Saturday Review of Books: November 19, 2011

Nov18

“Books, nowadays, are printed by people who do not understand them, sold by people who do not understand them, read and reviewed by people who do not understand them, and even written by people who do not understand them.” ~~G. C. Lichtenberg

SatReviewbuttonIf you’re not familiar with and linking to and perusing the Saturday Review of Books here at Semicolon, you’re missing out. Here’s how it usually works. Find a book review on your blog posted sometime during the previous week. The review doesn’t have to be a formal sort of thing. You can just write your thoughts on a particular book, a few ideas inspired by reading the book, your evaluation, quotations, whatever.

Then on Saturday, you post a link here at Semicolon in Mr. Linky to the specific post where you’ve written your book review. Don’t link to your main blog page because this kind of link makes it hard to find the book review, especially when people drop in later after you’ve added new content to your blog. In parentheses after your name, add the title of the book you’re reviewing. This addition will help people to find the reviews they’re most interested in reading.

After linking to your own reviews, you can spend as long as you want reading the reviews of other bloggers for the week and adding to your wishlist of books to read. That’s how my own TBR list has become completely unmanageable and the reason I can’t join any reading challenges. I have my own personal challenge that never ends.

1938: Arts and Entertainment

Nov17

In 1938 Kate Smith sings Irving Berlin’s “God Bless America” and makes the song a classic expression of American patriotism.

Also in 1938, a young Mary Martin captivates theatergoers with her rendition of “My Heart Belongs to Daddy” in Cole Porter’s Leave It to Me. In the 1946 movie, Night and Day, Mary Martin reprised the song playing herself in the movie with Cary Grant as Cole Porter.

Top Hits of 1938:
“A Gypsy Told Me” by Ted Weems And His Orchestra With Perry Como
“A-Tisket, A-Tasket” by Ella Fitzgerald with Chick Webb
“Begin the Beguine” by Artie Shaw
“Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen” by The Andrews Sisters
“Cry, Baby, Cry” by Larry Clinton
“Don’t Be That Way” by Benny Goodman
“I’ve Got a Pocketful of Dreams” by Bing Crosby
“Music, Maestro, Please” by Tommy Dorsey
“My Reverie” by Larry Clinton
“Roll ‘Em Pete’ by Big Joe Turner And Pete Johnson
“Thanks for the Memory” recorded by Bob Hope And Shirley Ross
“Ti-Pi-Tin” by Horace Heidt
“Walking In The Kings Highway” by The Carter Family

Elephant, Piggie, and Mo Willems

Nov17

Cybils nominees: Easy Readers.
Should I Share My Ice Cream? by Mo Willems. Nominated by Sarah at Page in Training.
I Broke My Trunk by Mo Willems. Nominated by Becky of Becky’s Reviews and Young Readers.
Happy Pig Day! by Mo Willems. Nominated by Danielle Smith at There’s a Book.

What is there to say about Mo Willems and his easy reader creations, Elephant and Piggie? The books are deceptively simple, a long comic strip in book form. However, this form is not so simple to conceive, write, and illustrate well. I’ve seen attempts by other authors fall flat. Mr. Willems has the gift or the genius or the 99% perspiration or something.

In Should I Share My Ice Cream?, Gerald Elephant obsesses over whether or not to share his ice cream with his friend Piggie, until the issue becomes moot when the ice cream cone falls splat on the ground. Of all the elephants in children’s literature, Gerald is the Charlie Browniest. But unlike good old Charlie Brown, Elephant has a friend in Piggie, and in this story Piggie saves the day.

The story of how I Broke My Trunk begins with Elephant and a bandaged trunk. Of course, Piggie (and readers) want to know how Elephant broke his trunk, but hold on, because it’s a long crazy story. Suffice it to say that “two hippos, one rhino, and a piano on your trunk are very, very heavy,” and very, very funny. But that’s not even the whole story.

Happy Pig Day! Is it just for pigs, or can Gerald Elephant celebrate Pig Day, too? Again, I am reminded of what Charlie Brown could have been if he had had even one faithful friend. (Peppermint Patty doesn’t count. She couldn’t even get his name right, and she was undependable.)

The exciting thing about these books is that beginning readers of all ages can enjoy them over and over again. My fourth/fifth grader whose reading skills and interest leave a lot to be desired loves Elephant and Piggie. She reads the books to herself, reads them to her dad, reads them again to herself, and chuckles softly. Then she tells me to read them or else she reads them to me. Elephant and Piggie and other books like them are what the Sunday comics were to another generation. How many adults can say they learned to love reading and stories from their reading of the comic strips on Sunday mornings?

*These books are nominated for a Cybils Award, and I am a judge for the first round thereof. However, no one paid me any money, and nobody knows which books will get to be finalists or which ones will get the awards. In other words, this review reflects my opinion and Z-baby’s and nothing else.

1938: Events and Inventions

Nov15

February, 1938. U.S. chemical company, du Pont, produces the first nylon-product, toothbrush bristles.

March 14, 1938 The Anchluss. Germany and Austria unite as one country. Hitler makes a speech in Vienna and tells the Austrian people, “The German nation will never again be rent apart.” Not much of a prophet, was he? By the way this event is the climax of the movie, The Sound of Music, as the von Trapp family must decide what to about the Anchluss and the German army’s orders for Herr von Trapp to report for duty.

April, 1938. US. chemist Roy J. Plunkett accidentally discovers a new non-stick substance and calls it Teflon.

May, 1938. Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini meet in Rome and pledge friendship and mutual cooperation.

Early June, 1938. Japanese bombers reduce the Chinese city of Canton to rubble. Nationalist leader General Chiang Kai-shek has no more troops available to defend the city.

July 14, 1938. Multimillionaire Howard Hughes flies around the world his in specially built Lockheed 14 Electra in a world’s record time, 3 days, 19 hours, and 8 minutes.

September 30, 1938. After threatening to invade the Czech territory of Sudetenland all year, Adolf Hitler invites Italian Duce Benito Mussolini, French Premier Edourd Deladier, and British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain to one last conference in Munich. The Czechs themselves are not invited. At the end of the conference, Hitler is promised that the British and the French will not oppose his takeover of Sudetenland, and Hitler promises no more German aggression in Europe. Prime Minister Chamberlain says that his policy of appeasement has led to “peace for our time.”

October, 1938. U.S. physicist and lawyer Chester Carlson makes the first successful Xerox copy with his Xerox machine.

November 10, 1938. Kristallnacht or “The Night of Broken Glass”. More than 7000 Jewish-owned stores and businesses are vandalized and looted. Synagogues are burned to the ground, and Jewish people are beaten in the streets in riots organized by the Nazi party.

1937: Books and Literature

Nov13

The first issue of Look magazine goes on sale in the United States.

Newbery Medal for children’s literature: Roller Skates by Ruth Sawyer.

Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: A Further Range by Robert Frost.

Pulitzer Prize for the Novel: Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell.

Published in 1937:
Dumb Witness, Death on the Nile, and Murder in the Mews by Agatha Christie.
Out of Africa by Isak Dineson.
To Have and Have Not by Ernest Hemingway. More about Hemingway.
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston.
Life and Death of a Spanish Town by Elliot Paul.
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck.
The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien. I was blogging through The Hobbit earlier this year as Z-baby and I were reading it aloud, but I only made it through chapter seven with the blog entries. Z-baby and I finished the entire book and enjoyed it very much.

1937: Events and Inventions

Nov13

January, 1937. Leading Communists go on trial in Russia, accused of Trotskyism and participating in a plot to overthrow Stalin and his government. The Soviet Union finally executes thirty-one people for Trotskyism. In August, Stain continues The Great Purge in which hundreds of thousands of political opponents, peasants, writers, artists, intellectuals, Trotskyites, and military leaders are killed for disagreeing with or offending Stalin in some way.

February, 1937. Spanish Civil War. Battle of Jarama: Nationalist (Franco’s fascist Falangists) and government (Republican and Communist) troops fight to a stalemate. Italian troops and German tanks help the Nationalists. British, Irish, Balkan, French and Belgian volunteers fight in support of the Republican government.

April 26, 1937. German planes bomb Guernica, Spain in support of Francisco Franco’s Nationalists, killing 200 to 300 civilians. The Spanish Republican government commissions Pablo Picasso to create this large mural for the Spanish display at the Paris International Exposition in June, 1937.

'Le fameux Guernica (1937) de Pablo Picasso au musée Reine Sofia à Madrid' photo (c) 2011, Tab59 - license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/

May 6, 1937. The German airship Hindenburg explodes on its approach to Lakehurst Field, NJ after a transatlantic flight from Frankfort, Germany. 35 of the 97 passengers and crew on board die in the explosion.

'Golden Gate Bridge' photo (c) 2007, Salim Virji - license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/May 27-28, 1937. Golden Gate Bridge opens to pedestrian traffic, creating a vital link between San Francisco and Marin County. The next day, President Franklin D. Roosevelt pushes a button in Washington, D.C., signaling the start of vehicle traffic over the Golden Gate Bridge. At 1.7 miles the bridge is the longest suspension bridge in the world in 1937.

May 28, 1937. Neville Chamberlain becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

June 3, 1937. Wallis Simpson marries the Duke of Windsor, the former Edward VIII of the United Kingdom, in France.

July 2, 1937. Amelia Earhart disappears after taking off from New Guinea during her attempt to become the first woman to fly around the world.

July 7, 1937. Japanese troops open fire on a Chinese patrol outside the Chinese capital, Peking (Beijing). The Japanese claim the Chinese provoked the exchange of fire, but the Chinese are claiming a Japanese invasion. This incident begins the Second Sino-Japanese War as Japan attempts to take over mainland China. By the end of 1937, Japan will control most of the coastal cities of China, including Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, Nanjing, and others.

December 13, 1937. The city of Nanjing, China falls to the Japanese invaders. Up to 300,000 Chinese are brutally murdered by the Japanese army in the Nanking Massacre or the Rape of Nanjing during the next six months of Japanese control.

1936: Books and Literature

Nov12

Published in 1936:
The A.B.C. Murders, Murder in Mesopotamia, and Cards on the Table by Agatha Christie.
Double Indemnity by James M. Cain. Cain’s novella is the source for the screenplay for this movie that I watched last summer, starring Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck.
Jamaica Inn by Daphne duMaurier.
Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell. This book was the #1 fiction bestseller of 1936, and of course, it went on to become the 1939 award-winning movie of the same title.
The Allegory of Love by C.S. Lewis.
Absalom! Absalom! by William Faulkner.
How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie.

'Life' photo (c) 2007, Jennifer - license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/Also in 1936:
Life magazine is first published.

The Carnegie Medal for excellence in children’s literature, published in the U.K., is created and awarded for the first time to Arthur Ransome for his book Pigeon Post.

Newbery Medal for children’s literature is awarded to Carol Ryrie Brink’s Caddie Woodlawn. Caddie has gotten some flack and bad press in recent years for its stereotypical and inaccurate portrayal of Native Americans. But I think this practice of reevaluating classic literature by modern PC standards is spoiler-y. Caddie Woodlawn is a good story, and the Native Americans in the book are portrayed as a child of Caddie Woodlawn’s era would probably have viewed them. ‘Nuff said.

Best-selling authors of 1936, besides Margaret Mitchell were: Sinclair Lewis, Lloyd C. Douglas, Rebecca West, Aldous Huxley, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, and Clarence Day.

Saturday Review of Books: November 12, 2011

Nov11

“A successful book is not made of what is in it, but what is left out of it.” ~~Mark Twain

SatReviewbuttonIf you’re not familiar with and linking to and perusing the Saturday Review of Books here at Semicolon, you’re missing out. Here’s how it usually works. Find a book review on your blog posted sometime during the previous week. The review doesn’t have to be a formal sort of thing. You can just write your thoughts on a particular book, a few ideas inspired by reading the book, your evaluation, quotations, whatever.

Then on Saturday, you post a link here at Semicolon in Mr. Linky to the specific post where you’ve written your book review. Don’t link to your main blog page because this kind of link makes it hard to find the book review, especially when people drop in later after you’ve added new content to your blog. In parentheses after your name, add the title of the book you’re reviewing. This addition will help people to find the reviews they’re most interested in reading.

After linking to your own reviews, you can spend as long as you want reading the reviews of other bloggers for the week and adding to your wishlist of books to read. That’s how my own TBR list has become completely unmanageable and the reason I can’t join any reading challenges. I have my own personal challenge that never ends.

1936: Events and Inventions

Nov11

January 28, 1936. King George V of England dies, leaving his oldest son Edward to become king.

'Volkswagen Käfer' photo (c) 2009, Dmitry Klimenko - license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/2.0/February 26, 1936. The “People’s Car”, Volkswagen, is born. Hitler inaugurates the first factory to build the cars that he believes will do for Germany what Henry Ford’s automobiles did for the United States, make ordinary Germans, car owners and drivers.

March 7, 1936. In violation of the Versailles Treaty, Hitler’s troops march into the Rhineland, territory that was ceded by Germany to France after World War I. Hitler is gambling that the French will not want to go to war over the Rhineland, and they don’t. Hitler proposes a new treaty that will “guarantee peace for the next 25 years.”

April 28, 1936. Prince Farouk becomes King of Egypt, following the death of his father.

April 30, 1936. The Italian army takes Addis Ababa, the capital of Abyssinia (Ethiopia), crushing the forces of Haile Selassie, the current ruler of Ethiopia. The Italian air force drops mustard gas on the civilians and military forces in order to pacify the capital. By May 9th, Mussolini boasts, “Italy at last has her empire. It is a Fascist empire because it bears the indestructible sign of the will and power of Rome.” (Fascism, according to my dictionary, “tends to include a belief in the supremacy of one national or ethnic group, a contempt for democracy, an insistence on obedience to a powerful leader, and a strong demagogic approach.”)

June 8, 1936. New French Premier Leon Blum, a socialist, promises the French people, suffering from the worldwide economic depression, pay raises, a 40-hour work week, two weeks per year of paid vacation, collective bargaining rights, and binding arbitration in labor disputes.

July, 1936. The giant German airship, Hindenburg, crosses the Atlantic in a record time of 46 hours.

'El Correo Español' photo (c) 2010, Las Mentiras de El Correo Español - license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/2.0/July 19, 1936. Generalissimo Francisco Franco lands Fascist troops in Cadiz coming from Morocco to take over the Spanish government. Franco’s troops move through Spain to Madrid, the capital, and tales of horrible atrocities are told from both sides of the civil war. In Barcelona and Madrid, there are reports of assassinations and house searches for rebels and arms. In Badajoz in August Fascist soldiers line Loyalists (Republicans) up against a wall and shoot them after a Fascist victory.

October, 1936. The $120 million Hoover Dam opens on the Colorado River between Nevada and Arizona.

December 11, 1936. King Edward VIII of England abdicates the throne so that he can marry Wallis Simpson, a twice-divorced American. The king will be succeeded by his younger brother, Albert George (George VI). (Watch the Academy Award-winning movie, The King’s Speech, to see a dramatized version of the year’s events in regard to the British monarchy and the effects of those events on younger brother Albert George, “Bertie”. It’s a wonderfully inspiring movie.)