Sunlit Graveyards

On October 9, 2012October 9, 2012 By cherylmahoneyIn Ruminations16 Comments

As another group activity for R. I. P., Carl has invited people to write this week about graveyards–no particular focus, just whatever strikes you. Technically it’s supposed to be tomorrow, but I’m posting a day early so I can keep with my regular Wednesday-book-review schedule.

I’m probably going to have a bit of a different post than most on this subject, because I tend not to think of the creepy side of graveyards. I think this is a product of not reading horror books, and of reading L. M. Montgomery instead. I don’t read about scary ghosts and Things From the Crypt and skeleton hands reaching out of graves–and I don’t watch those movies either. But I do read L. M. Montgomery books, where families and towns have their local graveyards and it’s quite a personal thing where everyone’s ancestors are buried. Funerals are social occasions and graveyards are a pleasant place to spend a sunny afternoon.

In the Emily of New Moon books, the Murrays have their own graveyard on New Moon property, and Emily loves going to sit on the slabs and write, and to think about all the family stories about the ancestral Murrays. In the TV show, Emily sees the ghosts of the Murrays in the graveyard–not unlike The Graveyard Book, actually. And it was either Anne (of Green Gables) or Montgomery herself who liked walking around a graveyard across from where she was lodging while at school. I can’t remember if it was in a novel or her journal–maybe both.

I love that attitude toward graveyards. Unless you’re trying to tell a ghost story, why should they be creepy anyway? Often they’re very park-like, and the old ones especially are so beautiful and full of history.

I suppose my favorite graveyard is Westminster Abbey, if that qualifies. You can’t walk without stepping on the memorial of someone whose name you recognize–from Charles Darwin to Oliver Cromwell to Henry V to Elizabeth I to Charles Dickens. The list is staggering. What a community of ghosts that would make!

Ooooh…I may need to write a story!

I once had the best time rambling around a graveyard with a friend one afternoon. There was nothing creepy or morbid about it, we were just looking at the stones and the history. And we did manage to stumble on a funny story.

In one area, there was a section of graves of Jesuit priests. All the headstones had their names in Latin, which seemed to mean they were recognizable names with “us” at the end–Edwardus and so on. Well, the very last one in the row must have been named Hilary (it can be a man’s name) which means what his stone actually read was…Hilarius! I sincerely hope he had a sense of humor.

I think I’ll leave it on that funny note about graveyards. 🙂 Do you have any good graveyard stories or experiences, creepy or sunlit?

Saturday Snapshot: Travel Books

On September 22, 2012September 21, 2012 By cherylmahoneyIn Saturday Snapshot15 Comments

I got back last week from my trip to London and Paris 🙂 and still need to do a lot of sorting through my nearly 800 photos! So rest assured, you’ll be seeing many travel photos in weeks to come…

This week, because I haven’t figured out yet which shot of Admiral Nelson or which angle of the Peter Pan Statue is best, I have something travel-related but different. I asked blog readers for advice on books for while I traveled, so I thought I ought to share what I ended up reading!

It is SO much fun to sit in Kensington Gardens reading the last chapter of J. M. Barrie’s The Little White Bird or Adventures in Kensington Gardens, or to sit in the lower level of the Paris Opera House reading Susan Kay’s Phantom (while waiting for a tour, I wasn’t just prowling…)

I always try to bring books that will connect me to the cities I’m visiting. My trips tend to turn into literary pilgrimages to places I’ve read about, so it makes sense to read about the places while I’m there. Not everything in the stack is set in London or Paris, but Susan Kay’s Phantom was brilliant for setting me in Paris, and all the others are at least British–except The Poetry of Lucy Maud Montgomery which has nothing to do with anything. But L. M. Montgomery falls into the “don’t leave home without it” category.

And I had a nice time reading Montgomery’s nature poetry while on a boat on the Thames. So it all worked out.

And these were all good books, most of which I plan to review. Besides sorting photos, I have lots of book reviews to write…

Come back soon for book reviews and more photos! In the meantime, check out At Home with Books for more Saturday Snapshots.

Emily of New Moon on Screen

On September 19, 2012September 19, 2012 By cherylmahoneyIn Reviews3 Comments

I think you all know that I’m kind of an L. M. Montgomery fan. She’s my favorite author and I’ve read every bit of her available prose. So naturally I was intrigued when I encountered an Emily of New Moon television series. It’s not new, but it was new to me. Adaptations of beloved books can be wonderful or terrible, and fortunately this one was more good than bad.

Emily is an orphan who moves to New Moon farm after her aunts and uncle draw lots to see who’ll get stuck with raising her. She ends up living with sweet Aunt Laura, domineering Aunt Elizabeth, and dreamy, slow Cousin Jimmy. They don’t know quite how to handle stormy, emotional and impulsive Emily, who longs to be a famous writer. But even Aunt Elizabeth warms up in the end.

I should probably note that it’s been some time since I read the books, but I think I remember them reasonably well. It’s a funny balance here, in that the characters are very true to the book, while the plot isn’t. I was okay with that, though. I’m always more forgiving of plot changes than character changes–especially in a TV show where they obviously need more ideas than a book (even three books) will provice.

The premise, as described above, is correct, but the larger plot arc ends up diverging dramatically (though some of the early episodes draw directly from book vignettes). It’s still fun to see Emily and everyone else brought to life, and even if the things they’re doing aren’t things that happened in the book, what they do fits with their characters (with the possible exception of Aunt Laura, who’s basically right but exaggerated in some ways).

Emily is a delightful heroine, in book and television, and of course I’ve always sympathized with her dreams of literary fame. I also loved seeing her friends, wild-child Ilse, aspiring artist Teddy, and (my favorite in the adaptation) hired-boy Perry who plans to one day be governor. They’re well-drawn characters and they’re enjoyable characters, having adventures large and small.

I think the feel of the show was also right to L. M. Montgomery, though it may not be what people would expect–and it probably actually helps that I’ve read so much of her writing. The show does a lot with Emily’s second sight, especially in the first season. Emily frequently sees spirits (most of them friendly). The book was not that visual about it and it wasn’t that much of a focus, but Emily did have a few supernatural experiences–mostly visions or dreams of the past or the future. It was part of the book, and it was also part of L. M. Montgomery’s beliefs, so I think she’d be all right with it here. Ghosts also show up in some of the stories in Among the Shadows, one of my favorite collections of Montgomery’s short stories.

The series on a whole delves into some darker places and touchier social issues than most of L. M. Montgomery’s writing, but I never thought it went too far. There’s a character who struggles with alcoholism, and another who has a baby out of wedlock. It’s true you won’t see that in L. M. Montgomery’s novels, but I’ve read her journals too and she wasn’t blind to the world. I think she might have gone deeper and darker in her books if her publishers had let her. Although I don’t think she would have been as forgiving as the show towards people who broke society’s conventions!

I especially enjoyed the first two seasons. The show takes a turn in the remaining two seasons. It’s like they thought it had to be more exciting, because the plots get more dramatic and less plausible. People fall in and out of love quickly, Queen Victoria comes to visit, and there’s a strange number of dream sequences. Also, even though Emily is theoretically fifteen by the end, she still looks twelve to me, and far too young for the (reasonably innocent) romances they start her on. I’m glad I watched to the end, to see how things turn out, but I do recommend the first two seasons as better.

I think this show can be watched and enjoyed whether you have or haven’t read the books. Take it at face-value if you don’t know the source, and you have a great set of characters having interesting adventures. If you know the books, you have familiar characters having adventures. They weren’t all the right adventures, but for me at least, I liked the characters so much and enjoyed the adventures enough that it really wasn’t a problem.

Saturday Snapshot: First and Last Books

On September 8, 2012 By cherylmahoneyIn Saturday Snapshot20 Comments

I thought I’d share a couple of recent book purchases this week.

A Tale of Time City is one of the first Diana Wynne Jones books I ever read, and oddly enough, is the first of her books I’ve deliberately set out to buy. I’ve read many, many of her books, but all from the library, and the only ones I own are ones I happened to stumble on at a library book sale, or got as a gift. My collection is woefully small, and I thought I’d better do something about that–so I started by buying this lovely new edition of one of my favorites.

The Poetry of Lucy Maud Montgomery is my last L. M. Montgomery book. I have read and own every other published book of her writing. Novels, short stories, poetry, letters, journals, autobiography–I have it all. This is the last one. At least, until someone, somewhere, somehow decides to publish the 200-odd additional short stories that exist in an archive but are not currently available. In the meantime, I’ll just have to have a bittersweet read through the last new-to-me book of L. M. Montgomery writing. Although the name makes me laugh–having read everything else, I’ve read her journals where she commented that she didn’t like having her full name written out. Now I’m always amused when people do that!

Visit At Home with Books for more Saturday Snapshots!