I counted Rikki's storms just like I counted God's.

A Quiet Storm by Rachel Howzell Hall

Spoiler Alert: Plot Summary
A Quiet Storm is the story of the Moore sisters, two African-American women growing up in Los Angeles in the 70s/80s. Stacy (short for Anastasia) Moore is a de facto caretaker and off-and-on babysitter to her sister, Rikki (short for Arika) as they try to navigate from their teenage years to adulthood. Rikki struggles with mental illness, though the exact nature of her trouble is not clear, since her parents (her mother, in particular) is averse to seeking help. They try other methods (like that good old tried and true exorcism, for example) and eventually Rikki seeks help in her college years behind her mother's back. There are good spells and bad spells for Rikki, who seems to suffer from manic depression, bipolar, or a bit of both. She is prescribed lithium, among other drugs, but she has a variety of challenging side effects from many of the drugs, so she frequently stops taking them. Stacy is caught in the middle: largely invisible to her parents and completely beholden to Rikki's needs. As the two women mature, and even marry, Rikki's issues in trying to navigate her life fade, then reappear, and Stacy's life is generally the one to suffer, in addition to Rikki's herself. Stacy's husband, Eric, tires of coming second to Rikki, and they separate. Rikki's husband, Matt, eventually disappears, after she's heard rumors of him cheating on her. At first, we think perhaps he has actually disappeared, but it soon becomes apparent that Rikki was involved. Stacy defends Rikki for some time, thinking her capable of many things, but not murder. But when Rikki's suicide note comes in the mail, Stacy realizes that Rikki poisoned Matt and hid his body. It's all revealed when Matt's body is found, and the world reels from this news which is surprising to everyone but Stacy. In the end, Stacy is grieved by the loss of her sister, but also relieved by the release of caring for her. 
Spoiler Over: Continue Here

This book was good. It wasn't quite all the way to the 'best books I've read list', but it definitely carved out a place for itself in my heart, and I'm really glad that it exists. A few brief thoughts:  

I do not believe in snow!
I knew I would like Stacy when she says early on in the book that even though she lives in L.A., 

"I was a child who believed in snow." 

I love a good snow girl, myself. 

Things Stacy and I have in common
Though in some ways I have more in common with Rikki than with Stacy, I enjoyed the various points of alignment that I had with the protagonist. 

• Miss Mary Mack - Stacy plays 'Miss Mary Mack' with her sister in the closet during thunderstorms, and it reminded me of playing the game with my friends in elementary school. 

• Nanas and lithium - Stacy and Rikki have a Nana who they know is not totally mentally sound, and who is eventually institutionalized. From that point on, she's overmedicated and essentially disconnected from the world. While my grandmother was able to function and navigate the world outside of an institution, she had rough patches and her own mental particularities, and I wonder to what extent our privilege, our whiteness, our relative wealth, or our family's protectiveness all acted to keep her from a different life, one more like Stacy's Nana. I'm deeply grateful that I was able to love my grandma and she was able to live her life the way she did, and I hope that everyone can have that same right as we move forward as a society.

• Comparative literature - Stacy is a Comp Lit major in school, because obviously it's the best major. (#notbiased)

• Omnivores - Stacy is constantly dealing with and reeling from Rikki's latest swing in attitude and mood, and at one point, Rikki is living with her but decides she no longer wants to eat any meat. Stacy plays along for a little while, but eventually decides she has no desire to be a vegetarian, and she cooks herself and her mom a nice juicy burger. I respect vegetarians and vegans everywhere, but I have to say I loved this moment. 

POC at private schools
When Rikki's on her upswings, she's a star student, and she gets accepted to private school. Hearing about her experience there reminded me of the complexities of navigating Breakthrough students toward private/independent institutions, which tend to be largely white: 

Rikki fit in and stood out in her new environment. She was black. She was pretty. She was sassy like Nell Carter or Florida Evans, but not disrespectful like Florence the Maid or Wilona the Neighbor. Smart, but not Harriet Tubman/Oprah Winfrey start-a-race-war smart. She was black, but not too...black. So they liked her.

What a challenging line to straddle. 

We're getting there. 
While I am always glad to see more works of fiction dealing with mental health and raising awareness for the full personhood of people with any number of afflictions, reading this book made me feel a little like this, the SEPTA motto for Philly's public transit system. In some ways, it's just a reflection of the book being a little dated already (published in the early 2000s, referencing decades prior). In any case, I would love for us to be able to just speed up the timeline and raise awareness for all populations around mental health like yesterday. Here are a few bones I'd like to pick: 

Psychiatrist ≠ Therapist
Some psychiatrists do talk therapy with their patients, but in today's society (and in my experience) this is rare, and is very much not the norm. In general, psychiatrists deal with medication management and are the actual prescribers (and medical doctors) in the mental health field. Therapists can have a variety of different backgrounds (social work, PhD in psych, etc.) and cannot prescribe medication. There is a marvelous collection of supports that each brings to the table, but it bugs me to no end when people use the terms interchangeably as if the two are synonymous. It's a lot of work to find people to help you navigate your own brain, and I guess I just want people to see how hard you have to work to find your team. It's not a once and done kind of thing, generally.

"You can't inherit something like that."
At one point, Rikki's trying to get pregnant (and sort of not telling her husband, which is a separate issue) and she tells Stacy that maybe she shouldn't get pregnant, because what if she passed her brain on to her children. Stacy comforts her and says 'you can't inherit something like that', and I wanted to throw my hands in the air and raise alarm bells, because you most definitely can. I'm not saying that Rikki shouldn't be empowered to make whatever decision she likes around procreating, but it's SO important, especially in this day and age, that we as women make thoughtful decisions with full information as we attempt to reproduce. 

Title Possibilities

• Stacy: I counted Rikki's storms just like I counted God's.

• On Rikki and Stacy: You two are always keeping secrets from the rest of the world. 

• Stacy, on Rikki: Nothing she does really shocks me anymore. 

Lines I liked

• A draft lifted the curtain's hem the way the wind lifts a lady's dress: innocent, but voyeuristic.

• I added that comment to the other bones of contention that I had collected over the years. There were so many, I almost had a skeleton. 

New Words or References
buppies - a young, upwardly mobile black professional. [1980–85, Amer.; b(lack) u(rban) p(rofessional), on the model of yuppie

Porcelana - skin lightening cream

Well, this has been a short and perhaps not so sweet post, but a good addition to the collection, methinks. I'm off to metamorphose and see what it is that I become. Join me if you dare.

Keep each other safe! Keep faith. Good night.

As I see it, part of the art of being a hero is knowing when you don't need to be one anymore.

Watchmen by Dave Gibbons and Alan Moore

Spoiler Alert: Plot Summary
Watchmen is about a group of erstwhile superheroes who are targeted in a conspiracy by an unknown foe. We pick up the trail of a murdered superhero with Rorschach, the only one in the superhero crew who seems to still be out and about. He tries to rally the rest of the group and make them aware of the imminent danger, but he's mostly ignored or ridiculed by his former peers. The Comedian is the one who was murdered in the opening scene. Other superheroes in the group include Doctor Manhattan (aka Jon Osterman), Dan Dreiberg (formerly Nite Owl, version 2.0), Laurie Juspeczyk (second Silk Spectre), and Adrian Veidt (formerly Ozymandias). Only Doctor Manhattan has actual superpowers (garnered, of course, like all good super powers, from a lab accident). Some people love each other (Jon and Laurie, Laurie and Dan, Jon and Laurie again), some people are deeply ostracized and low-key brutalized (Rorschach) and some people turn out to be not so much super heros as super villains (ahem, looking at you Adrian). According to the interwebs, I was supposed to realize this was an alternate reality where we won the Vietnam War and Watergate never happened (I noticed one weird comment about 'winning the war' that I thought was odd but I did not feel this was clear). In the end, the rest of the crew finally wises up and listens to Rorschach, but they are too late to stop Adrian's evil/sort of not evil plan where he blows up like a gazillion people to distract the US and Russia from fighting and thereby "avoids" World War III.
Spoiler Over: Continue Here

I wanted to like this book. 

I did not like this book. 

Again, I don't feel like I got a lot of what I was supposed to get. Some of that may have been temporal distance from when it was published (1986-1987) but I feel like some of it was just classic smart white guy "I'm gonna talk in this weird esoteric space and expect you to follow my line of thinking" nonsense. You know, Joyce-ian. Pynchon-ian. Vomitorious. 

Anyway, it was fun and a new experience for me to read a full-length graphic novel. Here's a list of things I liked (and ones I didn't): 

Liked
- That at least some (one) of the superheroes were ladies
- Rorschach's super cool and scary face (see right)
- The nuance of the storyline

Did not like
- That while it read as subversive or irreverent in places, it didn't stand up for things I think have clear moral 'right' and 'wrong'. (Ex - The Comedian tried to rape Laurie's mom back in the day, but eventually the storyline comes down in this place that's like, oh, but it's okay, it was a really long time ago, and maybe she wanted him to do it, a little bit. WHICH IS SO COMPLETELY NOT OKAY. Blame the victim narrative is never acceptable.)
- Graphic, depressing violence - it was just kind of brutal and hard to read. And it didn't feel like it was grounded in reason - I didn't see the necessity for it, it just felt arbitrary and extreme.
- Weird, "the world is awful and morally bankrupt" vibe from Rorschach, which felt like it was also what the author(s) felt. It had a real 'holier-than-thou' (and slightly racist) feel to me. (Ex: 

The streets are extended gutters and the gutters are full of blood and when the drains finally scab over, all the vermin will drown. charming, right? ;)

- The only female superhero still has a ridiculous body shape and preposterously sexified costume. 

Sooooo yeah. By all means, feel free to read and generate your own opinion - it would appear I am deeply in the minority in not having been wowed by this book TIME called "one of the best English language novels published since 1923". 

I'll leave you with one of the lines I did like, which is apparently a common translation of a quote from Juvenal - "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" or...

Who watches the watchmen? 

Moving on to more wonderful words! Here's hoping the next one resonates a bit more with me. 

He had agreed with each of them in turn, though what it was they wanted him to sanction he did not know.

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers

Spoiler Alert: Plot Summary
This is a story about people looking for connection. We follow a variety of different characters over the course of the novel, all inhabitants of a smallish town in the American South. They range in age from adolescent to elderly, they span both sexes, they represent different racial backgrounds, and they have strikingly different lived experiences despite living in the same place. Each of our narrators finds a point of connection in John Singer, a deaf man who has become increasingly lonely after his only friend, Antonapoulos, another deaf man, was sent away to an institution. Singer still visits Antonapoulos, and while he seems to enjoy the company of his motley crew of companions, his visits to Antonapoulos seem to be the only thing that bring him real joy. On his last visit to the institution, Antonapoulos has died after a liver illness, and Singer is bereft. He returns to the town only to kill himself, and his 'friends' are left at loose ends.
Spoiler Over: Continue Here

Well. 

This book was a bit of a downer, though it had pleasurable moments here and there. I love this idea of an American Gothic South, but I just didn't quite get all the way there with this book. I didn't see a lot of Carson in the book (maybe in Mick?) and honestly, I didn't care that much when things happened to the characters. The whole book felt a bit like it was looking at people under a microscope from a distance, which I guess is an achievement in its own right, but it didn't leave me feeling wowed. In reading descriptions of how the book was received (voice to the oppressed, revolutionary) I guess it's just not ringing those bells for me. Maybe it's not the right temporal context. Anyway, here are my thoughts...

Athelstane + Antonapoulos = BFFLs
If you read my last post on Ivanhoe, you may remember Athelstane, the man who adored his meals. In reading the first descriptions of Antonapolous, I think he would have gotten along very well with Athelstane: 

For, excepting drinking and a certain solitary secret pleasure, Antonapoulos loved to eat more than anything else in the world.

One of the issues I had with the book was that I just didn't get the connection between Antonapoulos and Singer. Singer says "Nothing seemed real except the ten years with Antonapoulos." And I thought, really? Hunh.

I thought I got it at first, in that they were the only deaf people in town, so of course signing and having someone to communicate with on that level would be profound in ways I can't imagine. But then later Singer meets some other folks who sign and it's exciting at first, but then he just doesn't really connect with them. So I guess it left me wondering what was so great about Antonapoulos, since he seems like kind of a doofus. Was Singer in love with him? Was I missing some big other level to their relationship? 

Nothing gold can stay
One of my favorite scenes is when Mick, a tomboyish girl is playing with her little brothers at a house under construction. 

The house was almost finished. The carpenters would leave and the kids would have to find another place to play.

It reminded me of playing on the dirt piles and sledding on the dirt hills behind my house before the development was built there. I guess kids and construction sites just go hand in hand, no matter the decade ;)

HP isn't the only one who listens to the radio under people's bushes...
This was my other favorite scene, also with Mick:

When she walked out in the rich parts of town every house had a radio. All the windows were open and she could hear the music very marvelous. After a while she knew which houses tuned in for the programs she wanted to hear. There was one special house that got all the good orchestras. And at night she would go to this house and sneak into the dark yard to listen. There was beautiful shrubbery around this house, and she would sit under a bush near the window. And after it was all over she would stand in the dark yard with her hands in her pockets and think for a long time.

Doesn't that just make you want to go into nice neighborhoods and sneak under a bush and listen to the radio? 

Toys that sing songs
One of the characters, Biff, sings a song at one point, and it cracked me up, because I'm 100% positive that one of my nephew's toys sings this song. I had never heard it anywhere else, and there it was! Apparently it dates back to the late 1800s. 

I went to the animal fair.
The birds and the beasts were there,
And the old baboon by the light of the moon
Was combing his auburn hair.

Lol. I love the image of a baboon combing his auburn hair. 

Next, since the book really revolves around this quintet, I'd like to give you snippets to paint a portrait of each one. 

Jake Blount, revolutionary, proselytizer, "Red"
Jake enters the scene super duper drunk, and while he cares a whole lot about the 'common man', he can't quite get his head around the fact that black folks are also having a lot of challenges in that day and time. He spends most of the book drunk, shouting, or both.

• Biff, the bartender, on Jake: Never had he seen a man change so many times in twelve days. Never had he seen a fellow drink so much, stay drunk so long.

• It was hard to tell what kind of folks he had or what part of the country he was from.

• He was like a man thrown off his track by something. 

• Jake, to others: I'm one who knows. I'm a stranger in a strange land.

• Always he felt someone was laughing at him. 

Mick Kelly, tomboy, responsible for several younger siblings, likes listening to music under bushes and playing the piano, from a pretty poor family
Mick was probably my favorite, though I honestly didn't even care that much about what happened to her. It's not that she wasn't well written, I just kind of felt that observational distance from all the characters, which made me far less invested in them as individuals.

• She wanted to think for a long time about two or three certain people, to sing to herself, and to make plans. doesn't this sound like a lovely list of things to do? 

• To her older sisters - "I don't want to be like either of you and I don't want to look like either of you. And I won't. That's why I wear shorts. I'd rather be a boy any day." you do you, Mick!

• Portia: Mick has something going on in her all the time.

• Sometimes she hummed to herself as she walked, and other times she listened quietly to the songs inside her. There were all kinds of music in her thoughts. 

• She wasn't a member of any bunch.

Singer, deaf, magnet for outcasts, friendly, inscrutable, super into Antonapoulos (for reasons unknown)
Singer was interesting, but I thought it was odd for a hearing author to choose a deaf protagonist, especially because it felt like Mick was the actual star of the book. It also raised my feminist hackles that even though she was a phenom and she got published as a lady in her 20s in the 30s, she still had a MALE LEAD CHARACTER. What is it with women and writing stories with leading men? Where are our leading ladies? EH?! I'm all for representation here, and we certainly need more spaces for deaf folks in literature, but I'm still looking for the ladies.

• Jake, on Singer: It was like the face of a friend he had known for a long time. 

• He was never busy or in a hurry.

• This man was different from any person of the white race whom Doctor Copeland had ever encountered. 

• His hands were a torment to him. They would not rest. They twitched in his sleep, and sometimes he awoke to find them shaping the words in his dreams before his face.

• On Jake: He thinks he and I have a secret together but I do not know what it is.

• He had agreed with each of them in turn, though what it was they wanted him to sanction he did not know.

Dr. Benedict Copeland, an elderly black man, father to a daughter and two sons, tireless proponent of moving forward the black race, doctor to the town's black folk
Dr. Copeland was oozing nuance, but he also felt like such a sad character. I mean, for sure, being a black man in the South in the 30s can't have been anything resembling easy, but his sadness was like, fathoms deep. Like a personal kind of 'everyone lets me down' vibe, from his family to his country. It made him a pretty hard character to like. Maybe I wasn't supposed to like him? Idk. 

• Of all I have put in nothing has remained. All has been taken away from me. 

• The hopeless suffering of his people made in him a madness, a wild and evil feeling of destruction. 

• All that we own is our bodies.

• We spend our lives doing thousands of jobs that are of no real use to anybody. We labor and all of our labor is wasted. Is that service? No, that is slavery.

• He could think of no white person of power in all the town who was both brave and just.

• If I were a man who felt it worth my while to laugh I would surely laugh at that. Dr. Copeland says this to Jake about Jake's idea about how to inform people about inequity and such, and I thought it was such a fantastically wry burn. 

Biff Brannon, bartender, uncle to a young girl named Baby, self-appointed investigator, possible pervert?
I honestly didn't know what I was supposed to think about Biff. He seems to be into Mick, but Mick is not that old, and later on, he's like, oh, and then that passed, and I'm like, what passed? Your pedophilic feelings? It was creepy, and made it strange to know where I was supposed to stand with him. Which I guess is kind of the point? Once again, hands in the air. Idk.

• To his wife, Alice: You never watch and think and figure anything out.

Title Possibilities

• When us people who know run into each other that's an event.

• It was funny, too, how lonesome a person could be in a crowded house.

• The way I need you is a loneliness I cannot bear.

• Of all the places he had been this was the loneliest town of all. 

Referents and Reverberations
Books always make me think of other books, and this one was no exception.

Even though he was also sometimes creepy, Biff had a line about androgyny that I liked that reminded me of The Left Hand of Darkness:

By nature all people are of both sexes. Often old men's voices grow high and reedy and they take on a mincing walk. And old women sometimes grow fat and their voices get rough and deep and they grow dark little mustaches. And he even proved it himself - the part of him that sometimes almost wished he was a mother and that Mick and Baby were his kids.

This line: 

One night soon after Christmas all four of the people chanced to visit him at the same time. This had never happened before. Singer moved about the room with smiles and refreshments and did his best in the way of politeness to make his guests comfortable. But something was wrong.

Reminded me of this line from Swann's Way - "I hear that things worked out badly again today, Léonie; you had all your friends here at once."

And yet again, my books make unexpected connections with each other! Came across this line:

At Vocational when they read about the jew in 'Ivanhoe' the other kids would look around at Harry and he would come home and cry.

about Harry Minowitz, a friend and one-time lover of Mick's, who happens to be Jewish and is a neighbor of the Kelly family. 

Words that were new for me:

flying-jinny - a simple, usually homemade carousel

hard-boiled eggs (already stuffed) - I thought it was funny that they kept referencing bringing 'already stuffed' hard-boiled eggs to picnics and such. I think they mean devilled eggs, or maybe they were stuffed with something else, but it never said what they were stuffed with, and it made me very curious!

isinglass - a kind of gelatin obtained from fish, especially sturgeon, and used in making jellies, glue, etc., and for clarifying ale

miry - very muddy or boggy

I'll leave you with one final line, from an exchange between Jake and Dr. Copeland: 

We have talked of everything now except the most vital subject of all - the way out. What must be done.

I often feel like we're looking for a way out, especially in this America in this day and age. We (or at least some of us) know that something is very wrong, and now we must come to agreement on what must be done. So I suppose that even though lots of things have changed since 1930, this - this need to find a way out and agree on what's to be done - hasn't gone away. 

So ponder the way out, dear readers, on this breezy, sunny, warm Friday evening. I'm off to the world of Watchmen. Join me if you dare! Read my blob if you care! Keep each other safe. Keep faith. Good night. 

Four generations had not sufficed to blend the hostile blood of the Normans and Anglo-Saxons.

Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott

Spoiler Alert: Plot Summary
Ivanhoe is a tale of loyalty, patriotism, knighthood, and England. Scott takes us back to medieval England and casts some familiar faces (Richard the Lion-Heart, Robin Hood, Friar Tuck) and some new ones (Ivanhoe, son of Cedric, a Saxon lord; Rowena, Cedric's ward and Ivanhoe's forbidden love; Athelstane, the last Saxon who could claim a right to the throne). For good measure, he tosses some bad guys into the fray (De Bracy, Bois de Guilbert, Front de Boeuf), all knights who are on their worst knightly behavior in this novel, and a father-daughter pair who are maligned for being Jews. We start with Ivanhoe in exile, fighting with Richard the Lionheart in the crusades because Cedric banished him for expressing his undying love for Rowena, his ward. As with any good exile, it doesn't stick, and good ole' Wilfred (Ivanhoe) makes his way back to merry ole' England. He enters a tournament in disguise and declares Rowena the 'Queen of Love and Beauty', but the gig is up and his identity is revealed, much to everyone's (but not our) surprise. Ivanhoe was severely wounded in the tournament, though he was the clear winner and beat all the nasty knights. The nasty knights decide they're going to get their due and they kidnap Rowena and Rebecca (along with Ivanhoe, who is under Rebecca's care) and Cedric and Athelstane. Robin Hood and Richard the Lionheart (also both in disguise - it's a running theme in this book) help to launch a counterattack and save Rowena and Rebecca from De Bracy's castle. De Bracy is burned alive, and we think Athelstane has died (but, amusingly enough, he was just unconscious. Story to come.) Otherwise everyone's hunky dory. Well, everyone but Rebecca, who gets tooken encore une fois by Bois de Guilbert. She gets tried for sorcery (some serious anti-semitic vibes) and declares a champion (you guessed it, it's Ivanhoe) and even though Ivanhoe isn't really all better he bests BdG, who promptly dies on the spot (like you do). Ivanhoe gets back with Rowena, Richard makes Cedric forgive his son, Athelstane withdraws his claim to the throne and swears allegiance to Richard, and everyone lives happily ever after (except for the Jews who leave England for ever). I know, serious bummer.
Spoiler Over: Continue Here

This book was lots of fun. My mom recommended it, as it's one of her favorite books and she read it in France, where they pronounce it Ee-Van-Oh-Ay (lolz). It was super different from The Left Hand of Darkness, but a rollicking good ride. The anti-Jew theme was tough to stomach, especially given the recent rise of anti-semitism in America and other countries, but I guess it illustrates how deep-seated the prejudice is and how systemic. 

Don't worry Scotland, we can care about England, too
Apparently, Scott was super famous for writing about Scotland, and this was his first book venturing into new territory. Considering that I don't think of Scotland and England as so different as, say, Ghana and Sweden, it was pretty funny to read his long introduction where he assures his readers that England has a pretty interesting history, also. 

#Saxonsforever
If this book had a hashtag, it would definitely be #Saxonsforever. Not knowing much about English history, I was fascinated and taken by this idea that there were warring clans that fought aggressively before we came to this present-day concept of English and England. Here are a few of my favorite lines (all about Cedric, of course, since he's the real die-hard Saxon): 

Say to them, Hundebert, that Cedric would himself bid them welcome, but he is under a vow never to step more than three steps from the dais of his own hall to meet any who shares not the blood of Saxon royalty. haghaghahghaghg

The restoration of the independence of his race was the idol of his heart, to which he had willingly sacrificed domestic happiness and the interests of his own son. yep, you read that right. Cedric is rooting for Athelena (Athelstane and Rowena are betrothed, which would ignite Cedric's dream for a Saxon throne takeover), so he has no problem kicking out Ivanhoe when he gets in the way. 

I will die a Saxon - true in word, open in deed.

Wamba the Wonderful
When I was starting this book, my mother told me, "There's a character called Wamba..." And is there ever! Wamba is Cedric's jester, but, through some beautifully constructed literary irony, he is no one's fool. Here are some of my favorite Wamba moments: 

Of all the train none escaped except Wamba, who showed upon the occasion much more courage than those who pretended to greater sense.

When Wamba ends up riding with Richard the Lionheart: On horseback, [Wamba] was perpetually swinging himself backwards and forwards, now on the horse's ears, then anon on the very rump of the animal, -now hanging both his legs on one side, and now sitting with his face to the tail, moping, mowing, and making a thousand apish gestures, until his palfrey took his freaks so much to heart, as fairly to lay him at his length on the green grass - an incident which greatly amused the Knight, but compelled his companion to ride more steadily thereafter.

When Robin Hood & company have come to save them, but Wamba is prisoner because he saved Cedric by changing places with him: When the noise of the conflict announced that it was at the hottest, the Jester began to shout, with the utmost power of his lungs, 'Saint George and the dragon! - Bonny Saint George for merry England! - The castle is won!' And these sounds he rendered yet more fearful, by banging against each other two or three pieces of rusty armour which lay scattered around the hall. The guard is so frightened that he leaves them unguarded and they make their escape! Go, Wamba!

Some things never seem to change (like anti-Semitism)
As I've mentioned already here, there's a lot of anti-Semitism in this book. A good deal of the book is spent sort of questioning that hatred, and I think the whole point of including Isaac and Rebecca as side characters/love interests was to humanize the 'jew and jewess', but it mostly just made me really sad that humans have such a long-burning capacity for hatred and mistreatment and unkindness. 

Subtitle suggestions for this novel

• Ivanhoe (who's out of commission for like a third of the book)
• Ivanhoe (More like IvanWHO)

I have to admit that I was a little let down by Ivanhoe as the titular hero. He gets injured and then just LAYS AROUND for most of the epic battle scene, and I didn't really feel like he was anywhere near as cool as some of the other characters (like, ahem, Rowena, or Rebecca, neither of whom this book is named for). 

Speaking of badass ladies

My favorite one is Ulrica. She has a whole backstory, but the most important thing is that she was a Saxon, but she's been forced to live here at De Bracy's castle and assimilate as a Norman and has had all kinds of terrible things done to her. She leads a SECRET COUNTERATTACK and sets the castle on fire (with De Bracy locked in it) and the scenes of her at the end of the battle are my favorite in the book: 

The fire was spreading rapidly through all parts of the castle, when Ulrica, who had first kindled it, appeared on a turret, in the guise of one of the ancient furies, yelling forth a war-song, such as was of yore raised on the field of battle by the scalds of the yet heathen Saxons. Her long dishevelled grey hair flew back from her uncovered head; the inebriating delight of gratified vengeance contended in her eyes with the fire of insanity; and she brandished the distaff which she held in her hand, as if she had been one of the Fatal Sisters, who spin and abridge the thread of human life.

The maniac figure of the Saxon Ulrica was for a long time visible on the lofty stand she had chose, tossing her arms abroad with wild exultation, as if she reined empress of the conflagration which she had raised.

Mortal defiance
There are many references to mortal defiance and other such florid knightly terms, which I found highly amusing. Here's one of my favorite lines: 

My master will take nought from the Templar save his life's-blood. They are on terms of mortal defiance, and cannot hold courteous intercourse together.

And this one: 

Athelstane - 'Tell Sir Reginald Front-de-Boeuf that I send him my mortal defiance, and challenge him to combat with me, on foot or horseback, at any secure place, within eight days after our liberation; which, if he be a true knight, he will not, under these circumstances, venture to refuse or to delay.' 

'I shall deliver to the knight your defiance," answered the sewer; 'meanwhile I leave you to your food.'

Love triangles
I think this book is technically called "Ivanhoe, a Romance" and while I wasn't all that into the whole Rowen and Ivanhoe love affair, I enjoyed the various love triangles and angles that weren't quite intersecting. A few of the pairings/exchanges: 

Rowena, to Cedric
Without attempting to conceal her avowed preference of Wilfred of Ivanhoe, she declared that, were that favoured knight out of question, she would rather take refuge in a convent, than share a throne with Athelstane, whom, having always despised, she now began, on account of the trouble she received on his account, thoroughly to detest. hagh!

Rowena, to De Bracy
Courtesy of tongue when it is used to veil churlishness of deed is but a knight's girdle around the breast of a base clown. You tell him!

Rebecca, to Bois-Guilbert
Thou shalt see that the Jewish maiden will rather trust her soul with God, than her honour to the Templar!

Lovely imagery
While I wasn't necessarily all that into the romance portion, I was very into the romanticized depiction of the medieval era. Between the castles and descriptions of the forests like the one below, I was ready to ship off to medieval England: 

Hundreds of broad-headed, short-stemmed, wide-branched oaks, which had witnessed perhaps the stately march of the Roman soldiery, flung their gnarled arms over a thick carpet of the most delicious green sward; in some places they were intermingled with beeches, hollies, and copsewood of various descriptions, so closely as totally to intercept the level beams of the sinking sun; in others they receded from each other, forming those long sweeping vistas, in the intricacy of which the eye delights to lose itself, while imagination considers them as the paths to yet wilder scenes of silvan solitude.

A last bit - for laughs
I mentioned earlier that Athelstane is taken for dead, and I promised the story. While I can't quite capture how amazing the whole thing is (he's punched, taken for a ghost, almost buried, and is understandably irate when he finally escapes) here's a snippet to give you a sense of the moment:

I should have been there still, had not some stir in the Convent, which I find was their procession hitherward to eat my funeral feast, when they well knew how and where I had been buried alive, summoned the swarm out of their hive. I heard them droning out their death-psalms, little judging they were sung in respect for my soul by those who were thus famishing my body.

Referents and Reverberations
As usual, this book reminded me of many books - Don Quixote, the Three Musketeers, Pride and Prejudice, to name a few. Here are two specific moments that struck me: 

In describing the interior of one of the medieval castles - Magnificence there was, with some rude attempt at taste; but of comfort there was little, and being unknown, it was unmissed.
(To which I thought, sounds a lot like Karhide ;)

And this line from Rebecca to Ivanhoe:
What remains to you as the prize of all the blood you have spilled - of all the travail and pain you have endured - of all the tears which your deeds have caused, when death hath broken the strong man's spear, and overtaken the speed of his war-horse?

And Ivanhoe's answer: 
What remains? Glory, maiden, glory! Which gilds our sepulchre and embalms our name.

reminded me, bizarrely enough, of when I read the Iliad translated into French, and we learned these lines from Achilles (aka Asheeel)

The Iliad
Si je reste à me battre ici devant les murs de Troie
Sans effet de retour, mais j'y gagne une gloire impérissable
Si, au contraire, je rejoind la terre de mes pères, sans effet de cette belle gloire,
  mais j'aurais longue vit
Et n'attendrais que sur le tour le terme de mes jours

I won't attempt to translate it line for line for you, but suffice it to say that glory has been on the brain of many a character, and Ivanhoe is certainly in good company with his obsession. 

Great Lines

• Where be those false ravishers, who carry off wenches against their will? Where indeed!?

• Tell me, dogs - is it my life or my wealth that your master aims at?

• This dungeon is no place for trifling.

• Thou wilt have owls for thy neighbours, fair one; and their screams will be heard as far, and as much regarded, as thine own.

• My vengeance is awake, and she is a falcon that slumbers not till she has been gorged.

New Words
buckram - coarse linen or other cloth stiffened with gum or paste, and used as interfacing and in bookbinding

dingle - a deep wooded valley or dell

escutcheons - a shield or emblem bearing a coat of arms

hurly-burly - busy, boisterous activity (not to be confused with a Hurdy-Gurdy, pictured here)

malapert - boldly disrespectful to a person of higher standing

oriel - a projection from the wall of a building, typically supported from the ground or by corbels

quondam - that once was; former

I'm off to work out and read more books! I'll leave you with this last bit that I liked: 

Be of good courage, and trust that thou art preserved for some marvel.

Have a lovely evening, be of good courage, and rest assured that you are all preserved for many marvels, dear readers! Happy spring evening to you all.