Rebecca Reads – Page 87 of 285 – Classics, Nonfiction, and Children's Literature

The Great Cake Mystery: Precious Ramotswe’s Very First Case by Alexander McCall Smith

April 17, 2012 by Rebecca Reid

One of the first posts I have on this blog centered around one of my then-favorite authors, Alexander McCall Smith. Although I have since refocused my personal reading around classics (and Dickens, Eliot, and Wilkie Collins now vie for the favorite author designation), McCall Smith is still an author I have a special place for, even if I haven’t kept up with all of the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency sequels.

What I really enjoyed about the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency was the African setting (I learned about Botswana by reading a novel) as well as the light mystery (I’m not generally a mystery reader) and the subtle humor and commentary in Mma Ramotswe’s ponderings. Imagine my delight when I saw a children’s middle grade book on display featuring a young Precious solving a mystery!

The Great Cake Mystery: Precious Ramotswe's Very First Case (Precious Ramotswe Mysteries for Young Readers)

The Great Cake Mystery introduces young readers to the lovely setting of Botswana and a precocious young girl named Precious who likes to figure things out. Although she thinks it may be many years before she’ll have a mystery to solve, it turns out that someone in her school is eating people’s snacks and she may just be able to figure out who has done it. With her father’s encouragement and her own careful logic, a detective is born in Botswana.

The book is a quick and easy read. McCall Smith speaks directly to the reader on occasion, giving the story a personal tone. Although there were a few moments in the book when it seemed the author forgot that this was her first case (such as “it took some time for her to drop off, as it often did when she was thinking about a mystery…”), meeting Precious as a child was delightful. She apparently always was a thoughtful, pleasant person. The mystery is a simple and rather predictable one for an adult reader, but young readers will enjoy the intrigue. The clever way Precious proves the solution to the mystery was likewise impressive and amusing.

Although I’m an adult, I look forward to reading more from Precious’ younger days. I suspect and hope that I also may interest my son in Botswana and Africa when we read this story together. The Great Cake Mystery is highly recommended for the young reader.

Erewhon by Samuel Butler (brief thoughts)

April 11, 2012 by Rebecca Reid

Regular readers of my blog know that I really enjoy a good Victorian novel. So I have to say I’ve struggled to pull together my thoughts on Erewhon by Samuel Butler (published 1872) simply because it’s not one of the good ones.

As a satirical look at Victorian society in the form of a dystopia, Erewhon fits in with the tradition of Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift (not Victorian, but one of the first), Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilmore, and Flatland by Edwin A. Abbott. But for me, the satire in Butler’s novel was overshadowed by dull prose and extensive explanations of the society. The result is a dull treatise barely worthy of the term “novel.”

As in the other dystopias, the narrator, who is searching for adventure, travels to a different land and finds a completely insulated society that has existed for thousands of years.

For me, finding an interest in the things Butler is satirizing is rather difficult. First, in Erewhon, machines are against the law because of a fear that they will become “smarter” than humans, a commentary on both Darwin’s survival of the fittest concept and the industrial era that Butler was well in the middle of. It’s hard to take the arguments seriously, and yet, from what I read (on Wikipedia) Butler actually was serious:

I regret that reviewers have in some cases been inclined to treat the chapters on Machines as an attempt to reduce Mr. Darwin’s theory to an absurdity. Nothing could be further from my intention, and few things would be more distasteful to me than any attempt to laugh at Mr. Darwin….

Besides the machinery issue, the society was also rather conflicted in it’s view of sin and criminality. Sickness was considered a crime and immoral behavior such as stealing or drinking was considered a complaint that must be treated with medicine. I found this an interesting concept to satire in Victorian society, although I struggle to pinpoint just what his implication was for society. Add to that concept a satire of religion (there are two different kinds of banks in Erewhon; people only use the “unofficial” money and make a show of visiting the official banks) and we have the complicated and strange world of the Erewhonians.

The chapters when there was action were somewhat interesting. Yet, for the majority of the book, the narrator quoted from a book of history or policies. These were dry as dry could be. Although Erewhon was a short volume, it dragged. I can’t say I liked it, although it certainly has an interesting place in context as a Victorian satire.

(Writing this post prompted me to demoted the book from two stars to one star on goodreads. Oh dear. The more I think of it, the less I like it!)

At any rate, despite the fact that I didn’t enjoy it, I’m willing to send on my used mass market paperback to an interested reader. If you want it, let me know in the comments. First to request it is the winner. I can send it somewhere in the USA. If no one wants it, it goes to the library book sale!

If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho, translated by Anne Carlson

April 10, 2012 by Rebecca Reid

For poetry month, I knew I wanted to read poetry, and since I’ve also been eager to return to the Greek classics, I thought I’d take the chance to dive in with Sappho’s lyrics, as translated by Anne Carlson in If Not, Winter.

Because Sappho’s poetry remains for us only in fragments, reading through Ms Carlson’s translations was an enjoyable reminder of the essential building blocks of poetic thought: word choice, simplicity, and metaphor, for example. Continue Reading

Tales from Shakespeare by Charles and Mary Lamb

April 4, 2012 by Rebecca Reid

As I followed along with Allie’s Shakespeare Month in January, I was impressed that so many of the plays that other readers discussed sounded familiar, even though I knew I had not read them or seen them performed. I knew I had never seen or read A Merchant in Venice, for example, but the plot seemed so familiar to me.

I recalled I’d read summaries of Shakespeare in eighth grade English class, so I determined to find the volume that we’d read. I discovered Charles and Mary Lamb’s Tales from Shakespeare, originally published in 1807, and I’m almost certain that was my eighth grade exposure. It was time to read the volume in full. While I’m glad I rediscovered this classic, I’m hesitant to recommend it for children today.

It’s not to say that there isn’t a place for play summaries for children. Obviously, reading summaries of the plays gave me a background for Shakespeare that I recall nearly two decades later. However, the summaries by the Lamb’s are difficult to get through. Most of the text is exposition rather than Shakespeare’s clever dialogue, and let’s face it, clever as they are, Shakespeare’s plots are quite confusing and detailed. For the plays with which I was not familiar, I found it hard to follow the developing stories. For the plays with which I am intimately familiar (Hamlet, The Taming of the Shrew), it was rather disappointing to read a surface-level treatment of what I consider genius of plot and language. Besides, much as the authors intended to keep their summaries unbiased, they did give their opinions in subtle ways (such as Mary Lamb’s interpretation of the end of The Taming of the Shrew, a play I think is rather ironic rather than misogynistic).

The Lambs recognized the limitations to their task. One of them wrote in the introduction the following:

It has been wished to make these Tales easy reading for very young children. To the utmost of their ability the writers have constantly kept this in mind; but the subjects of most of them made this a very difficult task.

The introduction further explains that they intended the summaries to also be for “young ladies” who are not able to be schooled as their brothers may be. The Lambs suggest that boys simply read the original Shakespeare instead of these summaries:

For young ladies too, it has been the intention chiefly to write; because boys being generally permitted the use of their fathers’ libraries at a much earlier age than girls are, they frequently have the best scenes of Shakespeare by heart, before their sisters are permitted to look into this manly book; and, therefore, instead of recommending these Tales to the perusal of young gentlemen who can read them so much better in the originals, their kind assistance is rather requested in explaining to their sisters such parts as are hardest for them to understand: and when they have helped them to get over the difficulties, then perhaps they will read to them (carefully selecting what is proper for a young sister’s ear) some passage which has pleased them in one of these stories, in the very words of the scene from which it is taken; and it is hoped they will find that the beautiful extracts, the select passages, they may choose to give their sisters in this way will be much better relished and understood from their having some notion of the general story from one of these imperfect abridgments; which if they be fortunately so done as to prove delightful to any of the young readers, it is hoped that no worse effect will result than to make them wish themselves a little older, that they may be allowed to read the Plays at full length (such a wish will be neither peevish nor irrational).

Ignoring the comments about what girls can take or not (and keeping in mind that girls did not recieve a comparative education), I wonder why, then, anyone who can read the original Shakespeare needs to read Lamb’s summary. As I mentioned, there is a place for it, I suppose, and I may even find myself using the Lambs’ summaries with my son in our homeschooling when the time comes for it. Summaries do provide cultural context for young readers.

And yet, I can’t help but feel that we should try to find a way to expose our kids to the original whenever possible. Shakespeare’s writing, not just his plots, are what make his plays magnificent.

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