Our Christmas Bookshelf

As it is almost December, I thought it'd be entertaining to share some of the Christmas books that have been in our family and now have special places in our hearts for years. :) 

So without further ado.....

(a very old ['93] Family Circle Christmas magazine)

What are some of your family's favorite Christmas books?

Readables: The Help by Kathryn Stockett

"I listened, wide-eyed, stupid. Glowing by her voice in the dim light. If chocolate was a sound, it would have been Constantine's voice singing. If singing was a color, it would have been the color of that chocolate."

The Help. It's a book I'd heard a deal about, a movie trailer that intrigued me, and a subject I personally love: the life of colored maids in the 1960's. Perhaps it is the stories of Mama's housekeeper, Laura Bullock, that always put me directly in sympathy with this sect of people. 

Mama's family loved Laura and Laura was always an integral part of their lives as children. I'll always remember the famous story of Grandmama coming home to find Laura dressed out in a helmet and jacket with a gun over her shoulder, doing drills with Uncle David who was only 5 or 6 at the time and had asked her to play army. And I'll never forget what Laura told Uncle David as a little boy:

"She's yo vanilla mama..." (nodding at Grandmama) "...but I's your choc'late mama."

Or what she would say when Mama was a little girl:

"Honey--you's fat, but you's purty!"

Bright in my imagination, too, is the family-legend of Laura's rooster. How it'd drown itself every rainstorm by looking up at the sky with his mouth open, and how Laura would shove it in the oven, heat it up till it started flapping around, and let it back outside again.

I had the honor of meeting Laura several times as a little girl. I remember being slightly intimidated by the warm pressure of her wrinkled, leathery hand and her intent gaze, but I do remember liking her a deal despite my fears.

All that to say, when a copy of Kathryn Stockett's The Help came into my hands and Sarah read it and told me I really needed to read it (High praise from Sarah!) I was ready. The general plot as described by the back of the book is as follows:

Aibileen Clark is a black maid in 1962 Jackson, Mississippi, raising her seventeenth white child. She's always taken orders quietly, but lately it leaves her with a bitterness she can no longer bite back. Her friend Minny Jackson has certainly never held her tongue, or held on to a job for very long, but now she's working for a newcomer with secrets that leave her speechless. And white socialite Skeeter Phelan has just returned from college with ambition and a degree but, to her mother's lament, no husband....Together, these seemingly different women join to work on a project that could forever alter their destinies and the life of a small town--to write, in secret, a tell-all book about what it's really like to work as a black maid in the white homes of the South...

What is there to say about this book except... Wow. I found myself laughing and crying alternately and sometimes simultaneously. As a writer I was astonished that this was Ms. Stockett's first novel. As a reader I connected deeply and intimately with the characters. As a white woman, I blushed over the treatment the black maids received and prayed that, had I grown up in that era, I would have been different than Hilly and Elizabeth and the other Jackson women.

This book is so full of emotion, so full of complex relationships, so full of truth and goodness and a realization of the common-ness of humanity that I found myself marveling that any author could boil it down and smash it between two covers.

"I don't know what to say to her. All I know is, I ain't saying it. And I know she ain't saying what she want a say either, and it's a strange thing happening here cause nobody saying nothing and we still managing to have us a conversation."

The characters are alive, the events poignant, the realizations touching and sharp-edged. I enjoyed the choice of "first-person, now narrative" for a fresh reading experience as well. I love the immediacy of it. The novel took me from looking at The Help as a historical-fiction and brought me winging back to 1960, and it flighting forward to 2012 and we met somewhere in the middle and had a heart-connection rare to find in today's helter-skelter thriller-fiction-craze. Kathryn Stockett tells it just like it was. She didn't assign all evil or all goodness to one side of the racial argument or the other. But she didn't sugar-coat anything. And I mean anything.

That's the only complaint I had about The Help. The author included quite a lot of language which--if it did help the ink-people come alive--presented lots of words in my mind that aren't usually there for good reason. One of the main characters is definitely not a Christian and speaks rather mockingly of it sometimes. There are two scenes I can think of that could have been toned down. One, I actually liked the raw, pithy emotion and horror of--the other I thought was a little graphic. That--along with the fact that the whole subject of the plot is a little weighty for younger readers--puts my recommendation for The Help at 18+. If you are 18 years of age or older and want a book that'll take your by the shoulders with warm, brown hands and shake you gently with strong, supple fingers that smell of dryer sheets and cake frosting, read this book. You'll never regret it. Never-ever.

*WARNING* In Chapter 24 there is a really creepy part that is described too graphically. Really, you'd not miss it if you skipped it. So read with caution or skip pages 360-365 entirely. :)

A teaser-taste for you:

"We go on in her room, where we like to set. I get up in the big chair and she get up on me and smile, bounce a little. 'Tell me bout the brown wrapping. And the present.' She so excited, she squirming. She has to jump off my lap, squirm a little to get it out. Then she crawl back up.That's her favorite story cause when I tell it, she get two presents. I take the brown wrapping from my Piggly Wiggly grocery bag and wrap up a little something, like a piece a candy, inside. Then I use the white paper from my Cole's Drug Store bag and wrap another one just like it. She take it real serious, the unwrapping, letting me tell the story bout how it ain't the color of the wrapping that count, it's what we is inside."

The Booklover's Mind: a peep

Observations from a book-lover...

• I'm so glad the Marshalsea and other debtors' prisons no longer exist
• The Micawbers and I? Yeah. We're like this.
• Dear old Dickens and Lewis--how do you manage to be so quotable?
• I have been much amused by the fact that Jane Austen's most famous quotes come from her villains (and villainesses) so one can only wonder if she disagreed with all the things people tout around as her wisdom. :P
• Green Gables--how does one tack a name onto a place and enmesh the name and place together in so effortless a fashion that every green and white farmhouse you see thereafter reminds you of a certain red-head?
• Josephine March--may I mention to you that I whole-heartedly agree when you say, "Oh, I hate money." It also amuses me how you can so cheerfully speak of your family's poverty as "a temporary poverty" when it has stretched years already. You're a darling.
• Yes he can be blunt and sarcastic and a tad vulgar, but Mark Twain was a star-spangled, gold-plated genius, that's what.
• There is a certain point in a thick book--*glares at Les Miserables*--when you think you will never get through. It is precisely at that moment that you decide whether you will beat it or not by the manner in which you respond to the doubt. If you toss the book aside you will fail. If you grab hold of it, grit your teeth, and sludge through yet another historic description, you will prevail. :)
• Bookmarks are so under-appreciated. "You never know what you got till it's gone," to quote the song. Anything will do--tags, tea-bags, napkins, post-it-notes, receipts and--in an extreme pinch--you can make do with...toilet paper.
•  I wish getting published was as "easy" as Jo March and Anne Shirley made it seem. I mean, at least editors accepted submissions back then. :P
• Read outside--there is an indescribable something that happens and quite transports you from this world to that.
• The best books never grow old. They grow soft, worn, battered, but they gain faces and you get to know them as well as you know your best friends. :)

Further Adventures in Teaching Abby

Yet another story about Abby's schooling, but this time it isn't so much our accent as her rather inventive little mind. :) Sarah had to go with Mama to the dentist the other day to watch the younger ones while Mama went back into the appointments with the child whose turn it was. Abby was getting bored and restless, so Sarah had her pick up a book and try to read words out of it.
We happen to own this particular book, so Abby knew the storyline. When she came to the word "sandwiches" she started to sound it out.

"Sa...and..sand...Sand?"

She appeared puzzled over the mention of sand, since this book has nothing to do with the beach. Sarah reached over and pointed at the word. Now, I must admit here that went we say the word "sandwich" quickly, you don't really hear the "nd" part...it comes out more like "samwich". :P
So Sarah set out to help Abby finish reading the word:

"See, sand....wiches....Sandwiches."

Abby gasped and looked frightened. Her eyes were very wide as she asked, "Sand-Witches? What are those?" :)

As you can see, she's just a teensy bit random at times, but SO adorable! :) It's great fun teaching her to read! ~Rachel

Anne of Green Gables - "The Highwayman"

Who can forget Anne Shirley's passionate recital of "The Highway Man" or "The Lady of Shallott"? Oftentimes, I step back, and think of what people did for fun before they had all this technology...the thought intrigues me, and I enjoy thinking of, and doing things that require no further technology than a book, and the brain God has given me. For a long time, my sisters and I would memorize a poem each week, and recite it at every tea-party with our Girl's Gazette. The exercise that it gave our brains was absolutely wonderful! Have we become so content with watching other people act things out for us on the screen that we cannot enjoy good literature, and use our imaginations to convey the wonder and excitement of it to others? In the book of "Anne of Green Gables" by Lucy Maud Montgomery, Anne says at one point, "Don't you just love poetry that gives you a crinkly feeling up and down your back?" It is so true...some poetry just captures your attention...I memorized"Barbara Frietchie" once, and still can quote many of those soaring lines...

"Up from the meadows rich with corn,

Clear in the cool September morn,

The clustered spires of Frederick stand,

Green-walled by the hills of Maryland...

.....And the nobler nature within him stirred

To life at that woman's deed and word.

"Who touches a hair of yon gray head

Dies like a dog! March on!" he said."

Ahh...reading poetry and prose aloud is a great art. I clearly remember a scene in the 1995 Sense and Sensibility when Edward Ferrars is reading aloud to the Dashwoods with very little emotion. Marianne, exasperated, finally stands up, take the book and reads passionately: "Not LIGHT propitious SHONE!" with great dramatic flair. We all cannot have perfect reading aloud..and not everyone we'd wish to read aloud to would care to sit and listen! :) But I do challenge all you fellow writers to take a favorite book, find a sister who would listen, and try to read the book or poem aloud in a way that would do Anne Shirley credit. One of my favorite quotes from poetry is in Sir Walter Scott's "The Lady of The Lake" and depicts a Highland Chieftan's defiant quote at Fitz-James at a crucial moment in the story..

"These are Clan Alpine's warriors true

And Saxon- I am Rhoderick Dhu!"

Those words still give me Anne's crinkly feeling up my back! :) Maybe I just have an uncommon love of literature...it's possible! ;) But I do think that we all can determine to improve our reading-aloud. It is a skill not possessed by most people today, and one that is appreciated for it's very rarity when a solid reader is found. Do it for fun! Take a book out to the woods, stand there, and either read or quote the words with as much drama as you would like to use. You can always tone it down in public, but in the woods, who cares as long as you are having fun! :)

-Rachel

Beatrix Potter: A Review and Some Memories! :)

Beatrix Potter as an older woman, with her favorite dog: Kep

I don't think there is a single child in America and Great Britain who has not, at one point or another, experienced the fascinating world of Beatrix Potter. Her illustrations are, in my opinion, flawless, and the strike true as much today, when I am 18, as they did when I was 3. I have always loved Miss Potter's pictures since I was a small child. Back then, they entranced me because of the animals themselves, wearing such tiny clothes, yet looking so real....

No one can forget Jemima Puddleduck and the "Sandy-whiskered Gentleman"

Nor can one forget Jeremy Fisher and his sloshy hallways and friends that come to tea wearing black and gold waistcoats, and other such things! :)

And of course we mustn't forget dear, naughty little Peter Rabbit! :)

Now I love her art because of how faithful she was to keeping the animals themselves looking like real mice, or hedgehogs, or foxes, or geese, and yet romanticising their world to form a storybook land that seems as if you could step into it if you just went over one more hill. :) Recently, I bought the whole collection of her stories for children in one volume to put in my hopechest. These books have been a part of my childhood all the way up, and someday I want to read them to my own young ones. I can remember Dad and Mama reading them to me. I had a strange fascination with "The Tale of The Fierce, Bad Rabbit". I was terrified, and interested all at once. I always jumped when the hunter shot the bad rabbit's tail off- Dad would make a loud "Pop!" noise and jog the book! :) There are so many wonderful little tales! And they are all so clever! Particularly "Squirrel Nutkin" where she incorporates near a dozen little riddles, and hides their answers in the main body of the story! :) Gracie's personal favorite, and the one that I read to her every time I put her to bed is:

This is perhaps, the most frightening of Beatrix Potter's books! Benjamin and Abigail hated it, because Tom Kitten almost gets eaten by the rats: Old Samuel Whiskers and his wife "Anna-Maria"! :) But Gracie, like me with the Fierce Bad Rabbit, gets a certain thrill out of hearing the tale over and over and over and over again! :) She knows Tom Kitten will be okay, she has heard the story a hundred times if she has once, but still, she hides her eyes, and squeals, and shrinks when I say, in a particular voice: "Anna-Maria? Are you sure the string will be digestible? I'm not sure it's a good pudding- it is all over with smuts!" and when I read the "butter and dough" quarrel. I get as much enjoyment out of the story as she! :) Anyway, this is a sort of book-review/ nostalgic post! :) I highly recommend any of the Beatrix Potter books. Some are more interesting to little ones than others- Gracie does not like "The Pie and The Patty-Pan", or "The Tailor of Gloucester" for instance. But she adores "Mrs. Tittlemouse", "The Flopsy Bunnies" and "The Tale of Two Bad Mice". I think it hardly possible that anyone could go throughout childhood without enjoying her stories, but if you have not read them yourself, and wish for a good old-fashioned tale to read to your siblings, by all means find a copy somewhere! You will not be disappointed! :) -Rachel

A Tale Of Lorna and Nicholas ;) (Otherwise known as, who'll finish first?)

Do any of you belong to families where EVERYBODY likes to read? I coaxed everyone else along in this area, and have pretty much made them as crazy about reading as I am! :) Daniel comes to Sarah and I at night, flops on our bed, or walks slowly over to our shelf and asks what book he should read. I feel like some sort of seller of furs as I exhibit the pros and cons of each book. I have read them all. The hunt for a good book always ends up rather flat, because so has Daniel. Actually, we've read all those books several times. The younger girls ravage my bookshelf continuously. Friends from church have me draw up lists of books for them to read. I think they should start calling me "Marian"! (you know, that librarian from "The Music Man"? ;) Even if you don't like to read, I may just press you with promises of good books. In all fairness though, I should be able to list a whole catalog of good titles- even the Walkers are hard-pressed to find a book in their house that I have not read. Poor Matthew has been subject to taking my recommendations on faith and reading many things such as "To Have and To Hold", and "Pride and Prejudice", that he mayn't have read without a big, encouraging shove into it. Okay, so having a girl for a cousin can injure your reading list. (But I think he enjoyed them!) I also, though, have roped him into reading "The Scarlet Pimpernel" and "Ivanhoe", and Sarah has gotten him to read "the Pickwick Papers" by Dickens, so we aren't all girly about it! Anyway, the point of this post, was to describe a rather amusing scene that happened last night. Sarah and I were both in the last throes of very thick books. Sarah is reading "Nicholas Nickleby" by Charles Dickens, (731 pages) and I was reading "Lorna Doone" by R.D. Blackmore. (400 some odd pages) She is reading her book on credit, because it is really one I took out of the library to read, but let her read it while I was reading the other. We sat together in the living room. She cast a wary eye upon my reading- only about a 1/4 of an inch to go! Her book is longer than mine...will she finish before I swoop down and grab it from her? We are both feverishly reading. Then Mama wanted to watch "I Love Lucy" with us, so we pause. Mama falls asleep, and we both decide to take our reading up again in our beds. I am savouring the last few pages of "Lorna Doone". Suddenly, she is shot at the altar at her wedding by a wicked, wicked cousin of hers! :0 Horrors! I breathlessly read the part aloud to Sarah, in absolute agony! How on earth could an author kill off his title character? Sarah listens patiently, then waves me off. "I've got to keep reading!" she says. I finish my book in peace, once I learn that Lorna is not really dead, and they have a happy life ever-after! I am satisfied. Sarah is still reading. The time draws nigh midnight. Reluctantly, she lays aside her book, and we go to sleep. I am a good sister and I don't claw the novel out of her hands this morning and read it myself! ;) In fact, Miss Sarah is sitting here beside me with only 1/4 inch (or 3 chapters) to go! Hurrah for literature from the old days when thin books were for babies! Our literary tastes go for Sir Walter Scott, Dickens, Austen, Alcott, Twain, and all those solid 4 inch writers! :) I don't find it too bad to boast of one's family, so think that our only crime perhaps in this post comes from the fact that we simply love to read! -Rachel

Yet Another Tag. Ho-hum-bon-hommy

Hi Everybody! This is Rachel. I must be well-loved or something....this is like my 5th time being tagged with the same tag, so...even though everyone is probably tired of reading about books we'd love to live in, I must do my duty to Shaina, Hannah, Sarah, Graham, and Matthew, and do it! Here goes nothing!

Eight Books I'd Love To Live In:

1.Little Women

2.Anne of Green Gables

3.The Scarlet Pimpernel (Well. If I knew I wasn't in any danger. I'd stay home with Lady Blakeney and enjoy fancy parties! :)

4. Farmer Boy

5. To Have and To Hold (Scoot over Lady Jocelyn! Capt. Percy is MINE! ;) (He is an impeccably godly gentleman. A rarity these days! Excusing Daniel and Matthew and a select few others)

6. Hind's Feet On The High Places (Wouldn't we all love to go on a journey with the King Of Love?)

7. Pride and Prejudice (Though I'd be scared I'd be snubbed by Mr. Darcy and Mr. Bingley's sisters!)

8. Winnie-the-pooh (A.A. Milne was brilliant! Those books are so funny!!)

On anothher note, I am beginning to think I am rather a heartless wretch- I am reading "The Wide, Wide, World" which I have heard from everyone is heartbreakingly sad, and so far, half-way through the book, I am rather amused than sorrowful! Oh well. -Rachel

Just Come Read This. (please?)

Hello! If you live in Va or NC, haven't these past few days been glorious? I feel quite spring-y, and I am extremely ready for flowers! I found a few pansies and wore them in my hair during church, but... like an analogy of how we feel about winter...they wilted. :) Some of my goals for this week are: keep working as Dad's office manager, WORK ON MY STINKIN' SCOTTISH DRESS, and read some of the nine books I am in the middle of! There you have it: Quite enough for one week besides school work and household things, don't you think? You may ask why I am in the middle of so many books? A simple answer: I love to read! The other answer? I kept losing the book I was in the middle of and so I'd start a new one! :)
The little goats are doing well- still name less! Please pray for Daniel this Tuesday (I think?) because he is addressing our county's G.O.P about Generation Joshua with another boy. They are the official speakers, so a bit nervous, also because Randy Forbes's wife might be there!
Do you ever imagine out conversations with yourself? I do. And I make the most witty and sparklings repartees, only to find myself in a similiar conversation with a real person, and make commonplace remarks about the weather, and Great Aunt Fanny's old milk cow! ;)
Well, hope you all have a great week! -Rachel

"Yoo-hoo! Any Knights Still Alive?"

Hi everybody! I thought I'd take some time this afternoon and do a post of more substantial value than anecdotes from our trip...

Lately I've been reading Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott. If anyone of you haven't read it, you really should. It is a brilliant masterpiece. So well-written if fact, that I found myself absolutely intrigued by the picture of knights in shining armor contesting on a field to win the prize of choosing the "Queen of Love and Beauty". Is it any wonder that a girl begins to long for the days of merry old England when chivalry was practiced by most, and cherished by all? When a man would fight to the death another man who had insulted a woman in any fashion? When the prize of keeping a maiden safe was coveted and contested for? I found myself wondering in a sighing sort of way, "Where have all the knights in shining armor gone?"
Isn't that funny? We maidens immediately assume that it the fault of the knights that they are not around. But if we feel that way, we are making a mistake. Let me tell you what really happened...
We maidens were not content to stay at the castle and be maidens. Nay, we refuted the help of a knight too many times. We, in foolish, puffed-up pride, decided that we could rescue ourselves from the dragon of so called "unfulfillment" by wearing the shining armor ourselves. We forsook the art of supporting the knights, and training our brothers to be knights, for some twisted picture that if we wore the shining armor, (that so ill-fits the feminine form and graces) we could rise to new heights, and come out princesses still. But while reaching for that illusive, wrong goal, here's what happened.
The knights found themselves unwanted. They were stripped of their dignity and manliness. Now that everyone wears armor, none of it shines. The armor, and chivalry has been dimmed by wrong ideas, and being refused over and over again. A knight no longer thinks to be strong for a lady. He has been lashed with a woman's tongue too many times, laughed at for trying to help her, and his place has been filled by maidens masquerading in armor, pretending to be happy. This is extemely wrong.
But take heart my maidens, and if any "closet knights" are reading this, listen please:
There is a host of maidens growing up, waiting willingly to be rescued by a true, chivalrous knight. There is another host of knights, who are dusting off their armor, daring to be men, and opening doors for ladies, whether they want it or not.
Let's not be deceived in thinking that chivalry has and always will have gone the way of leg-warmers, and bell-bottoms. No. But we as maidens must take pains to show the willing, but shy knights, that we are of a legion who wants to be rescued. And in this God-given position, we will find true fulfillment in being princesses: Daughters of the King of kings.

Curious Combination, But Don't Dismiss Us Yet! :)

Hey Everyone! Here's a picture of the snowman Abby and Benj made today. I think it's the biggest one they've ever made!:)

Psalm 147:15-18
"He sends out his command to the earth;
His word runs very swiftly.
He gives snow like wool;
He scatters the frost like ashes;
He casts out His hail like morsels;
Who can stand before His cold?
He sends out His word and melts them;
He causes His wind to blow, and the waters flow."



Psalm 148:8
"Fire and hail, snow and clouds, stormy winds fulfilling His word."

Here are some verses that Sarah just put up about snow and how God uses it to perform His works. The latter has always been a favorite verse of mine. I walk around dramatically quoting it. Actually, one time when the house had been really loud and I was merely quoting that most thrilling verse, Mama looked at me and said, trying to be patient, "Would you please stop quoting lines from movies!" I guess I was a pretty good actress! : ) Now, sorry to add onto Sarah's very pretty verses, but here is something that has nothing to do with that. Sometimes joint posts don't match well! :D
Okay. Please someone, tell me I'm not crazy and that you do this: when I read a book, most of the time I will not cry when I read it, because I don't like crying in front of people, and since I'm usually in the center of all the action, I am seldom alone. But I have a lively imagination. It can be a fault, and a damage to my health ;) Because I was reading the second book in the Scarlet Pimpernel series, and a young woman was about to tell a great secret that would send someone to the guillotine, and Sarah was trying to talk to me. I listened not. In that moment I was living the scene and I couldn't bear interruption. My eyes absolutely flew down the page, I had a raging headache, and my cheeks were flushed, my heart pounding. I then finished the chapter, and was reluctantly able to talk to Sarah rationally. Perhaps I am too easily pleased- these are not harmful thriller books from the twenty-first century. Nay, these are remarkably historically accurate books written in 1902 about the French Revolution. I assure you, they are some of the most exciting books I've ever read. And I am a huge reader. I have devoured most every book in my house and the Walkers, and on Morgan Wilson's shelf. (Just ask Matthew of Morgan, they'll tell you.) I really think Matthew, by the way, that The Scarlet Pimpernel and the other books in the series can vie for the most exciting book with Duncan's War and Co. ! I am not kidding! Thanks King's Daughter for doin' the interlibrary exchange thing so that I could be transported with delight reading something that I hadn't read and that I didn't make up, and that I could devour at my leisure!
In case anyone is wondering, the books center around a mysterious Englishman who calls himself "The Scarlet Pimpernel" (an English wild-flower) and who, along with his trusty band of 20 young men rountinely snatch the aristocrats to safety right under Robespierre, and Merlin, Focquier-Tinville, and others noses. They are so very good books in my opinion, and Daniel's, and I suggest you read them. The only thing I should warn you about, is that there is a bit of language in them, but the more I read British literature, the more I wonder if some of the words we consider bad here in America are bad there. Can anyone clear that up for me? Anyway, thanks for allowing me to go off on a rabbit-trail there. Laugh at me if you will. I laugh at myself, but I am a passionate lover of books, and I do not read them- I swallow them whole! ;) -Rachel (and Sarah)