Madame Bovary and The Thirteenth Tale

I often read more than one thing at a time, meaning on my nightstand I will have a novel, a self-help book, and a magazine that I rotate through according to my mood that night. I will also be reading a novel to the kids, my scriptures, and something online at any given point. However, I don't think I've ever done what I did with Madame Bovary and The Thirteenth Tale. I began reading Madame Bovary and when I was about half-way through it, I put it down and started reading The Thirteenth Tale until I was done with it, then finished with Madame Bovary. I can think of a couple reasons for my doing this.
#1 - Madame Bovary is considered a classic by many and like many classics, it was written long ago and is somewhat difficult to get through. It was originally written in French and depending on the translation, can be a little confusing. So, switching to a modern novel written in today's language gave my brain a bit of a break for a while.
#2 - I made the switch when we went on vacation. I usually read novels that fulfill one of three purposes: they are children's books that I preview for my kids, they are historical fiction that I read to learn more about a period of history we are studying, or I consider the book to be challenging and read it so that I may strengthen my reading skills and continue to learn and grow. I don't generally read just for pleasure. But, some of my friends had read The Thirteenth Tale and recommended it and because I considered it a fluff book, I figured vacation was a good time to read it.
#3 - I considered the character of Madame Bovary to have an extremely negative and strong personality and I really needed a break from having her in my head. Every once in a while I will stop reading a book that I don't like, but I don't think I've ever come right back to finish it.
In many ways the two books were similar. Both stories have leading female characters who appear to be strong and untouchable. Madame Bovary is the wife of a country doctor in post-revolution France. She is not only in control of everything in her household, but also has control over every man she interacts with, or so it appears. The Thirteenth Tale's Miss Winter is the epitome of a rich spinster who is author to the most popular modern novels of her time. She too is mistress of her world, which includes anyone who has ever read her books. Both women are manipulative, abbrasive, and demanding. In the beginning of each book, the reader feels there is no situation these women could not handle.
However, as each page is turned, it starts to become evident that even these two giants have an achilles heel. For Madame Bovary, the desire for luxury beyond her means is her downfall. She possesses no values, no morals and in her quest for more, more things, more love, she dashes through two affairs and racks up endless promissary notes until she eventually takes her own life to escape the nightmare she has created. Miss Winter's demise is brought on more subtly as her weakness is itself more benign. The inability to face the truth about her life has created a demon inside her that is slowly killing the author until she decides to tell the world her story. Ironically, the moment she begins to unfold the history of her past, a new and more real illness begins to take her life, timed so perfectly that as she finishes her story, the illness finishes her.
In the end, Madame Bovary was a great lesson in why society fails when it's members have no morals and debt is considered a solution to life's problems. What is interesting to me is that this book was written so long ago, but our modern society still exhibits the same folly as years past.
The Thirteenth Tale turned out to be more than a fluff book as it has many words that I had not heard of before and I really enjoyed the mystery that it contained. Finally, I appreciate that even fictitous female characters who are worthy of having a whole book written about them do have weaknesses and it makes me think that maybe my own weaknesses are not that bad after all.

Dragonwings

by Laurence Yep
We read this for our homeschool Book Group. I was not happy with this book and skipped several parts of it just to get through it. Part of the problem is that I was reading it to children who were really too young for the content. This is about a boy from China who lives in California and the struggles on the Chinese-Americans there. There is fighting, drug references, and thematic events that I did not feel were appropriate for my girls, but the book is a Young Adult novel meant for grades 4-7.

The Voyage of Patience Goodspeed

One of my many plans for school this year with the kids includes teaching them about some real-life heroes and heroines from history. Particularly with Clarissa, I'd like to point out how many female heroines begin to emerge in a world that had hitherto been a man's world. We have already explored such characters as Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman and Clara Barton. Some others we plan to discuss are: Florence Nightingale, Anne Sullivan and Helen Keller, Amelia Earhart, Anne Frank, and Rosa Parks. In thinking about women heroines, I have also enjoyed reading fiction novels with female main characters. I just finished a wonderful book called The Voyage of Patience Goodspeed about a teenaged girl who accompanies her father on a whaling expedition in the 1850's. Due to the recent death of her mother, Patience and her little brother find themselves torn away from Nantucket Island and all they hold dear as they follow their father out to see. Patience has many qualities, but patience is not one of them. She is a spirited, intelligent, strong-willed girl in a man's world. This tells of her struggle to find love and family amongst hardened sailors while practicing her mathematical skills of navigation. As I read more books about adventures at sea, I find them fascinating. I am really looking forward to our upcoming family vacation to Nantucket and Boston, but hope that we will meet with less adventure than Patience did in this book as grappling with pirates and being tossed about in a Cape Horn storm is not my idea of fun.

Thimble Summer

After reading so many war books, I needed something light and fun. Thimble Summer by Elizabeth Enright was my book of choice. All I really knew about the book is that it was about a girl in Wisconsin in the early 1900's and all the things that happen to her one summer. This book was delightful. I like to describe it as a happy Charlotte's Web. I know everyone loves Charlotte's Web, but I personally find it depressing. Thimble Summer is not about a pig or a spider, but it does have a pig in it who wins a ribbon at the county fair. It also includes other classic farm-life stories such as swimming in the water hole, going to town and getting an ice cream cone, "running away" for the day, helping with the haying, and my favorite - getting locked inside the library after closing time. I loved that while I was reading this book, I could remember back to our summers in Wisconsin and imagine the sounds and smells that were described in the book. I loved the feelings of family unity that included not just immediate family, but neighbors and friends as well. Mostly, I loved that this book had a happy ending and that nobody died. How refreshing to know that somewhere in the world is a children's book where a girl or boy could be a hero in their own tale without having to lose their parents or anyone else they loved. What a gem!

More Civil War

As the kids and I began our school year with a unit study of the Civil War, I continued my quest to read as many books about the Civil War as I could before we finished the unit. After Across Five Aprils and Gods and Generals I began reading The Red Badge of Courage. Most books would be a dissapointment after the last two I had read, but determined to give this one it's fair chance, I kept reading through what seemed to me to be endless sniveling and the insane ravings of a young soldiers mind. I had just resigned myself to finding absolutely no detailed description of battles or any other events that happen in a war, when the main character stumbled upon a dead soldier who had been dead for days. The author, Stephen Crane, who had yet to describe any tangible scene, painted a picture of this dead soldier that was so gruesome and vivid in detail that I actually had nightmares the night I read about it and it took me a couple days before I dared to pick the book up again. Most people who know me, know that I don't get grossed out easily: when we dissected owl pellets in fifth grade, I was the one who had to pull the rodent parts out of the regurgitated pellets for all the boys in the class who refused to touch them; in High School Biology class, I was delighted to find that my frog had some cancerous cells bulging out of it's guts and gladly volunteered to be the one to remove them as my lab partner (male) could not stomach the thought; finally, in college when I was struggling with my grades in every other class, I got an A+ in Human Anatomy because I found myself in the cadaver lab at any available time slot; however, this one scene described in a book grossed me out! So much so that I lost any tiny bit of interest that I had in the book and about three quarters of the way through it decided that it just wasn't worth my time. Apparently not all "classics" are classy.

On the flip side, as I had droned on and on trying to get through The Red Badge of Courage, I was really looking forward to starting The House of Dies Drear. Maybe it was because I used to be a mystery novel junkie as a kid and it's been that long since I've read a mystery novel, but I was very intrigued by the idea of this book. The House of Dies Drear is not set in the time of the Civil War, but is about a family who purchases a home that was part of the Underground Railroad and is rumored to be haunted by the slaves who were captured and killed nearby. After the first five or so chapters, I was scared out of my pants, and couldn't stop reading. I was loving it. I remember the next day when I saw my friend, I was so excited to tell her about how great the book was. I will say that the second half of the book wasn't as good as the first half, it actually got a little weird, but it was still a really good book for teenagers who enjoy history and mystery. I appreciated the little bits of information about the Underground Railroad that were woven into the story, as the kids and I had really enjoyed that part of our Civil War unit.

In summary, I would not really recommend The Red Badge of Courage to anyone, especially not the faint at heart, and I would recommend The House of Dies Drear to teenagers or older children who can handle a little bit of scary drama. But, for learning about the Civil War, there is nothing like Gods and Generals and I look forward to reading it's sequel, Fallen Angels, someday when I have a little more time.

The Secret Garden

Now that we are back in school, it's Book Group time again. This year, rather than just do historical books, we decided to try a little bit different approach by going with a geographical theme. We had to stretch our imaginations a little to find classic children's books that were age appropriate but still covered different world wide geographical areas. For example, our first book this year was Frances Hodgson Burnett's classic, The Secret Garden. We decided that this book would count for both England and India as the main character, Mary Lennox, was born in India and often has memories about her life in India. Most of the book is set in England at the home of her uncle, Mr. Archibald Craven. I had read this book to Jared and Clarissa two years ago and they loved it. As with any good classic, they loved it again the second time and I hope they will read it again and again as there are so many layers of understanding to be discovered in it's pages. The day of book club, we met at a local park on a chilly, misty day in September; with weather not unlike that of the English moor, as one of the Moms pointed out. The Mom who was leading the group had several activities and discussions points prepared. The kids each colored their own secret garden spaces and then described how it made them feel and why they liked it. They also had the chance to spread wildflower seed all over the nearby butterfly garden in hopes of coming back in the Spring to see their flowers growing. The favorite activity by far was making their own miniature garden out of potting soil, moss, plastic animals, and any other items from nature they could find at the park. Jared, Amber, and Clarissa show off their gardens above (Krystal was there and made one, but wasn't in the mood for a photo).

Gods and Generals

Staying within the realm of the Civil War, but jumping to a non-fiction book, I just finished Gods and Generals - the saga of the war in the Virginia area during the first couple years of the war (when the South was still winning). It was excellent. It did take a little while to get into it as the beginning starts off with some background history of four different Generals. Each chapter is about a different man and at that point in the story their lives are not at all connected, so it is essentially like reading four different books at the same time (which I do frequently, but for some reason, this threw me off). Anyway, once I got to the part where their lives start to interact with each other, the story also became much more interesting. This in-depth look at the events behind the battles brought to ask many questions.
Growing up in California, far away from "The North" or "The South," I had only thought about this part of history as some abstract concept of a nation fighting over slavery. Furthermore, knowing that the North won and that slavery was abolished made it easy for me to assume that the cause of the North was obviously the right and just cause and that those fighting for the South were all misguided or ignorant. As I read about the lives of Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson, and Robert E. Lee and their complete devotion to God and all things true and just, I had to reconsider my previous notions. I began to ask myself, what were these two righteous men fighting for, if not for slavery? As I further read about the inner struggles they faced about the idea of secession, I began to realize that their conviction was founded in the concept of state's rights. It's a fact that it is unconstitional for the federal government to make laws that can and should be made by the states. This realization led to a discussion between Chris and I about what was more important, the country following the constitution, or following just and virtuous principles. We finally concluded that although the states should have individually abolished slavery, Lincoln knew they never would and he knew that slavery, not being a virtuous principle would most certainly tear this nation apart. So, at the risk of deviating from the nation's standard, he chose the higher law of virtue and took the chance at war to eradicate slavery from this land and eventually it worked.
Going back to the book, just when I told Chris that it wasn't about specific battle details, the content of the book changed as the battles of Fredicksburg and Chancellorsville were described in minute detail. However, even being a woman who is proned to enjoy things soft and kind, not bloody and mean, I was enthralled by every single detail and hung on every word until the very death of General Jackson, at which point I bawled like a baby in true female fashion. Now I look forward to reading the book's sequel, Fallen Angels, in which the victory will turn from the South to the North and I hope I will continue to re-evaluate the notions that I had previously formed about this part of our nation's history.
As a side note, Chris and I also watch the movie God and Generals and although I enjoyed the movie, as is usual, it was not nearly as good as the book and Chris actually fell asleep several times during the viewing.