Favorite Authors Meme

Heather, Errant Thoughts, tagged me for this favorite authors meme. It was a fun one to think about.

1. Who’s your all-time favorite author, and why?

I’ve always said that Jane Austen is my favorite author … and I have indeed read all of her books numerous times and loved them each time I read them. And each time I reread her books, I understand and appreciate them in a different way, so she's been a favorite at many different stages of my life.

2. Who was your first favorite author, and why? Do you still consider him or her among your favorites?

Carolyn Keene, the “author” of the Nancy Drew series, was my first favorite author. I adored those books, read every one that had been published at that time, and developed a lifelong love of mystery books. She’s definitely a nostalgic favorite even to this day. The Nancy Drew books were ghostwritten by different authors, but the first 23 (the ones I adored) were actually written by a woman named Mildred Benson. Click here to read about her.

3. Who’s the most recent addition to your list of favorite authors, and why?

One of the most recent addition to my list of favorite authors is Gabriel García Márquez. I was completely captured by his writing last summer when I read Love in the Time of Cholera. I know it was partly because of my year spent in South America as an exchange student in high school, and because his descriptions and the beauty of his writing brought back so many memories and feelings from that year of immersion into another culture and language.

4. If someone asked you who your favorite authors were right now, which authors would first pop out of your mouth? Are there any you’d add on a moment of further reflection?

Favorite authors at the moment (all of them discovered through the blogging world): Charles de Lint, Patricia McKillip, Daniel Wallace, Wendell Berry, Jane Yolen...

On further reflection I'd like to add these authors that have been favorites of mine at different times in my life (in no particular order): Thomas Hardy, Lois Lowry, Tony Hillerman, Pearl Buck, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Rosamunde Pilcher, Victoria Holt/Jean Plaidy, Barbara Kingsolver, Josephine Tey, J.R.R. Tolkien, Leo Lionni, Kate DiCamillo, Charlotte Bronte

Smith of Wootton Major and Farmer Giles of Ham

I couldn't help myself when I came to the Tolkien section at the bookstore recently and found a small paperback with two short fantasies I'd never read. I picked it up thinking of adding it to my reads for Carl's Once Upon a Time II challenge, and I'm glad I did. I enjoyed both stories, and realized once again how much I love the work of J.R.R. Tolkien.

Smith of Wootton Major was the first novella, and most definitely my favorite of the two. Every 24 years, 24 children in the town of Wootton Major are invited to the Festival of Good Children. A great cake filled with trinkets and prizes is baked and is the highlight of the festival. As the story begins, there is a new Master Cook, a vain, arrogant, lazy and unqualified man, so it is his apprentice who actually bakes the cake. He is not just an apprentice, though, he is actually from the world of Faerie, and one of the trinkets he puts into the cake is a magic star (a fay star) that will grant access to the world of Faerie to whomever finds it. The blacksmith's son swallowed it unknowingly as he ate his piece of cake, but it didn't make itself known until the day of his tenth birthday. From that time on, Smith was able to travel into Faerie, where he was called Starbrow, and had many adventures there. But after 24 years, it is time to pass the star on to another generation ...

As with all of Tolkien's works, the story alone is wonderful, but it is also rich in meaning and background. I loved the idea of this star being a gift of fantasy, and a gift that enables the bearer to see the world differently than those around him as well as giving him access to the wonders of Faerie. I also love the idea of having to pass it on to a new generation, so that there is always one person in Wootton Major with that special vision and that ongoing connection to the other world.


The second novella was Farmer Giles of Ham, a humorous story of an unlikely hero and a bothersome dragon. It was entertaining and fun, and definitely a Tolkien tale.

"As you like," said Chrysophylax, licking his lips again, but pretending to close his eyes. He had a wicked heart (as all dragons have), but not a very bold one (as is not unusual). He preferred a meal that he did not have to fight for; but appetite had returned after a good long sleep. The parson of Oakley had been stringy, and it was years since he had tasted a large fat man. He now made up his mind to try this easy meat, and he was only waiting until the old fool was off his guard.

But the old fool was not as foolish as he looked ...

Bird Song

Last year the crows nested in one of the tall trees very close to us, and as a result, we listened to the sounds of baby crows all spring and summer and didn't get to enjoy many of our usual songbirds. This year, they've nested a little further away in the greenbelt, so there's a greater variety of birdsong to enjoy. I suspect they've moved their nesting place this year because of a new neighbor. I've heard the sound of this new bird numerous times, especially in the early morning or when we stand next to the greenbelt at the side of our place. I was quite sure it was an owl, so this morning I spent quite a bit of time at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology web site, listening to the sounds of various owls, and was finally able to identify our neighbor. Click on the photo to visit the lab and learn all about this handsome bird.

Remembering

Remembering is a tender and profound book written by Wendell Berry. Andy Catlett, of Port Williams, lost is hand in a corn picking machine while helping a young neighbor harvest his first crop of corn. In his grief and anger, Andy also lost his way, for awhile. He struggled to come to terms with his changed life, and was finally able to find a renewed sense of self, and a new and deeper understanding of the important of place in his life.

This book is about remembering in so many different ways, on so many different levels. Andy ultimately "remembers" his way back home to his wife and children, back to the land he loves, back to his true self, and back to the membership -- the community of all those that had gone before him in making the choices that made him who he is -- that guide him through his life and his own choices. This is a book about place, choices, and remembering what Lois Lowry calls "back and back and back."

From the publisher's notes:
"In this exquisitely crafted novel, Wendell Berry writes about how the acceptance of our membership -- our land, our family, our ancestry -- allows us to return to a place of integrity from which we are capable of making choices, of fulfilling our best intentions."

The photo above is of my husband walking behind a neighbor plowing our "field" at the home we lived in 30 years ago. That home was on a 1/4 acre lot in the middle of a city that grew up around it and changed it forever, which is why we left it and moved elsewhere. And moving away was the right choice at the time we made it, but I often miss our old home and working that little bit of land. I remembered and thought about this part of our lives, and was filled with nostalgia for it, as I read Remembering.

This beautiful little book is well worth reading and thinking about. It was one of my choices for Maggie's Southern Reading Challenge.

Lonesome Dove

B and I must be the only people around that had never seen Lonesome Dove (the 1989 mini-series starring Robert Duvall and Tommy Lee Jones), but thanks to Netflix, we took care of that this weekend. I'm speaking to you now with a Texas drawl (with nothing but respect for the way Texans speak) because we became so completely immersed in the story and watched the entire thing in two days. I didn't want it to end! I didn't want to leave that dusty, brutal, beautiful countryside, that incredible time period in history, and those characters! Now, I have to admit that I've never read the book, either, so it's time to remedy that by reading the whole saga! What a fun summer project that would be...

Naming Our Homeplace Contest

As part of her Southern Reading Challenge, Maggie is holding a "name your homeplace" contest, with the book Mudbound as the prize. I thought the book sounded really good, and I've always loved the idea of naming the place where we live.

B and I live in a very small condominium in a city east of Seattle, Washington. We bought our condo because it is a quiet and green haven in the middle of a city that is quickly growing out of control. We have a greenbelt behind and to the side of our unit, so we are tucked away from the noise of traffic and other irritations of city life, shaded by the trees, with lots of birds and critters as neighbors. We wouldn't be living in this huge metropolitan area if we didn't have our Green Haven to help us keep perspective on what's really important in life.

Greenbelt seasons

Renoir's Garden

Why shouldn't art be pretty? There are enough unpleasant things in the world.
--Pierre-Auguste Renoir

My father was passionate about art and art books, and I've always shared that love and fascination for the lives and work of artists. I was going through a box hidden away in the basement last week and discovered a very nice little art book on Renoir that must have come from Dad's library. It's called Renoir's Garden: A Celebration of the Garden that Inspired One of the World's Greatest Impressionist Painters, by Derek Fell. I was very familiar with Monet's gardens at Giverny, but I really didn't know much about Renoir's home and gardens, called Les Collettes, in Cagne, France.

Late in his life, Renoir fell in love with the area around Cagnes -- with the light, the views of the Mediterranean, and the olive trees. He bought Les Collettes, in part to make sure those ancient olive trees were kept safe from developers. At Les Collettes, his wife, Aline, was given the freedom to work with a designer and build the house of her dreams. It became a very happy family home. For Renoir, it also became a place of light and color, and inspiration.

"The story of Cagnes and Renoir is a love story -- Cagnes seemed to be waiting for Renoir, and he adopted it." -- Jean Renoir

The book is divided into five sections: A Vision of Earthly Paradise; The Farmhouse and the Olive Grove; The Gardens Around the House; The Orchards, Vineyards and Vegetable Gardens; and The Main House -- The Final Years. It is filled with photographs and paintings, and shows much of Renoir's inspiration for the paintings of the last period of his life. Each chapter combines the biographical story with descriptions of the garden plans and plants.

"The formal garden which Madame Renoir laid out was to have a pattern of oranges and roses as its principal theme. Renoir's own preference was for simple flowers, massed together without any complex interplanting. He liked the bold dash of colour created by beds packed with single varieties of flowers -- spring-flowering bearded iris in one area, winter-flowering ivy-leaf pelargoniums in another, and patches of summer-flowering lavender everywhere."


"His life and work were prolonged in this land of blue skies and sunshine", art critic Gustave Geffroy wrote by way of eulogy. "There he was able to breathe and paint, to contemplate its greenness and flowers, its sky and water. There on the doorstep or at the bottom of his garden was all than was beautiful and smiling in nature for Renoir's use."

This book was an enjoyable way to learn more about Renoir's life and work. I loved reading the descriptions of the home and gardens at Les Collettes, and loved all the beautiful photographs and paintings. It left me with a longing to travel to the south of France to see Les Collettes, now a museum.

I read this book for Joy's Non-Fiction Five challenge, (although it wasn't on my original list) because it's the kind of non-fiction I so enjoy.

Looking Back: A Book of Memories

"I would like to introduce you to this book. It has no plot. It is about moments, memories, fragments, falsehoods, and fantasies. It is about things that happened, which caused other things to happen, so that eventually stories emerged."

Lois Lowry's book of memories for young and old is filled with beautiful photographs and beautiful words. Looking Back: A Book of Memories, is a book full of short, poignantly described, memories -- each memory starting with a quote from one of Lowry's own books, and a photograph from her family collection. Each photograph works as inspiration for as well as illustration of the memory.

Through these memories, Lowry shares her life's journey, the ups and downs of growing up, and the joys and losses of both her childhood and her adult years. The stories also reveal the heart of a writer, and give you insight into the process of memory and art.

The book begins and ends with quotes from The Giver, which is a book I have loved and taught for many years. The "Giver" in Lowry's imagined dystopia, holds the memories of centuries for the Community. In a very poetic statement at the end of the book, Lowry says:

"I have come to believe that all of us, as we write, or read, or draw ...
as we hold the pages of a book tilted so that a little one can see ...
as we choose and wrap a book as a gift for a child ...
as we provide privacy and a comfortable chair, or a favorite book on a table beside a guest room bed ...
as we sift through memories, sort them out and see their meaning ...
and as we look back, and say to a child, "I remember --"
we do, in fact, hold the knowledge of centuries.
And we all become Givers."

This is my first book read for Joy's Non-Fiction Five reading challenge. It was a beautiful, poignant read and I highly recommend it.

Salutations!

May is an incredibly hectic month in school, and as a result, I'm not getting much reading or posting done after work. But I am enjoying reading during the day with my students, so thought I'd do a post this week about my "daytime reading!"

Charlotte's Web is our new read-aloud in my 2nd grade classroom. Of course, many of my students had heard it before, and most of them have seen the most recent movie. But none of them objected to listening to it again, so we are all immersed in one of the most beautifully written and tender stories of all times, and we're loving every minute of it!

The children and I have talked a lot about how an author uses descriptive words to paint pictures in our minds. E. B. White was a master "painter!" I wanted my students to become more aware of that important part of reading, so I had them close their eyes and listen to the following very descriptive passages from Charlotte's Web. Afterwards, and with their eyes open now, we read it again trying to pay extra close attention to all the details Mr. White had put into his description ... because we were then going to draw and color what we pictured. The kids asked for one more reading (most of them wanted to listen with their eyes closed again), and then I sent them back to their seats to work on their "visualization". Here's a copy of the passage I read to them, followed by some wonderful examples of what they imagined...

"The barn was very large. It was very old. It smelled of hay ... It smelled of the perspiration of tired horses and the wonderful sweet breath of patient cows ... It smelled of grain and of harness dressing and of axle grease and of rubber boots and of new rope ... It was full of all sorts of things that you find in barns: ladders, grindstones, pitchforks, monkey wrenches, scythes, lawn mowers, snow shovels, ax handles, milk pails, water buckets, empty grain sacks, and rusty rat traps. It was the kind of barn that swallows like to build their nests in. It was the kind of barn that children like to play in."

Seven Wild Sisters

"Course there's spirits in the hills. How could there not be?" muses Aunt Lillian...

Seven Wild Sisters is a novella by Charles de Lint and illustrated by Charles Vess. I stumbled across it in the library and snatched it up immediately because the two Charles are a favorite combination of mine! How could I go wrong reading a book by de Lint with illustrations by Vess? I was not disappointed!

In this book, we are introduced to the 7 red-haired Dillard sisters who live in the backcountry hills of Appalachia. One of the sisters, Sarah Jane, befriends an older neighbor, Aunt Lillian, whom her sisters think is a witch. She spends a lot of time helping her, learning about homesteading, and listening to her stories. She discovers that she is not a witch, but IS connected to the world of faerie in an interesting way. But because of an act of kindness by Sarah Jane, the sisters all get caught between two warring groups of fairies. It was fun to find out how they all managed to survive their encounters with the fairy folk and get back home from that "other world."

Charles de Lint has used these characters in some of his other books and stories. Another collaboration between de Lint and Vess is a book called Medicine Road, which includes two of the seven sisters and weaves North American Indian mythology into the magical mix.

From The Green Man Review:
Seven Wild Sisters advertises itself as a modern fairy tale. Including the seven sisters, it certainly has all the trappings: an old woman who may be a witch, an enchanted forest, a stolen princess. But Sisters is not just borrowing the clothes of the fairy tale. It sings with the true voice of fairy tale: capricious, wild, and not entirely safe, but rich and enchanting.

Maggie's Southern Reading Challenge

To understand the world, you have to understand a place like Mississippi. --William Faulkner

Maggie (Maggie Reads) has just announced her 2008 Southern Reading Challenge. That means that SUMMER is almost here! Hooray! Her challenge last summer was a highlight of the year for me -- the books I read were some of my favorites of the entire year. So I'm delighted that she's hosting it again, and I'm ready to go!

Maggie's Rules:

The rules are easy: 3 Southern Setting Books by Southern Authors in 3 Months beginning May 15 through August 15!

My Possibilities:

Watermelon King, by Daniel Wallace
Ballad of the Sad Cafe, by Carson McCullers
The Robber Bridegroom, by Eudora Welty
Remembering, by Wendell Berry
Her Stories, by Virginia Hamilton
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, by John Berendt

The Non-Fiction Five Challenge

I enjoy reading non-fiction, so Joy's new challenge, the Non-Fiction Five Challenge, has been calling to me. Am I nuts to take on another challenge while I'm in the throws of the end-of-a-school-year rush? Probably! But I've always liked the following quote, and keep it in mind when life get too rushed and there's too much focus on work:

No matter how busy you may think you are,
you must find time for reading,
or surrender yourself to self-chosen ignorance.
~ Atwood H. Townsend ~

Wouldn't want that to happen!
Here are Joy's rules for the Challenge:

1. Read 5 non-fiction books during the months of May - September, 2008.
2. Read at least one non-fiction book that is different from your other choices (i.e.: 4 memoirs and 1 self-help)

Here is a list of non-fiction books already sitting on my shelf, and I'm still looking for a few others to add to my choice pool:

Looking Back: A Book of Memories, by Lois Lowry
The Story of My Life: An Afgan Girl on the Other Side of the Sky, by Farah Ahmedi
The Measure of My Days, by Florida Scott-Maxwell
The Sum of Our Days, by Isabel Allende
Walking in the Beauty of the World: Reflections of a Northwest Botonist, by Joseph Arnette
Shakespeare: The World As Stage, by Bill Bryson
Take Joy: A Book For Writers, by Jane Yolen