These Were My Storytellers: A Year of Books

So I've been hearing print books referred to as "dead tree" books. I'm not sure if that's to prey on ecological minded people like myself who would save so much paper if only they became "modern" and got one of those fancy eReaders. One of the things I value about myself is that I care and think often about the environment, but I still like a print copy of The New York Times, and I am not giving up my print books. I also deeply care about bookstores. I don't want to those disappearing. They are valuable on our too quickly eroding main streets. No eReader for me, give me my "dead tree" books. But,

These trees are not dead. They have been repurposed, reinvisioned, and made into storytellers. They transport me to prairies of the West in the 1800s, onto a life boat in the middle of the Pacific Ocean with members of the Greatest Generation, inspire me to stop buying so much convenience food and start cooking. They may have once provided shade, but now offer escape from boredom, provoke and stimulate the human mind and provide nourishment to the soul. These pages are not dead. They are alive and filled with life and I turn back to them to remember the words. Other than for shelter, one of life's true "needs" I think of no greater end for a tree than to be made into a book. There is something in the human spirit from the beginning of time that draws us to tell stories, and to seek them out. Look at ancient writings on the walls. Pictures told their stories for the ages. We advanced to words and the printing press brought writing, books and information to the masses. Who doesn't love to hear, "I'm going to tell you a story about..."

I think of how often I turn to the books I read for reflection and to inspire my own writing. Take a favorite passage from Paula McLain's The Paris Wife when a woman is devastated her best friend Hadley is marrying the man she secretly loves, Ernest Hemingway. It's very much about how we can drown in our own misery of the present when things are down or not how we hoped they'd turn out, failing to realize the possibilities the future holds,

"Her eyes brimmed with tears. If we had only known that eight years ahead of us, in a Paris we hadn't begun to imagine, John Dos Passos would fall victim to Kate's sparkle. And pursue her with force until she agreed to marry him. That Dos was figure nearly as dashing and important to American letters as Ernest was would have softened the moment ever so much - but we never know what awaits us, good or bad. The future stayed behind its veil as Kate gave me a wan smile and paddled away..."

Leisure time is valuable and hard earned by those who came before us. I hope the beauty of words from books touch your life.

Cate from Liberal Simplicity has been a big reading inspiration. I love that she compiles lists of what she reads as well as what she reads with her daughter, Simone. In her spirit, I'm compiling a list of what I've read this year, and where I obtained them. Many are through thrift, and I love how I find books, but they also find me. My mom, friends and I also share books with one another. I've put asterisks next to my most favorites.

Library:
The Paris Wife , Paula McLain. The book club at work was supposed to read this, but never met formally.
The Sweet Life in Paris, David Lebovitz. I just love his blog. I laughed out loud many times during this book.
Let the Great World Spin, Colum McCann. A suggestion from Cate, who also recommended John Irving's A Prayer for Owen Meany, the main character of which will always stay with me. The book's characters live in dark worlds which are hard to enter. It gives you much pause on people's lots in life, and what role they play in their own destinies.
*The Wilder Life, My Adventures into the Lost World of Little House on the Prairie, Wendy McClure. I saw this in the shop of my local bookstore but got it from the library. I am so grateful McClure penned this book about her trips to the Little House sites and more. I don't think I would have started reading the books, which I'm trying to savor.
Little Girl Blue: The Life of Karen Carpenter, Randy Schmidt. I read this because my former neighbor was reading it on the porch. I really like the Carpenters but I'm not that serious a fan, although I did find out about their stunning cover of the Rainbow Connection and some interesting stories behind their hits. "We've Only Just Begun" - a bank jingle to get new couples to open accounts.

Our Thrift Shop, Westwood, NJ:
In the Shadow of Gotham, Stefanie Pintoff, 25 cents. Engaging historical murder mystery set in New York City. I have another of her books from the thrift shop on my "to read" list.
Marrying Mozart, Stephanie Cowell, 25 cents. A great wintry read that makes you want to learn more about classical musical (I'm embarrassingly ignorant on the matter), and drink great wine and eat chocolate.

Shaw's Book Shop, Westwood, NJ: Hardcovers books have a 20 percent discount, so I paid about $20-$25.
Centuries of June, Keith Donohue. A man awakes in the middle of a June night with a hole in his head, but keeps getting interrupted by six women telling stories of American myth and history over the centuries. I tend to be seasonal with my reading, so this is more a summer read, which is when I read it. I did like it but my favorite of his is Angels of Destruction, which I recommend for winter, followed by The Stolen Child. Donohue is a great storyteller of fairy tales for adults. I'll read any book he puts out.
*Unbroken, Laura Hillendbrand. My book club read this because a colleague's young daughter ordered it by accident on her phone, my coworker started reading it and recommended it to the organizer, and we all started reading it. I keep expecting to hear this story of a World War II veteran's saga was fraud since it's so unbelievable, but they do say the truth is stranger than fiction. It saddens me just that much more that any holiday honoring veterans is turned into just another sale day.

CATS Resale Shop, Westwood, NJ
The White, Deborah Larsen, 50 cents. A poetic, short tale about a young girl who lives among the Indians after her family is killed by them.
*These is My Words: The Diary of Sarah Agnes Prine, Nancy E. Turner, 50 cents. While I found the love story between the main character and Captain Jack Elliot a little over-the-top sickly sweet toward the end, I finished this book wanting to look up Geronimo and some books that she mentioned, and felt truly swept away to the Arizona territories of the 1800s.

Housing Works, New York City:
*Little House in the Big Woods, Laura Ingalls Wilder, 50 cents.
Little House on the Prairie, Laura Ingalls Wilder, 50 cents.
Farmer Boy, Laura Ingalls Wilder, 50 cents. Anyone who has read this blog lately knows how much I love these books (grain of historical salt needed)!
Julie and Julia, Julie Powell, $3. Again, I laughed out loud many times during this book and think Powell can be a great writer at times, but there's way too much information about the bedroom escapades of her friends. I wanted to learn more about Julia Child and her cooking experiences, not how her friend always dates guys named "David" and was supposed to keep picking up a couch. She gets defensive about her cursing (sailor's mouth, well, she's not a sailor) that really takes away from the writing. I agree with an Amazon.com reviewer that as a writer it's lazy to use foul language so much, and she goes overboard Republican bashing. But if Powell hadn't written this, we would have never seen Meryl Streep as Julia Child, and as much as Child didn't like her, Powell really did start of the chain of events to get Mastering the Art of French Cooking on the best seller lists again.

Library Book Sales:
*Witch Child, 25 cents and the sequel, *Sorceress, Celia Rees, 50 cents. The story of young Mary starts with an ocean passage to the New World where charges of witchcraft come. Technically "young adult" books, these are well worth a read for all ages.
*The Diary of Mattie Spenser, Sandra Dallas, 25 cents. New bride Mattie's adventures with Luke in the Colorado frontier. I hope to read more from this author. Do you ever finish a book and keep comparing every book after to that one - "but it's not as good as the last one!" My mom and I did this with this book and Raven's End.
The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho, 25 cents. An enchanting fable about a young shepherd boy from Spain in search of riches in Egypt. So different than anything I'd read all year.

Other:
*Raven's End, Ben Gadd, purchased from the author and autographed, $30. I found this book after seeing A Life Ascending at the BANFF Film Festival, which features films about mountain and other outdoor culture. I will never look at ravens the same.
*Death and the Dream, J.J. Brown, free, gift from my friend who is also the author. I am not drawn to short stories as a reader, but I loved these haunting stories and finished the book in record time. She reminds me a bit of Neil Gaiman and infuses her stories with science. Her new book, Vector: A Modern Love Story, is on my to-read list. The author is one of those people I feel my life is exponentially better because I know them.

I hope to double my reading list for the new year. I'm not one of those people who can read 3 books in a week and don't think I ever will be. Books can be very all-consuming for me and my spirit needs a rest. I also just don't want to rush through them and can't absorb the content so quickly, and have other interests.

What are the best books you've read this year? Are you in the print book camp? I do think eReaders are good if they help someone read more, but let's try and co-exist peacefully and keep bookstores alive. Above all else, support authors and books. Happy reading.

All is Calm, All is Bright: A Colonial Christmas

I feel a sense of calm whenever I gaze into a candle. The same goes for when I smell a fire in winter. Calm isn't easy to capture at this time of year, but it's so wonderful when you find moments of it. I'm not a winter complainer. I welcome the winter solstice with open arms. I love that "snug" and "cozy" feeling you get that Laura Ingalls Wilder so often talks about in her Little House books. I felt all snug and cozy at the Bergen County Historical Society's annual Colonial Christmas concert. I know Laura didn't live in Colonial times, her childhood was much later in the 1800s, but what she talks about and what was celebrated is so universal: enjoying good food, spending time with loved ones, the joy of small things, like a pair of red mittens.

The rooms in their Black Horse Tavern were aglow.

Enjoying their special holiday menu: Sweet potato cheddar soup, with a cheddar biscuit, and a poughman plate with cheese, bread and butter, a pickle, tomato, and cucumber salad.

Bread pudding, and hot mulled cider.

Carrots and hay, treats for Santa's hungry reindeer.

Mary crushing herbs in the Dutch Out Kitchen.


Remembering Laura's food memories of Christmas in Little House on the Prairie,

"For Christmas dinner there was a tender, juicy roasted turkey. There were the sweet potatoes baked in ashes and carefully wiped so you could eat the skins, too. There was a loaf of salt-rising bread made from the last of the white flour. And after all that there were stewed dried blackberries and little cakes. But these little cakes were made with brown sugar and they did not have white sugar sprinkled over their tops."

A foot warmer to bring to church, sometimes given to women with their initials on them by a suitor, and a yellow hot water bottle for sleigh rides. Imagine taking a sleigh ride to where you're going for Christmas. Does it seem fun or make you more grateful for your heated car?

Christmas music, yes, but this was also a celebration of light and the solstice, and of bringing joy into the homes and hearts during a dark time.

A holiday wreath. The five apples represent the planets that were known at that time, and mistletoe hangs below. The greenery was a symbol of life when the land was barren and not much grew.

From Little House in the Big Woods,

"Santa Claus had been there. Alice and Ella and Laura in their red flannel nightgowns and Peter in his red flannel shirt.

In each stocking there was a pair of bright red mittens, and there was a long, flat stick of red-and-white-striped peppermint candy, all beautiful and notched along each side. They were all so happy they could hardly speak at first. They just looked with shining eyes at those lovely Christmas presents."

"Christmas comes but once a year," said Aunt Eliza.

I hope in your holiday season you found moments filled with light, wonder and calm.

 

Calico Dreaming: Little House in the Big Woods

Sometimes I ask myself, "Do I spend too much time thrifting?" But if I hadn't gone to Housing Works on a particular day for a browse, I would have never scored all of these Little House books for just 50 cents! I'm missing just two: By the Shores of Silver Lake and These Happy Golden Years. I've been really eager to read the books since Wendy McClure's charming The Wilder Life book.

"How can we feel so much nostalgia for times in which we never lived or places we can never visit?" Natalie Merchant pondered in the introduction of her folk album, The House Carpenter's Daughter. She said the folks songs on her album "remind us of our humanity, of what we share."

I think of Natalie's words as I just finished reading the first of the series, Little House in the Big Woods, and about my visits with the Bergen County Historical Society (BCHS). Biscuits in the window of the Dutch Out Kitchen at a BCHS event.

Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote Little House in the Big Woods in 1932, a lean year for our nation economically. Flash forward, and we're in lean years now. Doesn't the humanity share in us a pull toward the most fundamental things: family, home, safety, love of friends, family and companion animals, seasonal delights, good food. Laura delighted in pancakes on a cold winter's morning in her childhood in the 1800s. Who doesn't delight in those now? She loved a good story to escape boredom and inspire and thrill. Me too.

You have to read the books with a grain of salt and understand the context of the times. As a vegetarian, the deer hunt, bear kill, and pig slaughter didn't leave me feeling "snug" and "cozy," although, yes, I suspect I wouldn't have been a vegetarian then. After that uncomfortable hog squealing when it was being killed, "Butchering time was great fun!" I kept thinking, "When do we get to the jam making?" Then there was the scene when Pa blew up a pig's intestine like a balloon and Mary and Laura play with it. Seriously! Although at least people were far more connected to the animals they ate instead of the sanitized meat in the grocery stores now. I don't know if most people would consume so much of it if they really considered how it was raised.

I loved the final chapter when Pa observing the beauty of the bear and deer in the woods was unable to kill them. Of the bear,

"He was a perfect mark to shoot at, but I was much interested in watching him, and the woods were so peaceful in the moonlight, that I forgot all about my gun."

Of the deer, again,

"It was a perfect shot. But he was so beautiful, he looked so strong and free and wild, that I couldn't kill him." He observed a doe and her yearling fawn,

"They stood together, looking at the woods and the moonlight. Their large eyes were soft and shining. I just sat there looking at them, until they climbed away among the shadows. Then I climbed down out of the tree and came home."

Laura said, "I'm glad you didn't shoot them" while Mary declared "We can eat bread and butter." Score one for the wildlife, at least for one chapter!

The books are viewed through a child's eye, and what a world it is.

"Laura loved to look at the lamp, with its glass chimney so clean and sparkling, its yellow flame burning so steadily, and its bowl of clear kerosene colored red by the bits of flannel. She loved to look into the fireplace, flickering and changing all the time, burning yellow and red and sometimes green above the logs, and hovering blue over the golden and ruby coals.

Photo, left of Mary, a re-enactor, at the BCHS Candlemas celebration. See my, "Cause for Cheer, Midwinter is Here" post for more photos.

In the chapter, "The Dance at Grandpa's,"

"They put on their beautiful dresses. Aunt Docia's dress was a sprigged print, dark blue, with sprigs of red flowers and green leaves thick upon it. The basque was buttoned down the front with black buttons which looks so exactly like juicy big blackberries that Laura wanted to taste them.

Aunt Ruby's was wine-colored calico, covered all over with a feathery pattern in a lighter wine colored. It buttoned with gold-colored buttons, and every button had a little castle and a tree carved on it."

To see a modern re-enactment of calico dresses and a dance, see "It Happened at the Calico Frolic."

"Now came the best part of the churning. Ma molded the butter. On the loose bottom of the wooden butter-mold was carved the picture of a strawberry with two strawberry leaves."

"In the winter the cream was not yellow as it was in the summer, and butter churned from it was white and not so pretty. Ma liked everything on her table to be pretty, so in the wintertime she colored the butter."

I thought of the butter at the BCHS Pinkster Fest with the pineapple mold. Food was so precious to the pioneers who worked so hard for it, and I love that they made it beautiful.

I also thought of a passage in the short story "Mother's Love" from my friend Jennifer's (J.J. Brown's) new short story collection, Death and the Dream:

"Mother took the pie out of the oven and it hissed fragrant apple, maple, cinnamon steam through the knife cuts in the top crust. She was making her world beautiful. She was making her world delicious. It could be done, and if anyone could do it, she could."

Life is full of drudgery, whether it was for Ma doing household chores to our modern life for many of us in cubicles. Why not make it as beautiful and delicious as possible?

Laura loved winter, as do I. In "Winter Days,"

"The snow kept coming till it was drifted and banked against the house. In the mornings the window panes were covered with frost in beautiful pictures of trees and flowers and fairies.

Ma said that Jack Frost came in the night and made the pictures, while everyone was asleep."

She refers to a "snug" and "cozy" feeling that I so love of the season. All was calm, all was bright on a December eve in the Dutch Out Kitchen.

After an adventure in "Going to Town" to Pepin, Pa declared the saying...

" 'Mid pleasures and palaces, though we may roam,
Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home."

Like Pa, I love an adventure, but love being home. All snug and cozy.

Check out the Little House cookbooks for more pioneer escapism. I did from the library. While My Little House Cookbook is more for the younger set, I thought of how many adults (myself included) rely on store-bought shortcuts for pancakes, strawberry jam, and creamy oatmeal. "For the Ingalls family, no matter where they were, mealtime was always a cause for celebration. The family worked very hard for their food, and at every meal they would come together and give thanks." Mealtime is a cause to celebrate. How many of us, especially women, start obsessing over body issues when thinking about food?

The Little House Cookbook by Barbara M. Walker has some interesting frontier history and recipes. I wish I had some Hasty Pudding, Johnny-Cake or blueberry pudding now.

Barbara Walker says, "Cooking was for Laura Ingalls Wilder a social experience and an apprenticeship. By cooking with her elders she learned something about food, something about human communion. Cooking remains one of the few household activities that adults and children older or younger can share in modern urban life."

Walker observes, "Perhaps her (Laura's) native gift of observation was sharpened when she became the "eye" for her blind sister Mary." I think that's an intriguing thought, for Laura, not "rich" in the way we'd say it, observes so much beauty everywhere in her books, which is I think what draws so many of us, myself included, to them nearly eight decades after she penned them. Do you see the beauty everywhere?

Just like Pa would have played! Arkansas Traveler.