Book a Week 2016 - W2: Sahitya Akademi, India's National Academy of Letters

[Ellesmere]

After reading the article that was posted about literary travels, I got sidetracked, thinking about tackling one of the books on the list, but instead I just finally finished The Essays of E.B. White. I had started awhile ago, but then I decided to restart and read this week.

I had gotten the Essays of E.B. White among other books, back when my dad had given me money as a gift to spend just on books for myself. And I thought of him as I read the article about traveling through books and as traveled to Maine and Alaska and New York and Florida, to the country, to the city, & to the sea with E.B. White. I had overheard my dad tell someone of how he could't afford to take us on vacations very far from home but he was happy they always were able to buy books and get me to the library. Then, he knew, I could get a taste of going anywhere. Reading is one of the few things I have ever been good at and I am always happy to remember how my mom read to me and my dad encouraged me to have a lot of books, even if my room was a terrible mess. Anyway, the Essays was all I had hoped it would be and cozy reading during a week too cold.

Books read this year:
Week 1: Greenglass House by Kate Milford, The Help by Kathryn Stockett, Saving Capitalism by Robert B. Reich, Will Sparrow's Road by Karen Cushman
Week 2: Essays of E. B. White. I also finished Notes from a Small Island but I have been picking that up for so long, I don't remember when I started it and only had two chapters to finish this year.

Now to catch back up on this thread, which is, as usual, giving me lots of books to put on my "to read" list. :)

[Angel]

Hmm, I don't like Marieanne much either, and I was always a bit annoyed that Col Brandon was interested in her, because I did like him.  Something about those very emotional characters really turns me off.

 

Aww, I'm not sure we can be friends  :001_tt2:  You must be an Elinor.  I'm surrounded by them.  

[Angel]

I identify most with Anne Elliot, but when I write out what about her resonates with me, well it sounds so pathetic! But I am Anne, the one who'd rather be playing the music for the party than have to participate.

Anne Elliot is always a conundrum to me.  On my first reading through all Austen's works, Persuasion was second to last in my favorites.  On rereading it, I liked it better and it moved up the list.  I don't dislike her, in fact I admire her steadfastness.  But I'm always left wondering why she didn't fight for what she wanted in the beginning.  Three and a half years ago when I did the Jane Austen study with Skye and her friends the group was split.  Half of them thought Anne had done what she was supposed to by obeying her parent and parental figure and not marrying Wentworth.  The other half couldn't figure out why she wouldn't fight for her love, especially since she was mostly surrounded by people who didn't love or care about her.  

[Chrysalis Academy]

What, no Elizabeth Bennets in the group? Elinor would be my second.  

 

And didn't we have this conversation last year?  :D

 

[Angel]

What, no Elizabeth Bennets in the group? Elinor would be my second.  

 

And didn't we have this conversation last year?  :D

:lol:  yes, we did!  Though I'm not sure it started out with Fanny and Mansfield Park.  Wasn't it you, Rose, who said you have too many Marianne's in your life when I said I'm the only Marianne I know?

[Woodland Mist Academy]

Still entranced by Don Quixote... the only Austen contribution I can bring myself to make at the moment is how many times DQ has brought to mind Austen's Northanger Abbey parodying Radcliffe's Mysteries of Udolfo.

 

(To be quite honest, I've had to shield my eyes from some of the Austen posts in this thread, lest I feel faint....  :svengo: ) 

 

Back to DQ while I recover my decorum...  ;)  

 

From The Great Courses, The History of World Literature by Professor Grant L. Voth  Lecture 22  Don Quixote 

 

...the real meaning of anything lies not in the thing itself, but in the way that we interpret it, which will always be based on our own individual experience, history, and choices.

 

As the windmill and fox and sheep and strange lights are to Don Quixote and Sancho, so the book is to us. Each one of us will probably read our own Don Quixote, but we need always to remember that the text is reading us as we are reading the text.

[JennW in SoCal]

Anne Elliot is always a conundrum to me.  On my first reading through all Austen's works, Persuasion was second to last in my favorites.  On rereading it, I liked it better and it moved up the list.  I don't dislike her, in fact I admire her steadfastness.  But I'm always left wondering why she didn't fight for what she wanted in the beginning.  Three and a half years ago when I did the Jane Austen study with Skye and her friends the group was split.  Half of them thought Anne had done what she was supposed to by obeying her parent and parental figure and not marrying Wentworth.  The other half couldn't figure out why she wouldn't fight for her love, especially since she was mostly surrounded by people who didn't love or care about her.  

 

Some of it was money, of course.  Marriage among her class was more of a business proposition than starting a life with one's true love. At the time of his proposal, Captain Wentworth was not a captain, nor a man of means or property, nor an oldest brother who would inherit. It was, but the standard of the day and of that class, an imprudent match, certainly not one that could have been proudly entered into Sir Elliot's baronet book. The Anne we see in the book is older and braver, someone who is bold enough to say that a woman should marry for love, should be able to choose her own partner. 

 

And from a psychological standpoint, when a young person is surrounded by an indifferent family, that young person tends to make choices in vain attempts to please, to gain notice. To make a decision that will cut you off from that family, no matter how cold they are, no matter how much sense it makes from an outside perspective, is a terrifying prospect.  It takes some maturity to summon the strength to do what one knows is right.

[Chrysalis Academy]

:lol:  yes, we did!  Though I'm not sure it started out with Fanny and Mansfield Park.  Wasn't it you, Rose, who said you have too many Marianne's in your life when I said I'm the only Marianne I know?

 

Oh yeah!  I think that was one of our first conversations!!  :lol:

[Chrysalis Academy]

I finished listening to Paper Towns by John Green.  This was my "Picked by a Friend" category - Shannon has been trying to get me to read this ever since she read it last summer.  For the first section, I was kind of meh, fine YA book.  The second section I didn't like at all - I wanted to smack Quentin upside the head and tell him to get his head out of his a%% and pay attention to his real friends.  But the third section of the book was great - classic road trip story. And the ending was just, exactly right.  So I'm glad I read this book after all, and I see why my teen liked it.  Great, great characters - you can tell John Green remembers what high school was like. Not all adult writers of YA fiction do, IMO.

[Bluegoat]

Some of it was money, of course.  Marriage among her class was more of a business proposition than starting a life with one's true love. At the time of his proposal, Captain Wentworth was not a captain, nor a man of means or property, nor an oldest brother who would inherit. It was, but the standard of the day and of that class, an imprudent match, certainly not one that could have been proudly entered into Sir Elliot's baronet book. The Anne we see in the book is older and braver, someone who is bold enough to say that a woman should marry for love, should be able to choose her own partner. 

 

And from a psychological standpoint, when a young person is surrounded by an indifferent family, that young person tends to make choices in vain attempts to please, to gain notice. To make a decision that will cut you off from that family, no matter how cold they are, no matter how much sense it makes from an outside perspective, is a terrifying prospect.  It takes some maturity to summon the strength to do what one knows is right.

 

I think we really underestimate the significance of being cut off from family.  Even in a modern context, that can have a much greater effect than people who are inclined to be romantic realize.  But more so when family was really the only social security you had, and it was also the key to social relationships to some degree.  Even true love, if there is such a thing, can't easily stand up to social isolation and financial difficulties over the long term.

[Angel]

Some of it was money, of course.  Marriage among her class was more of a business proposition than starting a life with one's true love. At the time of his proposal, Captain Wentworth was not a captain, nor a man of means or property, nor an oldest who would inherit. It was, but the standard of the day and of that class, an imprudent match,brother  certainly not one that could have been proudly entered into Sir Elliot's baronet book. The Anne we see in the book is older and braver, someone who is bold enough to say that a woman should marry for love, should be able to choose her own partner. 

 

And from a psychological standpoint, when a young person is surrounded by an indifferent family, that young person tends to make choices in vain attempts to please, to gain notice. To make a decision that will cut you off from that family, no matter how cold they are, no matter how much sense it makes from an outside perspective, is a terrifying prospect.  It takes some maturity to summon the strength to do what one knows is right.

:lol:  to Sir Elliot and his baronet book!!  What a vain and silly man he was!

 

Oh yeah!  I think that was one of our first conversations!!  :lol:

I think maybe so!

[Nan in Mass]

But wasn,t it Anne,s mother,s friend who prevented Anne from marrying? The friend who was being her mother and was her only advocate and who loved her very much? (i like Anne. : ) )

[Nan in Mass]

You know, I feel obliged to point out, as the mother of children who go to sea, that the issue for Anne,s foster mother was probably not just wealth, but lifestyle. Anne wanted to marry a man with no money who, immediately upon marrying her, was probably going to vanish for months or years or forever. Not only was he going to sea, but he was fighting at sea, not exactly a safe, stable job. The boy happened to get lucky, but I can,t exactly blame the foster mother for thinking Anne was too young to know what she was getting into. This is, essentially, a nautical book.

 

Nan

 

Eta - I love that Jane Austen gives us a lovely example of a happy nautical marriage, one that works beautifully and for the time, is amazingly equal. That marriage is one of the only truly happy ones described in the Austen books. Most of the others involve a compromise of some sort.

Edited January 17, 2016 by Nan in Mass

[Nan in Mass]

Do you think I could re-read it as my nautical bingo square without cheating ? :)

Yes. : )

[Nan in Mass]

But you have to pay attention to the nautical bits - the descriptions of the nautical people. And life at sea. And the ships.

 

Eta Persuasion can be summed up as a description of the difficulties of maintaining a relationship when one person is a sailor.

Edited January 17, 2016 by Nan in Mass

[Onceuponatime]

You guys talk too fast for me to keep up. I've pushed past the point where I quit If On a Winter's Night a Traveler the last time I tried to read it. I'm determined to finish, but I don't mind saying I'm not feeling the love. The choppiness is too distracting. I find I have to keep going back and reading parts over. The use of language is beautiful, but it doesn't help if I'm just totally lost, and my mind starts to wander very quickly. However, today I was fascinated by the phrase "petroliferous sultana." I had to smile at my automatic thoughts of oily raisins. 😃

 

Re Austen: There is no getting around it, I am an Elinor Dashwood. I watched Sense and Sensibility last night. However, last year I read Mansfield park and was totally irritated with Fanny. Maybe because I was a lot like her when young, a little too good, if you know what I mean. It gave me no satisfaction that she got the guy in the end. He irritated me even more than she did.

 

I feel compelled to say, in this nice safe place, that I absolutely adore everything about Blueberries for Sal. I read the book hundreds of times for my children. It's a very peaceful bedtime story. I've been wild blueberry picking in Maine, and many other places. My father taught us to recognize many kinds of wild fruits. Granted, my own kids are sometimes afraid to eat anything I pick until they see I don't die. But really, they'll be better prepared for the zombie apocalypse if they know what wild raspberries and grapes look like, and that the best persimmons are the ones on the ground. It makes me sad that they don't understand my love for My Side of the Mountain. They are the ones horrified at a child living alone in the woods, lol.

[Kathleen.]

I had to read a Roald Dahl book after I saw a commercial for "The BFG."  I couldn't find my copy of this book so I picked "Esio Trot" - what a cute story.  My 9yo read picture books of Charles Perrault's fairy tales in honor of his birthday.

 

:)

[Robin M]

You guys talk too fast for me to keep up. I've pushed past the point where I quit If On a Winter's Night a Traveler the last time I tried to read it. I'm determined to finish, but I don't mind saying I'm not feeling the love. The choppiness is too distracting. I find I have to keep going back and reading parts over. The use of language is beautiful, but it doesn't help if I'm just totally lost, and my mind starts to wander very quickly. However, today I was fascinated by the phrase "petroliferous sultana." I had to smile at my automatic thoughts of oily raisins. 😃

 

Re Austen: There is no getting around it, I am an Elinor Dashwood. I watched Sense and Sensibility last night. However, last year I read Mansfield park and was totally irritated with Fanny. Maybe because I was a lot like her when young, a little too good, if you know what I mean. It gave me no satisfaction that she got the guy in the end. He irritated me even more than she did.

 

I feel compelled to say, in this nice safe place, that I absolutely adore everything about Blueberries for Sal. I read the book hundreds of times for my children. It's a very peaceful bedtime story. I've been wild blueberry picking in Maine, and many other places. My father taught us to recognize many kinds of wild fruits. Granted, my own kids are sometimes afraid to eat anything I pick until they see I don't die. But really, they'll be better prepared for the zombie apocalypse if they know what wild raspberries and grapes look like, and that the best persimmons are the ones on the ground. It makes me sad that they don't understand my love for My Side of the Mountain. They are the ones horrified at a child living alone in the woods, lol.

See - Calvino grows on you after a while.

 

And I love Blueberries for Sal.   James and I read that so many times when he will young.  We still have it, hiding in the back of his bookshelf behind the star wars books and comic books.   I think he pulls it out occasionally.   Also One Morning in Maine.  We loved all those old books. So much fun to read. 

[SKL]

I started reading the intro to that Stephen King book I had, but I found it is Book 5 in a fantasy series.  I don't have the earlier volumes, and they don't sound very interesting anyway.  I will be donating that book.  I will make another trip to the basement and see what else I have.  I might have some James Clavell I haven't read before, or maybe I will start the Lord of the Rings books that my sister gave me decades ago.

[mumto2]

 

I feel compelled to say, in this nice safe place, that I absolutely adore everything about Blueberries for Sal. I read the book hundreds of times for my children. It's a very peaceful bedtime story. I've been wild blueberry picking in Maine, and many other places. My father taught us to recognize many kinds of wild fruits. Granted, my own kids are sometimes afraid to eat anything I pick until they see I don't die. But really, they'll be better prepared for the zombie apocalypse if they know what wild raspberries and grapes look like, and that the best persimmons are the ones on the ground. It makes me sad that they don't understand my love for My Side of the Mountain. They are the ones horrified at a child living alone in the woods, lol.

I have many memories of my father teaching me about the woods. Every spring I spent my afterschool hours in the woods hunting morel mushrooms with my dad who could spot them from about a hundred yards and send me after them. He also loved to hunt and fish, really anything outside. No hunting for me ever but I used to love fishing.

 

Nan, he was a Merchant Marine during WW2 so I always read your posts about your boys with great interest. He claimed his experience in MM made him a great fisherman, he was the envy of his friends because he really was good at catching lots of fish when they weren't.

 

It's funny to live in a place where I spend a great deal of time outside and don't really know what every single thing is and if it's safe to eat. We have done a few classes with naturalists but to be honest I wish my dad was here to sort it all out. The berries etc. we eat but mushrooms wild no thank you.

 

I have continued reading my cozy mysteries and finished my Murakami, Sputnik Sweetheart. The Murakami was enjoyable but I found I really needed to read it undisturbed so it took me awhile to get a chance to finish it. This one had all of his usual elements, cats, wells, etc. but I thought a bit lighter with them. Possibly a good first Murakami but 1Q84 remains my favourite.

 

I also read the first in a new to me historical series recommended by Kareni, The Perils of Pleasure by Julie Anne Long (Pennyroyal Green). I will be reading more in order. ;) :lol:

[Bluegoat]

You guys talk too fast for me to keep up. I've pushed past the point where I quit If On a Winter's Night a Traveler the last time I tried to read it. I'm determined to finish, but I don't mind saying I'm not feeling the love. The choppiness is too distracting. I find I have to keep going back and reading parts over. The use of language is beautiful, but it doesn't help if I'm just totally lost, and my mind starts to wander very quickly. However, today I was fascinated by the phrase "petroliferous sultana." I had to smile at my automatic thoughts of oily raisins. 😃

 

Re Austen: There is no getting around it, I am an Elinor Dashwood. I watched Sense and Sensibility last night. However, last year I read Mansfield park and was totally irritated with Fanny. Maybe because I was a lot like her when young, a little too good, if you know what I mean. It gave me no satisfaction that she got the guy in the end. He irritated me even more than she did.

 

I feel compelled to say, in this nice safe place, that I absolutely adore everything about Blueberries for Sal. I read the book hundreds of times for my children. It's a very peaceful bedtime story. I've been wild blueberry picking in Maine, and many other places. My father taught us to recognize many kinds of wild fruits. Granted, my own kids are sometimes afraid to eat anything I pick until they see I don't die. But really, they'll be better prepared for the zombie apocalypse if they know what wild raspberries and grapes look like, and that the best persimmons are the ones on the ground. It makes me sad that they don't understand my love for My Side of the Mountain. They are the ones horrified at a child living alone in the woods, lol.

 

I think One Morning In Maine s my favorite.  I really covet the mom's kitchen.

[mumto2]

I just finished another British (Welsh to be exact) village cozy. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6383980-the-cold-light-of-mourning. The Cold Light of Mourning by Elizabeth Duncan was a fun read. I ended up giving it 5* on Goodreads simply because it did the amateur sleuth (local manicurist) with lots of village colour really well. Lots of little clues that appeared to be missed were tied together at the end. Not much excess which I liked. I loved how a cup of tea kept solving all sorts of catastrophe. That can be pretty accurate and I still find it humorous in real life.

 

Pretty early in our social home ed lives in the UK we were at an art class with a good friend of Ds and his mother when she got a phone call because her dh was being taken to hospital by ambulance because he couldn't breathe ( punctured lung from broken rib). Anyway everyone was scurrying around trying to get her to the hospital to meet him. Then I asked what she wanted me to do? She wanted a fresh cup of tea??? Yes, she calmly set down and drank her tea before telling us what she wanted to do with her dc's. Since then I tend to just offer tea in the face of huge distress to all. Seems to work. :lol: I am more of an action girl myself, notice I offer to make the tea. ;)

[Nan in Mass]

I have many memories of my father teaching me about the woods. Every spring I spent my afterschool hours in the woods hunting morel mushrooms with my dad who could spot them from about a hundred yards and send me after them. He also loved to hunt and fish, really anything outside. No hunting for me ever but I used to love fishing.

 

Nan, he was a Merchant Marine during WW2 so I always read your posts about your boys with great interest. He claimed his experience in MM made him a great fisherman, he was the envy of his friends because he really was good at catching lots of fish when they weren't.

 

It's funny to live in a place where I spend a great deal of time outside and don't really know what every single thing is and if it's safe to eat. We have done a few classes with naturalists but to be honest I wish my dad was here to sort it all out. The berries etc. we eat but mushrooms wild no thank you.

 

...

 

My son has a friend who grew up in a hunting fishing family. He has an amazing knowledge base, one I envy greatly. You are lucky to have gotten some of that! Your dad sounds like a very cool person. I bet he could tell some interesting sea stories, too. My father-in-law did mushrooms. My family just does berries. And eats the occasional leaf, like wintergreen. I know what you mean about it being strange not to know what is around you. I drive my mother-in-law crazy by asking about all the Florida flora and fauna. She knows quite a lot, for someone who grew up in a city in NY, but Florida is so strange to New England eyes. I think Dr. Seuss must have been traumatized by a trip to Florida lol.

 

Nan

[Nan in Mass]

I think One Morning In Maine s my favorite. I really covet the mom's kitchen.

Me, too.

 

I love Time of Wonder the best, but Blueberries for Sal and One Morning in Maine are close seconds. Such familiar territory. Such familiar Maine-y faces. Such familiar activities.

 

Nan

[Nan in Mass]

I was brought up to give tea as a remedy for shock, especially emotional shock. It is what I want myself, as well. A bit of caffeine and sugar probably helps, but mostly I think it is having a tummy full of warm liquid that helps, somehow.

 

Nan

[mumto2]

My son has a friend who grew up in a hunting fishing family. He has an amazing knowledge base, one I envy greatly. You are lucky to have gotten some of that! Your dad sounds like a very cool person. I bet he could tell some interesting sea stories, too. My father-in-law did mushrooms. My family just does berries. And eats the occasional leaf, like wintergreen. I know what you mean about it being strange not to know what is around you. I drive my mother-in-law crazy by asking about all the Florida flora and fauna. She knows quite a lot, for someone who grew up in a city in NY, but Florida is so strange to New England eyes. I think Dr. Seuss must have been traumatized by a trip to Florida lol.

 

Nan

My dad did have great sea stories but after he died we realized how many untold but horrifying ones he must of had. Dh, one of his hobbies is military history, sorted my dad's paperwork after his death and ended up applying for several medals etc. Dh couldn't believe the conflicts my dad had been in and never mentioned to him.

[Lady Florida.]

I finished listening to Paper Towns by John Green.  This was my "Picked by a Friend" category - Shannon has been trying to get me to read this ever since she read it last summer.  For the first section, I was kind of meh, fine YA book.  The second section I didn't like at all - I wanted to smack Quentin upside the head and tell him to get his head out of his a%% and pay attention to his real friends.  But the third section of the book was great - classic road trip story. And the ending was just, exactly right.  So I'm glad I read this book after all, and I see why my teen liked it.  Great, great characters - you can tell John Green remembers what high school was like. Not all adult writers of YA fiction do, IMO.

 

This is on my to-read list only because I want to see if I can recognize the Orlando area locations. I was in a book club that started reading pretty much nothing but YA, and as a result I developed an aversion to the genre. A number of us left and formed a new book club because of the constant YA choices.That's a shame though, because before that I read some decent YA, and I'm sure there's more out there. I just can't bring myself to do it though. The wound is still fresh.

 

I feel compelled to say, in this nice safe place, that I absolutely adore everything about Blueberries for Sal. I read the book hundreds of times for my children. It's a very peaceful bedtime story. I've been wild blueberry picking in Maine, and many other places. My father taught us to recognize many kinds of wild fruits. Granted, my own kids are sometimes afraid to eat anything I pick until they see I don't die. But really, they'll be better prepared for the zombie apocalypse if they know what wild raspberries and grapes look like, and that the best persimmons are the ones on the ground. It makes me sad that they don't understand my love for My Side of the Mountain. They are the ones horrified at a child living alone in the woods, lol.

 

We have fond memories of Blueberries for Sal from our read-aloud days. We go blueberry picking here every year. Ds would love to take a survival course where he learns what you can eat. There are a lot of bad (poisonous) choices here in Florida. He devoured books like My Side of the Mountain and at one point couldn't get enough of books about young people in survival situations.

 

He loves being outdoors, and has been trying to get a group of his friends to go on a camping trip. We talked about it recently and I realized how sad it was when he lamented that, "Nobody wants to be outside". 

 

 I know what you mean about it being strange not to know what is around you. I drive my mother-in-law crazy by asking about all the Florida flora and fauna. She knows quite a lot, for someone who grew up in a city in NY, but Florida is so strange to New England eyes. I think Dr. Seuss must have been traumatized by a trip to Florida lol.

 

Nan

 

Come take a walk with me. I might not be able to tell you what's good to eat, but I can at least tell you what to avoid. And I can tell you the names of most of our flora and fauna. I can even tell you what's native and what's invasive. We have been gradually switching to all native or well-adapted and non-invasive plants in our yard. I'd love to show someone my Florida, the real Florida. The Florida that doesn't include a big mouse or Harry Potter or beaches so built up you can't seen the ocean. My Florida does exist and it's absolutely beautiful.

 

 

Pretty early in our social home ed lives in the UK we were at an art class with a good friend of Ds and his mother when she got a phone call because her dh was being taken to hospital by ambulance because he couldn't breathe ( punctured lung from broken rib). Anyway everyone was scurrying around trying to get her to the hospital to meet him. Then I asked what she wanted me to do? She wanted a fresh cup of tea??? Yes, she calmly set down and drank her tea before telling us what she wanted to do with her dc's. Since then I tend to just offer tea in the face of huge distress to all. Seems to work. :lol: I am more of an action girl myself, notice I offer to make the tea. ;)

 

A friend of mine's husband was in the U.S. Air Force and stationed at a (now closed) joint UK/US air base. My friend is an occupational therapist and she went to apply for a job at a local hospital (I have no idea how she got a work permit but it was the 80s so maybe things were different). I remember in one of her letters (80s remember? Actual letters in the mail) she said that she was there at tea time and everyone was having tea. Even patients on gurneys were sitting up having tea. She said it was like something straight out of Benny Hill (who was very popular in the US at that time).  :lol:

 

I was brought up to give tea as a remedy for shock, especially emotional shock. It is what I want myself, as well. A bit of caffeine and sugar probably helps, but mostly I think it is having a tummy full of warm liquid that helps, somehow.

 

Nan

 

My grandmother held tea up as a cure for what ails you. Don't feel well? Have a cup of tea. Boyfriend troubles? Have a cup of tea. A cup of tea could reach all the way into your soul and make everything okay. 

[Chrysalis Academy]

Not having seen any discussion of the topic outside of this thread, I will go so far as to say that thinking that Blueberries for Sal is a bad book to read to children is *exactly* what is wrong with parenting these days.  Because I'm assuming that the objection is that the mother let Sal out of her sight?  I feel strongly that kids should have as much opportunity to explore without the constant monitoring of parents as possible.  The times we've taken the kids camping with a group of friends and turned them loose in the woods to return at mealtimes are the best memories of their entire lives. We can't always replicate that at home, but I try to as much as we can.

 

OTOH, The Story About Ping is another book I read over and over as a kid, and I have to say that I now find it kind of creepy and disturbing.

[Mom-ninja.]

One of my favorite bed time books is In the Night Kitchen. I should buy it. In fact I should buy two copies and give one to my library because the library copy was vandalized by some person who thinks it is okay to impose their standards on everyone else.  :thumbdown:

[Nan in Mass]

My dad did have great sea stories but after he died we realized how many untold but horrifying ones he must of had. Dh, one of his hobbies is military history, sorted my dad's paperwork after his death and ended up applying for several medals etc. Dh couldn't believe the conflicts my dad had been in and never mentioned to him.

How frustrating for your poor husband! I can see why your father let the stories die with him, though. You relive a story as you tell it, and he might have thought he went through all that so you wouldn,t have to share such horrors, making him reluctant to tell you about them. The poor merchant mariners were butchered in that war and weren,t eligable for any military benefits. That might make him just want to forget the whole thing, too.

 

Nan

[Jane in NC]

Another fan of Blueberries for Sal here.  My kiddo chose his occupation (archaeology) in part because of a desire not to work in a cubicle!

 

But back to Anne Elliot and those who questioned why she broke off the engagement to Captain Wentworth as a younger woman.  As has been noted by others, Wentworth's position was far from secure at the time of the initial engagement.  Austen had two brothers who served in the British Navy during the Napoleonic Wars.  She knew of the challenges faced by those in the profession.

 

More importantly I think we also have to remember primogeniture dictated society, hence the number of second or third sons who enter the British Navy or the church.  Even then, it took financial backing to secure a good living.  (Commissions within the Navy were purchased in Austen's time.)

 

One of the reasons I love Persuasion is because of the strong female characters within the book.  Anne may be my favorite but I am also enamoured with Sophia Croft (who strikes me as unconventional) as well as dear Mrs. Smith.  I think the latter is a good reminder of what could easily happen to a woman of the time despite what seemed to be a good marriage prospect.

 

Another thing related to primogeniture:  One of Austen's brothers was adopted by a family member in order to inherit that relative's estate.  The brother changed his name as part of the deal.  The way families maintained their wealth was often through arrangements of this sort as well as marriage.  Love did not necessarily enter into the equation.

 

 

[Lady Florida.]

 

 

Another thing related to primogeniture:  One of Austen's brothers was adopted by a family member in order to inherit that relative's estate.  The brother changed his name as part of the deal.  The way families maintained their wealth was often through arrangements of this sort as well as marriage.  Love did not necessarily enter into the equation.

 

Oh, interesting! Sounds like he might have been the inspiration for Frank Churchill/Weston. Though if it was common at the time, the character wouldn't need to be based on anyone in particular. Her contemporary readers would have recognized it as a normal thing.

[Robin M]

Link to week three - please continue conversation in new thread