Debi Cates
“Just magic,” said Adam, “the ordinary kind.”
This nearly 60 year old YA novel has a surprising number of reviews, the majority five star! Unlike the magic of Penn and Teller, or of Harry Potter, I am drawn to that ageless quest for “ordinary” magic.
This is a 1966 fable about an unassuming man, Adam, capable of true magic. He travels to a fantastical place, Mageia, where he hopes to be accepted into their Guild of Magicians and with their help, learn more about magic, rating himself as only a modest beginner. When the town's master magicians witness his real magic, ironically, they consider it cheating and in their sleight-of-hand hearts and minds, they also covet his secret. He is now a threat to them and is in mortal danger.
Luckily author Gallico cleverly gives Adam a companion and sidekick, Mopsy, a talking dog. We all know dogs are fiercely loyal and have that near magical intuition about humans. With Adam's utterly trusting nature, he could never have survived without the cynic Mopsy.
In Mageia, he also meets a young resident, an 11 year old girl, Jane, who doesn't care to grow up to be a magician's assistant as is traditional. No, she wants to be a magician herself! That touch of early feminism tickled my female heart. She will be the only one in Mageia who learns some of the “ordinary magic” from him.
The novella Jonathan Livingston Seagull came to my mind, a book I read at around 12, another tale of transcendence. Many GR reviewers read The Man Who Was Magic at around 12, too, and kept it as a life-long memory. I think we treasured being introduced–at the perfect age–to the magic of possibility.
I added an extra star in comradery.
Answers are delayed until the question is no longer relevant.
Knowing next to nothing about the Hindu culture, I can hardly add anything to this novel's deeper meaning. I can only reflect on it personally via this English translation.
In a very brief summary, this is a 1965 novel about a village religious leader, Praneshacharya, who is presented with a dilemma related to the rites and cremation of one of the members of the village. The dead man, although also a brahmin, has deliberately mocked brahminism and is considered polluted as well as polluting. No one wants to touch him but no one except a brahmin can do the rites. The whole village must wait upon Praneshacharya to find a solution.
Meanwhile, the man's corpse is rotting and the village isn't allowed to eat or pray until he has been cremated. Praneshacharya has a crisis of indecision. After searching the scriptures to no avail, he decides to go to a temple where he asks and waits for an answer from the temple's god. He receives none. In the subsequent state of dejection and fatigue, he succumbs to an act of religiously immoral passion. Because of his hitherto faithfulness and his role as an example to others, this aberration causes him psychic pain and he falls into deep self-reflection.
As a non-Hindu reader, I found the novel and its premise fascinating. The writing was superb, the plot was intriguing, the characters well defined and the drama highly thought-provoking. I'm certain that to Hindus it would be incredibly more complicated. But even from my cultural distance, it was stimulating and rewarding.
Praneshacharya is an empathetic character. He is honest in his faith and has lived his life with a clear moral compass going back to his early teens. He is now almost 40, an age common for an identity crisis. However, the same faithfulness can't be said of the other village brahmins, including the reprobate dead man. While alive he had been Praneshacharya's opposite, his nemesis who now, in death, continues to antagonize and challenge Praneshacharya's understanding of what is holy and righteous. This is his long-needed trial, the kind that can either destroy or enrich one's spiritual understanding. It will foundationally change his personal and religious perspective about himself and his place as a member of humanity.
It was an immersive read. I loved that about it. I may not have understood all the many nuances and other political facts (perhaps includes effects of Colonialism) that a fellow native of author Ananthamurthy's would, but I am convinced the novel can be understood at a universal level of the State, Society, and Religion versus personal morality. I'm reminded of Sophocles' play Antigone in that way.
From my admittedly narrow perspective, the novel's hero was the despised low caste consort of the dead man, who like the hero in Antigone also outside the power structure, is a woman. Her credo was so much simpler–and one could argue is the premise of every religion: how should we best live? To love and care for others. And to honor this life of pain and joy.
A fine, thought-provoking read.
This book is a trip back in time to how things where when I was growing up.
I have no idea how our parents did it–how did they not worry themselves sick? Yet, we kids did have some amazing growing experiences.
Different times, my friend, different times.
“Are you playing nice?” was exactly what adults would say to us kids. It wasn't a question, so much as it was a kindly greeting and, perhaps, their own nostalgic observation.
Lucille Wood-TrostRemember that name.(Also illustrator Lydia Rosier.)No cutesy bunny tale. This is the real deal about real cottontails with realistic fine illustrations.I have been known to search out children's nonfiction books if I am interested in a subject. Although today I found this book because I was researching 1971 first publications for a personal reading project. And though it didn't qualify for that project of a future read, it instantly interested me. I read right then via Archive.org.I find that a “kids book” is the most pleasant–and brief–way to lightly familiarize my beginner self with something that interests me. Even the name author has given the protagonist, a female, is Sylvi, short for the sylvilagus genus in which all cottontails belong. Wood-Trost reveals this in the very first sentence. Right away it excited me that this would be a treat of the refreshing scientific kind. Note: It includes death and mating, you know, like in the biographies of all real bunnies.Here I learned that female cottontail mates the same day after giving birth. (Yowza.) That explains their notoriously large and quick populations, doesn't it? I also learned only 20% survive their first year due to weather, mishaps, and of course predators, lots of predators . Reminded me of the rabbits' creation myth in [b:Watership Down 76620 Watership Down (Watership Down, #1) Richard Adams https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1405136931l/76620.SY75.jpg 1357456] that acknowledges they will be hunted by most other animals.A per the author's biography in this, her first, book, Wood-Trost holds degrees in zoology and biology from Pennsylvania State University. Illustrator Lydia Rosier hails from Switzerland, educated in the Netherlands, then went on to study in the US at the Art Students League and the School of Visual Arts. So, yes, both these women have their props due them and I'll be looking out for more of their works. (Although GR barely gives their work a nod).
A sad, one-way friendship that ends without Little Oleg having realized what an empty friendship he has cherished.
But a little reader should see it clearly and, with an adult's help, might consider options for Little Oleg, or anyone being taken advantage of.
At least that's what I hope happens upon reading this book.
That's so 70s!
1971 to be exact and I loved it. With Felicia's Earth Mother vibe, cozy cottage, her frizzy hair, bell-bottom jeans, and bare feet I felt right at home. (This children's picture book can he read at Archive.org)
Felicia was making breakfast of plums and shortbread cookies with currents. But when it's time to eat, Mimi has gone missing. Felicia looks everywhere, in every nook and cranny in every room, even looking under the plums in the bowl. The illustrations are fun to look at, to read the labels and book titles. But, who is Mimi and where has she gone?
A story with no heavy message, just some fun tomfoolery before sitting down to breakfast.
Definite LGBTQ vibes, if I'm not mistaken. L also is for loving.
From the bottom of my heart, thank you Ms.Viorst
Pet deaths are hard, no matter if you are young or old, no matter if the pet is young or old. Ms. Viorst has written a story that isn't pandering but is kind and understanding, done gently and simply. She's done a generous thing by writing this story for us.
I have a little pet cemetery in my yard. We–my oldest daughter and my older grands–hold services there. It is part of our grieving process. It helps us to also know they are nearby, part of our family still.
I've let my family know that when I die I want to be cremated and my ashes scattered the next spring, among the West Texas wildflowers with a service not much different than we've done for our pets.
Wildflowers have given me joy all the years I've lived here, teaching myself their names, watching their seasons, and I want to rest among them. Then when it is spring, when the wildflowers bloom, my family will know I'm now part of the flowers just as I was part of them.
Simple and Sweet
A children's book first published in Japan in 1966, written by a young American author who was working her “way around the world.” The brushed ink illustrations are simple but expressive. Without an illustrator mentioned, I assume they were done by Nash herself.
The book was dedicated to Debbie, so I gave it an extra star. I was a “Debbie” until I was an early teen and in act of outrageous rebellion, changed the spelling. :P
There is only a shallow reference to the Japanese culture but the story is universal: a little girl who would like her own pet. In the end, she realizes that every day she can befriend a critter without having to take it home, a message that also fits nicely with contemporary sensibilities.
I read this via Archive.org while browsing around for books published in 1966. It's amazing how many gazillion books are out there, books for which GR doesn't have a proper entry I discovered. There is something philosophical to say about that, indeed about the Internet as a whole. All the more reason to support sites like Archive, Open Library, and Gutenberg. And to support our public libraries that still have lots of lovely old books, too.
Book link here.
A charming book. I enjoyed being reminded of when I was growing up in places that had distinct, long winter seasons, including snow and iced over ponds.
After reading quite a few 1970s picture books the past week via Archive.org or OpenLibrary.org, I'm pretty sure a lot were written as much for the writers themselves as they were for the “intended audience.” And that audience, I'm sure, included appealing to the read-aloud parents. I've noticed too that older picture books don't worry so much about imbedding a message.
Nothing wrong with any of that. Just noticed it is all.
I had to chuckle when I read the author's bio at the end: she has lived in Houston, Texas all her life. So, this book definitely is not a nostalgic ode to her childhood! Nonetheless, she seem to have gotten it right.
My 25 cents
I picked up an almost untouched copy of this book for an incredible mere 25 cents at a local thrift store. I read it in a couple of hours while it rained this Friday evening. It always seems to rain on Labor Day weekend here. I remember reading Charlotte's Web to my two girls on another Labor Day, long time ago, a late afternoon when it rained and the electricity went out so I remember reading it aloud to them by the gray light coming in through the window.
I confess, after reading a few chapters today, I was pretty attached to Winn-Dixie. I skipped to the last couple of pages. Just to make sure the dog didn't die. I, too, had a dog named Dixie (just Dixie) who I still think of often. I named her after my dad's favorite dog he had when we lived on the farm when I was a kid. A farm hand ran over that Dixie with a tractor, an accident that didn't seem possible. My dad never liked that guy, not before nor after. My Dixie, luckily, died of old age but that was hard, too. When I think of her, I always first think of her during her infirmity, confirming to myself that yes, it was her time. Then I can go on to think of her as young, energetic, happy faced with one lazy ear, and how that was the time of “me and Dixie.”
Some books are like that, aren't they? They get mixed and stirred in with a bunch of other things in our life at the time we're reading them: the weather, the time of year, the people and animals who were with us. This time, decades after that other Labor Day weekend with my girls, it was just me silently reading with my two dogs, Elvie and Fizz, who I reached down to pet frequently. And it was raining.
I've never spent a quarter so well.
An odd experience. I mean, odder than normal.Do you know what two books should not be read back-to-back? I do.Previous to Dahl's book, I just read the 1963 essays [b:The Fire Next Time 464260 The Fire Next Time James Baldwin https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1657560861l/464260.SY75.jpg 1129041] by James Baldwin. That read was like having surgery on all your organs, where you are splayed with your innards exposed and, now, sewn back up, you are still sore to the touch. Then, next, I read this 1964 children's book by Roald Dahl, making a very odd pairing. I “ouched” a few times at things that I would not have had a reaction to at all had I read this as a kid in the 60s. Still, I don't ascribe to the near-sightedness of judging everything under the sun by today's standards, but I do notice them now.Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was entertaining, well-written, fabulously imaginative. No wonder it's clearly a classic, beloved by millions around the world. You have to love Dahl for all the children who love him. He knows what they like. His stories see the world through the eyes of children, and rallies them around another child for whom life is deeply unfair. Always in the end, with the help of often odd characters, hurrah! Sweet justice and happiness is had.Wait. It just occurs to me that my two back-to-back reads aren't entirely an odd pair. They both share that subject of unfairness. Baldwin's child, though, is black America, and that story is still being written.Sigh. Well, not all meals have to be kale and broccoli. Chocolate is a good treat. So it is with books–not all have to be serious, much less serious to an adult. It's quite alright to enjoy a book, to dream of fantastical sweets and being given the answers to all your problems simply because you are deserving. Do remember, though, the part where you need to actually be deserving by having a kind and loving heart.May I suggest in lieu of a lifetime of chocolate and a magic man in a velvet coat with tails appearing, let us grownups keep working on fairness and justice within ourselves. Let's be the good guys of the story we live.
“...all the stars aflame.”
–08/23/2024
This isn't a review of the book because I'm not done yet. This is me stopping reading after having just read the first 10 pages, the letter Baldwin wrote to his nephew on the 100th anniversary of emancipation. My head and heart are on fire!
These few lines are also a celebration, my own small commemoration, of Kamala Harris' U.S. presidential Democratic nomination last night. I don't want to go back. I want to go toward where stars are aflame. The mere thought of more darkness of Trump and MAGA is an unbearable deadness. I have a feeling that millions of voting Americans feel the same. Our joy, our hope for November is a sky filling with neutron stars.
–08/28/2024
It's impossible for me to make comments here that begin to reflect the depth of insight in this 1963 book. Baldwin is a new hero of mine, for his mind, for his heart. And his frank honesty.
You know what the crying shame is in 2024? That nearly 60 years after Baldwin's advice and faith in America's possibilities eruditely, passionately, and compassionately written here, we are seeing states “fixing” American racial history and today's American racism by literally legislating denialism, making it illegal even to discuss racism in schools. That is wholly shocking to me. There is no redeeming value in an education based on omission and lies. It's oppression of minds.
We all know that what you resist, persists. I have a feeling, though, that these cunning politicians are legislating exactly so systematic racism persists. I also have a feeling that the upcoming generation is not fooled one bit and will help vote them into old racist white guy political oblivion.
“[The American Negro] is the key figure in his country, and the American future is precisely as bright or dark as he is.”
“...a vast amount of energy that goes into what we call the Negro problem is produced by the white man's profound desire not to be judged by those who are not white...“
“White people, in the generality, cannot be taken as role models of how to live.”
“...I am not a ward of America. I am one of the first Americans to arrive on these shores.”
“Color is not a human or personal reality; it is a political reality.”
Palookaville, a thought experiment.
“You're in charge of the the Palookaville rebranding campaign. Suggest six slogans or overall directions the town image could move in.”
That's just one of the many often weird and fun prompts in this book. I'm enjoying at bedtime. Yeah, it helps me fall asleep. Not because it's boring but because it drowns out the shenanigans that my monkey-mind likes to irritate my brain with (really? that old boyfriend story again?), even when I keep saying, “Stop! I gotta work tomorrow!”
That probably isn't what the author had in mind. He might have imagined readers using the prompts to exercise their uber creative powers while sitting in an outdoor cafe, sipping an espresso. Or something. Not lying in bed, using it instead of counting sheep. Hey! That could be another prompt, “List five places you could answer these prompts instead of at a cafe.”
Palookaville. Like Paris without the je ne sais quoi.
Palookaville. Come for the selfie with our sign. Stay for the still working 1880s amusement park!
Palookaville. We found all your lost socks and they are in our museum.
Palookaville. Hometown of 7 GoodReads reviewers.
Palookaville. “Pa, look! A Ville!”
Palookaville. Palooka but don't patoucha.
“Time went by. It could be proved that it did, although so little happened.”That's the way time passing feels to the small group of aged pensioners staying in London at the Claremont Hotel as residents. But certainly a lot more living (and some dying) was going on there than one would suppose. Taylor writes with razor-sharp humor and aching pathos. She captures snippy comments, suppressed feelings, painful indignities, careless family ties, lackluster days. She captures the sad lamentations for spouses who left this earth first, bad hotel food, tight budgets, snobbery disguised as banter, and the outdated unchangeable personalities. And mostly, she captures the fear of further downward trajectories felt by every one of the small group of aged residents.But Taylor gives more than old age tropes. These aged Claremont residents are still very much alive in spite of diminishing bodies and diminishing capital. Certainly those constraints force upon them a lot of mere watching and waiting. Yet the inflow of experiences and emotions continues, just as it always has. The heart of the residents' true tragedy is to experience this latter part of their lives among strangers. And life now has both too much and too little time for them.Taylor is such a consummate writer that it's delightful to pick up on the little tidbits of her astute observations. You certainly don't have to be an old geezer to enjoy this novel. It's witty, it's clever, it's sensitive, and it's mightily entertaining. It's remarkable how she can write about even obnoxious people with compassion, though clearly depicting how obnoxious they undoubtedly are. (I'm thinking also of her novel [b:Angel 647121 Angel Elizabeth Taylor https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1328729193l/647121.SY75.jpg 633266] I read last year.) No one, not even our Mrs. Palfrey, is without irritating faults–that stoicism, that stiff upper lip, always proper to the point of bland remoteness. Yet, in contrast to that outer controlled exterior, Mrs. P also takes delight now and then in creating tiny amounts of calculated shock; she also instigates a major deception! Behaviors which prove she is not as bland and proper as presents herself to be. Even so, in Taylor's deft writing we see Mrs. Palfrey and all the other Claremont regulars as deserving our sincerest empathy. Just as real people in our real lives deserve. Just as we hope we deserve, especially in our old age.All of us live the majority of our lives with a carefreeness, even carelessness, as if we ourselves will always be meaningful, part of the hubbub, the center of our warm cocoons, looking vaguely toward when we will enjoy the rich harvest of a life well-lived. Then, one day, the hubbub is elsewhere. Our well-stocked pantry is more bare than we imagined. We are alone.Gently Taylor takes us to that place, where in spite of all, life's fundamental desires don't age out: we have the same longing we've had all our lives, to be important to someone who cares about us.
“Almost a happy day.”–Ivan Deisovich Shokhov
There is no doubt that the Siberian gulags, implemented under Stalin who, it has been estimated, killed 7 million of his own people, were absolute horrors. But in this novel, depicting just one day, no one dies. They are merely grossly mistreated while serving ten and twenty-five year sentences for minor, sometimes illogical infractions. For example, men were sent to the gulag after surviving a Nazi camp. They were sent to the gulag because they had spent time around “foreigners” in those camps and thus could not be trusted. (There's Stalin's famous paranoia for you.) Whatever the infraction, the prisoners at the end of their sentences, if they lived to see that day, will either be exiled, have more years tacked on, or they will be dead. None will ever go home again and they know it.
This day, a day in 1951, nothing extraordinarily horrific happens: the camp's 400 men are merely under-clothed, under-fed. Like all the days before and the days after, they spend this day freezing, working, and hungry. And being counted.
What I found discombobulating was how I reacted to the story. It was awful, God yes, but it didn't invoke tears or major fear. There are men easily given to violence in the camp but this day no one is grossly assaulted. Tragedies are mentioned in passing without hyper focus or sting, told off-screen, so to speak.
Rather, the day is spent by the main character, Ivan Denisovich Shukhov, being careful, being wily. He has figured out how to survive one more day, and this day with tiny additions of luxury: another 6 ounces of bread, an extra bowl of thin cabbage soup, and a cigarette.
In my reading journal, I even made a list from his thoughts of survival which I titled, “Rules for Surviving the Gulag,” which included:
“...you never put your feet near the flame if you're wearing boots,” “...never be conspicuous. The main thing was never to be seen by a camp guard on your own, only in a group...” and “When you work for the knowing you gave them quality; when you worked for a fool you simply gave him eyewash.”
Dozens of small things like those meant the difference between living another day or starting your spiral toward terrible misery and then inevitably, terrible death. No one can save you.
This novel–based on Solzhenitsyn's own years in labor camps–made a big impact in the Soviet Union and in the world when it was published in 1962, approved by Nikita Khrushchev, Stalin now dead and no hero of Khrushchev's. It was the first time the Stalin Terrors were openly acknowledged. A couple of years later the novel became banned again after Khrushchev was ousted in 1964, but the cat was out of the bag. Solzhenitsyn continued secretly writing and publishing outside of the USSR. In 1970, Solzhenitsyn was award the Nobel Peace Prize, which gave him a whole new set of political headaches, and exile.
Very complicated, all that.
That makes me wonder if that is why the novel seemed to pull its punches.
Or was there some other subversive message from Solzhenitsyn? Was it a message to the Soviet government about its short-sightedness toward its own valuable resources? (Ivan Denisovich Shukhov was a kulak, one of the thousands of peasants who had their lands taken from them and made into collectives). Was the message that the true strength of the Union was the hard working and skilled people, a major resource they stupidly abused and murdered by the millions?
In the Afterword, Eric Bogosian writes, “The individual cannot detach himself from the matrix of his society.” In this case, it was the societal matrix of the USSR and equally the matrix of the gulag.
P.S. Hey 2024, the good guys don't create thousands of interment camps.
“Now, then.”
Verlyn Klinkenborg spent four years studying famous English naturalist Gilbert White's writings. I underlined half this book, taking weeks to read it, savoring it. I am tempted to write Mr. Klinkenborg, care of his publisher. I want to tell him, gushingly, all fan-girlish, how moved and spellbound I was by this work, a wonderment.
It takes its place, now and forever, as a beloved favorite among my favorites.
In a nutshell, or if you prefer, in a tortoise shell, Timothy is the observer of Mr. Gilbert White. The tables are turned. Both poetic and crass, she calls it like she sees it (Timothy was indeed a female, a fact unknown to White).
She is no anthropomorphic sweetie. Her voice is that a tortoise, a reptile, a hibernator, a sentient being that is distinctly not under the spell of human beings, those dear sweet misguided and obnoxious human beings and their hurly-burly 18th century lives in Selborne.
Like White, Timothy too, is a naturalist, records human species' oddities, rhythms and predictable schedules, is astounded by their awkward physical attributes, and puzzles over their behaviors. Everything so oddly different from Timothy's own.
There is a passage where Timothy wonders what would happen if she simply said, “Now, then” to Mr. White who has such a devoted interest in her, tenderly cares for her, and unlike with the other Selborne humans, they sometimes exchange a brief glance, recognizing mutual consciousnesses. If she did speak, though, how that would change the human perspective! She notes it would require “All the world to be rearranged.”
Being an unwitting transplant from her Mediterranean home, she is always a transplant, an alien, a misfit, a survivor, living in a “tiny, miserable kingdom of one,” without any kin during her long years in England from 1740 to 1794. 1794 is, when at last, she does not rise from her annual winter hibernation. White had died just the summer before, at age 72. One has the feeling that she was at least that old, having lived who knows how long on the coastal ancient Greek ruins in the south of Turkey, her native land, the land she was physiologically, ecologically bound with, before being swooped up by anonymous human hands and carried worlds away.
Here is a 10 minute interview with Klinkenborg about Timothy. He sounds like I had hoped he would! If Klinkenborg would have made the audiobook himself, I would want to buy, listen, and treasure it as well. Instead they used a female narrator and rightly so, avoiding heaping another injustice of ignorance onto Timothy:
https://www.loe.org/shows/segments.html?programID=06-P13-00006&segmentID=6
489 total GR reviews. Hmph. Not all wonderments are lauded, as would be just.
For children ages 8-13. And 65.I chuckled throughout! What a clever monkey Juster is. It was a joy to read.It's nice that he doesn't talk down to children. It would be extra fun to read aloud with a child of the target age, a child who would appreciate the puns and play on words (and numbers). Probably most children of the intended age group won't get all the jokes (I hope I didn't miss any myself!) but the curious can certainly ask. Or Google it, of course.As I was reading, I thought this classic could be compared to [b:Alice's Adventures in Wonderland / Through the Looking-Glass 24213 Alice's Adventures in Wonderland / Through the Looking-Glass Lewis Carroll https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1630487234l/24213.SX50.jpg 2375385], except things in the Kingdom of Wisdom everything makes sense once you learn who it is you are talking to.I also thought of [b:The Little Prince 157993 The Little Prince Antoine de Saint-Exupéry https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1367545443l/157993.SY75.jpg 2180358], except that instead of feeling sorry for adults and for the things they find valuable, the quirky adults in the Kingdom of Wisdom, taken as a whole possess a lot of, well, wisdom.I even thought of [b:The Never Ending Story 2893081 The Never Ending Story Michael Ende https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1641510766l/2893081.SY75.jpg 1122661], but instead of the protagonist child being apart through most of the story, Milo is there, navigating and even taking on a heroic adventure, and doing so with curiosity and willingness.This book belongs with those others, standing just as tall as a well-deserved classic.
