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The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester

Oct19

Subtitled “A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary,” this book has something for everyone. For bibliophiles and verbivores, there are all the dictionary details. Did you know that it took seventy years to produce the first edition of the OED? Or that there are 414,825 words defined in the OED? Did you know that the team of lexicographers who produced the dictionary included many unpaid volunteers who read and copied out quotations from a myriad of sources? Did you know that they mislaid one word, only one, bondsmaid? It was found long after the volume in which it would have been included was published, and it was later included in a supplement to the dictionary which came out in 1933.

I can tell, though, that some of you are more interested in the murder and insanity. Well, one of those lowly, unpaid volunteers, one who made himself indispensible to the dictionary project, was an American living in Britain. Unknown at first to the editor of the dictionary and his team of lexicographers, this American, a medical doctor, who sent in thousands of useful citations that were used in the final dictionary, was also a resident of England’s second most famous mental hospital, Broadmoor Asylum for the Criminally Insane. It was an interesting collaboration, to say the least.

So if your interests extend to crime, murder, paranoia, mayhem, the development of the English language, or lexicography, you’ll find something of interest in this book. I noticed the other day that Ms. Mental Multivitamin has a copy of this book in her library.
I borrowed mine from the public library.

By the way, did you know that Shakespeare didn’t have a dictionary?

Whenever he came to use an unusual word, or to set a word in what seemed an unusual context—and his plays are extraordinarily rich with examples—he had almost no way of checking the propriety of what he was about to do. . . . Shakespeare was not even able to perform a function that we consider today as perfectly normal and ordinary a function as reading itself. He could not as the saying goes, “look something up.” . . . Indeed, the very phrase did not exist.

Maybe that’s why Shakespeare was so inventive with words and phrases, no dictionaries to hem him in and tell him what he couldn’t do.

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Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset

Oct16

With the ‘domestic epic’, a sweeping drama set against a carefully studied social background, she broke a new ground. Undset turned away from the sentimental style of national romanticism and wanted to re-create the realism of the Icelandic sagas and write so vividly, that “everything that seem(s) romantic from here – murder, violence, etc becomes ordinary – comes to life,” as the author explained. . . . Undset’s emphasis on women’s biological nature, and her view that motherhood is the highest duty (to which) a woman can aspire, has been criticized by feminists as reactionary. —Kirjasto

I’m not surprised that feminist critics might not appreciate Sigrid Undset’s Kristin Lavransdatter. What a story! I actually began reading this story of a medieval Norwegian mother and wife a long time ago, but found myself unable to stay with it. This time I read it in three separate paperback books, The Bridal Wreath (Part 1), Mistress of Husaby (Part 2), and The Cross (Part 3). I think the three separate books made it more digestible and less intimidating. Anyway, this time I not only read the entire book, over a thousand pages, but I enjoyed it so much that I plan to add it to my list of the 100 Best Fiction Books Ever Written.

The Bridal Wreath tells the story of Kristin’s childhood, her growth into womanhood, her betrothal, her sin and loss of honor, and her marriage. For better or for worse, the decisions that Kristin makes in this first book determine the remainder of the events of her life and her willfulness in choosing her own husband throws a shadow over even the happiest of times in her later life. Kristin is a likeable protagonist, but very much a fallible one. Book 1 of this trilogy is about rebellion and how easy it is to fall into sin, how justifiable it seems. The story also demonstrates how one sin leads to another and “what a tangled web we weave.”

Nevertheless, Kristin becomes The Mistress of Husaby, the medieval estate of her husband, Erlend. She gives her husband sons, seven sons. They are rich in land, in friends, in family. But their character, or lack thereof, comes back to haunt the two of them and their marriage again and again. Having started off on the wrong foot, so to speak, Kristin and her husband can never manage to live in harmony for long. Erlend is careless and untrustworthy, just as he was when Kristin married him. Kristin is often shrewish and disrespectful in response to her husband’s irresponsibility. Still they build a marriage that, just barely, outlasts the storms of adultery, abandonment, imprisonment, sickness, and disgrace.

In Book 3, The Cross, Kristin is getting old for a woman of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. She’s in her forties as the story progresses. Her sons are growing up, and her husband is growing old. Kristin must learn the lesson of self-denial and letting go of those whom she loves fiercely and somewhat possessively. Perhaps as my children grow up and begin to leave the nest in little ways, I identify with Kristin in this book most of all. She wants so much to shield her sons from harm and from difficulty, but most of all from themselves and the trouble they will bring upon themselves by their own sins and bad decisions. Oh, I do want the same thing.

“When you yourself had borne a child, Kristin, methought you would understand,” her mother had said once. Now, she understood that her mother’s heart had been scored deep with memories of her daughter, memories of thoughts for her child from the time it was unborn and from all the years a child remembers nothing of, memories of fear and hope and dreams that children never know have been dreamed for them, until their own time comes to fear and hope and dream in secret —

But Kristin learns that her sons have their own dreams and their own unwise decisions to make. And she can only pray for them and leave them to the mercy of God. She comes to realize, too, that her own prayers have always been answered by a faithful God, that she has always been in His hand, even when He allowed her to follow the sinful desires of her own heart.

Never, it seemed to her had she prayed to God for aught else than that He might grant her her own will. And she had got always what she wished—most. And now she sat here with a bruised spirit—not because she had sinned against God, but because she was miscontent that it had been granted her to follow the devices of her own heart to the journey’s end.

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Oh, that the Lord would say “no” and put a barrier in my way when I ask Him for what I think I want but what He does not will. And I pray the same for my children. But sometimes He sees that we need to experience the fruits of our willful decisions before we can see clearly that His will is best.

Kristin Lavransdatter is a wonderful book for wives and mothers especially, for those of us who sometimes struggle with those roles and who often delight in the same. If it’s slow going at first, please persist. The language is beautiful, but somewhat archaic and stilted. I think you’ll find the book worth getting through any initial difficulties.

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The Secret River by Kate Grenville

Oct3

We just finished watching the PBS series, Colonial House, where a group of twenty-first century Americans and Britishers go back in time to the year 1628 and attempt to build a colonial settlement in rural Maine. One of the issues with which they had to grapple was their relationship to the Native Americans upon whose land they were building. I thought the issue was handled with way too much “sensitivity” and political correctness in Colonial House with the erstwhile settlers hanging their heads in shame and guilt over what their ancestors had done to the Native Americans and the native representatives obsessing over their lost heritage and the wrongs their ancestors suffered.

Then I read Kate Grenville’s Booker-prize nominated The Secret River. It’s not about Native Americans at all; it’s set in Australia, New South Wales. But it does show the ruthless subjugation of a native people from the point of view of the invaders, and yet I was brought to see the horror of what was done to the aboriginal people in Australia and, by analogy and implication, of what was done to the native peoples of America. The strength of this novel, however, is that the reader can see the tragedy of what happened when the British settled Australia and engaged in genocidal warfare against the native people, tragedy both for the aborigenes and for the English.

The Secret River is the story of William Thornhill who grows up in the late eighteenth century in the slums of London, has the great good fortune to become an apprentice and marry his master’s daughter, loses his livelihood because of medical bills and bad luck, becomes a thief, and is caught and transported with his family to Australia. That’s just the first part of the book, the lead-in to the real central purpose of the story which is to portray the “depredations and outrages” perpetrated upon and by the native aborgines and by and upon the English ex-convicts who took the aborgines’ land and made it their own. There’s plenty of violence in the book, not gratuituous, but rather uncomfortable. William and his wife, Sal, are fully drawn characters with completely believable motivations. They want security, a dependable living, a place for themselves and their family. The aboriginal people are less clearly portrayed, shown as they most likely were seen by the settlers, to be mysterious and unfathomable in their actions and motivations.

Since Ms. Grenville doesn’t choose to rewrite history, the fate of the aborigines in the book is clear from the beginning, and the fate of Thornhill and his wife is true to history, too. Thornhill gets what he wants, but “he could not understand why it did not feel like triumph.” A narrative picture like the one in this novel is worth a thousand pretend colonials feeling the pain of the native Americans for an hour or so on television. If we’re to avoid further genocidal episodes in our own time, we must understand not only what was done to the victims, but also why and how the perpetrators felt they had no choice but to commit genocide. Perhaps, then, such disasters can be avoided or stopped before they start.

The Secret River is a good, thought-provoking read. I don’t know if it will win the Man Booker Prize or not. Since I’ve not read any of the other nominated books on the short list, I can’t compare them. However, The Secret River at least deserves the recognition of having been nominated.

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More Maps, More Globes

Aug21

In our second week of school, we’ll be using the following resources:

Music:
Johann Sebastian Bach—Brandenburg Concertos

Mission Study:
1. Window on the World: Pygmies
2. WotW; Vagla
3. WotW: Wodaabe
4. WotW: Republlic of Guinea

Poems: Marvelous Math—Lee Bennett Hopkins

Science:
History of Mathematics

Nonfiction Read Aloud:
The Book of Where, or How to Be Naturally Geographic–Bell. The urchins are really enjoying the projects and information in this book, a part of the Brown Paper School series. I recommend the entire series, brown paper-covered books on a variety of subjects including music and sounds, backyard animals, and money-making ideas for kids, just to name a few.

Fiction Read Alouds:
Mr. Popper’s Penguins—Atwater. I’m reading this story to Betsy-Bee and Z-Baby. We think it might be a bad idea to keep a penguin in your icebox.
The Boy Who Sailed Around the World–Graham This book is an abridged “youth edition” of the original book by Robin Graham that tells about his solo sailing trip around the world. He began the trip from California at the age of sixteen and and finished five years and more than 30,000 miles later in the same place he started.

Elementary Readers:
Adrift—Baillie
Explorers: From Columbus to Armstrong—Everett
Explorers Who Got Lost—Dreher
They Put Out to Sea–Duvoisin

Other Books:
Sebastian Bach, the Boy from Thuringia–Wheeler This book is out of print, not available in the Houston Library system, and the used copies I’ve found on the internet are a bit pricey. So we may not get to read it this week, but I’d certainly like to own a copy of this biography and the others in the series by Opal Wheeler and Sybil Deucher.

Movies:
Shackleton This A & E program stars Kenneth Branagh as Ernest Shackleton, the famous Antarctic explorer.

Mary, Queen of Fools

Jul19

I’ve always thought Mary, Queen of Scots was a fascinating character, even if she was a foolish woman. A couple of weeks ago while I was in San Angelo, I read Queen’s Own Fool: A Novel of Mary Queen of Scots by Jane Yolen and Robert J. Harris, and although the novel portrays Mary sympathetically, I was confirmed in my opinion that she was an unthinking person who made unwise decisions. Yolen and Harris use a real historical character, Mary’s French female jester La Jardiniere, as the central character from whose viewpoint the story is told. According to the authors’ note, “we know only this much about Mary’s French fool La Jardiniere, all from the court records: that she was female, that she was given several expensive dresses, that she was given linen handkerchiefs, and that she was sent home to France with a large payment when the queen went off to England.” Yolen and Harris give this fool a name, Nicola, and a character, honest and loyal to a fault, and they create a story featuring the fool Nicola’s friendship with the queen Mary and the known historical events of Mary’s life. It’s a good story, but again, it’s hard to tell who is the fool and who is the wise leader.

I remember the first historical fiction book I ever read about Mary, Queen of Scots, the book from which I learned the basic outline of Mary’s life and times. It was called Immortal Queen; A Novel of Mary Queen of Scots (seems to be the obligatory subtitle) by Elizabeth Byrd. I just looked on Amazon, and although the book was published in 1956 and is now out of print, it gets excellent reviews from the two reviewers there. I would give it a good grade, too, especially since I re-read it several times until my paperback copy fell apart and since I still remember the facts and the fictional scenarios presented in the novel. Mary is again portrayed sympathetically, although she’s obviously weak and a poor judge of character. Her ill-advised marriages are her downfall, and she’s shown to be complicit in Darnley’s death, but in denial about her own role as an accomplice. Immortal Queen is an adult novel, but the explicit sex of today’s historical fiction for adults is thankfully absent from Byrd’s novel. Queen’s Own Fool, by the way, is a YA novel, but I see no reason that adults wouldn’t enjoy it, too.

Have any of you read any good novels or biographies of Mary, Queen of Scots or her dear cousin Elizabeth I? What about other historical fiction set in that time period? Reading the Past has this note about the plethora of novels about Elizabeth I, saying that she may be the most popular subject for historical fiction.

By the way, Protestant reformer John Knox called Mary a “honeypot” and wanted to burn her as a sorceress. Knox makes a brief appearance in both novels mentioned above. Does anyone know of a good book about John Knox?

Bastille Day

Jul14

In 1789. the French mob stormed the Bastille, and the rest, as they say, is history. Or fiction. In honor of the day, here are a few suggestions:

A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens. After my recent very long post on Mr. Dickens, I had to put this one at the top of the list. “It was the best of times; it was the worst of times . . .”

Scaramouche by Rafael Sabatini. I read this book last year. “Sabatini tells a good story set during the French Revolution; it reminds me of Star Wars, the ‘Luke, I am your father’ motif. Why are young adventurers in swashbucklers always looking for their missing fathers?”

The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Orczy. “They seek him here. They seek him there. Those Frenchies seek him everywhere. Is he in heaven? Or is he in hell? That demmed elusive Pimpernel.”

I haven’t read either of these books, but they sound as if they would be of interest on this French-y sort of day:

The Knight of Maison-Rouge: A Novel of Marie Antoinette by Alexandre Dumas. A citizen of the Republic rescues a damsel in distress and becomes involved in a plot to rescue the imprisoned queen.

A Far Better Rest by Susanne Alleyn. A sequel to A Tale of Two Cities.

The Walking Drum by Louis L’Amour

May30

Despite the fact that Mr. L’Amour is famous for his novels of the American West, this book, The Walking Drum, is not about the West at all. It’s set in 12th century Europe and the Middle East and concerns a young man named Kerbouchard, the son of a druidic Celtic woman and a pirate father. As the novel begins, Kerbouchard’s father has been captured and sold into slavery and his mother has been murdered before his eyes by a neighboring enemy. Kerbouchard sets out to find and free his father and to avenge his mother’s death, but before long, he is himself taken captive by a band of corsairs.

I said this novel wasn’t a western, but Kerbouchard is a twelfth century cowboy adventurer by another name. His philosophy of life is summed up in these words: ” . . a strong man need wish for no more than this: a sword in the hand, a strong horse between his knees, and a woman he loves at the battle’s end.” Kerbouchard travels from Moorish Spain to Paris to Kiev to Constantinople, usually on the run from various enemies he has made in the course of his travels. He finds and leaves a girl in every port —or city. His quest is to find his father, but he takes a rather roundabout way to get there. The plot of the novel is made up of battles, daring rescues, escapes from prison, strangely chaste love scenes, and more battles. Kerbouchard is a self-proclaimed pagan, but when in Spain he takes on the outward practices of the Muslims and in Paris he taunts the Christians with their superstitious ways. The author clearly preferred medieval Islamic culture to medieval Christian culture, and he tells us again and again how refined and educated and tolerant were the Muslims of Spain and the Middle East and how superstitious and backward and intolerant the Christians of Frankish lands were. Perhaps so, although I doubt the contrast was quite so great as this book makes out.

Mr. L’Amour’s novel is full of historical references and details, and for anyone interested in twelfth century European life, it would be a wonderful beginning to a study of that century. (L’Amour in the Author’s Note at the end of the book: “One of the best means of introduction to any history is the historical novel.”) For instance, here’s a description of the course of study in the Paris universities of the time:

Hungry for learning, young men came to Paris to learn, many of them walking for days to reach the city. Only a few had sufficient money to maintain themselves. Books were scarce, paper expensive, teachers diverse in attitude. After three years a student might be received bachelier-des-arts, but two years more were required to get his master’s degree or license. To become a doctor of medicine required eight years of study, and to earn a degree of doctor theology the student had to present and defend four theses. The last of these was a challenge only the exceptional dared attempt, for the candidate was examined from six in the morning until six at night, nor was he allowed to leave his place to eat, drink, or for any other purpose. Twenty examiners, relieving each other every half hour, did their best to find flaws in the preparation of the student.

Ah! students today are such wimps; a two hour test is considered cruel and unusual punishment. And we romanticize classical education if we believe it only consisted of the delightful study of Latin and rhetoric in an open-air classroom. All educational systems and methods have their advantages and their difficulties.

L’Amour obviously planned to write a sequel to The Walking Drum; he says as much in the Author Notes. However, according to his official website, he never got around to writing the two other books in his planned trilogy about Kerbouchard and his adventures. Kerbouchard, who thinks of himself as a student and a philosopher, is not really a deep thinker (see philosophy of life above), but he’s an interesting character. It might have been fun to see what difficulties L’Amour could have dropped him into and retrieved him from in the sequels. As it is, you’ll have to make do with volume one of the life and adventures of Kerbouchard, student, merchant, pirate, soldier, and rescuer of fair maidens.

Two more nuggets from L’Amour/Kerbouchard:
“Reading without thinking is as nothing, for a book is less important for what it says than for what it makes you think.”
“There is no miraculous change that takes place in a boy that makes him a man. He becomes a man by being a man, acting like a man.”

Yes and amen.

To This Great Stage of Fools: Born April 26th

Apr26

John James Audubon, b. 1785. Naturalist, artist and author of Birds of America. Did you know he was born in Haiti?

Charles Francis Richter, b. 1900. Author, inventor, seismologist, inventor of the Richter scale to measure the magnitude of earthquakes. Would you rather live in earthquake country, tornado alley, or on the hurricane coast? I’ve lived in tornado alley, and it’s scary because tornadoes are so unpredictable; they can change directions very quickly, touch down, wreak havoc, and then disappear. You get used to the idea, however, and tornado watches are commonplace and often go unnoticed by native West Texans. I now live in the path of a possible hurricane, and although you can see them coming, it’s difficult to know when it’s necessary to leave—as evidenced by Katrina and Rita. I’ve never lived where an earthquake is likely, and I never want to live there (California). The idea of the earth no longer being firm and trustworthy under my feet is beyond scary; it’s just not right.

Bernard Malamud, b. 1914. American author of novels and short stories, including The Natural and The Fixer. I’ve never read any Malamud, but my mom took a Jewish American literature class once upon a time, and I typed her papers (thirty plus pages long on a typewriter!). So I feel as if I am at least acquainted with Mr. Malamud’s work.

Patricia Reilly Giff, b. 1935. Author of light reading material for children, especially girls. I’ve read a couple of her books, and they’re OK.

To This Great Stage of Fools: Born April 25th

Apr25

Martin Waldseemuller, b. 1507. German mapmaker and geographer who gave America its name, named after Amerigo Vespucci, the man Waldseemuller thought had made the first voyage to the American continent.

Walter de la Mare, b. 1873.

Some one came knocking
At my wee, small door;
Someone came knocking;
I’m sure-sure-sure;
I listened, I opened,
I looked to left and right,
But nought there was a stirring
In the still dark night;
Only the busy beetle
Tap-tapping in the wall,
Only from the forest
The screech-owl’s call,
Only the cricket whistling
While the dewdrops fall,
So I know not who came knocking,
At all, at all, at all.

De la Mare also wrote this poem that we use to tease the very industrious Tim in our family:

POOR tired Tim! It’s sad for him.
He lags the long bright morning through,
Ever so tired of nothing to do;
He moons and mopes the livelong day,
Nothing to think about, nothing to say;
Up to bed with his candle to creep,
Too tired to yawn; too tired to sleep:
Poor tired Tim! It’s sad for him.

Guglielmo Marconi, b. 1874. Inventor of the wireless telegraph, without which we probably wouldn’t have the internet now. What kind of mother would name her child Guglielmo?

Maud Hart Lovelace, b. 1892. Author of the beloved Betsy-Tacy books. All my girls have been quite fond of these books about Betsy, her sister Julia, and her friends, Tacy and Tib. The series takes Betsy from age five through four years of high school, a trip to Europe, and then a wedding. I wonder if Eldest Daughter who is in France now is planning to emulate Betsy and make that sequence a pattern for her future. No Joe yet though.

Medieval History Resource

Apr17

Homeschoolers and History teachers: The Homeschool eStore offers one free product each week, and the product for this week is a book of outline maps of the medieval world. There are twenty-four nice, uncluttered maps in this book including maps of Columbus’ voyages, the Crusades, the Byzantine empire, the Holy Roman Empire, and more. And the book has “lesson plans” which consist of labeling activities to go with each map. All the books at The Homeschool eStore are ebooks; just download the pdf file using Acrobat, and you’re in business.

Yes, I get a small kickback if you purchase something from the Homeschool eStore, but the Medieval Outline Maps book by Terri Johnson, published by Knowledge Quest, is FREE this week (April 17-23, 2006), no purchase required. You can’t beat that price!