All's Well That Ends Wednesday
Jan. 10th, 2018 10:11 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
evelyn_bWhat I've Finished Reading
Circus Shoes by Noel Streatfield: a beautifully simple juvenile novel from 1939. This book loses no time at all at any point. From the first sentence, "Peter and Santa were orphans," we know exactly where we are and what to expect. Peter and Santa are raised by a snobbish aunt on a low budget, whose upbringing leaves them poorly educated, burdened by a vague superiority complex, lonely, and devoted to each other. When they are eleven and twelve she dies, and to avoid being send to separate orphanages, Peter and Santa run off in search of their uncle, a clown and "artiste" with Cob's Circus.
Because of their eccentric upbringing, Peter and Santa have no idea what to expect from life in the circus. Their uncle is a decent guy, but he can't understand why his niece and nephew are so prim and ignorant, and he isn't used to being patient with children. They meet the other circus children, who are an international bunch, though only the Germans have irritatingly meticulous accents (and a trained seal named Hitler, though this is mentioned only once and never comes up again). Late, but not too late, they learn to get on with people who are different than themselves, to work hard at things they enjoy, and to try again when they fail. Will their gruff uncle let them stay on after the end of the season? What do you think?
Nothing could be more predictable or more completely charming. The watercolor illustrations are unspectacular, but fit in perfectly with the coziness of the story. The title is a non sequitur, asthisbluespirit pointed out, it was changed to fit a series pattern (with Ballet Shoes and Tennis Shoes, though I don't think it's actually part of a series other than "books by Noel Streatfield about children who learn to do things.") Nothing significant happens around shoes, though Peter and Santa do get their own practice clothes eventually. This book had a Christmas 1939 inscription to a girl from her grandfather, so I added my own inscription and date on the next blank page and sent it to my own niece and nephew as a gift. It's in good condition and there are several more blank pages at the beginning, so with any luck it'll survive to see a third round of regifting.
What I'm Reading Now
In an unexpected twist, everything I'm reading right this minute is non-fiction except for The Last 4 Things (poetry) and my temporary favorite nemesis, Finnegans Wake (inescapably prolonged stand-up comedy dreamscape). Yes, I am going to finish Finnegans Wake in 2018! It's been a long road, as the Enterprise theme song says, getting from there to here. It's been a long time, but my time is finally near.
Home Comforts: The Art and Science of Keeping House is a Thinking Woman's Housekeeping Manual by a former philosophy professor and current NYC homemaker. Would you believe me if I said it's not as obnoxious as that description implies? Maybe I've just been in the right mood for it. It's not coy about being aspirational, which in itself makes it more tolerable than some housekeeping books I've seen - the kind that pretend to be for everyone and then make it very clear that they are for well-off parents of young children in either the US suburbs or Manhattan. Cheryl Mandelbaum has heard of and possibly even seen studio apartments, mobile homes, couches that double as beds, and households of all sizes, and sometimes even remembers to acknowledge that not everyone uses "I can't afford it" as polite code for "I want to spend all my money on shoes instead" or "I've earmarked all my income for exorbitant preschool tuition." This may seem like a low bar, but I have seen too many "organizing" "housekeeping" and "simplification" books that fail to clear it. She has strong opinions, not all of which are likable in themselves, though they are not as eccentric as Marie Kondo's.
This book has inspired me to cut up a too-small flannel sheet into cleaning rags, and now I have more cleaning rags than I know what to do with.
Marthe: A Woman and a Family, A Fin-de-Siecle Correspondence. This completely absorbing collection of letters begins in 1892. Marthe, the 20-year-old daughter of a wealthy family, is pregnant and living at a home for unwed mothers. Her mother and uncle discuss all the trouble they have to go to to by her special food, privileges, extra medical attention and secrecy. After the baby is born, they get to work finding her a husband who will accept a large payout in exchange for acknowledging the child (and, in one case, changing his first name because it was the same as the first name of the baby's father). Currently the mother (Emilie) and her brother (Charles) are trying to background-check a couple of prospective suitors while preventing themselves from being checked in return. Per the introduction by Frederick Brown, it isn't going to turn out well for anyone. Marthe has her foibles, but really the whole family is wonderfully petty, petulant, and self-absorbed.
There's also Language in Action: A Guide to Accurate Thinking by S. I. Hayakawa - a "layman's guidebook" to "the twentieth century's newest science, semantics." Also published in 1939, it has almost the same soothingly simple style as Circus Shoes, though it's a book for adults rather than a book for children.
Language in Action: "All of us, however, have certain reactions of similar kinds: sometimes, tripping over a chair, we kick it and call it names; some people, indeed, when they fail to get letters, get angry at the postman. . . We create in our heads an imaginary chair that maliciously trips us and then 'punish' the extensional chair that bears ill will to nobody; we create an imaginary postman who is 'holding back our mail' and bawl out the extensional postman who would gladly bring us letters if he had any to bring."
Circus Shoes: "He was not exactly cross, but somehow since they had run away people were making him feel that they thought him stupid. Nobody ever had before. In fact Aunt Rebecca, Mr. Stibbings, Mrs. Ford and Madame Tranchot had all in their way given him the idea he was rather bright. He knew that he was not stupid really. In fact, he suspected that he was better educated than anybody attached to the circus. All the same, the way Gus said things made him feel a fool, which was just as bad as being one."
What's similar about them? I'm not sure.
What I Plan to Read Next
The 99 Novels are back! City of Spades by Colin MacInnes and The Assistant by Bernard Malamud are with me today in my living room, waiting to be read! And I gave up waiting on ILL and have just gone ahead and ordered The Golden Virgin by Henry Williamson, so eventually that will be here, too.
If I decide to join osprey_archer in her 2018 reading challenge, the "classic I've been meaning to read" will be The Life of Samuel Johnson by James Boswell.
Circus Shoes by Noel Streatfield: a beautifully simple juvenile novel from 1939. This book loses no time at all at any point. From the first sentence, "Peter and Santa were orphans," we know exactly where we are and what to expect. Peter and Santa are raised by a snobbish aunt on a low budget, whose upbringing leaves them poorly educated, burdened by a vague superiority complex, lonely, and devoted to each other. When they are eleven and twelve she dies, and to avoid being send to separate orphanages, Peter and Santa run off in search of their uncle, a clown and "artiste" with Cob's Circus.
Because of their eccentric upbringing, Peter and Santa have no idea what to expect from life in the circus. Their uncle is a decent guy, but he can't understand why his niece and nephew are so prim and ignorant, and he isn't used to being patient with children. They meet the other circus children, who are an international bunch, though only the Germans have irritatingly meticulous accents (and a trained seal named Hitler, though this is mentioned only once and never comes up again). Late, but not too late, they learn to get on with people who are different than themselves, to work hard at things they enjoy, and to try again when they fail. Will their gruff uncle let them stay on after the end of the season? What do you think?
Nothing could be more predictable or more completely charming. The watercolor illustrations are unspectacular, but fit in perfectly with the coziness of the story. The title is a non sequitur, as
thisbluespirit pointed out, it was changed to fit a series pattern (with Ballet Shoes and Tennis Shoes, though I don't think it's actually part of a series other than "books by Noel Streatfield about children who learn to do things.") Nothing significant happens around shoes, though Peter and Santa do get their own practice clothes eventually. This book had a Christmas 1939 inscription to a girl from her grandfather, so I added my own inscription and date on the next blank page and sent it to my own niece and nephew as a gift. It's in good condition and there are several more blank pages at the beginning, so with any luck it'll survive to see a third round of regifting. What I'm Reading Now
In an unexpected twist, everything I'm reading right this minute is non-fiction except for The Last 4 Things (poetry) and my temporary favorite nemesis, Finnegans Wake (inescapably prolonged stand-up comedy dreamscape). Yes, I am going to finish Finnegans Wake in 2018! It's been a long road, as the Enterprise theme song says, getting from there to here. It's been a long time, but my time is finally near.
Home Comforts: The Art and Science of Keeping House is a Thinking Woman's Housekeeping Manual by a former philosophy professor and current NYC homemaker. Would you believe me if I said it's not as obnoxious as that description implies? Maybe I've just been in the right mood for it. It's not coy about being aspirational, which in itself makes it more tolerable than some housekeeping books I've seen - the kind that pretend to be for everyone and then make it very clear that they are for well-off parents of young children in either the US suburbs or Manhattan. Cheryl Mandelbaum has heard of and possibly even seen studio apartments, mobile homes, couches that double as beds, and households of all sizes, and sometimes even remembers to acknowledge that not everyone uses "I can't afford it" as polite code for "I want to spend all my money on shoes instead" or "I've earmarked all my income for exorbitant preschool tuition." This may seem like a low bar, but I have seen too many "organizing" "housekeeping" and "simplification" books that fail to clear it. She has strong opinions, not all of which are likable in themselves, though they are not as eccentric as Marie Kondo's.
This book has inspired me to cut up a too-small flannel sheet into cleaning rags, and now I have more cleaning rags than I know what to do with.
Marthe: A Woman and a Family, A Fin-de-Siecle Correspondence. This completely absorbing collection of letters begins in 1892. Marthe, the 20-year-old daughter of a wealthy family, is pregnant and living at a home for unwed mothers. Her mother and uncle discuss all the trouble they have to go to to by her special food, privileges, extra medical attention and secrecy. After the baby is born, they get to work finding her a husband who will accept a large payout in exchange for acknowledging the child (and, in one case, changing his first name because it was the same as the first name of the baby's father). Currently the mother (Emilie) and her brother (Charles) are trying to background-check a couple of prospective suitors while preventing themselves from being checked in return. Per the introduction by Frederick Brown, it isn't going to turn out well for anyone. Marthe has her foibles, but really the whole family is wonderfully petty, petulant, and self-absorbed.
There's also Language in Action: A Guide to Accurate Thinking by S. I. Hayakawa - a "layman's guidebook" to "the twentieth century's newest science, semantics." Also published in 1939, it has almost the same soothingly simple style as Circus Shoes, though it's a book for adults rather than a book for children.
Language in Action: "All of us, however, have certain reactions of similar kinds: sometimes, tripping over a chair, we kick it and call it names; some people, indeed, when they fail to get letters, get angry at the postman. . . We create in our heads an imaginary chair that maliciously trips us and then 'punish' the extensional chair that bears ill will to nobody; we create an imaginary postman who is 'holding back our mail' and bawl out the extensional postman who would gladly bring us letters if he had any to bring."
Circus Shoes: "He was not exactly cross, but somehow since they had run away people were making him feel that they thought him stupid. Nobody ever had before. In fact Aunt Rebecca, Mr. Stibbings, Mrs. Ford and Madame Tranchot had all in their way given him the idea he was rather bright. He knew that he was not stupid really. In fact, he suspected that he was better educated than anybody attached to the circus. All the same, the way Gus said things made him feel a fool, which was just as bad as being one."
What's similar about them? I'm not sure.
What I Plan to Read Next
The 99 Novels are back! City of Spades by Colin MacInnes and The Assistant by Bernard Malamud are with me today in my living room, waiting to be read! And I gave up waiting on ILL and have just gone ahead and ordered The Golden Virgin by Henry Williamson, so eventually that will be here, too.
If I decide to join osprey_archer in her 2018 reading challenge, the "classic I've been meaning to read" will be The Life of Samuel Johnson by James Boswell.
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Date: 2018-01-10 06:42 pm (UTC)How did poor Santa get stuck with that name? Is it short for anything, or did her mother just think, "Santa. That's a good name for a girl"?
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Date: 2018-01-10 06:58 pm (UTC)Maybe you can put the plain old ordinary copy on hold and see what shows up first? I hope you get the chance to read The Black Arrow soon!
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Date: 2018-01-10 09:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-01-11 02:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-01-11 02:28 am (UTC)I think I may have to put in for a plain boring copy with no beautiful old illustrations. It was probably asking a bit much to ask them to lend out this book that is apparently 100 years old and still in a school library (which is part of the city system for some reason)... but there was nothing on there that said they couldn't! I'll be very good to it, I promise!
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Date: 2018-01-10 08:56 pm (UTC)Heh. I do like Noel Streatfeil. Her characters aren't cute and they tend to have to work believably hard at what they do, so I'm glad you enjoyed it.
(And, looking above, as to Santa, even when I was growing up in the 1980s, it was a very US term, not a UK one, where he was generally Father Christmas, although there were enough US films and shows that you'd have side-eyed someone called it, but probably not in the 1920s and 30s.)
Also, yay, go 99 Novels!! (The cheating list that it is!)
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Date: 2018-01-10 09:20 pm (UTC)The 99 is such a lie. City of Spades is one of three novels that Burgess is counting as one - and which I guess it's not completely nonsensical to treat as a single multivocal novel in three parts, I GUESS.
I think the one I'm really going to begrudge him by the end is all that damn C.P. Snow. Just because it all fits together doesn't mean it was worth it, as the man said after completing a 6000-piece jigsaw puzzle of some lawyer's drawing room for some reason.
(but even that will be only a minor begrudgement; I still <3 the 99).
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Date: 2018-01-11 02:37 pm (UTC)LOL.
And I came to Streatfeild a little later than some, but early enough in my teens to still appreciate her. It's a shame you can't send it back in time to yourself, but that would only create a paradox. I liked The Painted Garden (which is about a modern grumpy girl getting cast as Mary Lennox in a film of The Secret Garden) and White Boots and several of the others, but funnily enough, our library didn't have Ballet Shoes, so I never read that. I did read The Circus is Coming, though, and have no intention of calling it Circus Shoes at this late date! ;-D
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Date: 2018-01-11 02:57 pm (UTC)The Circus is Coming is a better title, being a phrase that actually appears in and has significance to the book. American publishers strike again!
I'll definitely keep an eye out for Streatfeild in the future! The Painted Garden sounds amazing.
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Date: 2018-01-11 02:30 pm (UTC)I do hope your niece and nephew enjoy it!
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Date: 2018-01-11 02:39 pm (UTC)I hope so, too! Previous experience with the things they like makes me optimistic! (Bonus: it's easy enough for my niece to read on her own, OR OUT LOUD to her little brother!)
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Date: 2018-01-11 03:09 pm (UTC)The letters book sounds fascinating!
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Date: 2018-01-11 03:55 pm (UTC)The letters book sounds fascinating!
It really is! Poor Emilie, who is a piece of work but is doing her damnedest to sort this thing out For the Family, come what may, keeps writing "Burn this letter" at the bottom of each long missive to her brother detailing her machinations, secret fears, carefully cultivated lies, and bowel complaints. Charles burns nothing, bless his two-faced heart.
no subject
Date: 2018-01-12 03:37 pm (UTC)