Saturday Snapshot: Fingerless Gloves

On August 10, 2013August 9, 2013 By cherylmahoneyIn Saturday Snapshot12 Comments

I’ve posted a time or two about my knitting projects… Well, I recently decided I didn’t want to knit another scarf, and I had a somewhat inexplicable hankering for fingerless gloves.

So what did I do? Naturally I Googled “how to knit easy fingerless gloves” (and I’m pretty sure I landed on this video). Here’s the result:

They’re comfy too, even if it’s too warm to really wear them yet… And they’re my best project yet for sounding complicated when they really weren’t! It turns out you can knit fingerless gloves even if you can only knit rectangles…

Visit West Metro Mommy for more Saturday Snapshots–and have a great weekend!

Favorites Friday: L. M. Montgomery

On August 9, 2013August 9, 2013 By cherylmahoneyIn Favorites Friday4 Comments

It seems odd to me that I haven’t already written this post–but I haven’t! And since I have Montgomery on the brain right now (more than usual) due to my rereading of the Emily trilogy, it seems like an appropriate time…

The Blue Castle (novel): This is one of my top three favorite books of all time. It’s the story of Valancy Stirling, meek and mild and dominated by her family, who has never really lived–until the belief that she’s going to die gives her the courage to transform herself and her life. I love Valancy’s growth, and her subsequent adventures (and romance!) It’s full of Montgomery’s best qualities, of wit and beautiful nature and vivid characters, with a powerful message about overcoming fear and seizing life.

The Anne books (eight-book series): Anne of Green Gables, of course, is Montgomery’s most famous work, and the Anne books really are among her best. I like to read all eight in a row, as if they were one 2,400 page novel, but some do stand out. The first, of course, introduces us to charming, imaginative, impulsive Anne Shirley and her world. Book Six, Anne of Ingleside, was the last book Montgomery ever wrote, and I believe she was using it as a refuge from her own tumultuous life–and it feels like a charming, lovely, welcoming refuge. Book Eight, Rilla of Ingleside, is a powerful portrait of the Canadian World War I homefront, and brings it all to life better than any book I’ve read.

The Emily books (trilogy): Emily is dreamy and imaginative and quite different from harum-scarum Anne. She gets into her fair share of scrapes, but she’s driven always by her desire to be an author, and she delves into deeper and darker parts of the human consciousness than Anne ever touches. If Anne is sunlight, Emily is moonlight. Equally beautiful, but a different flavor.

The Road to Yesterday (short story collection): I have twelve collections of Montgomery short stories, I’ve read 200 stories total (I counted) and I have lots of favorites–but this volume seems to collect favorites better than any other. Although it wasn’t published during her lifetime, Montgomery did make the selections (that’s a long, complicated story) so perhaps that’s why. Some of the characters and stories here feel as vivid to me as the ones from the novels, despite our much briefer acquaintance with them.

The Selected Journals of L. M. Montgomery, Volume I (journal): I’ve read every volume of Montgomery’s selected journals, but the first one, covering age 14 to 35, is my favorite. Montgomery’s novels are, to large extent, set in the world of her girlhood, which is brought clearly to life in these early years of her journal. Her journal writing is as vivid and descriptive as her fiction, and the more you read the more you feel you know the people in her life–and, of course, Montgomery herself. Whether you really do, well, that’s a mystery, and one that grows more complex in later volumes. But this first one gives me the woman behind the fiction that I think I’d always been looking for. And then I got so attached to her that I went on a mad spree through the rest of the journals too!

Some Montgomery novels are better than others, and some short stories are mere pot-boilers (and she knew it), but I will still happily read anything she wrote. Her world is so alive and so beautiful and I feel like I know every one of her characters–not the least Montgomery herself, who died 65 years before I was born, but still feels like a very dear friend!

Classic Review: The Bagthorpe Saga

On August 7, 2013July 31, 2013 By cherylmahoneyIn Juvenile, Reviews2 Comments

I’ve been looking back at old favorites in rereads lately. Today I thought I’d share an early review of one of my favorite series, The Bagthorpe Saga by Helen Cresswell. These are among the zaniest, most hilarious of books…

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Some of my favorite characters live inside of Ordinary Jack by Helen Cresswell. Ordinary Jack is Book One of the Bagthorpe Saga. The Bagthorpes are a family of geniuses, each with a precise number of “strings to their bows.” That is, a number of talents (and each one can quote how many he/she has). That’s true for all except Jack, who is ordinary, and politely disdained because of it. Jack is complaining about the situation to his Uncle (by marriage) Parker one day, who hits on a scheme to convince the rest of the family that Jack is in fact a gifted psychic who can see visions and predict the future. Chaos ensues.

Jack and Uncle Parker are a fairly rational pair, who will chart you through the madness of the rest of this cast of truly hilarious characters. There’s Mr. Bagthorpe, a TV writer who loudly and frequently complains that everyone is disrupting the delicate vibrations he needs to write. There’s Grandmother, who cheerfully starts an argument with everyone, and is in years-long mourning for her beloved pet cat Thomas, who everyone else remembers as the worst-tempered animal who ever lived. There’s Uncle Parker’s daughter Daisy, who is four years old and likes to write on walls and set fire to things, often with literally explosive results. There’s one scene involving a birthday party and a box of fireworks hidden beneath the table… Daisy’s mother, Celia, is a poet and far too ephemeral and dreamy for this world, who feels Daisy’s spirit shouldn’t be restrained. For reasons Jack never quite understands, Uncle Parker is madly in love with her.

That’s only a sampling. They are all people I would never want to know in real life, and would definitely never want to let into my house (especially Daisy!) but they’re enormous fun to read about.

There are ten books in the series, taking the Bagthorpes through adventures including television fame, a haunted house, and more than a few explosions. The later books do vary in quality somewhat–they’re all fun, but at some point Cresswell stops having plots and just starts throwing the characters together and letting them react off of each other, and some of the results are better than others. But the first few are excellent and all are enjoyable.

And Ordinary Jack is worth the read if only for the scene about the birthday party and the fireworks!

Other reviews:
A Tapestry of Words
Letters from a Hill Farm
Anyone else?

Buy it here: Ordinary Jack: Being the First Part of The Bagthorpe Saga

Blog Updates!

On August 6, 2013August 6, 2013 By cherylmahoneyIn Ruminations4 Comments

You may have noticed (or not…) that there’s been some changes around here in the last few days. Nothing TOO dramatic and earth-shattering, as I still have the same basic design, and the same header image. But I decided it was (long past) time for an overhaul of my About pages and my sidebar.

So you’ll see that over there on the right-hand side, things have been cleaned up and reorganized a bit…and I finally decided to put up, well, half of a headshot!

I also have all new About the Blog and About the Blogger pages. I wrote the old ones when I first started the blog, and while the content wasn’t exactly out-dated, it felt like time for an updated style and tone. Regular readers probably won’t learn much that’s new…but if you do take a look, I’d love to get your thoughts on anything I should be mentioning that’s left out. In other words, what do you like that I should tell other people about, to encourage them to read the blog too? Which I suppose is fishing for compliments, but do be honest…

And last but not least, if you look up at the very top there, I have a new domain name! Rather than the WordPress address, it’s now http://marveloustales.com Just so you know, in case you ever wanted to tell a friend…and if you kindly already have a link up somewhere, the old URL should still be sending people through to the new one.

I’ve rather enjoyed my overdue overhaul. Other bloggers, do you have a plan or a habit around when to make updates? Or do you just do it whenever the spirit moves?

Dark Poets and Untimely Death

On August 5, 2013August 5, 2013 By cherylmahoneyIn Reviews, Young Adult2 Comments

Frenchie Garcia likes to talk to Emily Dickinson. The cemetery near her house has a grave for Emily Dickinson, and though it’s not the famous one, Frenchie likes to pretend. She views “Em” as a kind of imaginary friend–and that idea was what drew me into reading Death, Dickinson and the Demented Life of Frenchie Garcia by Jenny Torres Sanchez.

As you might already guess, Frenchie is a somewhat unusual teenage girl, considering she feels a kinship with a reclusive poet, and thinks about death a little more than may be healthy. Frenchie is struggling with changes in her best friend, doubts about her plans post-high school, and a depression no one else seems to recognize the depths of. What no one realizes is that Frenchie’s worries are tied to one wild, unexpected evening she spent with Andy Cooper, a near-stranger but long-time crush. Andy committed suicide just hours later. Wracked with guilt and uncertainty, Frenchie sets out to re-create her evening with Andy, hoping to find answers.

Despite being about depression and death (and Dickinson), this book isn’t nearly as much of a downer as you might expect! Frenchie is experiencing a lot of darkness, but the book is fast-paced and ultimately more about life than death–so if you’re turned off by the apparent bleakness, I can tell you that I personally didn’t find it to be a depressing read. (Hmm, lots of Ds in that paragraph…)

Frenchie’s voice and character are strong even when she’s feeling lost. Many of her feelings are very relatable, even if she’s experiencing them to a more extreme degree than (I hope) most readers. There are questions about friendship, choosing a path in life, how well you can know a person, how to handle changes and let-downs, and what it all really means. Some of Frenchie’s apparently profound revelations felt a little basic, but I am older than both her and the book’s target audience, so that may be a factor there. On the whole, it addresses some powerful issues.

My favorite aspect to the book is actually a kind of subplot, around Frenchie’s best friend, Joel, and his (relatively) new girlfriend, Lily. The book is first person from Frenchie’s point of view, so we only have what she tells us about Lily–but it’s handled carefully enough that I could tell Frenchie wasn’t a reliable narrator on this subject. Most or all of her hostility towards Lily is unjustified by who Lily is. Though at the same time I can understand completely why Frenchie feels the way she does, so I felt sympathy for her. It was a nicely-handled presentation of a familiar scenario in teen books, but without the conventional conclusion to the situation.

My biggest reservation, on the other hand, is Colin, Frenchie’s choice to accompany her on this re-created night. He’s a near-stranger, which is what she needs for the situation, but I never quite believed that he was willing to go along for this apparently irrational ride. I get that he thinks she’s cute…but there was more than enough to scare just about any guy off. While so many other characters (Andy included) were complex and effective, Colin I found less believable.

I won’t tell you the ending, but I will say that it’s satisfying, without being too pat or neat. It ends positively, but not in a place of implausible solutions or easy answers. After all, you can’t have too happy an ending, when your book has “Dickinson” in the title! And, you know, “death” too.

Disclaimer: I received a copy of this book for free from the publishers, in exchange for an honest review.

Author’s Site: http://jennytorressanchez.com/

Other reviews:
YA-aholic
Candace’s Book Blog
Teen Librarian’s Toolbox
Anyone else?

Buy it here: Death, Dickinson, and the Demented Life of Frenchie Garcia