Imagery from Afghanistan and Iran

Saffron, the world's most expensive spice,
is derived from the flower of the saffron crocus
(Crocus sativus)

A few favorite passages . . .
On ETERNAL RETURN
from The Saffron Kitchen, Yasmin Crowther

"It was suddenly a warm afternoon, a lost summer day in late autumn . . . " (48).

"That's the way of things: saffron, shit, saffron, shit" (175).


On SUSTENANCE
from A Thousand Splendid Suns, Khaled Hosseini

"You make the night to pass into the day and You make the day to pass into the night, and You bring forth the living from the dead and You bring forth the dead from the living, and You give sustenance to whom You please without measure.

"Give sustenance, Allah.

"Give sustenance to me" (87).


On THEFT & FORGIVENESS
from The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini

"Now, no matter what the mullah teaches, there is only one sin, only one. And that is theft. Every other sin is a variation of theft. . . . When you kill a man, you steal a life. You steal his wife's right to a husband, rob his children of a father. When you tell a lie, you steal someone's right to the truth. When you cheat, you steal the right to fairness. . . . There is no act more wretched than stealing, Amir" (17 - 18).

"Then I realized something: That last thought had brought no sting with it. Closing Sohrab's door, I wondered if that was how forgiveness budded, not with the fanfare of epiphany, but with pain gathering its things, packing up, and slipping away unannounced in the middle of the night" (359).


P.S. April 2020

More on Forgiveness:
from Nadia Bolz-Weber:

"I’m not sure what allows us to forgive. . . . Harm is harm. Forgiveness doesn’t minimize harm, nor does it exonerate the perpetrators. But maybe it can free victims. Free us from carrying someone else’s burden - someone else’s shame - someone else’s sin. That is for them to carry alone. And when it comes, when forgiveness shows up, it feels free and unbidden . . . and it brings life, and life abundant. Yes, forgiveness feels impossible, and also like the most holy thing there is."

and from my sister Diane Burrows:
" . . . if you can, open your hand and let the guilt go."

and from The Little Paris Bookshop

Little Golden Books

Who remembers these books? The stories of sad little Puff who learns the hard way what it means to be a good friend and wise little Bobbie who chooses to spend his money not on things, but on a memorable experience!



These were a couple of unforgettables from my Pre-K Reading List.
Here's another one:


This innocent autumn scene by artist Eloise Wilkin (1904-1987) appears in her illustrated edition of Robert Louis Stevenson's Child's Garden of Verses (click on the picture to enlarge the text for reading Stevenson's, "Autumn Fires"). Known for her darling portrayals of chubby-cheeked children, Wilkin worked for Simon & Schuster, illustrating Little Golden Books from 1943 - 1961.

I had a few of her books as a child, and the dreamy child-centric life depicted on those pages contributed greatly to the vision of a perfect world that danced in my little head. As for visions of sugar plums, I looked no further than the gingerbread house with windows of spun sugar in Wilkin's illustrated Hansel and Gretel, one of my earliest Little Golden Books:


I've had these books for a long, long time.
Remember the old rhyme?

Make new friends but keep the old,
one is silver, the other gold.

These old friends are Golden!
I was also fond of the Child Horizons Series, especially the story of how "Mr. Apple Names the Children." The boys are called MacIntosh and Jonathan; the girls are called Delicious (Delia, for short) and -- my favorite -- Snow. Snow Apple. What a great name!

See, in the upper left hand corner of the orange book: that's Mr. Apple at the library (back before the internet), researching apple species, trying to find the perfect name for his baby girl (story by Jean McDevitt). I also liked the one about Tallulah, a bookish girl who spent her days hiding up in a chinaberry tree, reading her favorite books and spying on the passersby. What a great pasttime!




Earlier blog posts:
Fires of September & Childhood Autumn

And in 2022:
Baby Ellie!

Junior High Girl

17 Book Rosamond du Jardin Collection
Although I read many books between 4th grade and junior high, the written record is incomplete, because I slacked off when it came to compiling my comprehensive master list. I resumed, however, in my splayed and earnest junior high cursive, writing out the titles and authors of all the teenage girl books that my friends and I were reading. As you will no doubt observe, the "mass market paperback" is well represented, but you'll also find a sprinkling of middle-brow classics.

I was better in those days than I am now at reading a number of titles by a single author. If I liked one, then I could easily remain true through half a dozen more. These days, I've grown more fickle; if I'm not totally enamoured the first time, well, it's one strike and you're out.

Way back then when the days were long, one of my reading strategies was to pick up a volume of Readers' Digest Condensed Books -- often while babysitting for sleeping children, find a story that I liked, and read it quickly to pass the time until the parents returned. Then in the following weeks, I would go to the library or the bookmobile ~ a fortnightly treat in our neighborhood! ~ and check out or request all the additional novels I could find by whatever author I had most recently discovered.

Skimpy, sketchy, and flawed though it may be, here's the list as it has been preserved:

1968 - 73

Jane Austen: Emma
Charlotte Bronte: Jane Eyre
Emily Bronte: Wuthering Heights

Louisa May Alcott
Little Women
Little Men
Jo's Boys
Eight Cousins
Rose in Bloom
An Old Fashioned Girl

Pearl S. Buck
The Good Earth
The New Year

Taylor Caldwell
Captains and the Kings
Dear and Glorious Physician
Great Lion of God
Prologue to Love
On Growing Up Tough
The Search for a Soul: Taylor Caldwell's Psychic Lives (by Jess Stern)

Barbara Clayton: Decision for Sally

Lloyd C. Douglas
The Robe
The Big Fisherman
Magnificent Obsession
Dr. Hudson's Secret Journal
Forgive Us Our Trespasses

Rosamund du Jardin
Class Ring
Practically Seventeen
Senior Prom
Wait for Marcy

Dorothy Eden: Waiting for Willa

Louanne Ferris: I'm Done Crying / Lillian Roth: I'll Cry Tomorrow
[I read these two together one night]

Catherine Gaskin
Edge of Glass
Fiona
Property of a Gentleman

Rumer Godden & Lydia Halverson: The Kitchen Madonna

Arthur Hailey
Airport
Hotel St. Gregory
The Final Diagnosis

Victoria Holt
The Secret Woman
The Curse of the Kings
Kirkland Revels
The Mistress of Mellyn
The Pride of the Peacock
The Shadow of the Lynx
The Queen's Confession

Hope Dahle Jordan: Take Me to My Friend

Frances Kerns: The Stinsons

Grace Gelvin Kisinger: The New Lucinda

Irma Knott: This Thing Called Love

Janet Lambert: Forever and Ever

Katie Letcher Lyle: I Will Go Barefoot All Summer for You

Norah Lofts: How Far to Bethlehem?

James Vance Marshall: A Walk to the Hills of the Dreamtime

Melisssa Mather: One Summer In Between

Marjorie McIntyre: The River Witch

Florence Crannell Means: Reach for a Star

Iris Noble: Megan

Glendon Swarthout: Bless the Beasts and the Children

Willard Temple: Too Young To Be a Grandfather

Jean Webster
Daddy Long Legs
Dear Enemy

Phyllis A. Whitney: The Highest Dream

Ruth Wolff
A Crack in the Sidewalk
I, Keturah

















And a final favorite . . .
Marjorie Morningstar by Herman Wouk

. . . also loved staying up late
to watch this movie in the summertime!
(song by Doris Day, Sammy Fain, Paul Francis Webster)

I always liked what Andrea Dworkin has to say about this novel
when she describes her favorite girlhood heroes
in The New Woman's Broken Heart:
" . . . sometime about the 6th grade I got into the heavy stuff. Scarlett O'Hara and Marjorie Morningstar. . . . Marjorie. the thrill of eating bacon for the first time. of course I had eaten bacon all my life. I just hadn't ever before known how dangerous it really was. Noel Airman. An Actor. soon he would be balding, that's how old and evil he was. danger. sex. I could feel his creepy decadence. I looked for it everywhere. I coudn't find it in the grammar school I went to. he would corrupt her. he would corrupt me. . . . I might even go to Hell. I would be an artist. I would be able to feel. I would know everything. I ignored the 2nd part of the book where she married that jerk. none of that for me. keeping kosher indeed" (1 -2 ).

Even Older Favs From Even Further Back

My Old Friend Silver Chief
My last post of "Must Reads" (scroll down) began with a section of "Very Old Favorites From Way Back," way back meaning high school in the 70s. I can, however, go back even further than that. One of my oldest handwritten "documents" is my list of 100 favorite books that I read while in the 4th grade.

It's a funny list, printed in pencil on a piece of notebook paper, ranging all over the place from dog books to picture books, from mysteries to biography, from childhood nonsense to pre-teen angst. I thought of re-typing it here on my blog, for the sake of historical preservation, then realized that creating an amazon LIST: "My Fourth Grade Reading List, 1966 -67, First Forty" would be so much more fun because it would include all of the old nostalgic cover art.

Amazon has "no image available" for a few of the titles, and some of the old illustrations have been updated to something more contemporary. However, as you will see that many are as they ever were, and just the sight of them brought back vivid memories of visit after visit, down the hallway, down the stairs to the library at Intermediate School in Neosho, Missouri, in 1966 - 67. Do you recognize any old favorites?

Picture Books
Where The Wild Things Are
Nine Days To Christmas

American Classics
Charlotte's Web
Stuart Little
The Wizard of Oz

International Favorites
Snipp, Snapp, Snurr
Madeline
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

A couple that I've already mentioned earlier on this blog:
The Birds' Christmas Carol
(8 December 2009: "HOLIDAY FAVORITES" )

The Witch Family
(24 June 2010: "BEEHOLD! BEEGIN! BEE STILL!" )

More Witch Books (a phase?)
Dorri and the Blue Witch
Miss Grimsbee is A Witch

Many Mysteries
everything by Helen Fuller Orton
and Catherine Woolley, author of my favorite Ginnie and the Mystery Doll -- an early example of my interest in fictional dolls, leading up to the book I would write 30 years later! See my LIST: "Dolls in Literature" ~ including my book, Created in Our Image: The Miniature Body of the Doll as Subject and Object.

Brave Strong Girl Stories
The Jennifer Wish
Becky and the Bandit
The Glass Slipper by Eleanor Farjeon
(see 30 September 2010: "The Precious Firstlings" )

Families and Sisters
Understood Betsy
The All-of-a-Kind-Family

A Surprise:
One of the mysteries on my 4th grade list ~ The Diamond in the Window, was written by Jane Langton, who wrote Emily Dickinson is Dead, which I read just a few years ago without realizing that it was by the same author as one of my way-back favorites (see 13 September 2009: "Emily From Different Angles"),


and lastly

Animal Books:
Barn Cat by Belle Coates: A token cat story! Though I've always loved cats in real life, I never had a favorite fictional cat . . . well, not until Hello Kitty! came along."

Molly's Miracle by Linell Nash Smith (daughter of Ogden Nash)
I was, and still am, totally enchanted by this gentle mystical story of evolutionary time travel in the barnyard world.

and every Silver Chief book ever written. I was a girl who loved cats way more than dogs, yet there was something about Silver Chief and all the other big dogs of the north that drew me in! On my old fourth grade list, I scribbled these words across the top:

"The best books I have ever read are:
Silver Chief Dog of the North
The Return of Silver Chief
Silver Chief to the Rescue
Silver Chief's Revenge
Silver Chief's Big Game Trail "

For more of my 4th grade favorites:
"My Fourth Grade Reading List, 1966 - 67, Conclusion"

Eclectic Course of Must Reads

The Little Prince, Most Dashing in his Traveling Scarf!
A few years back, several people all at once, each unbeknownst to the other, asked me what titles I would recommend to a reader who was starting at "Go." I mulled it over some, thinking about syllabi and reading lists. More importantly, however, I went with my heart and in an hour or so of brainstorming came up with the following list of "Must Reads."

Undoubtedly, you have only to glance down the page before a thousand omissions become apparent. No Shakespeare, for example...but maybe I wouldn't recommend Shakespeare at the starting line; better to run a couple of laps first. Not necessarily thematic or consistent or even rational, this list represents the titles that came to mind that day when I asked myself "What books are you really glad that you have read?"

I hope you will enjoy at least some of these suggestions:

VERY OLD FAVORITES FROM WAY BACK
These were the soul - searchers:

The Fantasticks
by Tom Jones & Harvey Schmidt

Our Town
by Thornton Wilder

The Little Prince
by Antoine de Saint Exupery

I Heard the Owl Call My Name
by Margaret Craven

Doctor Zhivago
by Boris Pasternak

The Good Earth
by Pearl S. Buck

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter
by Carson McCullers

To Kill a Mockingbird
by Harper Lee

Stranger in a Strange Land
by Robert Heinlein

The Water is Wide
by Pat Conroy


MYSTERIES
If you’re in the mood for a thriller,
I think these are all above average:

The Daughter of Time
by Josephine Tey

Summer’s Lease
by John Mortimer

The 7th of July
by Jill McCorkle

Fatal Inversion
by Ruth Rendell

The Secret History
by Donna Tartt

Turtle Moon
and
Second Nature
both by Alice Hoffman

The Erasers
by Alain Robbe-Grillet


TRAVEL
As mentioned awhile back,
you should read everything by Bill Bryson;
also these American travelogues:

Blue Highways
and PrairyErth
both by William Least Heat Moon

Mama Makes Up Her Mind
and Sleeping At the Starlite Motel
both by Bailey White


WORLD WAR II
Loss, sadness, and European history:

Badenheim 1939
by Aron Appelfeld

The Tin Drum
by Gunter Grass

War Time Memories
by Louis Begley

The Remains of the Day
by Kazuo Ishiguro

How German Is It
by Walter Abish

Hiroshima
by John Hersey

Slaughterhouse Five
by Kurt Vonnegut

The White Hotel
by D. M. Thomas


MISC. WORLD LIT
Nearly all from my classes with
Professor Leonard Orr:

The Metamorphosis
and The Trial
by Franz Kafka

The Wanderer
by Henri Alain-Fournier

Death in Venice
by Thomas Mann

The Master and Margarita
by Mikhail Bulgakov

Out of Africa
and "Babette's Feast"
both by Isak Dinesen

Kitchen
by Banana Yoshimoto

If On A Winter’s Night a Traveler
by Italo Calvino


AMERICAN STANDARDS
Don't worry, I'm leaving out Moby Dick:

Bartleby, the Scrivener
by Herman Melville

My Antonia
by Willa Cather

The Great Gatsby
by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Winesburg, Ohio
by Sherwood Anderson

The Sound and the Fury
by William Faulkner

In Our Time
by Ernest Hemingway

"Appointment in Samara"
by John O’Hara

Cat On A Hot Tin Roof
by Tennessee Williams

Catcher in the Rye
by J. D. Salinger


MORE RECENT AMERICAN NOVELS
Modern and post-modern despair:

Dangling Man
by Saul Bellow

Miss Lonelyhearts
by Nathanael West

The Universal Baseball Association
by Robert Coover

Edwin Mullhouse
by Steven Millhauser

84 Charing Cross Road
by Helene Hanff

Still Life With Woodpecker
and Another Roadside Attraction
both by Tom Robbins

Breakfast of Champions
Cat's Cradle
Slapstick
and Jailbird
all by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

Ragtime
by E. L. Doctorow

Bright Lights, Big City
and Brightness Falls
both by Jay McInerney

Moo
by Jane Smiley


A FEW PICKS FROM MY GRAD SCHOOL READING LIST
Modern British and Irish fiction:

Far From the Madding Crowd
by Thomas Hardy

Sons and Lovers
The Man Who Died
The Captain’s Doll
all by D. H. Lawrence

Brideshead Revisited
by Evelyn Waugh

Anglo-Saxon Attitudes
by Angus Wilson

Lucky Jim
by Kingsley Amis

Hurry On Down
by James Wain

My Strange Quest for Mensonge
by Malcolm Bradbury

Brave New World
by Aldous Huxley

Keep the Aspidistra Flying
by George Orwell

The Ice Age
by Margaret Drabble

Dubliners
and Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man
by James Joyce

The Third Policeman
by Flann O’Brien

My Left Foot
by Christy Brown

Murder in the Cathedral
by T. S. Eliot

A Man for All Seasons
by Robert Bolt

The Importance of Being Ernest
by Oscar Wilde


SOME SLIGHTLY EARLIER BRITISH LIT
You can substitute other Dickens' titles if you want,
but I preferred these to David Copperfield or Oliver Twist:

A Tale of Two Cities
and Great Expectations
both by Charles Dickens

Frankenstein
by Mary Shelley

Favorites From 2010

Cover Illustration & Design by Roz Chast

The Possessed: Adventures With Russian Books
and The People Who Read Them
Elif Batuman's amazing memoir of her years
as a graduate student in Russian Literature.
See also "Holy Connection and Coincidence Batman"
"I don't know if I ended up siding with the academics because I happened to be in graduate school, or if I ended up in graduate school because I already secretly sided with the academics. In any case, I stopped believing that 'theory' had the power to ruin literature for anyone, or that it was possible to compromise something you loved by studying it. Was love really such a tenuous thing? Wasn't the point of love that it made you want to learn more, to immerse yourself, to become possessed?" (22, emphasis added)

"If I could start over today, I would choose literature again. If the answers exist in the world or in the universe, I still think that's where we're going to find them." (290)

************************
And here is a related thought by Steve Almond
from his article about the tragedy of 9 / 11:
"The Decade of Magical Thinking"
"One of the duties of the artist – not the only duty, but a central one – is to impel people to imagine the complexity of thought and feeling inside another person. Art complicates moral action, because we have to accept that other people matter, that their hardship and suffering, even their rage and sorrow, are, to some extent, our responsibility."

************************

Desperadoes
Ron Hansen's historical novel about the
notorious, ill-fated Dalton Gang

For more commentary:
"Dalton Gang"
"End of Summer Sounds"

*************************
"Barber ~ Shop ~ W. W. Lindsey"
One of my Great - Uncle Wayne's Barbershops

Wish I could name the little cousins, but alas I cannot!
Nor do I know the exact location of the shop but know
that Wayne had shops in Chautauqua, Elgin, Havana, Peru,
~ all in Southeast Kansas ~
and that in one of them, he shaved Emmett Dalton!

Books by Friends and Friends of Friends

. . . and Relatives!

Art at the Speed of Life:
Motivation and Inspiration for
Making Mixed-Media Art Every Day
by Pam Carriker

On Native Ground: Memoirs and Impressions
by Jim Barnes

The Conjurer
by Cordelia Frances Biddle

The Side Door
by Jan Donley

"secrets . . . everywhere . . . under carpets, in closets, in pockets, underground . . ."

The Lost Girls
by Laurie Fox

" . . . the moment we are born appears to be the very same moment we forget we are loved. Now isn't that awkward? Shouldn't the two things dovetail, love and memory? Shouldn't a feeling that powerful be carved on a tree so no one can ignore its message? To come so far to be in this world only to forget something all - important -- what kind of journey is that? I'll bet that 90 percent of the love that surrounds us is dismissed or discounted -- the cup of tea a friend makes, the letter from a faraway auntie. The fact that no one feels loved ~enough~ merely proves my point" (43).

The Witch's Boy
by Michael Gruber

Devil's Gold
by Julie Korzenko

Why We Have Evening
by Leonard Orr

Weeping: A Fritillary Quilter Mystery
by Shelly Reuben

The Good Psychologist
by Noam Shpancer