A Girl Named Zippy by Haven Kimmel

I first read A Girl Named Zippy a couple of years ago when I was browsing the biography section of the library and was captured by the baby picture and sub-title: "Growing up Small in Moreland, Indiana." Within a few chapters, I was hooked and finished the book in just a few days. The same happened when I read the sequel She Got Up Off the Couch: And Other Heroic Acts from Mooreland, Indiana. And the same thing happened again when I reread Zippy this week. They are both funny, poignant, and painfully honest accounts of one family's joys and trials from a remarkably well-written child's perspective.

In reviewing She Got Up Off the Couch for my bookclub where I used to live, I wrote of Zippy:

Since I love subtle word-plays like Mary Engelbreit's "Life is just a chair of bowlies," anyone who spoke of "Growing up Small" must have a unique perspective on the world. I certainly wasn't disappointed, as this childhood memoir delivers Midwestern charm and humor by a pint-size agnostic with a knack for trouble and accidents. It had me laughing to the point of tears on several occasions. Being a country girl from the Midwest myself, I could certainly identify with elements of her story.

I must clarify that my childhood was not nearly so adventurous as Zippys's, but I never would have imagined two years ago that I would be living in Indiana myself! I'm not sure there is anything specifically Indianian (or Hoosier, to be more correct) about Haven Kimmel's childhood. It is probably pretty typical for any small American town in the 70's. Even though there are a few hints of darker fears and dangers, it was a pretty innocent childhood full of dirt and friends and scrapes and animals. I wouldn't, couldn't raise my children in the laissez faire manner her parents seemed to adopt, but I do wonder if parents inherently worried less about their children 40 years ago. Was there that much less to be concerned about, or was it simply less public and prominent than today?

At any rate, A Girl Named Zippy is a quick, fun read that I highly recommend for responsible teens and adults (I wouldn't want my kids to get any ideas or attitudes until they were discerning enough to sift the funny from the rebellious).

Unfortunately, I'm unable to provide you with a sample of the humor and wit as I had to return the book to the library (probably for another bookclub member who had placed a hold). I'm looking forward to discussing this with my new bookclub in Indiana (but not Mooreland, IN).

Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell

For some reason, I had the idea that Cranford was a long novel. I must have assumed that from a review or two that I read whose writers thought it lacked plot and dragged on and on. I was mistaken on both counts since it's actually quite short (138 pages in the edition I read), and I, for one, did not think it moved too slowly. Granted, there was not a lot of action, but it was still a charming story - a slice of life narrative in which the characters did mature, deal with adverse circumstances and unexpected joys, and moved beyond their comfort zones, if only just a little bit.

Cranford is a small English village that has remained untouched by the industrial revolution. There is no landed aristocracy in the vicinity, and at the time of this narrative the principal residents of the town consist of aging spinsters and widows who occupy themselves with keeping up their forms of society, in spite of their limited incomes. "There, economy was always 'elegant,' and money-spending always 'vulgar and ostentatious'; a sort of sour-grapeism which made us very peaceful and satisfied." (3) The ladies spend their days observing their self-imposed rules of etiquette by receiving and returning calls in 15 minute intervals between the hours of twelve and three. Their sense of gentility and propriety lend a great deal of superficiality to their friendships, and as a consequence their conversations were usually very trivial as they kept up their appearances and reputation and patronized the working class beneath them. It is not until one of their number is reduced in means that they rally to support her, even in her business of selling tea to make ends meet. Additionally, when a relative newcomer to their society marries "beneath" her and an unexpected family member returns, they learn to value friendship over matters of convention.

Overall, I thought this was a charming story. It was funny, in the sense that I first envisioned it something like a whole town of Mrs. Olson's (from the Little House on the Prairie TV show), ladies who are slightly pretentious and pompous and overly concerned to keep up appearances. But really the little old ladies of Cranford are very sweet and good natured, and it was satisfying to see their characters develop and grow with change, both for good and ill, as the story progressed.

The "Mrs. Olson" factor did give it the flavor of a chronicle of town gossip, and it seemed that the narrative wandered a bit both in characters and time frame. In retrospect, this was actually giving necessary background information, but the narrative did seem to lack direction until it settled on one character, Miss Matty, and seemed less gossipy. I do not like anonymous narrators (as in Rebecca), so I was glad that the younger visitor who relates the story was finally called by name near the end. It would have been nice to hear more of her story, but I'm not sure if Ms. Gaskell wrote more about Mary Smith.

I was wondering how such a small book could be made into almost 5 hours of a BBC miniseries called Cranford, but from what I've gathered that series draws upon two of Gaskell's other short novels in addition to Cranford (all published together in The Cranford Chronicles). I'm not sure if I have the patience to sit through five hours of bustling busybodies, but we'll see.

I did find it interesting to read that Gaskell's style is likened to the American author Sarah Orne Jewett, whose The Country of the Pointed Firs I just picked up because it was about Maine. I will be interested in reading it to compare with Cranford.

New Year's Goals: Classics Bookclub, etc.

So, I'm a little behind with posting my New Year's goals on January 8th, but at least it's still January!

I have long admired the Classics bookclub at 5 Minutes for Books, but I hadn't participated because it didn't fit with what I was currently reading and I didn't have (or take) the time to go back and revisit my thoughts on their book selection if I had read it months before. BUT they've changed the format for this year, and I like it! More flexibility, more options, more book reviews - I'm in! (Check out this post for all the details.)

Classics are very high on my reading priority list and are usually my book of choice in between bookclub selections. I'm going to continue working on the titles from my 2009 TBR Challenge, with Cranford, The Woman in White, and Great Expectations being my first options. I would love to read one or two more titles by Daphne du Maurier. I'd aslo like to read more from Dorothy Sayers, both fiction and non-fiction, and also in the mystery genre try some Agatha Christie (maybe choosing one based on reviews at A Library is a Hospital for the Mind) and G. K. Chesterton.

In reading aloud to my children, I hope to get to classics such as Little House on the Prairie, The Boxcar Children Books, and The Borrowers. I'll try to read Anne of Green Gables and maybe Anne of Avonlea with my daughter, too. It is such fun to share books that I enjoy(ed) with my children!

Beyond that, I am slowly building a collection of classics to add to my personal library, and I look forward to finding more titles to read and own as I read reviews from other bloggers.

Books Read in 2010

This includes books that I read myself as well as the chapter books I read aloud to my children. The link is to my review where you will find each title linked to Amazon (from which I receive a very small percentage of purchases made from those links - I have yet to earn enough to even request the minimum amount, so I'm certainly not in this for the money!)

1. Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell
2. A Girl Named Zippy by Haven Kimmel (re-read)
3. Betsy-Tacy by Maud Hart Lovelace
4. The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins
5. Freckles by Gene Stratton-Porter
6. A Girl of the Limberlost by Gene Stratton-Porter
7. Whose Body? by Dorothy L. Sayers
8. The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley
9. Betsy-Tacy and Tib by Maud Hart Lovelace
10. Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser
11. Against the Odds: Tales of Acheivement by L. M. Montgomery
12. The Screwtape Letters by C. S. Lewis
13. Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life by Barbara Kingsolver
14. An Irish Country Doctor by Patrick Taylor
15. The Weed that Strings the Hangman's Bag by Alan Bradley
16. Stepping Heavenward by Elizabeth Prentiss
17. Middlemarch by George Eliot
18. A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula Le Guin
19. A Nest for Celeste by Henry Cole
20. Laddie: A True Blue Story by Gene Stratton-Porter
21. The Old Man and the Sea by Earnest Hemingway
22. Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw
23. Fairy Doll by Rumer Godden
24. The Book of the Unknown: Tales of the Thirty-six by Jonathon Keats
25. Mystery Ranch (The Boxcar Children Mysteries #4) by Gertrude Chandler Warner
26. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
27. Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan
28. Mike's Mystery (The Boxcar Children Mysteries #5) by Gertrude Chandler Warner
29. When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead
30. Percy Jackson & the Olympians: Sea of Monsters by Rick Riordan
31. Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Titan's Curse by Rick Riordan
32. A Morbid Taste for Bones: The First Chronicle of Brother Cadfael by Ellis Peters
33. One Corpse Too Many: The Second Chronicle of Brother Cadfael by Ellis Peters
34. Blue Bay Mystery (The Boxcar Children Mysteries #6) by Gertrude Chandler Warner
35. Monk's Hood: The Third Chronicle of Brother Cadfael by Ellis Peters
36. The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (Unabridged Audiobook) by C. S. Lewis
37. The Night Fairy by Laura Amy Schlitz
38. Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Battle of the Labyrinth by Rick Riordan
39. Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Last Olympian by Rick Riordan
40. Great Irish Short Stories, edited by Evan Bates
41. Stuart Little by E. B. White
42. The Warden by Anthony Trollope
43. A Vintage Affair: A Novel by Isabel Wolff
44. Girl in Hyacinth Blue by Susan Vreeland
45. Girl with a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier
46. Undaunted Courage: Meriweather Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West by Stephen Ambrose
47. Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay
48. Tumtum & Nutmeg: Adventures Beyond Nutmouse Hall by Emily Bearn
49. The Yellow House by Patricia Falvey
50. An Irish Country Village by Patrick Taylor
51. Barchester Towers by Anthony Trollope
52. An Irish Country Christmas by Patrick Taylor
53. Fannie's Last Supper: Re-creating One Amazing Meal from Fannie Farmer's 1896 Cookbook by Christopher Kimball

Read Aloud Thursday - The Wind in the Willows

My mom gave me a nicely illustrated edition of The Wind in the Willows a few years ago, and after our success with My Father's Dragon, it seemed a good time to try this classic English adventure story. My kids did enjoy it, though they weren't as enthusiastic about it as they were with Charlotte's Web or Three Tales of My Father's Dragon. I think some of the older British vocabulary and humor were beyond them (at 5 1/2 and 2 1/2), though I did try to explain as much as possible. The pictures were beautiful, and after reading How the Heather Looks, I couldn't help wondering if they actually depicted the section of the Thames where Kenneth Grahame took his inspiration for the setting of The Wind in the Willows and Earnest H. Shepard did the illustrations for earlier editions. (Inga Moore illustrated the edition I have, and her lush full-color illustrations, some even two-page illustrations, made it much more engaging for my children than Shepard's ink drawings, as classic as they may be.) Maybe someday I will travel in England and see for myself!

I think we will revisit this classic again in a few years when we will be able to have more fruitful discussions on topics such as friendship, coveting, selfishness, stealing, and making wise/foolish choices. I did find it a little unsettling that everything ends well for Mr. Toad in spite of all the bad decisions he makes. But Curious George puts me in the same quandary, and I still read them to my kids because they are fun and imaginative. The Wind in the Willows is also fun and imaginative, and the varied characters of each animal are endearing, even Mr. Toad and his mischief. I suppose it can be an illustration that the Lord causes the sun to shine upon both the just and the unjust as well as an example of mercy and grace in the sense of not receiving the justice that is due for one's actions. Stories that don't necessarily support one's values need not necessarily be avoided, for they can provide many fruitful discussions.

Evening in the Palace of Reason by James R. Gaines

Evening in the Palace of Reason: Bach Meets Frederick the Great in the Age of Enlightenment is a book about history, about culture, about those who thought they were great and those who really were. It begins by reconstructing a meeting between Johann Sebastian Bach at age sixty-two and Frederick the Great, who was basking in the expansion of his kingdom after just a few years on the throne. Each chapter thereafter, traces the family history and lives of these two men bringing it back to the crux of their meeting in 1747. In an attempt to mock Bach's command of counterpoint and improvisation, Frederick challenged him to compose a three-part fugue on a nearly impossible theme, that is, it was nearly impossible to use this theme in the structured forms of composition for which Bach was known. Bach delivered this request on the spot, causing Frederick to set the bar even higher with a request for a six-part fugue. Bach declined the second challenge, but played a six-part fugue on another theme. In the matter of only two weeks, however, Bach completed his Musical Offering, a sixteen-movement work for piano that is considered a work of genius by all who have studied it.

Around these historical details, Gaines demonstrates that this musical challenge was really a duel between two competing worldviews: the principles of the Reformation and the Enlightenment. They "met at the tipping point between ancient and modern culture, and what flowed from their meeting would be a more than musical expression of that historical moment" (8).

Bach's life and work were informed by his faith. He accumulated a significant theological library for his time and carefully read and marked the text and commentary of his 1681 Lutheran Bible and Luther's collected works (169). His music was founded upon the firm principles of faith and belief in a universe ordered and governed by a sovereign God, so whether the subject was sacred or secular it could be marked S.D.G., soli deo gloria, to the glory of God alone. In contrast, "the 'enlightened' composer wrote for one reason and one only: to please the audience" (220).

I do not know the beliefs or religious background of the author, James Gaines. His accounts of the Reformation and Bach's high esteem of Luther occasionally hint at skepticism, but there is a touch of sarcasm in his treatment of the Enlightenment's optimism and hope in human reason, too. At any rate, his detached journalism does not prevent him from posing the following thesis - "Bach's Musical Offering leaves us, among other things, a compelling case for the following proposition: that a world without a sense of the transcendent and mysterious, a universe ultimately discoverable through reason alone, can only be a barren place; and that the music sounding forth from such a world might be very pretty, but it can never be beautiful" (12) - or from concluding with the late 18th century irony that "those who continued to claim their trust in reason did so more in hope than confidence, almost as an article of faith (of all things)" (259).

I didn't need to be convinced that Bach was a great composer, but it was intriguing to learn more of his personal history and his music (though I must admit that the music theory behind counterpoint is a little beyond me). I'm ready to start building a music library of his complete works, beginning with Bach: The Art of Fugue; Musical Offering! Karl Barth might have had portraits of Calvin and Mozart at equal heights in his study*, but if I were one to hang portraits of theologians and composers, I would have to choose Bach over Mozart. Calvin, of course, could stay!

















*An interesting quote from an article by Theodore A. Gill in Theology Today from Princeton Theological Seminary:
"And with a now not so secret delight, I remember noting as I left Barth's study on a first visit those portraits of Calvin and of Mozart hanging over the adjacent doors. He has written of them: 'There are probably very few theological study rooms in which pictures of Calvin and Mozart are to be seen hanging next to each other and at the same height.' What he does not write is what he said when he noticed how taken I was with the juxtaposition. 'My special revelation,' he smiled, looking at Calvin. 'And my general revelation,' he said, as he beamed at Mozart. Was he smiling because it was a joke? Or because he knew something we didn't?"

The Man Who Was Thursday by G. K. Chesterton

I have been reading this month, but I haven't felt like writing about what I've read. I've considered giving up blogging, but for now I'm going to revert to my original plan when I started over a year ago, that is, to record my favorite quotations from the books that I've read with very little commentary. In order to avoid copyright infringement, I will limit myself to no more than five quotations and will provide full bibliographic information at the beginning of each post.

Chesterton, G. K. The Man Who Was Thursday. New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1986 reprint of 1908.

“The rare strange things is to hit the mark; the gross, obvious thing is to miss it. We feel it is epical when man with one wild arrow strikes a distant bird. Is it not also epical when man with one wild engine strikes a distant station? Chaos is dull; because in chaos the train might indeed go anywhere...” (3)

“But indeed, this comic contrast between the yellow blossoms and the black hats was but a symbol of the tragic contrast between the yellow blossoms and the black business.” (72)

"'When I see the horrible back, I am sure the noble face is but a mask. When I see the face but for an instant, I know the back is only a jest. Bad is so bad, that we cannot but think good an accident; good is so good that we feel certain that evil could be explained...Shall I tell you the secret of the whole world? It is that we have only known the back of the world. We see everything from behind, and it looks brutal. That is not a tree, but the back of a tree. That is not a cloud, but the back of a cloud. Cannot you see that everything is stooping and hiding a face? If we could only get round in front – ?'” (110)

“'No,' said Syme, 'I do not feel fierce like that. I am grateful to you, not only for wine and hospitality here, but for many a fine scamper and free fight. But I should like to know. My soul and heart are as happy and quiet here as this old garden, but my reason is still crying out. I should like to know.'
'I am not happy,' said the Professor with his head in his hands, 'because I do not understand. You let me stray a little too near to hell.'
And then Gogol said, with the absolute simplicity of a child - 'I wish I knew why I was hurt so much.' (118)

I've heard some people comment on the incomprehensibility of this short novel, and I can't say that I've figured it all out either. I was able to guess how the plot would unfold fairly early in the book, but I haven't unraveled the meaning or determined if it was meant to be allegorical, satirical, or both. I'll leave such ponderings for another day. For now, I enjoyed it as a well-crafted story with beautiful descriptions interspersed with tidbits of wisdom. I look forward to reading more of Chesterton, both fiction and non-fiction, including The Complete Father Brown Stories, Orthodoxy, and Saint Thomas Aquinas: The Dumb Ox. What is your favorite Chesterton work?