In which my childhood is not ruined

Anne of Green Gables, y'all. Like so many other girls my age, I was obsessed with Anne of Green Gables when I was 10ish. I read all the book in the series multiple times; I don't think I ever owned them but I knew right where to find them in the library. My Victorian dollhouse Playmobil figures were always Anne and Gilbert and family, acting out incredibly dramatic scenes.

I didn't have this puppy, so I would use masking tape to make a house floorplan on my bedroom floor.

When I got to the end of the series, I would start over; at one point I remember feeling vaguely like maybe I should read something else, but ANNE was all I wanted to read, so ONE MORE TIME. That's just the kind of groove I get into now with 30 Rock on Netflix so, as they say in Quebec, plus ça change.

For all that, I discovered in conversation with some friends this winter that I had mostly forgotten what the books were about. I mean, I recognized various incidents ("oh yeaaaah...") but I couldn't have summarized anything to save my life. So when I saw this very attractive Oxford Children's Classics edition:

the book magpie strikes again

I thought I should re-read it. Not without some trepidation! You may remember that my re-reading of Nancy Drew was rather disappointing. And in general, what are the odds that a book for little girls published in 1908 wouldn't be embarrassing in 2014?

Actually, as it turns out, the book holds up pretty well! A lot of that has to do with one of Anne's key characteristics: that she is a whiz kid at school. There's no conflict about this in the book; I hate hypotheticals like this, but if it were a historical novel being written today, would the author have refrained from making "Anne is made to feel unfeminine for being smart" a major plot point? As I was reading, I both recognized that this is why I identified so intensely with Anne and also that this book, with its glorification of studying to win top marks, really shaped the way I approached my schoolwork as a kid.

And, not unrelatedly, Gilbert is still such. a. dish.*

Let's review, shall we? Gilbert Blythe (SIGH sigh sigh) is a boy who teases Anne about the color of her hair and she not only schools him good at the moment, she swears eternal hatred. Anne and Gilbert battle it out to be the top student in school on every assignment, exam, etc. Gilbert is clearly attracted to this girl who is so able and willing to fight back. Anne is mostly contemptuous, but by the end of the book they agree to be friends.

Amen amen, my fellow Ameriwomen, you can put away your tired "ooo, Disney princes gave me unrealistic expectations" meme, because that right there is kryptonite. Oh, you mean the most handsome boy in school will only love me more if I whoop him on spelling tests? I CAN DO THAT. And definitely, an antagonistic relationship like that will resolve in mutual respect and eventual love. Oh yes; Gilbert Blythe (SIGH sigh sigh) remains my one and only fictional crush.


* I've never seen the Canadian TV movie (series?), mind you. It seemed relevant to mention that at this particular moment.

Something old, something new

Books are obviously proprietary (probably using this word wrong); authors have rights over their text, and publishers have rights over their editions. We all know about copyright and royalties and so forth, and yet it's pretty easy, for me anyway, to slip out of thinking of a book as the property of a corporation. Most formally, at some point the book will almost certainly go into the public domain, but once a book starts to become "a classic" I expect to see it published by different houses and made available in different forms. I guess at the most basic level the activity of reading and the form of a book seem so obviously part of our common property that a particular individual or company having ownership of some sliver of the enterprise seems inherently short-lived.

I am subjecting you to that paragraph because this post is not so much about a book as it is about the format of the book, which is apparently a copyrighted format. What am I talking about? Mansfield Park in "Flipback" format. Here is a picture of it in my hand in my bedroom, because I forgot to take a picture of it on the train platform:

Just imagine I'm waiting for a train. Next to the bed.

The main features of the Flipback are:

• The text is rotated 90º to the ... right? ... so that the spine runs parallel, between lines of text
• The text is printed in a modern, sans-serif, easy-to-read typeface
• The paper is thin
• The bound part of the book is only glued to the back cover, and the spine and front covers are hinged on

Generally, the idea is that the entire content of a book has been compressed into a pocket-sized thing without losing any readability. Except for interference from wind, this compact layout does, actually, make it pretty easy to hold the book and read with one hand. Like the Kindle, it's sort of stripped out some of the distractions of white space and so on, so that the actual words on the page are the main focus. And after all the space-saving, it actually is pocket sized. It's adorable and tactile and functional, and I liked it. I've seen these in several stores over here (Waterstones, the British Library shop, and the indie store at Kew) so it seems like maybe they'll catch on. The thin paper is the only slightly worrisome feature, but in practice I didn't tear any pages or even cause any egregious creasing, so I guess I can't whine too much about it. After a week or so of being carried around in my coat pocket and read on windy train platforms, my copy is in darn good shape.

Tangent: You know that 1950s Leave it to Beaver-type trope about little boys always having their pockets full of all kinds of random things? That's so me. Give me a pocket and I will have it crammed full of keys, transit pass, tissues/handkerchief, lipbalm, coin purse, gloves and/or hat, and tiny book before I'm halfway down the street.

Unfortunately for Flipback, their list of published books doesn't currently include anything I'm really all that interested to read, and their "classics" series only includes Austen. While I have enjoyed all my Austen multilection, I don't know that I'm willing to spend £10 for the privilege of reading another. (No, I'm not willing to spend that much on more Jane. Sorry, Miss Austen, but I already own all your books multiple times over, and you're dead so it's not like it helps you any.) The format seems like a worthy thing, though, and I hope it does well enough to have more titles added to the list.

Oh, and what is there to say about Mansfield Park? This is a long overdue multilection on my part; I remember as I finished it the last/first time having a feeling like I was passing over something interesting. Certainly the book is less "fun" than the others. Fanny isn't the most engaging heroine, and the plotting is less than thrilling -- for example most of the dramatic events of the ending take place "off stage". (Plotting? More like plodding, amirite? Sorry.) But I still found it interesting and rewarding. First of all, because the book has a great deal to say, quite explicitly, about Austen's views on religion, and secondly (and relatedly) because the book is so much focused on good conduct and propriety. Even if you don't agree with Austen that this action or that attitude is the best, it's still a pleasure to enter into and consider what a thoughtful woman of her time thought these things looked like. Overall, on this read, I thought the book was much more about a family and family dynamics than about the romantic couples; the marriages and pairings are the tests that the children undergo in becoming adults. Anyhow, multilection continues to be one of my more brilliant discoveries, the end.

PS, just in case: this post was not sponsored or solicited in any way. Are you kidding me? No.

Multilection: the newest thing in text consumption!

So! Following on from my successful experience re-reading The Lord of the Rings, I have now also revisited Jane Austen's Persuasion. Actually, what happened was, I charged up my Kindle a few days before my flight, but when I got off the plane at Heathrow and took a seat to wait for my hotel shuttle, said Kindle was dead. I cannot tell you how displeased this made me. Luckily however I travel with a ridiculous number of gadgets and so was able to use the Kindle app on my iPad, where I found a languishing ManyBooks.org copy of Persuasion. (And now the Kindle has mysteriously stayed charged up despite every-other-day reading for the last couple of weeks. Hm.)

It's amazing, this business of reading something again that you've already read in the past! Who would have thought you could learn so much! For instance, did you know that Captain Wentworth's moody friend is called Captain Benwick and not Bentick? In all honesty, I'm still reading it as -tick in my mind. And none of the swoon-factor of Wentworth's letter (you know what I'm talking about) is lost by having read it before. Incredible!

I'm so thrilled with this completely new thing that I've just discovered that I've decided to give it a name:

Multilection

(from multus, many, and lego, I read; of course). Yes indeed, I am really something to have discovered this thing and shared it with you, and I look forward to receiving your praise and admiration now.

Oh Faramir... you're all the lore-master I'll ever need

Blogger tells me there are people clicking through onto my blog from Alice's Norwegian Wood readalong, which makes sense since I said I would, y'know, read along. But as you have probably all noticed by now, I totally punked out on that in the interest of finishing The Lord of the Rings before I leave the country (this Sunday, holy hell).

I finished The Two Towers! It actually went a bit quicker than I anticipated (always good). In this section Sam and Frodo (and Gollum) enter Mordor via Ithilien and Cirith Ungol, and we the readers really get to observe Sam and Frodo's characters and relationship up close for the first time. Tolkien being a child of his times, Sam and Frodo are very much the Servant and the Master, although Sam breaks out a little more as a truly good servant while Frodo is pretty offhanded in his role as master. This latter judgment struck me in the incident with the elven rope, which they have just used to rappel down a cliff:

To the complete surprise of both the hobbits [the rope] came loose [when Sam tugs on it]. Sam fell over, and the long grey coils slithered silently down on top of him. Frodo laughed. 'Who tied the rope?' he said 'A good thing it held as long as it did! To think that I trusted all my weight to your knot!'
     Sam did not laugh. 'I may not be much good at climbing, Mr. Frodo,' he said in injured tones, 'but I do know something about rope and about knots. It's in the family, as you might say. Why, my grand-dad, and my uncle Andy after him, him that was the Gaffer's eldest brother, he had a rope-walk over by Tighfield many a year. And I put as fast a hitch over the stump as any one could have done, in the Shire or out of it.'
     'Then the rope must have broken--frayed on the rock-edge, I expect,' said Frodo.
     'I bet it didn't!' said Sam in an even more injured voice. He stooped and examined the ends. 'Nor it hasn't neither. Not a strand!'
     'Then I'm afraid it must have been the knot,' said Frodo.
     Sam shook his head and did not answer. He was passing the rope through his fingers thoughtfully. 'Have it your own way, Mr. Frodo,' he said at last, 'but I think the rope came off itself--when I called.' He coiled it up and stowed it lovingly in his pack.
     'It certainly came,' said Frodo, 'and that's the chief thing. But now we've got to think of our next move...'

Dude, Frodo. Way to be a dismissive jerk. I guess I could say something here about Sam being a kind of middle class fantasy, the working class servant whose only concern is for the wellbeing and happiness of his master, but I'll leave that to the 70s college students from that video I posted last week.

Of course, this section is also where we get to meet Faramir, "the grave young man whose words seemed so wise and fair" to Frodo. As Boromir's brainy little brother, he manages to basically guess the entire story up to this point, which is handy.

This Mithrandir was, I now guess, more than a lore-master: a great mover of the deeds that are done in our time.... He got leave of Denethor, how I do not know, to look at the secrets of our treasury, and I learned a little of him, when he would teach (and that was seldom).

Clearly Boromir the Hot Airbag was the jock of this family, while Faramir, probably wearing thick nerd glasses, spent all his time in the library.

This joke has definitely never been made before, so I made a picture to illustrate it.

We in the house of Denethor know much ancient lore by long tradition, and there are moreover in our treasuries many things preserved: books and tablets writ on withered parchments, yea, and on stone, and on leaves of silver and of gold, in divers characters. Some none can now read; and for the rest, few ever unlock them. I can read a little, for I have had teaching.

Mmm, yeah, I bet you've had some teaching. Why don't we meet up in the library later, and you can read a little in my rarely unlocked treasury.  *ahem*

Finally, although I realize that this post is basically all quoting, all the time, I just have to share this paragraph in which Tolkien turns the awesome up to 11:

There agelong she had dwelt, an evil thing in spider-form, even such as once of old had lived in the Land of the Elves in the West that is now under the Sea, such as Beren fought in the Mountains of Terror in Doriath, and so came to Lúthien upon the green sward amid the hemlocks in the moonlight long ago. How Shelob came there, flying from ruin, no tale tells, for out of the Dark Years few tales have come. But still she was there, who was there before Sauron, and before the first stone of Barad-dûr; and she served none but herself, drinking the blood of Elves and Men, bloated and grown fat with endless brooding on her feasts, weaving webs of shadow; for all living things were her good, and her vomit darkness. Far and wide her lesser broods, bastards of the miserable mates, her own offspring, that she slew, spread from glen to glen, from the Ephel Dúath to the eastern hills, to Dol Guldur and the fastnesses of Mirkwood. But none could rival her, Shelob the Great, last child of Ungoliant to trouble the unhappy world.

Hot damn! I love this first of all because it just sounds awesome; can we have a recording of Ian McKellen reading this please? The rhythm of the names and sentences - perfection. I can't think of a better example of texture in writing, not only in terms of register but also (once again) time.

My next post: a wrap-up?!

Whining, procrastinating: the usual.

So! I have got to the end of Book Three! Hooray! That's exactly halfway, well done me. However, this means I am now on the edge of Book Four, which is a Frodo-and-Sam book...  hence I am typing on Blogger instead of reading, even though I only have a week (!) (!!!!) to finish this.

Does it make me a terrible person if I don't particularly like the Frodo-and-Sam part of the story? It's so dark and gross and long, and a little Gollum goes a long way. Reading Gollum's dialogue is like, I dunno, reading a Yorkshire peasant's dialogue in a Victorian novel -- jeez o pete, if this is the price we pay, do we really need to hear from this character so often? Incidentally, I feel the same way about Andy Serkis' performance in the movies. Oh sure he's a genius blah blah innovation blah, but still: a little goes a long way. Plus, I get a little tired of the modern obsession with making bad guys sympathetic. Don't get me wrong, it's not like I only tolerate eeeevil characters with black hats and capes and twirlable mustaches; and I would point out that Tolkien makes Gollum, like most of his characters, complex and ambiguous; but I hate when movies (especially) feel the need to provoke some kind of emotional "awww" moment in addition to just understanding who this person is and what they've done.

Anyway, I don't think not liking the Frodo-and-Sam part makes me terrible but it might make me shallow. Whatever dudes! I stand by my impatient desire to get back to the kings and battles and ancient civilizations and hilarious hobbit dialogue!

Too many words, have a random picture of the Bayeux Tapestry.

Maybe this time around I will appreciate the hard slog into Mordor better. Maaaybe. But look at the awesomeness you get in the other part of the story:

'They are shepherds of the trees,' answered Gandalf. 'Is it so long since you listened to tales by the fireside? There are children in your land who, out of the twisted threads of story, could pick the answer to your question. You have seen Ents, O King, Ents out of Fangorn Forest, which in your tongue you call the Entwood. Did you think that the name was given only in idle fancy? Nay, Théoden, it is otherwise: to them you are but the passing tale; all the years from Eorl the Young to Théoden the Old are of little count to them; and all the deeds of your house but a small matter.'
The king was silent. 'Ents!' he said at length. 'Out of the shadows of legend I begin to understand the marvel of the trees, I think. I have lived to see strange days. Long have we tended our beasts and our fields, built our houses, wrought our tools, or ridden away to help in the wars of Minas Tirith. And that we called the life of Men, the way of the world. We cared little for what lay beyond the borders of our land. Songs we have that tell of these things, but we are forgetting them, teaching them only to children, as a careless custom. And now the songs have come down among us out of strange places, and walk visible under the Sun.'

THIS MESSAGE BROUGHT TO YOU BY EARLY 20TH CENTURY PHILOLOGY.

Oh! I shall miss you, Théoden King, until we meet again in Book Five. Which had better be soon!

The mathom that keeps on giving

Today is JRR Tolkien's birthday! Here's a charming little 1968 BBC program about Tolkien for your viewing pleasure:



(That's a pretty free-form kind of show, isn't it? Oh the '60s.)

This is a good day for me to update you on my ongoing re-reading of The Lord of the Rings, especially since I've been thinking fondly about the ways in which Tolkien's own profession is noticeable in the text. I first started thinking about this when the hobbits reach Bree. The guests at the Prancing Pony are shocked to meet Shire hobbits so far from home and ask them what they're doing. Frodo, thinking fast, declares that he's researching a book about the hobbits who live outside the Shire, and suddenly all the patrons are eager to tell their own stories and anecdotes that they think are relevant. Ha! First of all, "I'm doing research" is a very academic sort of excuse, and secondly, I'm sure anyone who's ever been engaged in research has had the experience of people jumping in to give their own opinions and experiences with your subject. Bilbo is a quintessential researcher when they find him at Rivendell, too: pestering Frodo to contribute to his book and only concerned with the quest insofar as he might get material for a few more chapters!

This passage made me smile as well:

Terrified Pippin lay still, though the pain at his wrists and ankles was growing, and the stones beneath him were boring into his back. To take his mind off himself he listened intently to all that he could hear. There were many voices round about, and though orc-speech sounded at all times full of hate and anger, it seemed plain that something like a quarrel had begun, and was getting hotter. To Pippin's surprise he found that much of the talk was intelligible; many of the Orcs were using ordinary language. Apparently the members of two or three quite different tribes were present, and they could not understand one another's orc-speech. There was an angry debate concerning what they were to do now: which way they were to take and what should be done with the prisoners.

Obviously there's a lot that can be said about the fictional languages and the role of linguistics in Tolkien's fictional cultures, but this little vignette jumped out at me. Of course Pippin uses the unfamiliar languages as a way to distract himself from fear and pain... and look how Tolkien anticipates and solves the problem of Pippin being able to overhear a conversation among the orcs. So sweet.

I have just finished the Battle of Helms Deep, so I am just a hair over halfway done. I think... I think... I'm going to finish this by the 15th. Bold words, I know.

I'm havin' hobbits for Christmas

Christmas (or in my case, the birthday-Christmas season) is a time of excess. Personally I've spent the last couple of days baking booze cakes (yes plural, and both those recipes are delicious), drinking pumpkin spice Irish cream in my coffee, and sewing sequins onto a sweater. Ho ho ho.

The other thing I've been doing, which is in its own way excessive, is re-reading The Lord of the Rings. I passed over the three-volume hardbacks and the paperback omnibus and went right for the pleatherette Big Red One:

Uff da.

It's a nice bright festive red with shiny metallic printing, and satisfyingly hefty. Like the Ring itself, this edition is reluctant to be moved and feels especially heavy when you consider taking it with you anywhere.

Having just watched the Peter Jackson trilogy with Alice, the movies are fresh in my mind --

Break to gush over the Hobbit trailer: SQUEEEE! Martin Freeman was born to play Arthur Dent, Dr. Watson, and Bilbo Baggins, so thank you world for making these happen.

-- certainly much fresher than the books. I have a horrible memory; in fact I think when I saw Two Towers and Return of the King in theaters I had pretty much forgotten the respective books already. The movies are "big" visually, but the books feel "big" in time. What I mean is, the art direction and the use of New Zealand's geography makes it seem like the movies were shot in a real continent-sized place; and while the books certainly have that complete world in them, what strikes me first and most immediately is that there are thousands of years present in and behind the story. Even on a smaller scale, I've just gotten up to the arrival in Rivendell and already years have passed in the main plot. And of course the events of The Hobbit are directly involved as well.

I'm trying to pay better attention to the poems and songs -- as my experiences with AS Byatt will attest, I have a tendency to gloss over this kind of thing to get back to the plot as soon as possible. Aside from your feelings about poetry, I guess you have to like spending time with the characters in order to appreciate this kind of literature within literature. After all, in this case at least, the poems are the characters' way of expressing and enjoying themselves.

Being (hopefully) (sort of) older and wiser since the last/first time I read LOTR, another thing that strikes me is that the characters are very much adults. Frodo is out of his "tweens" almost right out the gate, and the other characters (at least so far) are mature if not actually old. Of course there's an element of growing up, learning, gaining experience to the quest, but it's not a coming-of-age story. It seems even sort of Tolkien-esque to say that the characters' lives to this point have been a kind of preparation for this quest in a broad destiny sort of way.

This frivolous image is your reward for reading this far.

 Anyhow, I am plugging along and hopefully will have more and better thoughts to share with you over the next few weeks. Merry Christmas and happy holidays!