Ann Rinaldi, b. 1934. Ms. Rinaldi may be my two teenage daughters’ favorite historical novelist. You can find many titles by Ann Rinaldi, mostly based on American historical figures, in these two lists:
Historical Fiction for Young Ladies, Part 1.
Historical Fiction for Young Ladies, Part 2.
Also born on this date:
Lyndon Baines Johnson, b. 1908.
Mother Teresa (Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhui), b. 1910.
I can hardly think of two more unlike people to share a birthday, can you?
Lee DeForest, b. 1873. American pioneer in the invention of broadcast radio, talking pictures, and television. We watched this excellent PBS documentary a long time ago and need to watch it again:
In Empire of the Air: The Men Who Made Radio, Ken Burns examines the lives of three extraordinary men who shared the primary responsibility for this invention and its early success, and whose genius, friendship, rivalry and enmity interacted in tragic ways. This is the story of Lee de Forest, a clergyman’s flamboyant son, who invented the audion tube; Edwin Howard Armstrong, a brilliant, withdrawn inventor who pioneered FM technology; and David Sarnoff, a hard-driving Russian immigrant who created the most powerful communications company on earth.
John Buchan, b. 1875. Read George Grant’s brief but informative biographical entry on Buchan posted last year at King’s Meadow.
Albert Bruce Sabin, b. 1906. He invented the oral polio vaccine which replaced Salk’s injected vaccine.
Patricia Beatty, b. 1922. Author of mostly historical fiction for children and young adults. My favorites of her books are Behave Yourself, Bethany Brant about a turn-of-the-century preacher’s daughter who’s always in trouble and Wait for Me, Watch for Me, Eula Bee about a young man whose little sister is captured by the Indians when he is supposed to be looking after her.
I just read about this rather intriguing project via one of the Saturday Review-ers (Melanie at Indextrious). It seems that Canadian author Yann Martel (Life of Pi) decided to send some books to Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
For as long as Stephen Harper is Prime Minister of Canada, I vow to send him every two weeks, mailed on a Monday, a book that has been known to expand stillness. That book will be inscribed and will be accompanied by a letter I will have written. I will faithfully report on every new book, every inscription, every letter, and any response I might get from the Prime Minister, on this website.”
So far, Martel has sent ten books to Mr. Harper. He’s received one response to the first book, The Death of Ivan Illych by Tolstoy.
The other nine books are:
Animal Farm by George Orwell.
The Murder of Roger Akroyd by Agatha Christie.
By Central Station I Sat Down and Wept by Elizabeth Smart.
The Bagavad Gita
Bonjour Tristesse by Francoise Sagan.
Candide by Voltaire.
Short and Sweet: 101 very short poems, edited by Simon Armitage
Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel GarcÃa Márquez.
Miss Julia by August Strindberg.
Interesting choices, don’t you think? If you were going to send one book to one of the candidates for the Democratic or Republican nomination for U.S. president, to whom would you send it, and what book woud you send, and why?
Max Beerbohm, b. 1872, was an English satirist, critic and caricaturist. Quotation of the day: “Anything that is worth doing has been done frequently. Things hitherto undone should be given, I suspect, a wide berth.”
Mike Huckabee, b. 1955 in Hope, Arkansas. Are all presidential candidates from Arkansas born in Hope? Wikipedia: “Hope is also the birthplace of the former governor of Arkansas and current presidential candidate, Mike Huckabee; former White House Chief of Staff Mack McLarty; attorney Vince Foster; former Louisville, KY mayor David L. Armstrong; former Arkansas Secretary of State Kelly Bryant (1908-1975), and actress Melinda Dillon.”
Starting on Monday, Colleen at Chasing Ray will be sponsoring a multi-blog round-up of posts about “books we all individually feel have been overlooked. Some of them might have been award winners in the distant past, and some are even out of print, but all of them are books that each of us have enjoyed and want to tell more people about. We’re calling the event ‘Recommendations From Under the Radar’ (or Radar Books for short) and we really hope you guys will check us out and, more importantly, track down some of these great books as well.”
Go here for list of planned posts and books and authors to be featured.
I’ll be writing about overlooked and underappreciated books and authors here at Semicolon next week, too. On Monday, I have some picture book titles you might have missed. Most of them, unfortunately, are out of print but well worth the effort required to track down and purchase or borrow from the library.
On Tuesday, I’ll feature some children’s fiction gems that were favorites when I was a child and have aged well.
Then on Wednesday I plan to feature three authors for adults who have been largely forgotten, even though all three were hugely popular in days gone by. The three are: Samuel Shellabarger, Giovanni Guareschi, and Guillermo Enrique Hudson. You get extra points if you are already familiar with any one of the three and can tell me in the comments the title(s) of any of their books.
On Thursday I’ll be featuring two authors who’ve enjoyed success in the world of Christian publishing but whose books deserve a much wider audience: Athol Dickson and Jamie Langston Turner.
I hope Collen’s idea will catch on throughout the litblogs, and if you post next week about a great book that flies “under the radar”, please link to your review on Saturday, September 1st, at the Saturday Review of Books.
From the introduction (Penguin Classics edition) to Our Mutual Friend:
Most of the life in Dickens’s last completed novel tends to a state of suspended animation. Nothing seems certainly dead nor entirely alive.”
Well, if that motif doesn’t relate to the TV series LOST . . . Fans have been trying to decide whether the survivors of Oceanic Flight are alive or dead or someplace in-between ever since the series began.
p. 130 I’ve discovered a new word, and a very useful one at that: Podsnappery.
. . . The world got up at eight, shaved close at a quarter-past, breakfasted at nine, went to the City at ten, came home at half-past five, and dined at seven. . . . As a so eminently respectable man, Mr. Podsnap was sensible of its being required of him to take Providence under his protection. Consequently, he always knew exactly what Providence meant. . . . And it was very remarkable (and must have been very comfortable) that what Providence meant, was invariably what Mr. Podsnap meant.
These may be said to have been the articles of a faith and school which the present chapter takes the liberty of calling, after its representative man, Podsnappery.”
Having read a little over half of the book, I would now say that it’s not so much about suspended animation as it is about pretending to be dead or the advantages of playing dead and changing identities. One of the main characters is a man who allows everyone around him to believe he is drowned, takes on an alternate identity, and lives a life of observation as he watches to see the effect of his death on those he leaves behind. Two young ladies find a hideaway on a rooftop to escape the hard realities of their poverty-stricken lives. One of the young ladies, Jenny, feels as if she were dead when she’s up high above the city on the rooftop:
‘How do you feel when you are dead?’ asked Fledgeby, much perplexed.
‘Oh, so tranquil!’ cried the little creature, smiling. ‘Oh, so peaceful and so thankful! And you hear the people who are alive, crying, and working, and calling to one another down in the close dark streets, and you seem to pity them so! And such a chain has fallen from you, and such a strange good sorrowful happiness comes upon you!'”
Is this feeling of escape from the real world exactly what Jack and maybe some of his cohorts miss in the last episode of LOST Season Three? They’ve escaped death-in-life on the island and now they wish they could go back and again be above or outside of the real world.
Other characters in the book run away to their own hiding places, in the world but hidden away: Lizzie Hexam and Betty Higgins to the country, the Boffins hide themselves in their Bower, the incessant London fog hides everyone and everything. Many of the Losties are also escaping or hiding from the real world: certainly Kate and Sawyer, Shannon and Sayid, Claire and Charlie are hiding , running away from something or someone in their past. LOST Island is a great sanctuary, but as Season Three ended, their cover had been blown.
Some other obvious connections between LOST, the TV series, and Our Mutual Friend are: lots of strained father-daughter relationships (Kate, Penelope Widmore, Lizzie Hexam, Sun, Jenny Wren, Pleasant Riderhood), the effect of the sudden aquisition of great wealth (Hurley, Mr. Boffin), a profusion of peculiar characters whose stories intertwine (everybody in both stories).
I’ll write some more thoughts when I finish the book. I just thought that those of you who are missing LOST might like something to ponder, and a book recommendation, too. I’m enjoying the eccentric characters in Our Mutual Friend, and I would suggest that Desmond read it sooner rather than later. Wanting a certain book to be the last one you read before your death is all poetic and romantic-sounding, but the plan has some practical difficulties. How do you decide when death is imminent but far enough away to give you time to finish a Dickens tome before it’s too late?
Author Steven Berlin Johnson on LOST Season Two and Dickens’ Our Mutual Friend.
I got this question a long time ago and tried to answer it to the best of my ability. I wanted to think about it some more before posting, but I thought too long and couldn’t come up with a better answer.
Sometime I would love a glimpse into your daily life…how much time you give to reading and writing AND schooling your own children.
Do your children understand the time Mom gives to books and writing? Mine are 5-11 and I worry they see me staring at a book or screen more than anything else.
I have this theory that it’s important for children to see you doing something you love —for me that’s reading and blogging— at least some of the time. Not that I read and blog just to show my children how important those activities are, but I think for them to develop a love for reading, they need to see me reading. Engineer Husband Husband loves science and math, so as they see him doing science and math, they begin to enjoy those subjects, too.
My theory doesn’t do much to settle the question of how much time to spend on each activity. I spend a lot of time reading, but often I’m reading while sitting on the couch supervising schoolwork. I stop reading my book to read aloud to the urchins or to help with a math problem. Then, I take up where I left off in my book. I read while I eat lunch. I’m writing this post while eating breakfast, and the urchins are also eating breakfast, doing their morning jobs, and listening to Les Miserables. It’s sort of a juggling act, and sometimes I do it better than other times.
I don’t do housework very well, except in spurts of insiration which don’t occur often enough. We get school done, mostly, and I make meals, most days. All that means that I don’t have it all together, but I’m satisfied with the general way things are going. I only have the same worries as the questioner on alternate Mondays.
Edgar A. Guest, b. 1881. I’ve posted poems by American poet Edgar Guest here and here. My father-in-law, a Southern Baptist preacher, often quoted Guest’s poems, several of which I think he had memorized and used as sermon illustrations. (I didn’t know that Judith Guest, author of the novel Ordinary People, was Edgar’s great-niece.)
Here’s another sample of Guest’s poetry, which some folks deride as sentimental and overly optimistic. I rather like it.
Good books are friendly things to own.
If you are busy they will wait.
They will not call you on the phone
Or wake you if the hour is late.
They stand together row by row,
Upon the low shelf or the high.
But if you’re lonesome this you know:
You have a friend or two nearby.
The fellowship of books is real.
They’re never noisy when you’re still.
They won’t disturb you at your meal.
They’ll comfort you when you are ill.
The lonesome hours they’ll always share.
When slighted they will not complain.
And though for them you’ve ceased to care
Your constant friends they’ll still remain.
Good books your faults will never see
Or tell about them round the town.
If you would have their company
You merely have to take them down.
They’ll help you pass the time away,
They’ll counsel give if that you need.
He has true friends for night and day
Who has a few good books to read.
Eyes of the Emperor by Graham Salibury. A Japanese-American boy in Hawaii, Eddy Okubo, experiences the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor, lies about his age, and joins the Army. Because of his ethnic background, Eddy is given a special assignment that tests his commitment, patriotism, and endurance.
Code Talker by Joseph Bruchac. A Navaho boy, Ned Begay, hears about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, disguises his age, and joins the Marines. Because of his ethnic background and fluency in the Navaho language, Ned is given a special assignment that tests his commitment, patriotism, and endurance.
I read both of these in quick succession and found them to be similar in tone and in plot, but I liked both anyway. I would imagine that if you know any boys who are WWII buffs, these would be great to recommend.
I found the Saturday Review links quite interesting, as I clicked through, in between preparations for Hurricane Dean. I figure if I prepare diligently, it will probably go somewhere else and leave Houston alone. And, yes, I know that’s superstitious and illogical thinking. I don’t really believe that anything I do will affect the path of a hurricane. (Do I?)
I found these titles to add to my ever-growing reading list:
The Secret Country by Pamela Dean. Recommended by MoominLight.
Witness by Whittaker Chambers. Recommended by Laura at Lines in Pleasant Places. I’ve been meaning to read this historical memoir for years, but now Laura’s reminded me with a gentle push.
Collision Course by Alvin Moscow. Recommended by Lynne.
I was also glad to see that someone else enjoyed some of my past favorites:
The Queen of Carrots says that The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins has “one of the best female characters I have ever encountered.” I agree. Also, the villain is “fascinating and charming despite his age, weight, and utter ruthlessness. An unforgettable villain.”
Semicolon review here.
Sage says Gilead by Marilynne Robinson “should be read slowly, taking time to savor the language and the scenes Robinson creates.”
Semicolon review here.
Abiding liked Enchantment by Orson Scott Card. I think Mr. Card is one of the most versatile and intriguing authors I’ve read in the past several years, and I’ve only read two of his books so far, Enchantment and Ender’s Game. Can any fans suggest the next book by Card that I should read? I definitely want more of his writing.
Semicolon review of Enchantment here.
And Jennifer says that The Kite Runner by Khaled Housseini is “a beautifully written account of one man’s hopes and dreams along with the bitterness of regret.” It is that and more.
Semicolon review here.