The only downside is a cleaner bathroom

Finally, a book worth reading in one day!

Yesterday, I devoured The Help by Kathryn Stockett in a twelve hour time period. I read while the kids had a rest time---it was a long rest time yesterday, they both slept. Good thing, because I wanted to read. Then I read while the two-year-old read Where's Waldo after he got up from his nap. Then I read again when the kids went to bed.

What a great day. What a great book. Great writing, great characters, great plot. Humor. Life. Strong women. Sassy dialogue. Complex, struggling, real characters. All the things that keep me reading. The setting is Mississippi in the 1960's. The book is about the black women who serve in the white households and raise the white kids. About about the women who employ them.

Stockett is good. Her non-fiction research (and experience) makes for some mighty fine fiction.

I think you'll like it. The tone reminds me of the Secret Life of Bees, but I think this is much better.

If I had to point out a downside to this book, it would be that after reading about these women who worked so hard to keep these houses (and kids) clean, my bathroom looked shamefully neglected. So today I yielded my oh-so-pregnant body around my bathrooms and gave the toilets and the floor a mighty scrubbing. They look a lot better. Aibileen (one of the characters) would be so proud.

But that's the only bad thing about this book. It might make you think about cleaning your bathroom. That's not a bad downside, really . . . and while you clean, you can mentally chew on the book's plot. So, yes, you may want to clean your bathroom, but you'll also have something else to think about.

And truth be told, the "Deborah Wants to Scrub Everything" is probably just pre-birth nesting. Probably didn't have anything to do with the book.

Probably.

Probably doesn't count. The carnation post.

Before I lost my concentration to the third trimester of this pregnancy, I was doing a nice side-by-side comparison of The Agony and the Ecstasy by Irving Stone and Il Gigante by Anton Gill, both about the life of Michelangelo. Agony is historical fiction (and nicely researched at that), and Gigante is historical, period. My comparison was short-lived, but interesting, and I read about half of Agony (Does it drive anyone crazy that I sometimes critique books that I only read part of?). The part I read is good. You can skip the love scene if you are into censoring what you read---you'll see it coming. I need to go back someday when I can concentrate academically and give these two books a solid read. I know very little about Michelangelo and Italy during this time, and these books are well-written and worth the time.

What I was in the mood for, however, was a re-read of These is My Words by Nancy Turner, and a "I've lost count how many times I've read this" read of Joy in the Morning by Betty Smith. Both were just about my speed during this "Where is my brain? Oh, it's making a baby" last few months before girl baby arrives.

I need to find more books that give much and don't require much intelligent analysis on my part.

Since I don't have anything new to recommend, does it count if tell you what I've been thinking about lately? Probably not, but here you go . . . if I were in a creative writing class and had to write a personal essay, I would write it about my latest realizations about carnations. You know, the flower.

Last Sunday, I was wandering the church during the last hour because it's too uncomfortable for me to sit for three hours anymore. The Braxton Hicks hit and I have to get up and move. So as I was roving, I passed a lovely spray of flowers, left from a funeral the day before. Since I didn't know the person who died, I could be objective, and not sentimental, about the flowers. I was looking at the roses (lovely), the irises (beautiful), etc. What stuck out where the carnations.

I realized that I don't now, nor have I ever, liked carnations at all (aside from when I was six years old and carried them when I was flower girl for my Aunt Kit). Carnations have no personality---they just look like a flower sneezed and a carnation grew there. Achoo! Florists use them to fill space. Boring. So carnations are a boring sneeze flower. Which CAN be used if you are a gangster and need a red one for your lapel---but other than that, I can't think of a good use for them. It's no surprise to me, in hindsight, that I married a man who never once gave me carnations. Eric is a roses man. He was so clever about that, even from the start. No wonder he won.

When I die (in sixty years), please find something else to have at my funeral. If you want inexpensive, try daisies. Or better, yet, don't have flowers at my funeral at all. If you are looking for a symbol of life and beauty, just leave bouquets of books and books and books around my coffin. Slip a copy of something I haven't read into my hand before you close the lid. If I like it, you can think of me smiling from the great beyond.

If I don't like what you choose, I'll come back and let you know why. You'll see me in a dream and I'll have my reading glasses on my nose and your book in my hand. I will have flowers in my hair---lilacs perhaps, or maybe honeysuckle. But no carnations.

Here's What Santa Brought Me For Christmas

Books. Santa brought me books. Santa reads my blog so he knows which books I adore, but don't own copies of. He brought me:

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Hurston
Through the Children's Gate by Gopnik
Essays of EB White by EB White
These is my Words by Turner
Griffin and Sabine by Bantock

Santa brought me that last book because I do like the book, and I do like name Sabine. If I were pregnant with a girl, "Sabine" would be on the list for a girls name. Not as in "Sabine" as in "Sabine women/passive/captured/exploited" but "Sabine" as in reminds me of the verb "saber" as in "She who knows with conviction/understands/comprehends."

Wait! Since I am pregnant with a girl, I can put Sabine on my list. TADA!

That Santa. The longer I live, the more clever I think Santa is.

P.S. My children also punctuate things they say with "TADA!" Ah, the sweet echoes of linguistic Deborah quirks.

I Capture the Castle

Found another good coming of age novel: I Capture the Castle, by Dodie Smith (The same Dodie Smith who wrote A Hundred and One Dalmations).

Fun book. An old castle in England, an impoverished genius, gargoyles in the kitchen, a practical pastor with a refreshing view of faith, an older sister with secrets . . . and a younger sister trying to figure them all out. While she tries to figure herself out. And figure love out. With occasional references to Bronte and Austen. Nice, very nice.

And the writing's not bad either. No clever phrases turning necessarily, but lovely images and nice snapshots of personality. (Gotta love the bohemian Topaz.) I'm going to find a used copy somewhere and put it next to my new copy of Guernsey. When I sleep, I'll imagine that the two books could have each over for tea, crumpets, and lovely, lively conversation.

If you are looking for a good holiday read, try this one. Take some cocoa with you and enjoy.

A Girl of the Limberlost

Just finished A Girl of the Limberlost by Gene Stratton-Porter. Published originally in 1909, it's a coming of age novel about Elnora Comstock in backwoods Indiana at the turn of the century.

Somewhere I missed this one. I would've loved it during my Anne of Green Gables years. After the Little House on the Prairie Series, after the Stretfield Shoes books, after A Little Princess and the Secret Garden. Right there. Right after those. That's when I would've loved this book. Next to Daddy Long Legs. That's where it should be kept.

I like it now, and I need to buy a copy to have on my shelves for Unnamed Daughter. (Some mothers find out they are having a girl and buy Girl Fetus hairbows and shoes. I plan which books I need to have ready for her in fourteen years.)

The writing is dated, of course. There's preaching and moralizing and passages of philosophy. Elnora, the main character, has very few flaws. She gives away her lunch to orphans, works hard and never complains, and isn't even tempted by the Unattainable. Her motives are pure. She loves moths, especially the ugly ones. She's polite to mean girls. Gag me already.

But yet. She's feisty and determined and overcomes difficulty. I had to like her, even when I thought she needed to save her lunch for herself.

Jenny, get this one for Emma. Liz, get this one for Amelia. And both of you will like reading it for yourself. And Meg in Sheridan, see if your library has this one. You'd probably like it, too.

Hero of the Ages

I tried to jump into Brandon Sanderson's Hero of the Ages, the last in this sci fi trilogy.

But I couldn't remember the nuances of the characters so I'm going to have to read the first two books before I can proceed. Since I liked these books, this will be no chore.

Maybe over the holidays. This would be a good holiday trilogy to escape into. Since I skip over the fight scenes, battle scenes, war scenes, and creepy monster creature description scenes, it probably won't take me very long.

Four books

1. So after recommending My Antonia to Katy, I went back and read it again. Delightful. I'm glad I own this book. The more I see of life, the richer this book becomes to me. When I read it the first time, at the sagacious age of twenty, I didn't get much of it. Or, rather, I hadn't met even real people to see the truth in Cather's characters. But experience is a powerful magnifying glass: so reading about people who grow up and move away, and ambition that comes to fruition, and memories of past friendships that grow sweeter with the passage of time, and some women who are happy to make hearty meals and have people eat them . . . true, all true, I say. If you haven't read My Antonia in the past five years, give it another go.

2. I am happily making my way through Essays of E.B. White, by the same E.B. White of Charlotte's Web and Stuart Little. No children's book, this one. But charming and poignant all the same. Charm, really, and strong, graceful writing. Non-fiction, personal essays of E.B. White's musings. I'm going to buy a copy of this for my shelves. It's going to be on my "Can you recommend a good book?" list. And the format is fun because you can sit down and read an essay all by itself, and feel like you've had a good literary feast.

Liz, go find a copy. You'll love this book.

3. The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls. When my sister Liz told me I should read this one and described it: a woman tells of her neglectful parents and deprived childhood, it sounded too dark for me. Liz tried to tell me that no, really, there was light in it . . . I was silly and put off reading it. I just couldn't handle an "I hate my parents and I was a victim growing up" book.

But I finally read it, and Liz was right (Liz usually is right, and she usually thinks that I'm right, yet another reason that we get along.) This is about Walls's neglected upbringing. But it's also about the innonence of the world through the eyes of a trusting child. And as Walls grows up, that innocence melts away. But what is left is compassion and love, not bitterness. (OK, a little bitterness, but in a justified way, not in a whiney way.)

And the writing is just plain good.

So thumbs up on that one.

4. Queen's Own Fool by Jane Yolen and Robert Harris (probably mostly by Harris). YA lit, fiction. Good. Jenny, Emma might like this since she's been having such fun with Shakespeare. Might be nice to have her read some historical fiction from the time period: 1559-1568. This novel is about Mary Queen of Scots, and about her fool/jester/confidante/friend. I liked it. I've never been driven to dive deep into Scottish history, and this was a tantalizing taste. A perfect place to start.

Clean, not sketchy. I'd let my kids read it (both my own and my students). The writing is better than most YA lit writing, and the story moves along. Not too history heavy. Just right.