Smith of Wootton Major and Farmer Giles of Ham

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I got off of work a little earlier than usual yesterday, and instead of going back to my apartment, I went over to one of the local coffee houses and got a blended iced latte and a chocolate cupcake with delectable strawberry icing and read through a rain storm. It was actually completely idyllic and I read the entirety of these two wonderful little stories while waiting out the rain.

The first of J.R.R. Tolkien's works I ever read was The Hobbit, which remains one of my favorite stories of all time. I remember reading these two short stories as a kid, and remember liking them, but had no recollection of the stories themselves. It was a nice treat to revisit them! And, while I read them first as a child, they're really not childrens' stories...check 'em out!

Smith of Wootton Major is something of a fairy tale...the magic that happens when the world of Faery intersects with humanity. Farmer Giles of Ham is a story of courage and cowardice, and...my favorite part...a dragon named Chrysophylax. And a dog named Garm. If I ever have a male dog, I just might name him Garm :-)

The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag

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This was the second in the Flavia de Luce Mystery Series by Alan Bradley. I read the first book, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, last October (you can read that post here) and absolutely loved it. This second novel did not disappoint!
In this adventure, Flavia befriends a woman named Nialla, the assistant to a famous puppeteer who has taken his show on the road. There is a lot of mystery about them, especially after Flavia starts to suspect a connection between Rupert, the puppeteer, and a little boy who died under strange circumstances years before. When Rupert winds up dead, Flavia finds herself once again trying to solve the mystery herself.
Just as he did in the first book, Bradley does a spectacular job of building the setting and characters in a way that the reader is transported back to that time & place. There are lots of cultural references and language usage that make the entire setting on the page come to life. One particular reference actually made me rather jealous...Flavia reminisces at one point about her father taking her & her sisters to see John Gielgud as King Lear on stage in Stratford-upon-Avon...oh, how I would have loved that!
Just as I did The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, I heartily recommend The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag. The story is delightful (and deliciously dark) and one thing I love about these books is that they are clean...there is no gore or sex or bad language...just a good, slightly macabre mystery. I love this series :-) I'm not sure when the next is due out, but I can't wait!

What's Coming Next?

I've decided that my next read will be The Weed that Strings the Hangman's Bag by Alan Bradley. This is the second in the Flavia de Luce mystery series (the first of which I talked about here) and I am very much looking forward to this read! I usually don't post until the end of a book, but I just wanted to share a bit of the praise that's on the back of this one, talking about The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie. From Mystery News: "A smashing series starter - a book readers will come to the end of wishing they hadn't read, because it would be so wonderful to read it again for the first time." How great is that?! Anyway...just thought I'd share & encourage anybody who reads this blog to pick up these books & check 'em out for yourself. Or, in the words of LeVar Burton, host of Reading Rainbow: "But you don't have to take my word for it!"

By the way, Flavia has a blog: http://www.flaviadeluce.com/

:-D

Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason by Helen Fielding

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My reaction to this sequel was much the same as to Bridget Jones's Diary. It was so entirely different from the movie, that at least I didn't feel like I was reading a story I already knew well. However, I think these made better movies than books. They were diverting, and I related pretty well to Bridget, but the story really was better on screen than on the page. Oh well!

Bridget Jones's Diary by Helen Fielding

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I've just finished reading Bridget Jones's Diary by Helen Fielding, and am a few chapters into the sequel already. This book was hilarious in parts and in others, terrifyingly reflective of myself. Bridget is an extremely relatable character, though the others generally seem to be flat & archetypal. That's alright, though, because it really isn't about them. It's all about Bridget. Many of her epiphanies were good for me to see in print...things I've sort of thought but dismissed as rubbish, but that really are truth. Things I thought, but assumed no one else did. I liked that.
It isn't a great book. But it is a fun book. It reads like the film (the book came first, but I saw the movie long before I read the book) and would have been perfect to read on a plane or at the beach or something...fairly light, easy, and diverting.

Gossamer by Lois Lowry

Two posts in less than 24 hours? Whoa! I guess I've had more time for reading in the last few days. For a while there, I had none!

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I'm in a divorce recovery class and last week, one of the other ladies recommended this book. She teaches Children's Literature and I don't even know how this book came up in conversation, but it did (it has nothing at all to do with divorce...please don't get that impression!) so I decided to to go Barnes & Noble and pick it up.

I'm so glad I did! Gossamer is a sweet little book (only 140 pages) about where dreams come from. It is the story of Littlest, one of the dream-givers, and a boy to whom she bestows them. There's a battle between good and evil...the dream-givers versus the sinisteeds, who inflict nightmares...taking place over the troubled boy, but Littlest shows great courage and determination in helping him.

Lois Lowry is an expert at writing in such a way that a child could understand the words and follow the story, but an adult can read the same story and get just as much from it...have you ever read The Giver? Wow!

I loved this story. It was a quick read, but was emotionally involving and left me feeling happy. I can almost believe in the dream-givers and the sinisteeds, because I certainly have felt the presence of each, whether real or imagined. I love the way Lowry weaves reality and imagination together. Her stories are always completely believable, if not quite real, and I find that wonderful.

And I must mention this: I love the dedication in this book! I'm a lover of Shakespeare, and Lois Lowry found the perfect lines to accompany her tale.

We are such stuff
As dreams are made on;
and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.

~William Shakespeare
The Tempest, Act 4, Scene 1

Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe by Fannie Flagg

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Prior to reading this novel, I'd seen the film only once, but had a clear enough memory to know essentially where the story was going.

I wish I hadn't known! I kept waiting for what I knew was coming, and so when those things were revealed in the novel, they didn't have quite the shock value that I think they would have possessed otherwise.

Nonetheless, I enjoyed this book. There was a surprising amount of homosexuality between the two main characters, Idgie and Ruth...not explicit, but quite clearly understood. And it seemed both known and accepted by the characters surrounding them. This seems unlikely for the time period and especially for a small town in the Bible Belt...even today, I think, in a town as small as Whistle Stop. It was nice to read and imagine it that way, though...without all the hatred and heat that seems so tied to that lifestyle from the people who are so adamantly against it. The love between Idgie and Ruth was just...love. Just good. It was matter-of-fact and didn't dwell on the rightness or wrongness or nature of the thing. That whole thing was really the only surprise I had in reading the novel...it was essentially left out of the movie (on purpose, to make it more palatable to audiences of the time.)

My dad grew up in Birmingham, Alabama, so my family visited often when I was growing up, and still goes back when finances and time allow. I loved reading a story set in so familiar a place...they talked about Ollie's Barbeque (which, in the novel, didn't compare at all to what Big George cooked up at the Cafe, but is absolutely some of the best BBQ sauce I've ever had!) and on the cover of the book is a sign for Buffalo Rock Ginger Ale, a dark ginger ale which can only be found in Alabama, and is SO much better than stuff like Canada Dry (ick!) It mentioned Ensley, a tiny town outside of Birmingham where my Grandpappy had one of his furniture stores. I half expected to see a mention of Braswell's 1811 Shoppe in there somewhere, haha! It mentioned Gus' hotdog stand down on 16th...it wasn't named, but that's Pete's Famous...THE BEST hotdogs in the world. It's a little place tucked into a space between two buildings...the walls are so close that you can touch opposite sides at once...and you pay a dollar or two for a hot dog and a dollar for a Coke in a glass bottle and $0.50 for a bag of chips...SO good...but I digress...

I just loved that, along with being an excellent story of love and family and friendship and community, it also held a lot of nostalgia for me. Ninny Threadgoode tells the story like my Granny told stories (and with the same accent, too!) and I could see and smell and hear everything, even though it was a totally different time. Summers at Granny's house had that relaxed, timeless feel, so I could easily imagine it all.

I know people who are deeply offended by homosexuality, and due to that, I cannot in good conscience recommend this to everybody...but if it doesn't bother you (or doesn't bother you *much*) I do. It does have some rather blunt descriptions of violence, and I imagine that might not sit very well with some people. I have a pretty weak stomach for that kind of thing myself, though, and those parts didn't bother me too much.

It's a different sort of story, but a good one :-)

This was borrowed from one of my dearest friends, and if I'm not mistaken, she threw in another by Fannie Flagg...I'm prepared now for her writing style...perhaps the next will hold a few more surprises for me...no movie to have spoiled all the twists, y'know? I'm looking forward to it!

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I watched the film tonight (after finding it in thirteen parts on You Tube, haha!) and just wanted to say one more thing about the novel. The movie was fun, and it's pretty tough to beat Jessica Tandy! However, the book, as usual, was so much better. There were more stories woven into its fabric, which I know is difficult with movies, due to time constraints and things like that. But I truly did find that the film lacked the depth of the novel. Still good...still perfectly enjoyable...but (as usual) I find that I like the book better :-D