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To This Great Stage of Fools: Born January 27th

Jan27

Lewis Carroll, b. Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, 1832 at Cheshire, England. Now you know where the name for the Cheshire Cat came from. At least, I assume so.

My favorite Lewis Carroll poem: Jabberwocky

My favorite scene from Alice in Wonderland: The very mixed-up croquet game in which the players keep on chasing their hedgehog balls round the lawn.

My favorite Lewis Carroll quote:

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less.”

“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”

“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master – that’s all.” Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll

The Most Important Book I Read in College

Jan18

Lessons from a Bear of Very Little Brain by Sam Torode.

“In four years of college, the most important thing I did was read Winnie-the-Pooh. My saying this will surprise many of you, and it is with no small shame that I admit it. How, you ask, could I have made it through childhood, and all the way into college, without reading Winnie-the-Pooh?”

I linked to this article in Boundless last year on A.A. Milne’s birthday (b.1882), and this year I can’t resist it again. What was the most important book you read while in college? I think I read some of C.S. Lewis for the first time while in college, and if so, I would have to count those as my most important books. However, maybe I read all of C.S. Lewis while still in high school; in which case I would choose Les Miserables by Victor Hugo. I stayed up until 3:00 AM to finish Les Miserables, and I had an 8:00 AM class that morning. For me, staying awake until 3:00 in the morning was an unusual occurence; my head usually hit the pillow at 10:00 PM every night. Only a very good book could keep me turning pages until the wee hours. Anyway, back to Pooh, I agree with Mr. Torode that for one who was never introduced to Pooh as a child the meeting would be a Momentous Occasion.

Winnie-the-Pooh was first published in 1926.

More Books

Dec29

In thinking of books for boys, I came up with two more beloved books from my own childhood. I looked on the internet for the first, Friday’s Tunnel by John Verney. I remember this one as a very British, cartoon-like story about an eccentric family by the name of Callendar. The boy’s name is Friday, and his sister is named February. I found that this book and all the others by this author are out of print. That’s a shame because I remember them quite fondly.
The other book is The Silver Sword by Ian Serrailler. This story tells of four children, refugees in post-World War II Europe, and how they manage to survive and eventually become reunited with their father. This book is also sometimes entitled Escape from Warsaw.
Anybody read either of these? I plan to add both of them and several other books by both authors to my ever-growing LIST.