that in the interval I had succeeded in a very important undertaking: I must have made my escape from it.

• This was the tree, and it seemed to me standing there to resemble those men, the giants of your childhood, whom you encounter years later and find that they are not merely smaller in relation to your growth, but that they are absolutely smaller, shrunken by age. In this double demolition the old giants have become pigmies while you were looking the other way. isn't this a fabulous line? I love the part about 'in this double demolition...' 

• Happiness had disappeared along with rubber, silk, and many other staples, to be replaced by the wartime synthetic, high morale, for the duration. 

• We reminded them of what peace was like, of lives which were not bound up with destruction.

• The closer victory came the faster we were shuttled around America in pursuit of a role to play in a drama which suddenly, underpopulated from the first, now had too many actors.

Well, dear blobbists, I wish you the very happiest of holidays and a lovely new year, if I don't blob again before then. Squeeze your dear ones, listen to the brag of your heart, and remember we much cherish peace anywhere and everywhere that we find it and we make it. Keep each other safe. Keep faith. Good night.

She comprehended the perversity of life, that in the struggle lies the joy.

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

Spoiler Alert: Plot Summary
This is the first of seven autobiographies which chronicle the life of Marguerite Johnson, aka Maya Angelou. We start off with Maya being sent with her brother Bailey to live with her grandmother and uncle in Stamps, Alabama. As time goes on, Maya eventually goes to live with her mother in St. Louis, as well as in San Francisco, and spends time with her father at various points as well. Some pretty rough stuff goes down (think mom's boyfriend getting too friendly with an 8-year-old Maya) but Maya manages to persevere into young adulthood, at which time she becomes a parent herself.
Spoiler Over: Continue Here

Blob friends, 
   I didn't love this book, nor did I dislike it. I really liked various parts of it, and most of all, I really liked Maya Angelou herself after reading it. As a book, I'm not sure I'll walk away remembering every detail for years to come, but it definitely made an impression. Here are some other thoughts...

Hot takes
- Maya Angelou is very funny.
- Maya Angelou had a pretty intense coming of age, and it's fairly miraculous that she not only survived, but thrived and then recounted it so eloquently for us.
[For evidence, see such scenes as "driving dead drunk dad home from Mexico when you don't know how to drive, let alone drive stick shift", or "bounces back after her mother's boyfriend rapes her when she is 8"]
- Maya Angelou is a badass.

Seven volumes of autobiography
Okay, so I didn't know there were seven volumes in her autobiography, or that this was only the first of the seven. Admittedly, she had a pretty cool first 17 years, so I can see there being plenty of fodder for more books, but seven? That feels like a lot. That reminds me of someone else... (Cough) Proust? ;)

Maya and Bailey/Scout and Jem
The relationship between Maya and Bailey reminded me a lot of the relationship between Scout and Jem. Both were the only pair of children in their families, both grew up under one strong parental voice (Atticus, Momma) and both fiercely fought for the other at various critical points of childhood.

Momma and Marilla
Since we're on the topic of other books this book reminded me of, I'll just also let you know that Momma (Maya's grandma) reminded me a lot of Marilla Cuthbert. Some samplings:

• Momma never answered questions directly put to her on any subject except religion.

• Knowing Momma, I knew that I never knew Momma. Her African-bush secretiveness and suspiciousness had been compounded by slavery and confirmed by centuries of promises made and promises broken.

Mom's family in St. Louis
Lots of things happen when Maya and Bailey move to St. Louis for a time and live with their mother. This was one of my favorite lines, in reference to her mother's brothers:

I admit I was thrilled by their meanness. They beat up whites and Blacks with the same abandon, and liked each other so much that they never needed to learn the art of making outside friends.

Not condoning violence here, but I liked the idea that they were so insular they never bothered to learn how to meet other people. 

Did de-segregation burst something beautiful within the Black community? 
I'm sure I am not the first person to ask this question. In fact, I'm sure there are whole treatises and papers on the subject. I mention it here because the community that Maya grows up in in Stamps, while certainly suffering in a variety of ways because it is segregated from the white community, has an incredible warmth and vibrancy and community. I'm sure various sub-communities still exist within black culture, but this was the first time I read something that really made me stop and go, "ooh, did we ruin something while we were trying to fix something else?"

Lampfish of Twill
Was one of my favorite books growing up, and I thought of it when I read this line: 

• The lamplight in the Store gave a soft make-believe feeling to our world which made me want to whisper and walk about on tiptoe.

After
As Maya tries to recover from being raped, she's still only 8 or 9 years old, so in many ways she doesn't really know how to process what she's feeling. I liked what this line captured, and it reminded me of the way that Roxane Gay talks about her life in terms of "before" and "after". 

For nearly a year, I sopped around the house, the Store, the school and the church, like an old biscuit, dirty and inedible.

Mrs. Flowers
Mrs. Flowers is a delightful character, and a real person who serves as a critical role model for Maya when she returns to Stamps after her time in St. Louis. She reminded me of many such a character - the old wealthy woman who shares her books - only here, her library and wealth are all the more remarkable because she is also a black woman in the early 20th century. Here are some lines I liked: 

• It would be safe to say that she made me proud to be Negro, just by being herself.

• I was liked, and what a difference it made.

• I wouldn't miss Mrs. Flowers, for she had given me her secret word which called forth a djinn who was to serve me all my life: books.

We are more alike than we are unalike
This is a line from a famous Maya Angelou poem that Oprah references in her introduction to my copy of this book. It struck me immediately, because I expected to have little in common with Maya, and instead found myself over and over again seeing points of connection and similarity. Here's the list I came up with: 

- Preserving (In Stamps the custom was to can everything that could possibly be preserved.) While this reminded me of my own family, it also reminded me of my most recent read, and Paradise Pickles and Preserves. So interesting how my books never fail to follow each other in seen and unforeseen ways.

- Singer sewing machines - Momma's black Singer sewing machine is featured prominently early on, which reminded me of my own sitting next to me and my mother's and my sister's and so on and so on. 

- Marguerite - Maya's name is Marguerite, and some members of family call her Ritie, while her brother ends up giving her the nickname Maya, which clearly stuck. Marguerite is a family name that shows up all over my maternal lineage, so I immediately felt a kinship with her. 

- Refuge in books/library - Maya has a lot to handle and absorb as she grows up, but, like me, she found refuge in books and in that wondrous invention, the library. 

When spring came to St. Louis, I took out my first library card, and since Bailey and I seemed to be growing apart, I spent most of my Saturdays at the library (no interruptions) breathing in the world of penniless shoeshine boys who, with goodness and perseverance, became rich, rich men, and gave baskets of goodies to the poor on holidays. The little princesses who were mistaken for maids, and the long-lost children mistaken for waifs, became more real to me than our house, our mother, our school, or Mr. Freeman.

- Frequently internalizes rather than verbalizes - I've worked on this over the years, but young Maya reminded me a great deal of myself. 

- Quilts - there's a great line about Momma checking to see if their feet are clean under the quilts. 

- Momma (Grandma) threatening you with her eyes to stay still and quiet at church - my grandma also struggled to keep me in line at church from time to time. ;)

- Laughter so easily turns to hysteria for imaginative children - I loved this line, and it reminded me of the only time I was kicked out of my house (very briefly, to stand on the back porch - no big deal, to be clear) which was for laughing too hard at the dinner table and being unable to control myself. 

- Feeling ungainly/unpretty, esp. as compared to family - Maya is surrounded by beauty in her family, and she feels a little like an ugly duckling, which I identified with. 

- Bologna, potato salad - Both staples at the Stamps summer picnics; both featured at many a family gathering I attended. 

- Going to parties and wanting to read - I distinctly remember going to a family get together, and upon seeing that there were several other children who had been allowed to read the latest Harry Potter in the front room, begging my mother to be allowed to return to the car and read my own copy. (She acquiesced.)

- Playing croquet & pinochle - I'm not sure why so many of Maya's childhood pastimes overlapped with ones I encountered, but again, I found it striking.

- Oakland, San Francisco - I found it particularly interesting to read the sections which took place in Oakland and San Francisco, as I have been there several times for work in the last year. 

Great lines about race
There were so many to choose from, but I've cultivated a selection for you. 

• If growing up is painful for the Southern Black girl, being aware of her displacement is the rust on the razor that threatens the throat. It is an unnecessary insult.

• In Stamps the segregation was so complete that most Black children didn't really, absolutely know what whites looked like. I remember never believing that whites were really real.

• The Depression must have hit the white section of Stamps with cyclonic impact, but it seeped into the Black area slowly, like a thief with misgivings.

• Maya, on a woman named Mrs. Cullinan calling her the wrong name repeatedly, then renaming her "Mary" to suit her: I decided I wouldn't pee on her if her heart was on fire. lolololololz

• Every person I knew had a hellish horror of being 'called out of his name'. It was a dangerous practice to call a Negro anything that could be loosely construed as insulting because of the centuries of their having been called n***ers, jigs, dinges, blackbirds, crows, boots and spooks.

• The Black woman in the South who raises sons, grandsons and nephews had her heartstrings tied to a hanging noose.

• The night suddenly became enemy territory, and I knew that if my brother was lost in this land he was forever lost. This line and the one above reminded me so vividly of Emmett Till. 

• On thinking Joe Louis had lost a big fight against Max Schmeling (a white man): My race groaned. It was our people falling. It was another lynching, yet another Black man hanging on a tree. One more woman ambushed and raped. A Black Boy whipped and maimed. It was hounds on the trail of a man running through slimy swamps. It was a white woman slapping her maid for being forgetful.

• It was awful to be a Negro and have no control over my life.

• The humiliation of hearing Momma describe herself as if she had no last name to the young white girl was equal to the physical pain. It seemed terribly unfair to have a toothache and a headache and have to bear at the same time the heavy burden of Blackness.

Great lines more generally

• The world had taken a deep breath and was having doubts about continuing to revolve. 

• On meeting her dad for the first time: And my seven-year-old world humpty-dumptied, never to be put back together again. I love the use of humpty-dumpty as a verb. :)

• Weekdays revolved on a sameness wheel. They turned into themselves so steadily and inevitably that each seemed to be the original of yesterday's rough draft.

• Children's talent to endure stems from their ignorance of alternatives.

• There was going to be a storm and it was a perfect night for rereading Jane Eyre.

Words new to me
Gladstone - a small portmanteau suitcase built over a rigid frame which could separate into two equal sections, typically made of stiff leather and often belted with lanyards. The bags are named after William Ewart Gladstone (1809–1898), the four-time Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

catheads - a Southern term for biscuits

didoes - mischievous tricks; pranks; antics. Also, baubles or trifles

mumbledy-peg - a children's game played with a pocketknife, the object being to cause the blade to stick in the ground or a wooden surface by flipping the knife in a number of prescribed ways or from a number of prescribed positions

I'll leave you with two of my favorite lines:

Idiots and lunatics drove cars, why not the brilliant Marguerite Johnson?

Although I had no regrets, I told myself sadly that growing up was not the painless process one would have thought it to be.

If I don't blob before we get there, happiest of holidays and happy winter, friends! I'm off to A Separate Peace. 

They were strangers who had met in a chance encounter. They had known each other before Life began.

The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy

Spoiler Alert: Plot Summary
The God of Small Things is a tale of twins. We follow Estha (Esthappen) and Rahel through their present, past, and future, in India and abroad, delving into tragedy and reliving their childhood. They are, in many ways, more a we than a he and a she. They seem to know each other's innermost thoughts and feel each other's pain. The story weaves us back and forth from past to present, and we learn the circumstances that split Estha and Rahel apart, the eventual death of their mother, and how the twins are eventually reunited.

The rest of the family plays an integral role in the plot, from the twins' great-aunt Baby Kochamma, to their grandparents Mammachi and Pappachi, to their uncle Chacko and cousin Sophie Mol. The story is full of death and full of life, packed with flavor and aching with pain and desire. Ultimately, what the twins find and seek is not so much resolution as reincarnation.
Spoiler Over: Continue Here

People whose names begin with the letter D
Dear readers, I wanted to like this book. In fact, I wanted to LOVE this book, since two of my dearest friends (both with names that start with D) are big fans. Alas, I did not love this book. I won't go so far as to say that I hated it, but I will say that it wasn't a very pleasurable reading experience to me. In much the same way that Great Expectations is full of sadness, this book is full of trials and challenges for its characters. But, where GE succeeds for me is that it gives the reader levity and joy within that desolation. This is not to say that only happy books are good ones - that, certainly, is not true. But in this case, I wanted not only a little more joy, but also to genuinely care about what happened to the characters. Perhaps because it took place mostly in retrospectives, I didn't feel that I really got to know the characters, so when things happened to them, I didn't really care very much. In any case, I always encourage readers to make their own decisions about books, and of a trio of readers, this book still has a 67% recommendation rating, thanks to D2. So make up your own mind. 

Capital letters When the Mood seems to Strike
One of the things I really liked about this book was that it reminded me very much of the lyrical quality to several other books I've read by Indian authors (Home and the World, Haroun and the Sea of Stories). Obviously I don't want to lump all authors of a country together, but I do find that there are some similarities and kinships I really enjoy. One of these is a propensity to use capital letters in meaningful ways. Here is an example: 

In those early amorphous years when memory had only just begun, when life was full of Beginnings and no Ends, and Everything was Forever, Esthappen and Rahel thought of themselves together as Me, and separately, individually, as We or Us.

Church domes painted blue like the sky.
During a funeral, Rahel examines the church ceiling, and it is domed and painted like the sky, which reminded me very much of the church I grew up going to. I used to count the stars in the ceiling and imagine the sky beyond that sky, so I liked the idea of us having similar mental explorations continents apart. 

Now tell me, are you jelly, or are you jam? 
Another thing I really liked about this book was that the family owns a factory called 'Paradise Pickles and Preserves'. As I've mentioned in other posts (Please Look After Mom) the process of preserving and pickling makes me think fondly of my mom and my aunts and my great aunts. I loved this line in particular, as my mother and I have discussed the difference between jelly and jam at length: 

They used to make pickles, squashes, jams, curry powders, and canned pineapples. And banana jam (illegally) after the FPO (Food Products Organization) banned it because according to their specifications it was neither jam nor jelly. Too thin for jelly and too thick for jam. An ambiguous, unclassifiable consistency, they said.

Pappachi
Pappachi reminded me in a very negative way of Things Fall Apart and some other classic wife-beaters in literature. That said, here are a few lines about him that I enjoyed:

In the evenings, when he knew visitors were expected, he would sit on the verandah and sew buttons that weren't missing onto his shirts, to create the impression that Mammachi neglected him. haghaghaghahgagh.

His light-brown eyes were polite yet maleficent, as though he was making an effort to be civil to the photographer while plotting to murder his wife. This sentence is so great. 

Feeling vomity
I loved this exchange between Estha and Ammu, his mother, at the movies: 

"Now WHAT?"
"Feeling vomity," Estha said.
"Just feeling or d'you want to?"
"Don't know."

It reminded me of many a conversation I have had with a middle schooler who was feeling vomity, and/or who might have already felt vomity and, say, thrown up in the bathroom sink. 

Books this book reminded me of:

• Please Look After Mom (house as factory, pickling, preserving)

• The Home and the World (zamindars, revolution, relationship between castes)

• Haroun and the Sea of Stories (Capital Letters but also lyrical storytelling)

• Hotel New Hampshire (incest, siblings intertwined)

• Things Fall Apart (treatment of wife beating as banal)

• Ulysses (made me feel vomity, tbqh)

• The House of Spirits (muteness becoming its own character)

Striking Sentences

• The old house on the hill wore its steep, gabled roof pulled over its ears like a low hat.

• A hot river and a pickle factory. 

• This was the trouble with families. Like invidious doctors, they knew just where it hurt.

New words

dhobi - a caste group of India whose traditional occupation was washing clothes

veshya - a Hindu of an upper caste traditionally assigned to commercial and agricultural occupations

estivation - ZOOLOGY: prolonged torpor or dormancy of an animal during a hot or dry period; BOTANY: the arrangement of petals and sepals in a flower bud before it opens

mangosteen - The purple mangosteen, known simply as mangosteen, is a tropical evergreen tree believed to have originated in the Sunda Islands of the Malay archipelago and the Moluccas of Indonesia

mundu - in Kerala and other parts of southern India: a large piece of cloth worn wrapped around the waist and (when worn by men) frequently having the lower back edge pulled up between the legs and tucked into the waistband

lambent - (of light or fire) glowing, gleaming, or flickering with a soft radiance

kathakali - Kathakali (Malayalam: കഥകളി) is one of the major forms of classical Indian dance. It is a "story play" genre of art, but one distinguished by the elaborately colorful make-up, costumes and facemasks that the traditionally male actor-dancers wear.

I will leave you with this line, which was a reference to the kathakali, but I think speaks quite clearly to a broader truth: 

The Great Stories are the ones you have heard and want to hear again. The ones you can enter anywhere and inhabit comfortably. They don't deceive you with thrills and trick endings. They don't surprise you with the unforeseen. They are familiar as the house you live in. Or the smell of your lover's skin. You know how they end, yet you listen as though you don't. In the way that although you know that one day you will die, you live as though you won't. In the Great Stories you know who lives, who dies, who finds love, who doesn't. And yet you want to know again.

I'm off in search of more Great Stories, and to explore the beauty of southern California! Onwards to Maya Angelou. 

I used to be in a very revolutionary mood, but now I think that we'll gain nothing by violence.

Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak

Spoiler Alert: Plot Summary

Cast of Characters (not all-inclusive) Zhivago, aka Yuri, aka Doctor Zhivago
Lara, aka Antipova (married name) (Zhivago's love, and one-time baby mama)
Antonina Alexandrovna Gromeko, aka Tonya (Zhivago's wife, and two-time baby mama)
Antipov, aka Strelnikov, aka Pasha (Lara's husband)
Viktor Ippolitovich Komarovsky (Lara's first lover/tormentor)
Evgraf Zhivago (half brother to Zhivago)
Can't remember her name (#sorrynotsorry) (Zhivago's second wife, and two-time baby mama)

Oh, I'm sorry, are you confused? I didn't even include the alternate diminutives, so really, I'm cutting you some slack here. 

In all seriousness, though, here's the gist of it: 

This is the story of Zhivago - the man, the myth, the legend. We begin with him in his boyhood, and we end shortly after his death. The interim is replete with the stuff of his life - love, loss, adventure, work, revolution (because come on, he's a Russian, so obvi), family, writing, and some more love. We travel with him across the great expanse of Mother Russia, we fall hard with him for the forbidden Lara, and we feel for him when he is caught within the various webs of war and revolution in his home country. This book is an epic in the very best sense, and like any good epic, it's a wild ride.

Spoiler Over: Continue Here

Oh, I'm sorry, were you wanting more plot just then? I don't feel inclined to acquiesce to your request. You'll simply have to pick up a copy (or borrow mine) and read it yourself if you'd like to know more of the details. 

So, what did I think of this book, you DEMAND TO KNOW? I loved it. It officially goes into a very specific category for me called "Books where I don't really like any of the characters but somehow the book is one of my all-time favorites anyway". There is one other book in it. Any guesses? Starts with "Gr" and ends in "pectations."

It's not that I found Dr. Z unlikable, but more that he felt kind of entitled and aimless toward the end. He also had a lot of children, and didn't seem super invested in figuring out how they would do that whole growing up thing, which I just can't condone. But there's something sweeping and grand and majestic about this book that's sort of impossible to capture, and that's what I loved about it. I have alphabetized and categorized my thoughts for your reading pleasure. 

Cortèges and Cholera
This book has a stellar opening scene. We begin with Dr. Zhivago's mother's funeral, and we're quite literally standing over her grave in the middle of snowstorm. It's totally epic and amazing. It also reminded me of the opening of Love in the Time of Cholera for some reason, something about funerals and somber carriages and such. 

Fragrances and Flashbacks
Often, authors write of smells that make me yearn to eat the food in the book, or experience a specific moment in space and time. But Pasternak had a real knack for writing about smells, and weather, and things dealing with the physical world. Here are a few of my favorite fragrance flashbacks (anyone else thinking about Proust and his madeleines?):

• Here she stopped and, closing her eyes, breathed in the intricately fragrant air of the vast space around her. It was dearer to her than a father and a mother, better than a lover, and wiser than a book. Lara, on returning home. I know it's odd, but this is what the smell of manure and hay does for me.

• The handkerchief had the mingled smell of mandarine and of Tonya's hot palm, equally enchanting. The childishly naïve smell was intimately reasonable, like a word whispered in the dark. Aren't these metaphors spectacular? 

• Then, like a telegram received on the way, or like greetings from Meliuzeevo, a fragrance floated through the window, familiar, as if addressed to Yuri Andreevich... Everywhere there were blossoming lindens. The ubiquitous wafting of this smell seemed to precede the northbound train, like a rumor spread to all junctions, watch houses and little stations, which the travelers found everywhere, already established and confirmed.

• The air smells of pancakes and vodka, as during the week before Lent, when nature herself seems to rhyme with the calendar. I love everything about this sentence. 

(Sometimes) Lugubrious Lara
I don't want to go into too much detail about Lara here (because I'd really prefer that you go read the book) but here are a few lines I liked about her: 

• Lara liked to talk in semidarkness with candles burning.
• I'm broken, I have a crack in me for all my life.

Love and Lovers
Since this is a Russian novel, there's no shortage of love in it. Okay, so maybe that's not true of all Russians, but it's true for several of the Russians I have read for this blob. 

• I don't think I'd love you so deeply if you had nothing to complain of and nothing to regret.
• I love you wildly, insanely, infinitely. 

I am not sure I want to be loved insanely. Infinitely sounds nice, and wildly sounds exciting, but insanely gets into some tricky territory, imho. 

Playing Pianos

In the corner a tuner produced the same note a hundred times and then spilled out the beads of an arpeggio.

I loved this line because it made me think of our piano in the living room, and Mr. Donley (sp?) ping-ping-pinging at it to get the strings just right. 

Philosophy and Pepper (not be confused with that famous pairing of Salt and Pepper)

• I think philosophy should be used sparingly as a seasoning for art and life. To be occupied with it alone is the same as eating horseradish by itself.

There is no shortage of philosophy in this novel (because, again, Russian) but this was by far my favorite line, from Lara, to Zhivago. 

Reading Russians

Reading this book reminded me of several fantastic Russian works, and I was ticking off a mental list of their common themes. Here's what I came up with: 

• Philosophy
• Existentialism/Death
• Trains
• Love affairs
• Strange coincidences
• Revolution

I thought of Bulgakov and Tolstoy, Solzhenitsyn and Dostoevsky, and then, a thought came to me which clearly should have struck me before. What OTHER book that I love has all of these components? Did you guess Atlas Shrugged? And what did I recently learn about Ayn Rand. Was it that her real name was Alisa Zinov'yevna Rosenbaum. (slaps self on forehead) Of COURSE SHE'S RUSSIAN. Now it all makes sense. 

Okay, now that I've shared that epiphany (epiffy-wot?), here are a few things that felt quintessentially Russian: 

• Now, as never before, it was clear to him that art is always, ceaselessly, occupied with two things. It constantly reflects on death and thereby constantly creates life.

• The fear known as spymania had reduced all speech to a single, formal, predictable pattern. The display of good intentions in discourse was not conducive to conversation. Passenger and driver went the greater part of the way in silence.

• The war was an artificial interruption of life, as if existence could be postponed for a time (how absurd!). Note - that is the author's commentary, not mine. Though I quite agree. 

It is perhaps also worth noting that one of my favorite scenes in the book took place when Zhivago and Lara crossed paths in the local library. Get it? Reading Russians? ;)

Trains and Trajectories
Trains came up many times in this book, and I was totally here for it. I love trains, and train travel, and there's something that feels deeply romantic and also functional to me about train travel. Like you get to do two things at once but you can also be a normal person on a train, whereas on a bus or a boat or a plane you're more rumpled by the action of the vehicle or the air or the water.

This could just as easily have lived in the fragrance section, but since it was the train station they were describing, I decided to include it here.

It smelled of early city winter, trampled maple leaves, melting snow, engine fumes, and warm rye bread, which was baked in the basement of the station buffet and had just been taken out of the oven.

Unfreedom

Despite the absence of fetters, chains, and guards, the doctor was forced to submit to his unfreedom, which looked imaginary.

Doesn't that line just blow your mind a little? Just a little? Or maybe a lot? So good. 

Whispers and Waiting
I loved this exchange: 

He tugged at Yura's sleeve, trying to tell him something. 'Aren't you ashamed to whisper in a stranger's house? What will people think of you?' Yura stopped him and refused to listen.

Because it reminded me of this moment from Proust: 
-- "Now, don't start whispering! How would you like to come into a house and find everyone
muttering to themselves?" -- YBN's great-aunt, on why whispering is impolite

Words of Weather
Several people asked me about my experience reading this book, and what I told them each was this: I would, without a doubt, like to live in a world that was entirely composed of Pasternak's weather. He has many great qualities as a writer (in my opinion) but I fell in love again and again with the way he described the physical world and its weather. Here are some highlights for your pleasure. 

Even the sun, which also seemed like a local accessory, shone upon the scene by the rails with an evening shyness, approaching as if timorously, as a cow from the herd grazing nearby would if it it were to come to the railway and start looking at the people.

The cow either tossed her head angrily or stretched her neck and mooed rendingly and pitifully, while beyond the black sheds of Meliuzeevo the stars twinkled, and from them to the cow stretched threads of invisible compassion, as if they were the cattle yards of other worlds, where she was pitied.

The moonlit night was astounding, like mercy or the gift of clairvoyance.

Suddenly out of the cloud a heavy mushroom rain poured down obliquely, sparkling in the sun. It fell in hasty drops at the same tempo as the speeding train clacked its wheels and rattled its bolts, as if trying to catch up with it or afraid of lagging behind.

Yuri
Here is my favorite line about Yuri, aka Dr. Zhivago:

• And to the muttering of the wind, Yuri Andreevich slept, woke up, and fell asleep in a quick succession of happiness and suffering, impetuous and alarming, like this changing weather, like this unstable night.

Lines I Liked

• The weather was trying to get better. lol. love this. 

• They went outside and did not recognize the air, as after a long illness.

• This was what life was, this was what experience was, this was what the seekers of adventure were after, this was what art had in view - coming to your dear ones, returning to yourself, the renewing of existence.

Lines that were in contention for the title of this blog: 

I may arrive any day now like a bolt from the blue.

Everything around fermented, grew, and rose on the magic yeast of being.

But everything truly great is without beginning, like the universe. It does not emerge, but is suddenly there, as if it always existed or fell from the sky.

So you've heard that there's nothing good coming, only difficulties, dangers, uncertainty?

Words Which Were New to Me
heliotrope - a plant of the borage family, cultivated for its fragrant purple or blue flowers, which are used in perfume; a light purple color, similar to that typical of heliotrope flowers

nicotania - an ornamental plant related to tobacco, with tubular flowers that are particularly fragrant at night

taiga - the sometimes swampy coniferous forest of high northern latitudes, especially that between the tundra and steppes of Siberia and North America

virago - a domineering, violent, or bad-tempered woman 

Congratulations, dear ones, we've made it to the end of this blob. I'll leave you with thoughts that seem to encapsulate this novel, which serves, in a way, as a love letter to Lara and to Mother Russia. 

And this expanse is Russia, his incomparable one, renowned far and wide, famous mother, martyr, stubborn, muddle-headed, whimsical, adored, with her eternally majestic and disastrous escapades, which can never be foreseen!

It's not for nothing that you stand at the end of my life, my secret, my forbidden angel, under a sky of wars and rebellions, just as you once rose up under the peaceful sky of childhood at its beginning.

With that, I'll leave you. I'm reading many books for a personal book bingo (and read 24 for a previous book bingo) which is why my blobs have been less frequent. I could apologize, but that would imply that I'm sorry I'm reading so much. Which I'm not. So look for me some time, perhaps soon, perhaps not! Off to The God of Small Things! Join me if you dare!

How brave do you need to be to satisfy yourself?

March by Geraldine Brooks

Spoiler Alert: Plot Summary
March is an extrapolation of the life of Mr. March, as in the Marches of Little Women. We follow Mr. March through the past and the present, and experience not only what he discloses to Marmee and his girls, but also the things he keeps close to the breast. He serves as a chaplain in the Civil War for the Union side, he peddles his way through the southern states as a young man, and he triumphs and tumbles as he precariously navigates his space as a white man, an educator, a father, and a man of god. He does us and the March family proud more often than once, and like any human being, he makes his fair share of missteps. Injury and tragedy conspire to send him to Washington, D.C. to a military "hospital", where he is joined by Marmee. His conscience ebbs and flows, shifts and grows, and in the end, though he returns with a heavy heart, he is reunited with the Little Women. 
Spoiler Over: Continue Here

This book was pretty spectacular. I wasn't really sure what to expect, since I had forgotten adding it to my list, and I've never read anything else by Geraldine Brooks. If you're an Alcott fan, I highly suggest that you read this. Don't expect the same tone as Little Women, per se, but Brooks does a stunning job of weaving her story into the ends and outskirts of Little Women. I think both books end up the better for it on the other side. On a very basic note, Little Women is a story about white women in New England, and in many ways, it seems to exist out of time in a way. They have their ups and downs, but there's a kind of beautiful comfort that seeps through the pages. This book is grittier, and packed with nuance. Emotion and connection and history are present in a more substantial capacity. This book seems to round out not just the fictional side of the March family, but the historical moment in which they lived. 

Here are the rest of my thoughts about it, in no real order.
Why have I never heard of this book before?
It won the Pulitzer Prize. Had you heard of this book before? I feel like the subtitle for my second list of 100 books should be "Books You SHOULD Have Heard Of Before, But Probably Didn't". This certainly makes my top ten favorites now, and I didn't even remember adding it to my reading list. 

On writing as a man
I'm always intrigued when an author chooses a protagonist who is of the opposite sex, and ultimately, I am not always pleased by the choice. I'm especially curious (perhaps suspicious?) when women write as a man - I suppose I always wonder if there's a patriarchal reason driving it. Why can't she be the protagonist? Is she not worthy of heroism herself? 

In this case, however, I was pleasantly surprised. Ms. Brooks did such a wonderful job of writing as a man that I was actually disappointed when she briefly switched over to Marmee's point of view. I thought, oh no! Where has Mr. March gone!? In my humble opinion, this is a sign of a job well done in writing across difference.

Why I have always wanted to be a March
Perhaps you, too, read Little Women and wanted to be a member of that family, dear reader. This book built on those feelings and made proud to want to be a March. Allow me to explain. 

The girls are close, which always resonated with me, having two sisters I am close with myself. But beyond that, they are kind. They are compassionate to their community and fierce protectors of their own family, and these things drew me to them originally. 

These lines imbued my long-burning desires to be a March with a kind of fierce pride:

• Some call them less than human; I call her more than saintly - a model, indeed, for our own little women. Mr. March, on Grace, a slave he encounters first in his peddling days, and then again in the war. 

• But would it have been better so? I am not convinced of it. For instead of idleness, vanity, or an intellect formed by the spoon-feeding of others, my girls have acquired energy, industry, and independence. In times as hard as these are now become, I cannot think this an unfortunate barter. That's right, Mr. March! Energy, industry, and independence!

• We don't give up our girls for a dozen fortunes, Aunt. Rich or poor, we will keep this family together and find a happiness in true affection that some will never know, because all the wealth in the world cannot buy it. True affection can't be bought! 

• On the March family's role in the Underground Railroad (based, as Brooks states, on the Alcott family themselves): We had all learned long ago not to interrogate our railroad travelers, for reasons pragmatic as well as kind. The people who came to us were often in a sort of trance, brought on by fear, exhaustion, and, I imagined, a kind of mourning for what they had left behind - family, perhaps; friends, likely, and the certainty of all that had ever been familiar. A home in bondage is a home, still, and it is no light matter to leave such a place, knowing that one's act is irrevocable. I can't share them all here, but the flashbacks to the March family and their role in helping slaves are very powerful.

On going south to Oak Landing
Mr. March begins the war embedded with troops, but as the conflict continues, he is sent south to a plantation that has been turned into a kind of 'experiment'. The previous owners lease the farm and slaves to the government, and the slaves become paid laborers on the land. It turns out to be dramatically different than what Mr. March's northern sensibilities had prepared him for, but I thought Brooks did a brilliant job of conveying the many nuances that complicated the circumstances for many different parties involved. Here is Mr. March's description of the weather, which felt very à propos given the unbearable heat we had the last few weeks here in Philadelphia:

Spring here is not spring as we know it: the cool, wet promise of snowmelt and frozen ground yielding into mud. Here, a sudden heat falls out of the sky one day, and one breathes and moves as if deposited inside a kettle of soup. In response, vegetation shoots out of the ground with irresistible force. Just when the body wishes to slow down and give way to lassitude, it must instead accelerate, for the challenge is to keep human labor on a pace with the work of Nature, or else be overrun by the excesses of her abundance. Yes. A kettle of soup. That's JUST how I've been feeling. 

On exemplars, not saints
What I loved most about this book was the fact that the Marches, and in particular Mr. and Mrs. March, were portrayed not just as aggressive abolitionists, but flawed and complex thinkers. I think it is easy to look back at the horror of our country's history and as a white person say, "Oh, I would definitely have been an abolitionist, and I would have been different." This book not only explores what activism and abolitionism would have looked like, and the lengths one would have had to go to stay true to that within the confines of that rigid time, but also what the journey to understanding means to different people at different times. The Marches are not perfect, but I do think they act as paragons - examples of what resisting, and loving thy neighbor, and treating all human beings with decency and kindness could and should look like, whether it's 1862 or 2018. 

Mr. March's conflict
Mr. March struggles as he heals at the hospital, because he has been forced to abandon many of his closest acquaintances, and he cannot save them from violent death or return to slavery. He questions his ability to return to his own family, knowing that slaves and black people across his country are suffering so. This was really beautifully articulated, and I loved the exchanges he had with Grace, who serves as his nurse for part of this time. Here are a few snippets:

Grace, to Mr. March - "Do not presume that I have no experience with a conscience that flays me alive, every waking day."

Grace again - "I do not ask your absolution. I simply ask you to see that there is only one thing to do when we fall, and that is to get up, and go on with the life that is set in front of us, and try to do the good of which our hands are capable for the people who come in our way. That, at least, has been my path."

Grace, on Mr. March's suggestion that he re-join the army and support doctors - "We have had enough of white people ordering our existence! There are men of my own race more versed in how to fetch and carry than you will ever be. And there are Negro preachers aplenty who know the true language of our souls. A free people must learn to manage its own destiny."

Grace's parting words - "If you sincerely want to help us, go back to Concord and work with your own people. Write sermons that will prepare your neighbors to accept a world where black and white may one day stand as equals."

Words, Wonderful Words
inchoate - just begun and so not fully formed and developed (like the novel I'm working on!)

flotilla - a fleet of ships or boats (I knew this had something to do with water, but couldn't quite put my finger on it.)

Lines I Liked

• It was a family alive with good feeling, their zeal for reform matched by a zest for life.

• I had learned the meteorology of Marmee's temper: the plunging air pressure as a black cloud gathered, blotting out the radiance of her true nature; the noisy thunder of her rage; and finally the relief of a wild and heavy rain - tears, in copious cataracts, followed by a slew of resolutions to reform.

• In the months that had followed our marriage I quietly conspired to build beauty into our daily life.

In the end, what I liked most about this book was that it somehow felt like it was Ms. Brooks's story to tell. Which, by all accounts, it shouldn't have been. She is not an Alcott, she's not a descendant, and, in fact, she's Australian by birth. So this complex and nuanced history is not even necessarily hers to claim. And yet, she eloquently, effortlessly, and unequivocally crafted a story which seems to speak directly into and out of Little Women. As if Louisa May Alcott had written a letter to Ms. Brooks saying, "Won't you please extend my work a bit, and add Mr. March's portrait to the story?" So I say, as an ardent Alcott fan, well done, Ms. Brooks. Well done, indeed. 

I'll leave you with this line from Mr. March, in telling the story of his past: 

I went on peddling, though I ceased averting my eyes

Who knows if you are peddlers, dear readers, but I  will ask you this. Do not avert your eyes. See the world for what it is, and be industrious, be thoughtful, be kind, and act to protect the humans in the wake of whatever latest circumstances have cast them out to sea. 

I'm off to write and read - it's Doctor Zhivago next, if anyone cares to join. Keep each other safe. Keep faith. Good night.

What you have done will not please the Earth.

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

Spoiler Alert: Plot Summary
Things Fall Apart is a story of Nigerian village life, replete with love, pain, history, strife, and complex layers of nuance. It chronicles the life of Okonkwo, whose father disappointed him in lacking traditional 'masculine' qualities and goals for the time and place. Okonkwo takes several wives and builds his own reputation within the village of Umuofia, eventually earning a place as an egwuwu, an Umuofia elder who portrays an ancestral god. Okonkwo's early life is full of hard work to get to this point, but his middle age is full of tragedy and heartbreak. His family takes in a young boy who is sacrificed to the village by a nearby village after they murder a woman from Umuofia. The boy, Ikemefuna, lives with Okonkwo and family for several years, but eventually his role is put into motion and Okonkwo kills him with several other men from the village. Okonkwo's other sons disappoint him in various ways, the eldest eventually becoming interested in the Christian community that makes its way into villages as missionaries. Okonkwo gets exiled for accidentally killing a community member, and has to leave for seven years with his family. He spends this time planning his triumphant return, but when he makes it back to Umuofia, everything is different. The missionaries have gained a foothold with his people, and despite his best efforts, he is unable to force the white man out. Okonkwo tries to lead a short rebellion against the Christians, but after he kills one of them, he realizes that his attempts are fruitless, and in the final scene of the book, we find that Okonkwo has hung himself.
Spoiler Over: Continue Here

So as you can see, this book was SO UPLIFTING! ;) Okay, clearly it was not. I had a tough time getting into it, largely because of two main reasons: 

(1) Misogyny/Sexism
There are lots of articles about whether this was hyperbolic, or ironic, or INSERT PHRASE HERE, but as a reader, I just couldn't stomach it. Okonkwo beats his wives frequently, talks about how terrible female traits are, and wishes frequently that his favorite daughter was a boy. Here are a few snippets: 

• No matter how prosperous a man was, if he was unable to rule his women and his children (and especially his women) he was not really a man. Yep. Love reading about women being ruled.

• Apparently there is such a thing as 'too much wife-beating' - Interestingly, in one scene a woman's brothers defend her leaving her husband, because he beats her 'too much'. I was confused about how much wife-beating is an appropriate amount of wife-beating, and where we are to draw the line. 

(2) Homophobia
In addition to the numerous references to women as being less than, or property of, or ruled by men, there are loads of derogatory comments about 'effeminate men', men who 'are women', and men who don't condone clan violence. A quick review suggests that same-sex sexual activity is illegal in present-day Nigeria, and there are no LGBT protections. In northern Nigeria, you can face death by stoning. So that's swellsies. Too bad this book was written almost sixty years ago, and very little has changed. All I can say is, I'm not here for it. 

There were a few lines I liked, most of which were about yams, the main crop in Umuofia (though, notably, it's designated a 'man's crop'): 

• That year the harvest was sad, like a funeral, and many farmers wept as they dug up the miserable and rotting yams. 

• Yam, the king of crops, was a very exacting king.

• The faint and distant wailing of women settled like a sediment of sorrow on the earth.

• After her father's rebuke she developed an even keener appetite for eggs. And she enjoyed above all the secrecy in which she now ate them.

• Umuofia was like a startled animal with ears erect, sniffing the silent, ominous air and not knowing which way to run.

Here's a snapshot of Okonkwo, which just MIGHT make it clear why I did not like him: 

• Okonkwo knew how to kill a man's spirit.

• Okonkwo never showed any emotion openly, unless it be the emotion of anger. To show affection was a sign of weakness; the only thing worth demonstrating was strength.

• I will not have a son who cannot hold up his head in the gathering of the clan. I would sooner strangle him with my own hands.

• On Ezinma, his favorite child: She should have been a boy. This one touched a nerve. 

On a more pleasant note, there were a few things that reminded me pleasantly of Senegalese traditions, relayed to me by my sister from her time in the Peace Corps, or my brother-in-law:

• Wrestling bouts - wrestling is a huge deal in the book, and in Nigerian culture, it seems. It is equally Ginormously popular in Senegal, and bouts are extremely interesting to watch. 

• Waist beads, or jigida - the meanings may differ, since there are various layers of significance, but I remember talking to Lune about why women wear waist beads, what they represent, and the ways in which they are sacred, so I enjoyed seeing them appear here. 

• Kola nuts - Kola nuts are featured throughout the novel, in various moments of greeting and traditions. They made me smile because I have a favorite pair of earrings from Senegal that is made of kola nuts (though I have lost one of the earrings somewhere! I must find it! You tell me if you find it, okay?)

Strange connections
I'm always struck by the expected and unexpected connections that flow between books, despite the distance and time that separates them. Here are a few I saw: 

the Evil Forest (the Forest Sauvage)
Many things are relegated to the Evil Forest in the book (including twins, which, I recognize, feels a little extreme!) but it kept reminding me of the Forest Sauvage from The Once and Future King.

locusts
The coming of the locusts struck me because it still happens today, and there's a similarly eery quality to it, no matter the space or time of their arrival.

At first, a fairly small swarm came. They were the harbingers sent to survey the land. And then appeared on the horizon a slowly-moving mass like a boundless sheet of black cloud drifting toward Umuofia. Soon it covered half the sky, and the solid mass was now broken by tiny eyes of light like shining star dust.

drum (cannon) to announce a death
Drums play many roles in the book, but at one point the sound of the drum/cannon announces that there has been a death in the village, which distinctly reminded me of the Hunger Games, where they announce the death of participants with cannons each evening.

the land of the living was not far removed from the domain of the ancestors (the Turner House, Coco)
This line about the proximity of the land of the living and the land of the dead was very much in my brain already this weekend, having read Angela Flournoy's The Turner House and watched Coco on Friday, which is all about a boy traveling to the land of the dead by accident and meeting his ancestors.

Words I learned:
obi - a man's meeting house in traditional Igbo villages

egwuwu - masked Umuofia elders who are seen as ancestral gods; they serve as respected judges in the community, listening to complaints, prescribing punishments, and deciding conflicts

ekwe - an Igbo traditional musical instrument, the ekwe is a type of drum with rectangular cavity slits in the hollowed out wooden interior

harmattan - a season in the West African subcontinent, occurring between the end of November and the middle of March, and characterized by the dry and dusty northeasterly trade wind, of the same name, which blows from the Sahara Desert over West Africa into the Gulf of Guinea

kola nuts - fruit of the kola tree, a genus of trees native to the tropical rainforests of Africa. The caffeine-containing fruit of the tree is used as a flavoring ingredient in beverages, and is the origin of the term "cola".

Well readers, I'm off to the next adventure! Here's hoping there's a little less woman-hating in that one. ;) 

You will see what it is to be a king.

The Once and Future King by T.H. White

Spoiler Alert: Plot Summary
The Once and Future King is a retelling of the now classic Arthurian legend of yore. We begin with Arthur (nicknamed the Wart) as a boy, thinking he is a nobody and a gentleman's ward. Little does he know, though, that he is to pull the sword from the stone and reveal himself to be the RIGHTFUL HEIR TO THE THRONE! (I know, big twist. Maybe you saw the Disney movie so you were expecting it. Or maybe you know the legend.) So Arthur goes off to run England, with some support and guidance from his boyhood tutor, Merlyn. All of the things you have probably heard then happen - he marries Guenever, he makes the Round Table of Knights, Lancelot comes, there's a whole love triangle between G and A and T, Arthur accidentally knocks up his half-sister (SUPES NORMAL), and lots of battling and fighting ensues. Mordred, Arthur's son/nephew (emphasis on the EW) causes some trouble and things go downhill from there. In the end, all that's left is Arthur's legacy and his idealistic dream.
Spoiler Over: Continue Here

Well hello, there, blobbists! How is everyone doing this (not-so) fine Friday? Here, it has looked like (and been like) rain off and on all day. Susan and I are glad to be in for the evening, though I am mildly dismayed that it is already nearly dark. (Susan does not care.) NOTE: While writing this blob, the sun has come back out. #colormeconfused

If this picture looks familiar, then you probably saw the Disney film, 'The Sword in the Stone.' I couldn't figure out why the first part of this book felt so familiar to me, and I knew I hadn't read it before. Eventually, I googled it, and realized that they based the Disney film specifically off of T.H. White's version of the story; to be precise, the first quarter of this book (which is sub-titled, 'The Sword in the Stone'.) 

Mystery SOLVED!

I have only very vague recollections of the film, but they were just strong enough to make me feel like I was visiting an old friend when I was first starting the book, which was a very pleasant feeling.

Here are some bits I liked: 

- The Forest Sauvage
"The mad and wicked animals were not the only inhabitants of the crowded gloom. When men themselves became wicked they took refuge there, outlaws cunning and bloody as the gore-crow, and as persecuted. The first part of the book takes place in a castle nestled in the 'Forest Sauvage' (the Wild Forest) and I loved the way it was described. There's something deeply magical and fantastical about a really good forest, don't you think? (Forbidden Forest, Mirkwood, Fangorn, Archenland)

- Merlyn
Merlyn was my FAVORITE. I was very sad that Merlyn mostly disappeared after the first section - I felt like that was the very best part of the book, and I wanted all of the book to be like that first part. Here are a few highlights: 

• The magician was staring at him with a kind of unwinking and benevolent curiosity which made him feel that it would not be at all rude to stare back, no ruder than it would be to stare at one of his guardian's cows who happened to be thinking about his personality as she leaned her head over a gate. Hagh!

• There were thousands of brown books in leather bindings, some chained to the book-shelves and others propped against each other as if they had had too much to drink and did not really trust themselves. so cute!

• "Merlyn took off his pointed hat when he came into this chamber, because it was too high for the roof, and immediately there was a scamper in one of the dark corners and a flap of soft wings, and a tawny owl was sitting on the black skull-cap which protected the top of his head.

'Oh, what a lovely owl!' cried the Wart.

But when he went up to it and held out his hand, the owl grew half as tall again, stood up stiff as a poker, closed its eyes so that there was only the smallest slit to peep through - as you are in the habit of doing when told to shut your eyes at hide-and-seek - and said in a doubtful voice:

'There is no owl.'

Then it shut its eyes entirely and looked the other way." lololololoololzzzzz Archimedes!

And, my favorite: 

Wart: "I wanted to mention that you have been knitting your beard into the night-cap for three rows now.' 

Merlyn: 'Well, I'll be...' 

Wart: 'I should think the best thing would be to cut off the end of your beard. Shall I fetch some scissors?' 

Merlyn: 'Why didn't you tell me before?' 

Wart: 'I wanted to see what would happen.' 

Merlyn: 'You run a grave risk, my boy, of being turned into a piece of bread, and toasted.'
With this he slowly began to unpick his beard, muttering to himself meanwhile and taking the greatest pains not to drop a stitch.

Not only do I love how hilarious this exchange is, but I am also DELIGHTED that Merlyn KNITS!

- King Pellinore and the Questing Beast
Besides Merlyn, my other favorite character is King Pellinore, who is on a lifelong quest to hunt the Questing Beast (which is described as a having a weird blend of animal features and being most formidable). This is the exchange when Wart first meets him, and King Pellinore is talking about the dog who accompanies him on the quest: 

"Gets a bit lonely without her, following the Beast about, and never knowing where one is. Makes a bit of company, you know.
 'She seems to have a friendly nature.'
'Too friendly. Sometimes I doubt whether she is really chasing the Beast at all.'
'What does she do when she sees it?'
'Nothing.'" Hgahahgahgahgahghaghaghaghaghhaghaghahghaghahaghaghagha.

Other AMAZING moments involving the Questing Beast: 
- When King Pellinore nurses the Questing Beast back to health so they can quest some more
- When Sir Grummore and Sir Palomides decide "they must dress up and assume the role of Questing Beast" and be hunted themselves to cheer up the lovesick King P.
- When the real Questing Beast falls in love with the fake Questing Beast. ("Are you suggesting that we should flirt with this reptile of yours?" lolololollllz. I died. This scene was too funny.)

The Badger reading the Wart his treatise
The Wart is turned into a variety of animals as part of his tutelage (by Merlyn), and this moment with the Badger was my favorite: 

"Hem,' said the badger.
He immediately became paralysed with shyness, and sat blushing at his papers, unable to begin.
'Go on,' said the Wart.
'It is not very good,' he explained coyly. 'It is just a rough draft, you know. I shall alter a lot before I send it in." So cute! I love the shy badger, nervous to read his treatise. It reminded me of this scene from Narnia: 

When Peter needs marshals for his one-on-one battle with Miraz, one of the Three Bulgy Bears asks to be a marshal. Trumpkin whispers to Peter, "Don't let him. He's a good creature, but he'll shame us all. He'll go to sleep and he will suck his paws." Peter says he can, as long as he doesn't suck his paws. The bear promises not to, at which point Trumpkin points out that he is doing it right at that very moment. (Incidentally, in the battle, the bear does in fact suck his paws.) 

Bits I Didn't Like as Much

• Wart spending long periods of time as an animal - they were well-written, but after he was an ant for a while, or a fish, or insert animal here, I just got bored

• Disgusting food descriptions - generally, in fantasy novels, one WANTS to eat the food. The British food described, however, was MOST unappetizing to me. Cold venison for breakfast? #thanksbutnothanks

• How often we were reminded that Lancelot was ugly - White seemed to think it was Very important to mention this, and I got tired of hearing it. It is so wrong that I wanted Lancelot to look like Richard Gere from First Knight? ;)

• Hunting - there's lots of it, some of which is fairly graphic. 

• Deciphering the vernacular of the G family (Gawaine, Gaheris, Gareth, aGravaine) - We get it, they're from the Gaelic side, but does it have to be SO hard to read all of their conversations? 

• When the awful G boys killed the unicorn to try to get their mother's attention - This happened. And it was mostly just unspeakably sad. Their mom, Morgause, Morgan le Fay's sister, also didn't notice, and then when she did, she had them whipped for it, so it didn't really work out for them. Or the unicorn. 

• The whole Lancelot and Guenever bit and how we're supposed to root for them - Honestly, I wasn't rooting for Arthur and Guenever either. In this version, I just felt TOTALLY unconnected to the characters once they were older. We spent a good amount of time with Wart when he was younger, but once he got older and became king, we didn't really connect with him. When the book ended, I just sort of went, "oh. well that's that." 

• White's misogyny and general absence of female characters - I suppose you could argue that he's portraying the misogyny of the period, but I feel like in fantasy you can play around and mix things up (isn't that the whole point of fantasy?) So after like 500 pages I was tired of not seeing women or only seeing them in exceedingly unfavorable lights. 

Referents and Reverberations (HP mania)
As I read the first section of this novel, there were so many things that reminded me of the Harry Potter series, and I loved wondering if Rowling had read White, and if that found its way into the world of Hogwarts.  Merlyn reminded me of Dumbledore, and in his office, there are references to a phoenix, a basilisk, and Mandrakes (eek!) and his pet owl, Archimedes. There are several references to someone named You-Know-Who as well. Wisps of magic floating from one book to the next!

Other books this book reminded me of
In addition the HP series, this book also reminded me of...
- The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
- I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith
- A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle
- The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis
- Le Petit Prince by Antoine de Saint-Éxupéry
- Watership Down by Richard Adams
- Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
- Beatrix Potter stories (by Beatrix Potter)

I know I've mentioned this in previous posts, but how come so many of the great fantasy novels are written by Brits? England does have a rich literary history, but isn't it time for America to represent? We do, of course, have the lovely Madeleine L'Engle. Though she's more Christian-leaning than I'd prefer in my fantasy, and George R.R. Martin, but he's more misogynistic and gross than I like. I haven't read Ursula Le Guin yet, so I'll weigh in on her when I get there for the blob! Do you have American fantasy novelists you adore, blobbists? Please share - I'm most curious!

Words I Learned
austringer - a keeper of goshawks; a falconer

baldrick - a belt worn over one shoulder that is typically used to carry a weapon (usually a sword) or other implement such as a bugle or drum

dimity - a hard-wearing, sheer cotton fabric woven with raised stripes or checks

fritillary - 1. a Eurasian plant of the lily family, with hanging bell-like flowers; 2. a butterfly with orange-brown wings that are checkered with black

hurdy-gurdy - a musical instrument with a droning sound played by turning a handle, which is typically attached to a rosined wheel sounding a series of drone strings, with keys worked by the left hand

miasma - a highly unpleasant or unhealthy smell or vapor; an oppressive or unpleasant atmosphere that surrounds or emanates from something

seneschal - the steward or major-domo of a medieval great house

tintinnabulation - a ringing or tinkling sound

tumulus - an ancient burial mound; a barrow

A few lines I particularly liked:
For a fantasy novelist, T.H. White has a wonderful way with words. Not all world-builders are also lyricists, but he was definitely both. 

• For the hay was an element to them, like sea or air, in which they bathed and plunged themselves and which they even breathed in. My mother loves the smell of hay from growing up on a farm, and I have vivid memories of driving along the farms near her house, rolling down the windows in the car, and breathing in deep gulps of the fresh scent. 

• At first he only dipped below the surface of sleep, and skimmed along like a salmon in shallow water, so close to the surface that he fancied himself in air. 

• The passion of nocturnal secrecy was a wine in his blood.

• Their faces were fanatical, and they babbled of dreams.

• They stitched uneasily, the needles fusing through the dark material with a long gleam like falling stars. 

• Lanterns flickered outside, in the village street, as everybody went home in bands for fear of the moonlit wolves, and the Castle of the Forest Sauvage slept peacefully and lightless, in the strange silence of the holy snow. 

I'll leave you with a few of my favorite scenes. The first one is about winter and snowfall, and it made me very very hopeful that one day I will get to spend that holiday knee deep in gorgeous white stuff. 

It was Christmas night in the Castle of the Forest Sauvage, and all around the castle the snow lay as it ought to lie. It hung heavily on the battlements, like thick icing on a very good cake, and in a few convenient places it modestly turned itself into the clearest icicles of the greatest possible length. It hung on the boughs of the forest trees in rounded lumps, even better than apple-blossom, and occasionally slid off the roofs of the village when it saw the chance of falling on some amusing character and giving pleasure to all.

And the last one is advice from Merlyn that I think we can all stand to take to heart.  

The best thing for being sad is to learn something. That is the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then - to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the thing for you.

So the next time you're feeling blue (or if you're feeling blue right now!) go learn something - a new word, a new skill, or even just a fun fact (A snail can sleep for three years. Slugs have four noses. Rhinoceros horns are made of hair. Et cetera, et cetera, et Cetera!) and just maybe it will cheer you up! I'm off to learn more about why the world wags and what wags it. Good afternoon, good evening, and good night!