Behind the Curtain

Holiday Wanderings

Magic hour at Matchbox

Exploring Chicago with a "tourist" always lets me see my city with new eyes. Carolee came for a visit and we had some great drinking, reading, and walking about. One place that was very new-to-me was the Intuit Center, which has a portion of Henry Darger's room installed in the back. The room section is small, but the entrance fee is only $5 and it is definitely worth it to see the environment Darger worked in. There is also oodles of info and some great books to peruse in their library area right next to the room.

   

While we spent a fair amount of time relaxing and brainstorming projects, we also took our customary trip to Quimby's. I grabbed a handful of items while we waited for our photobooth pictures to develop. This time around I got a mix of stuff for myself and as gifts. The one thing I highly recommend getting is Make it Last, from Raleigh Briggs, who also wrote Make Your Place, which I've glowed about on here before.

As for the other items I picked-up: Two issues of MashTun for C (pretty good articles and photos), Cycling: A Guide to Menstruation (wish I had this as a teenager), Taproot (one article was interesting, but I'm not the target audience for this), and Who Will Comfort Toffle? (for my niece because you've got to start them on Tove early!).

Swallows & Amazons

Swallows & Amazons by Arthur Ransome is one of the books I discovered thanks to How the Heather Looks. This book was written in the 1930s for children (I'm guessing in the 6-14 age range), but this doesn't make it less enjoyable for adults.

If I read this as a child, my life would have been a bit different. Just the idea that I had the ability to "run away" and be in nature, because other kids did it too...my mother would have never heard the end of my scheming. I devoured this book in a matter of days and was only consoled in finishing the book by knowing this is just the first in a series.

   

I'm currently finishing-up the second book, Swallowdale, which takes place more on land than "at sea." It is a nice change of pace to see these siblings play explorer and climb a "mountain," though it is not as strong as the second book.  I've read reviews stating that the fourth in the series may be thr strongest, but I'll let you know when I get there. As in the first book, Ransome continues to sprinkle his illustrations of the kid's adventures throughout the story. I have to say I really enjoy his illustrations, although not very detailed nor perfect.

As for the very first book, Swallows & Amazons: it is an absolutely amazing story that I look forward to reading to my friend's kids and rereading myself. I highly suggest you pick-up this book, especially for summer reading.

Relish

This is a very delayed report and I apologize for not posting about it sooner. The awesome Lucy Knisley did a book signing at the awesome Challengers Comics & Conversation for her new book Relish: My Life in the Kitchen.

Lucy was so freaking nice and approachable, it made the whole event casual and awesome at the same time. Her book is also a very good read. Not only did I enjoy her story telling and drawing, Relish kicked me out of my cooking funk and got me back into the kitchen. After months of being "BAH!" about making any food item for fun, Lucy's book inspired me to whip-up a huge batch of cookies and share with my friends. I used the recipe that she included in the book (yes, she has recipes between chapters in the book!) and have been using her "secret weapon" on all cookies I've been baking since then. Super yum.

Too keep this food train going, next post I'll be sharing my scalloped potato recipe with you all. It is a bit different from other recipes, in that it is on the dryer side and not a bunch of sliced potatoes in a pool of sauce.

The Missing Ink: The Lost Art of Handwriting

A few of my letter-loving friends read The Missing Ink: The Lost Art of Handwriting, so I decided to give this short book a go. I have to thank Hensher for his humorous tone in his book. This is a subject that could very easily be a complete bore to read, but his funny footnotes and quips made this short book easy to read. Despite his light tone, I was happy to finish this book.

The only bits I found worth reading were the introduction, the chapter about the evolution of the pen nib, and the conclusion. The other chapters felt a bit forced, much like filler. Hensher includes interludes between some chapters called "witness," which are interviews with people able how they learn writing and similar topics. The "Witness" sections threw me off a bit and I ended-up skipping them toward the end of the book.

The interviews in the "Witness" parts were just snippets of a full conversation, which would be fine if Hensher gave us any context to the conversation and did not remove some of the interviewers prompts. Any information that may help one differentiate multiple speakers was given at the end. This manner of presenting the interviews stripped the speakers of any personality which left me not caring a pip about their thoughts. If he included a sample of their handwriting, so the reader could at least see what they were talking about (and perhaps have a glimpse into their personalities), this would have vastly improved the "Witness" interludes between the chapters. This book wavers between 2.5 to 3  stars for me, but I am glad I read it

How the Heather Looks

Child Reading on Couch (1905) by Jessie Wilcox Smith

How the Heather Looks: A Joyous Journey to the British Sources of Children's Books kidnapped my imagination in a way I was hardly expecting it to. Published in 1965, Joan Bodger narrates a trip she took with her husband and two children to the UK with one purpose in mind: finding the real geographical points/locations of their beloved children's books. This seems silly and a wild goose chase, but as they did research, they found (as do you as the reader) that many of these fictional lands are rooted in the real surroundings of the author's lives.

Map from Swallows and Amazons, a book series by Arthur Ransome

It was interesting to read just how willing Bodger was to see the reality of her kid's favorite stories. Sometimes they actually found the real house of such a character while other times it was just the right person/animal at the right moment that allowed them to see a story unfold. But her openness to look for the possible realness in something like Peter Rabbit, was lovely to read. Her children's love of the stories and of history was also fascinating to see as they visited different towns. They are often comparing the maps from the end pages of the books or using the text for reference to find just the right place, as is seen in the chapter "The River Bank," where they are hunting for several locations from The Wind in the Willows:

"Over hot tea at The Swan we reassessed our adventures. We had found Rat's house and Toad Hall, but what we really longed to see was the picnic place. Ian and I were both certain that we had been within yards of it and we got our copy of  The Wind in the Willows for the hundredth time that day to read aloud the description..." (page 123)

Charles Van Sandwyk's illustration from The Wind and the Willows

The way the family interacts and explores the different towns is stunning to read. It is a time capsule in the same way the books they are hunting down are capsules of a moment. My absolute favorite chapter from the book is "A Peak in Narnia." The family rents an old wooden caravan for two weeks that is placed on the highest peak in the area. From there they have amazing views of the countryside, but a storm moves in. They do not let this storm deter them or ruin their vacation. Instead, they huddle together as a family and read and give themselves more fuel for their upcoming adventures:

"I shall always be grateful to the storm in Cornwall that drove us inward on ourselves. The quality of light being almost the same at ten in the morning as it was at ten at night, we lost all count of time. The soporific swaying of the wagon, the utter stillness of the moor broken intermittently by the sounds of wind and rain, the glimpses of shifting, shadowed landscape gave us the feeling of having embarked upon a long voyage." (page 60)

Her children's curiosity and determination to find real physical evidence of their beloved stories is infectious. I had to put down this book several times because I was inspired to research and see certain topics, illustrators, or stories myself.

Illustration by Reginald B. Birch (1891) from The Admiral's Caravan, written by Charles E. Carryl

Bodger uses a great combination of background research, excerpts from the story being hunted down, and history that allows someone (like me) who is not familiar with the books enjoy their travels and discoveries just the same. For example, while looking for Sherwood Forest Bodger briefly speculates as to who Robin Hood could have actually been.

Her family's spontaneity, love of history, and ability to roll with the punches makes this a really fun book that I hated to see come to an end. I borrowed this from the library, but will be purchasing a copy for myself next week. Needless to say, this book gave me a ton of reading ideas and items to add to the book list, so you will most likely be seeing more old children's books on this blog.

My First Summer in the Sierra

I'm not entirely sure how I heard about John Muir or his writings, but after poking around GoodReads for a while, I settled on picking-up his journal, My First Summer in the Sierra (1911), as a starting point. Most of the reviews on the book that I read kept stressing "as a journal..." or "this is not a novel..." I didn't really get why people kept repeating this point until I read it myself. This is most definitely a cut and dry journal. It has not been heavily edited to follow any plot structure. It can be repetitive. With all this, it was still an enjoyable read.

"Horseshoe Bend, Merced River" and "One of the Tributary Fountains of the Tuolumne Cañon Waters, on the North Side of the Hoffman Range," both by John Muir

That being said, I vacillated between being completely absorbed in the book to being bored out of my mind. I couldn't place my finger on it at first, but I quickly figured out what my issue was with the book. While I very much enjoyed Muir's description and narration of the animals he saw during his camping, I had zero interest in his descriptions of the trees and plants. The journal is split pretty much 50/50 between the two, so I flip flopped between being interested and disinterested as he switched focus. I continued reading despite this because his writing is beautiful. Every time I considered to just leave the book, he said something absolutely stunning. 

"The broad-shouldered fronds held high on smooth stout stalks growing close together, overleaning and overlapping, make a complete ceiling, beneath which one may walk erect over several acres without being seen, as if beneath a roof. And how soft and lovely the light streaming through this living ceiling, revealing the arching branching ribs and veins of the fronds as the framework of countless panes of pale green and yellow plant-glass nicely fitted together—a fairyland created out of the commonest fern-stuff."
     - June 13,  In Camp on the North Fork of the Merced

I also really enjoyed his sense of humour, especially when it came to talking about the two-thousand sheep he was traveling with. He constantly talks about them as "the grand mass of mutton" or "the wool bundles." (Although my favorite was "the woolly locusts.") One example of his great sense of humour, yet admiration, when discussing animals is when he describes the woodchuck in Chapter 6:

The woodchuck (Arctomys monax) of the bleak mountain-tops is a very different sort of mountaineer—the most bovine of rodents, a heavy eater, fat, aldermanic in bulk and fairly bloated, in his high pastures, like a cow in a clover field. One woodchuck would outweigh a hundred chipmunks, and yet he is by no means a dull animal.
    -July 31,  Mount Hoffman and Lake Tenaya

The book is in the public domain, so you can read it online in many places, like The Sierra Club or get the ebook through an online bookshop. Though, I would recommend finding a print version, perhaps through your library, so you can see his drawings in full printed glory.

John Muir

PBS also has an article on John Muir and the role he had in creating our National Parks. In a similar vein, The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America is a book I started a long time ago and put down. I should pick it up again sometime soon. Has anyone read it?

Nature, Emerson

I tried to read Ralph Waldo Emerson's Nature last year, but I wasn't ready for it. The text is dense and I was out of practice in reading this type of material. I was in the right place for it this month and completely devoured these essays.

This book is broken into three essays: Nature, History, and Self-Reliance. I was most excited to read "Self-Reliance," but found the "Nature" and "History" essays more interesting. For me, the entire book is worth it just for this one line:

"The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn." (pg. 57)

I don't know why this one sentence hit me so much. There are a thousand other similar sentences in this book, but I kept going back to read this one. Funny how some writing just hits this sweet spot in your mind.

Another bit of words from this book that really got to me is this:

We are associated in adolescent and adult life with some friends, who, like skies and waters, are coextensive with our idea; who, answering each to a certain affection of the soul, satisfy our desire on that side; who we lack power to put at such focal distance from us, that we can mend of even analyze them. We cannot choose but love them. (page 32)

I recommend this book, as it got me very inspired, but if you can't get through it, put it down for another time. It is worth it in te end, but if you aren't going to absorb the words, wait until you are open enough to.

 

Where your feet are swept off to...

"Rivendell" by J.R.R. Tolkien

I debated with myself about whether I should write a post about my thoughts on The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings books. I never read either as a child or when the first movies came out, so I'm quite late in the game. In fact, I just finished reading Lord of the Rings last week and The Hobbit was keeping me company while I was sick over the holidays. But, in speaking to some friends, I found that I'm not the only one whose never read these and that some people still are a little biased about these books, so I decided to go ahead and add my bit on these titles.

Tolkien’s artwork and design for the first edition of The Hobbit, 1935

I loved both of these titles very much. It is hard for me to choose a favorite, but if pressed I will most likely say The Hobbit. It has the same amount of adventure and action in Lord of the Rings, but compressed into one volume. In reading The Hobbit my mind was full of joy. It made me excited to explore and gave me a bit of a kick in the pants to plan some mini-adventures with C. I also found myself more sucked into The Hobbit and staying up late to  finish "just one more chapter." (You know how that is!)

With Lord of the Rings I was surprised as to how different it was to the movie. The main thing I was completely shocked about is how much they changed the characters of the hobbits. In the movie they make the four hobbits seem helpless and a bit daft. In the book, it is obvious they can hold their own and in a way, I found them more courageous than any of the other characters. Frodo is much less of a whiny b*tch in the book as well. (Come on, he is SO whiny in the movie.)

"Fangorn Forest," J.R.R. Tolkien, c.1920

The main complaint I have with Lord of the Rings is that it can get terribly boring in parts. Here is what I will warn you about Lord of the Rings:
- The first two chapters of volume 1 are boring.
- The middle of volume 2 is a bit boring
- The boring bits are worth it because it picks up like crazy right after
- Read the preface after you read all three volumes. It will all make better sense and the preface contains some spoilers. 

That being said, Lord of the Rings has something in it for everyone. In talking to friends who have already read the series, I found us disagreeing on what characters and scenes we enjoyed more or found boring. I personally found the parts that just focused on the men boring and really enjoyed the parts that followed the hobbits. Meanwhile Donovan thought Sam & Frodo's story was boring and really liked Merry & Pippin, and yet another friend thought all the battle scenes with the men were amazing. So, to each his own.

I feel a little silly writing a "review" of these titles, especially while  The Hobbit movie is out (and I still haven't seen it). But, I very much enjoyed reading these books and look forward to rereading them sometime next year, so I thought I would share. For those of you who have been considering reading these books, do it. At a minimum, read  The Hobbit. Though I doubt you'll just stop there.

Fire Igniter

Carolee was kind enough to gift me a book called D.I.Y. Magic by Anthony Alvarado for the holidays. My thoughts when I first saw the book were:
1) This cover is gorgeous
2) Does she think I'm a witch or something?

Despite my initial "WTF Magik?" reactions to the book, I gave it a chance. What you should know about this book off the bat is that it is not about magic. At least in the traditional sense. D.I.Y. Magic is more about opening the magic and power you have within yourself so you can be more creative, peaceful, crazy...whatever you wish.

This is not an earth shattering book and you will most likely not learn anything new, but the book is good at motivating you to do things you have forgotten about. I already have done most of what is suggested in this book, but there are some new goodies, like The Ganzfeld Technique, or "the poor man's isolation tank." My favorite essay is "Surfing waves of Synchronicity and the Interpretation of Random Events." The essay talks about common ideas and thoughts, but Alvarado presents them in such honest and digestible ways that it is hard not to be inspired all over again.

D.I.Y. Magic is a good starting point for someone who wants to be more open or for someone who wants to rediscover actions they once used to do. The further reading section and the quotes scattered within the book are great for pushing the fire that this book lit. So, if you want to push your bubble of comfort, are in a creative rut, or just want to do new things, I would suggest this book. Choose your own adventure. No one is out to judge you.

The Golden Age by Kenneth Grahame

Illustration by Ernest H. Shepard; page 15 of The Golden Age (1922)

Yes, I am posting anther book review so soon after last week's. 'Tis the season for snuggling under the covers and reading. Oh, that and all the traveling we tend to do this time of year. I've been meaning to write about Kenneth Grahame's book The Golden Age for quite some time now. You may know Grahame thanks to his awesome book Wind in the Willows. I never read it as a child, but corrected this mistake this summer. I completely fell in love with Wind in the Willows and decided to read more from Grahame.

The Golden Age is more a collection of short stories than a full novel. The stories follow the same group of children through their various adventures, so there is a common thread that runs through all the tales. It was first published in 1900 and the children live in a rural area just outside of town being raised by aunts and uncles. This allows them a huge amount of freedom to wander and imagine as they see fit, making for some amazingly fun reading. They hunt dragons, they peer into the lives of the adults, they play lovely made-up games with each other. The writing is honest and descriptive, making it hard not to get sucked in or sympathize with the children. I especially adored how they spoke of themselves in comparison to the adults, as highlighted in this passage of how the adults tend to stay out of the children's way:

They cared not to explore for robbers' caves, nor dig for hidden treasure. Perhaps, indeed, it was one of their best qualities that they spent the greater part of the time stuffily indoors....We illuminati, eating silently, our heads full of plans and conspiracies, could have told them what real life was. (pages 4 and 6; 1922 ed.)

Illustration by Ernest H. Shepard; page 58 of The Golden Age (1922)

That bit is from the introduction, which is a bit more explanatory than narrative. I wish I could pin down one of the stories as my favorite, but I don't think I ever could. I will share with you this one bit from Chapter 8, "The Burglars " which I think captures the essence of childhood quite well:

It was much too fine a night to think of going to bed at once, and so, although the witching hour of nine p.m. had struck, Edward and I were still leaning out of the open window in our night-shirts, watching the play of the cedar-branch shadows on the moonlit lawn, and planning; schemes of fresh devilry for the sunshiney morrow. (page 63; 1922 ed.)

Illustration by Ernest H. Shepard; page 67 of The Golden Age (1922)

I couldn't help but be infected with these children's send of imagination. This book actually inspired a few of the projects I've been working for the LWA this year. I was feeling a bit stuck in a rut around summer - a sense of being both over and underwhelmed with the internet and this book just gave me a recharge of energy. Maybe it is just what I needed at the moment, but The Golden Age is the best book I've read this year. I have bookmarked a few of the stories to read again and look forward to doing so very soon.

Illustration by Ernest H. Shepard; page 99 of The Golden Age (1922)

Needless to say, I highly recommend you pick-up this book. If you can't find it in your library Openlibrary.org has a few digital copies available right here. The 1922 edition I read had some really amazing illustrations by Ernest H. Shepard, some of which I have included in this post. If you read this collection of stories, I'd love to hear what you thought of it.