The Saturday Morning Post EXTRA! EXTRA! (No. 158)

 

Something a very different today. I discovered a new genre.

My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.

Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below.

The Apothecary Diaries # 1 by Natsu Hyunga illustrations by Touko Shino

One of the booktubers I watch named the 11th volume of this series as one of her three favorite books of the month, and went on to say how much she liked the series. The premise she described sounded interesting since I like stories set in China, or something resembling China, and this story was described being that of a young girl making her way from the bottom up in a Chinese style court, with a mix of court intrigue and humor, all of which gave me Emma M Lion vibes. So I tracked it down both on Amazon and at our local library. All off which led me down something of a rabbit hole, which is the main purpose of this "review." But first a quick summery of the series.

This is a series of "light novels" featuring a young woman who was kidnapped and sold to the imperial court as a washer of clothes for the concubines of the emperor. Her father was a doctor, and she had acted as an apprentice and aide to him before she was abducted. In this first volume she inadvertently calls attention to herself with her medical knowledge. It seems that two of the concubines, having given birth to children who would become a prince and a princess, are wasting away, along with their infants. She recognized the reason why this is happening and contrives to warn them. One takes her advice, and both the mother and child recover, while the other doesn't, and the would-be prince dies, and his mother continues to waste away. This is as far as I got in the story itself.

I only read the first six chapters of this book, but I'm not going to count it as a DNF, since I was reading the sample pages on Amazon in order to get the flavor of the story. It would hardly be fair to say I DNFed it because in fact, I just stopped reading it when the sample ran out.

I was interested enough in the story to see if my local library had copies. In the online catalog they -seemingly - did have the first three volumes "on order," with a fairly short waiting list for them. I say "seemingly," because I discovered that there are two versions of this story. One is a manga and the other is the "light novel." 

What, you may ask, is a light novel? I did. So I asked Google.  Here a summery of the AI response:

A light novel is a style of Japanese novel that typically targets teenagers and young adults and is characterized by its short length, simple language and inclusion of manga-style illustrations. They are primarily markets to middle and high school students, but with a readership that extends to young adults and older readers. They are comparable to a novella, ranging from 40K to 50K words and frequently include both color and black and white illustrations in an anime or manga style.

Well, I learned something new. I further discovered that the books available at the library were the manga version of the story. I've never been a very ardent comic book reader, and have never even dipped my toes into manga or anime, and have no desire to. So if I wanted to read the light novel version of the story, I'd have to buy the books. I looked into getting the books second hand on Abe Books, my fist place to look when I consider buying a book, but the prices, including shipping were just about the same as new on Amazon. And with the ebook versions going for $8 each and not in Kindle Unlimited, they were also not an option, as anything for than $5 for a digital file is more than I am willing to pay. I'd rather pay more for a real, paper book.

However, returning to the story itself; the sample I read was certainly written at a middle school level, simple and direct, but cheerful enough. However, being a reader of writing rather than story, I found the writing rather sparse for my taste, though, as I said, its sparseness did have some charm to it. But not enough for me to pay money to read it. That said, I think that when one considers that there are currently 15 books in the series, which is to say, a story of more than half a million words, I can see that its simplicity might be very misleading, and how one might well get drawn into the story. If you could afford it.

The Saturday Morning Post (No. 157)

 

Let's keep a trend going here. What trend, you ask? Since I've likely read all of the  Anne of Green Gable books I care to read, we'll move on to some other books that one might have read to one's children at bedtime, back when I was reading bedtime stories to my kids. i.e. a long time ago.

My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.

Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below. 

The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett   B

This is, of course, a very well known book, with the story adopted half a dozen times over the years in film, TV, and the stage. It concerns a 10 year old orphan, Mary, whose neglectful parents both die, as Europeans often did, in India of cholera or some such thing. She is then sent home to live with her uncle in England; in a great house on the moors of Yorkshire. Unloved Mary is a very unpleasant you child, raised by servants that she could boss around, and did. She now finds herself in a strange house of a hundred rooms, most of which are unused. Her uncle, with a bit of a twisted back, is still morning the death of his wife ten years before, so he's rarely at home, roaming the world, half mad with sadness.  He has a son, who fears he will end up crippled like his father, and much like Mary is used to getting his own way. However, in this house, Mary slowly discovers the love she was denied, as well as, a mentor in the form of a 12 year old boy, Dickon, who is one with the moors and the out of doors. And she steps up to give her cousin the love and courage to move beyond his fears and discover the wide world outside his windows.

Lots of nature, lots of gardening, lots of inspirational writing, with a touch of Gothic atmosphere, as two unloved children began to blossom with love, friendship, and a healthy helping of the bracing life of the Yorkshire moors. And did I mention, gardening? A nice uplifting story. I enjoyed it.

A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett  B-

Like The Secret Garden, this is a book for younger readers, a century ago. Which is not to say I disliked it, but I could see children enjoying the riches to rags and riches again story of Sara Crewe. The story opens with Sara's father, a British Army Officer, comfortably supplied with money, bringing Sara to a London boarding school at the age of nine. Her mother had died, and he felt that India was an unhealthy place to raise a child, so he reluctantly arranged for her to say at this boarding school, lavishing her with fine things, including a pony and a maid. Sara is a very thoughtful young woman, gifted with imagination and much given to making ups stories to the delight of some of her classmates, but far from all. She is envied by some because of her privileged position as the daughter of a rich man, and is the pride of the school. But all good things must come to an end, and end they do, when her father, investing seemingly unwisely in a diamond mine, runs out of money, falls ill with fever, and dies penniless. Sara must now work for her room and board, and living in an attic room with a tame rat, she is very ill treated by all. And yet she is able to maintain her spirits and dignity by imagining herself as a princess, and only doing what a princess would do.

Once again, it's a nice story with lots of uplifting moral messages. Sara is a very nice and interesting character. A enjoyable read, if somewhat predictable. And it did, I am quite sure, improve my character. 

Robin by Frances Hodgson Burnett  DNF 16%

Now, this one is not a children's novel, but rather one about a young woman, Robin, whose mother, a widow is the mistress of a man reputed to be a rake and as such, not acceptable in polite society. Her rakish lover, however, sees that Robin is raised and educated in order that Robin can make a living, suggesting that he isn't all bad. The inciting incident of the story is when Robin as a young child, raised without love by servants, a running theme in Burnett's books to date, meets a boy in the local park and they spend a few days of playing together... until the boy's mother realizes just whose daughter Robin is, and after doing so, whisks her son away. They never forget those days, and meet again when Robin is 20 years old, when the world is on the brink of World War One. This is when the main part of the story kicks in. A promising romance set in a haunting time.

Alas, this adult novel still has all the moralizing and mush of her children-focused books. More of it, in fact.  Indeed, I found it filled so much of the characters' conversations, and musing on the phycological and moral effects of the early months of that war that the story just dragged on and on. It was very much a novel of its time. I found that I didn't care enough about the characters to wade my way through all the talk and anguish to carry on reading it.

All in all, I believe I've sampled enough of Frances Hodgson Burnett to check her box and move on.

My Writing Process

                                                                                                                

I spent last week finishing up on my current writing projects; The Isle House Ghost, a Red Wine novella, and Nine Again, another Red Wine story, but this time a short story. Nine Again is an extension of The Isle House Ghost, story, basically an afterthought, but an irresistible one. However, to have tacked it on to the main story would have destroy the symmetry of that story, and my ending, so it is its own separate thing. 

But that's not what I want to talk about here. I want to outline the steps I take to produce a story. And since I'm never at a loss for words, on a page anyway. let's begin.

Step One. Dream up a story. I usually spend three or more months just thinking about the story I want to write, getting to know it from beginning to end. Ideally. And often going over key scenes dozens of times, or more, in my head, so that when I sit down to write the story, I am telling a story that I know. Again, ideally.

Step Two. Write it. If I've done my job and know the story I want to tell from nose to tail, all I have to do is to put the scenes into words. Putting the story into words will add to and alter the original story somewhat as it goes along, but it will follow the outline of the story I dreamed up. I write it from beginning to the end. However there have been stories that I find, when I get to the middle of them, that I did a little too much handwaving over what happens in the middle, and have to stop and think about what I can come up with to fill in that gap. Sometimes I've had to put a story away for a while time, even a year, while I try to come up with stuff to fill that middle. Or in one case, just decide to make it into a novella. You don't need middles in novellas. I usually go back and start editing what I have written while I come up with things to fill out the middle of the story.

This first draft is the most important part of the story, since I do not make major changes to it in subsequent drafts, or edits, as some people call the process or revising the first draft. The first draft is the hardest part of the process because it sets the pattern, and so I need to be happy with it before going on, because I know I'll be only tinkering with it in subsequent drafts.

This step, writing the first draft, also takes about three or four months for a novel.

Step Three. Second draft. After finishing my first draft, I usually turn around and start my second draft. While experts often say that you should wait a while before starting to edit your work, I figure that the nose of my story is at least three months in the past, so that should be far enough in the past to view with an new eyes, and since revising is a lot easier than writing, the momentum of this draft will carry me all through this second draft. 

I don't make major changes. I will typically add 10% more words, as I fill out sketchy descriptions and dialogs. Most the changes involve straightening out my words; eliminating as many of my "and"s as I can, and taking all those phrases that I tacked on to the end of sentences and moving them forward to where they should be in the sentence. I seem to have heard somewhere that the German language adds a lot of phrases at the end, so this propensity to tack on phrases at the end of a sentence might be a heritage of my German ancestors. I also, of course correct all the typos I find along the way. But hardly all.

This second draft may take several weeks to complete.

Step Four. Third draft. I go over the story again, but hopefully I find less to tinker with. These days I do my third draft in Google Docs, as it has a better grammar checker, and the text looks different, which might make things I would miss going over the same text a third time, stand out more. I tried loading the document onto an ebook ereader, and then reading it, and then make changes when I found the clunkers when reading it as a book, but that proved to be too awkward. 

Ideally, after finishing my third draft, I should feel comfortable with the story as written. I know that anytime I read something of mine, I will find things I want to change, no matter how may times I've gone over it. So that at some point I have to say "Good enough." and go with it, or I would never get anything out.

Step Five. This is an optional step, but one I find I'm taking more and more; namely. a fourth draft. This happens when I don't feel completely comfortable after my third draft. The Isle House Ghost has gone through four drafts. It is an old fashioned mystery, and as I wrote it, I came to realize that I needed to change things that I had already written to be consistent, so this back and forth, even in the second and third draft left me uneasy. I did more drafts for The Girl on the Kerb, as I wasn't comfortable with my first "finished" version, and I had the time while I was querying it. 

Step Six. Online proofing. In the last several years I've introduced this step with great success. I upload my work, chapter by chapter to the free online version of Grammarly to find typos, wrong words correctly spelled, where to put commas, etc. Everything underlined with red. I don't use their premium grammar suggestions. This is just for proofreading. I then take these Grammarly-proofed pages and upload them to Scribbr's own online grammar checker, and correct all the mistakes that Grammarly missed. And decide who's comma suggestions I'll take and whose I wont. All of this is time consuming, and discouraging. They find so many mistakes. But well worth it.

Step Seven. I then print out a copy of the story and hand it to my wife to proofread and offer any comments or suggestions. Thanks to the online proofreading, her job is much easier than it used to be, with entire pages going by without needing me to fix anything.

Step Eight. When I've made all the corrections that my wife has found, I offer it to my beta readers. My beta readers mostly act as proofreaders - many of them became my beta readers by offering corrections in my published works that were far more prevalent in my early books. Some do offer suggestions as well, that I take into account.

Step Nine. Prepare epub versions. These days for Amazon, I use  their Kindle Create app on my computer to format the ebooks and audiobooks for Amazon. Otherwise, I use Draft2Digital to format my books for them and for Google.

Step Ten. I reformate my stories for paperback books using LibreOffice, the same program I write the stories in. It isn't too hard, and I'm not overly fussy. I grew up reading mass market paperbacks. I also have to paint or find painting for the cover of the books, both ebook and paper. And I do an interior page one illustration, and sometimes maps as well for the paper edition.

So that's my work flow. At present, I have turned over The Isle House Ghost and Nine Again to my wife for her proofreading. But with a release date in February 2026, there is no hurry for to get at it, as I will probably only sent it out to my beta readers after the holidays. I have a cover for The Isle House Ghost that would work for both the ebook, and the omnibus paper version of  Those two books and The Founders' Tribunal that I intend to release around the same time. But I have an idea for a separate cover for the ebook version of The Isle House Ghost that I would like to paint. We'll see.

So, with all of that, you are up to date with my writing. 

The Saturday Morning Post EXTRA! EXTRA! (No. 156)

 

Back to Prince Edward Island.

My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.

Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below.

Anne of the Island by L M Montgomery  A

This volume recounts Anne's four years in college. And though, like all the books in this series, it is episodic, however, there is much more of an overarching plot to this book than in Anne of Avonlea and I enjoyed it a lot more. 

L M Montgomery spends a lot of time describing the scenery, and while I can't really picture it, I can imagine being there even so. She is also a wonderful character writer; you get to know all of the major characters in her books. Each has their own personality that stands out on the page. They are observed lovingly, but not blindly, each has their strengths and flaws, and as a result, they come across as real people. And I enjoy the subtle wit and charm of her writing as well. It is easy to see how these books have lasted and been loved for more than a century. 

On a more practical level, they offer perhaps a slightly romanticized picture of life in the countryside at the turn of the last century. You get glimpses of the small details of life, and of the hardships. And of the society of the time. The fact that there seemed to be no shortage of widows and widowers, suggests how easy it was to die of something back then. Death was a commonplace experience for the  the young, and middle aged, as well as the old, who by today's standards, weren't all that old. 

I am going have to watch the two Anne of Green Gable shows again to see how they fit the various stories together. I can tell that they rearranged events, and perhaps characters as well. I don't recall the college years in the show, but that might well be due to my poor memory. I know that the next book in the series (below) covers her year(s) as a principle at a high school. And that during that period she had something of a romance with a wealthy man with a daughter, but I don't think that will be the case here, as the show ended with Anne and Gil finally together, as did this book. We'll see. And you'll see, once I add Anne of Windy Poplars below.

Anne of Windy Poplars  (AKA Anne of Windy Willows) by L M Montgomery  A-

This volume recounts the three years Anne was the high school principle at Summerside on Prince Edward Island. It was first published 28 years after Anne of Green Gables. A significant part of the book has Anne telling her story in letters to Gil Blythe, who is at medical school training to be a doctor. As with many of the Anne books, it is an episodic novel, with character studies at the core of the story. Indeed, it is the characters, both young and old, who are often spun out of their unique conversations that are the great appeal of this story to me.

Perhaps it is for the convenience of the story, but as I mentioned above, there are certainly a lot of widows about in these stories, and tales of deaths at any age, young, middle aged and old of natural causes. Perhaps a lesson the anti-vaccine people might want to take to heart. It is also interesting that unless you lived at home, or were married, you lived in boarding houses - a room and a meal provided. Even the principle of  the high school was apparently not paid  enough to have her own flat. Though that might also reflect society of the time, where even the middle class of the day employed a maid and a cook. With wood or coal burning furnaces and hot water heaters, and wood burning stoves, it would be hard to have a full time job, and then have to come home to get everything fired up to eat and live without employing a servant to do so. Anyway, an interesting glimpse into everyday life a hundred years ago.

What was also interesting was how the 1987 TV show adopted the books subsequent to Anne of Green Gables into the sequel mini-series. What they seemed to do was to consolidate a lot of characters, giving them storylines taken from different characters in the book, as well as eliminating many characters, and consolidating the time-line. This book covered three years, and I seem to remember it was only one in the TV series. 

One example of consolidated characters; in the TV show has a wealthy man with the semi-abandoned daughter what a love interest in the TV show. This child is a student of Anne. In the book this love interest plays out as Anne's collage boyfriend in Anne of the Island. However, there is a story about an abandoned daughter in Anne of Windy Poplars but the child is only eight years old and her father only appears at the end of the book. Both versions of the child had her living with the matriarch of the Pringles. However his matriarch character was also consolidated with another ancient widow in the book who kept her 40 year old daughter waiting on her hand and foot. In any event, there are elements in the books that recall the TV series, but are still quite different as well.

 I will have to watch this again this winter. But the long and short of it is that in these last three books, you get bits of pieces of the stories in one form or another that appeared in the TV show, with some new material.  However, you also miss a whole lot of what was in the books, as one might expect going from books to a TV show. Still, I am fond of both versions of Anne. I think the TV show did a very good job of building a charming cohesive story out of the episodic nature of the material they used, without betraying the true Anne of Green Gables.

There are four more Anne books, cover her life until the age of 53. Plus some books about Avonlea, that she might make cameo appearances in. I think, however, that I will leave Anne still in her youth, and maybe read one of the Avonlea books. I have one on my ebook reader. But for now, it's time to move on, though were to, I have no idea. Stay tuned. Next week you'll know.

NOTE:

Wikipedia says that the original title was Anne of Windy Willows, but the US publisher thought it too close to Wind in the Willows, and there was some gory stuff that they wanted removed, so she did for the US version. My version, though a free Canadian ebook version used the American version.

It was also interesting how Anne is portraited on the book covers I searched for; she is often portraied  in the style of women of at the age of publication. I had a lot of covers, and so Annes, to choose from.

The Saturday Morning Post (No. 155)

 

My last forelay into the War of the Roses period did not fare all that well. But never saying never, I'm back at it again with a new story set in England during that civil war. Along with that, I have also come across an unknown sequel to a very famous book. Does unknown mean "bad"? Find out below.

My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.

Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below.

The Black Arrow by Robert Lewis Stevenson  C 

This is indeed an old fashioned adventure story. It's young protagonist  Dick Sheldon, goes from one mostly disastrous adventure to the next from the beginning to the end of the story. Through his adventures and misadventures he does things that he comes to regret but grows up. 

I can only give this story an average, "C" grade for several reasons. First is the language. Stevenson tells the story using archaic language. Now when modern usages appear in fantasy or historical fiction they annoy me, but I found that the language Stevenson used to tell this story was just too authentic. It wasn't that I couldn't figure out what was going on, though in dialog it was sometimes very hard to follow. One of my chief joys in reading is the clever use of language, however, I found that the archaic language often needed to be deciphered. This made reading more work than pleasure.

The other factor that lowered my enjoyment of the story was that a lack of knowledge of the historical period. Knowledge of this age where alliances shifted with every triumph or disaster experienced by the two factions contending for the throne of England, and in this shifting landscape would have been helpful in knowing what exactly is going on. Not being up to speed on this period of history, I quickly lost track of who was for whom. Plus the pace of the story was pretty hectic and almost nothing turns out right until the very end. Which might not be a bad thing for many readers, but I guess I found it a little too fast paced.

To sum The Black Arrow up, I would say it was a classic adventure story, perhaps over-stuffed with adventure. And archaic language.

Catriona (AKA David Balfour) by Robert Lewis Stevenson  DNF 8%

This story starts right where RLS's Kidnapped ends. I read that story in 2023. I was looking back of my review of that book and I noted in my review that it had a very strange and abrupt ending. Indeed, I had to look up an online version to make certain that the book I was reading wasn't missing a page. Apparently it wasn't it was missing just a page, it was missing the last half of the rest of the story. Kidnapped earned only a "C" grade from me. I was still confused by the start of this story, and given my lukewarm impression of the first half of the story, and from what I read about what this story was about, I decided not to press on.

(I'll be honest; when I came across this book, for some reason, I had it in my mind that it was the sequel to Treasure Island, which is why I picked it up. If I had my wits about me, I likely wouldn't have bothered.)

Looking back over the RLS I have read, I don't think that RLS stories are exactly to my taste. At least in fiction. I liked his A Child's Garden of Verses though. I do have a very fragile 1906 copy of his Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes, and An Inland Voyage that maybe I should give a try.

Book Collecting

 

Book collecting, especially special limited edition fantasy books seems to be having its day these days, at least, on BookTube, and I believe on other social media as well. Buying or receiving gift books and then displaying them on your YouTube channel is a thing, a thing called "book hauls". Most of these books are regular books they find, but I gather they also feature these special limited editions as well, often receiving them for free, i.e. free publicity for the publishers.

In addition, indie authors with large social media followings on one platform or another have taken to offering their books as special editions on Kickstarter. Of course this only works if you have a large following, since most authors/media influencers can only turn as less than 5% of their followers or subscribers into customers. 

These limited edition books often feature all the bells and whistles of books; slip cases, color and B & W interior illustrations, fancy end papers, and have the outside edges of the pages "sprayed" with ink, often in patterns and even images. These books are very pricey, of course, I assume above $50USD, though I've not priced them myself. I guess true book lovers love pretty books. Or at least gaudy ones.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so when I say that I find these books are often over the top in their decorations, with gilded lettering, sometimes leather binding, and those sprayed edges they look, well let's say too dolled up, that's just my opinion. And that goes for the interior art that I've seen as well. In short, I find them just too much, if not ugly. But that's just me. 

The real issue is for me; they're books printed not to be read, but to be displayed on the shelf and admired. In a way, they are sort of like those libraries of books rich people buy to fill their bookshelves, but never intend to read. They're decor. And this is especially true because most of the buyers of these books already have at least one copy of the book. But then, what can you say? They're collectors... And well, collectors are collectors...

Now, of course, rare and desirable books can get very pricey indeed. And who knows what book will become rare and desirable decades from now. By producing only a limited number of books, often 1,000 or less, these books by definition are going to be rare. The question is that ,in the coming decades, will they be desirable? There seems to be a stigma attached to things that are deliberately made to be "collectable", and I wonder if these books will escape that stigma in time. Plus, who knows how popular the authors will be in the future? That certainly has a bearing on how desirable these books will be.

But here I am again, being negative. But hey, I'm an old man. Cut me some slack. However, as with audiobooks, I'm just speaking for myself. You do you, and if you love special editions of the books you love, I think that's great. I'm quite sure most of these book collectors are buying the books out of love, not as an investment. At least I hope not.

And I can't toss more stones than that. Because, yes, I used to collect books as well, until some 25 years ago, when I realized that I would have to someday move all of them. Now, if you have ever had to move books, you'll know just how heavy they get and just how fast they do. It doesn't take a big box of books to get heavy. I know, I moved them. Thus I stopped collecting books and started reading library books. Mostly. Since the turn of the century I may have acquired, maybe 50 books? A few more in recent years than before. For example, the seven Brother Cadfael omnibus books that I have now, I didn't own when I took the photo of my bookshelves above. But for the most part I have been, and still am, content to read library books.

Now if you study my book shelves you will see that I collected a variety of books, in a variety of subjects, types and conditions. I have some first printings, a lot of trade paperbacks for the  60's, and a lot of second hand books from the first half of the last century. What you won't find is special editions.

I'm too cheap. 

And when I buy books, I buy them, to read them (and treasure them). 

There are all sorts of book collectors who collect all sorts of books for all sorts of reasons. And that's great. So even if I shake my head at all these fancy special editions, well, if it funds authors who need funding, and brings joy to readers, it's all good. 

Read on. And buy on! If you're rich.

The Saturday Morning Post EXTRA! EXTRA! (No. 154)

 

It has been a rough couple of weeks, reading-wise. But you have to expect some rocks and briars once you leave your familiar cow path and strike out for unexplored books. I can take the rough with the smooth. Besides, I usually have more fun writing about books I don't like than the books I do like, so I'm not complaining.

Still, it would be nice to read a good book again. I downloaded several possible candidates, and today's books, since this is a double-header review, are the books I chose to begin with. I have to believe the first one is a reread. I'm almost certain this was one of the bedtime book I read to my kids when they were young, but I have no clear memory of doing so. However, what I can say is that the TV series is perhaps my favorite TV show of all time. So what can go wrong?

My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.

Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below. 

Anne of Green Gables by L M Montgomery  A

As it turned out, nothing. In fact, the book was far better than I expected it to be. As I said in the lede, the 1985 TV version of Anne of Green Gables, including the sequel may well be my favorite TV show of all time. (I don't count the third entry, "Continuing Story' as "canon", at least for me.) I know they have made a new version a few years ago, but Megan Follows is, and will always be, Anne Shirley. I have the complete collection on DVDs, and will have to watch it again on some cold rainy day.

Do I need to outline the story? Mathew, a very shy sixty-year-old bachelor and his spinster sister, Marilla, live on a farm on Prince Edward Island Canada decide to send for an orphan boy to help around the farm. There is a mix up, and they end up with the 11 year old Anne Shirley, a very sweet young girl with a vivid imagination and much given to talking. She brings a new life to the old folks with her various escapades. The story is lush evocation of nature and life in a small community at the turn of the last century. If you haven't read the book, do so. It is free on Gutenberg. And/or watch the 1985 version of the book and its sequel. I don't recommend the the third series with Anne all grown up, set during WW l.

Spoilers ahead!

I was surprised to discover just how closely that TV show followed the book. There were minor changes. For example, Anne was reciting The Lady of Shalott in the TV version, but the book has them reenacting Tennyson's Lancelot and Elaine, which I gather is the same story, but not the ballad. In the book, Mathew dies in the doorway of the house after reading that the bank where they have all their money has failed, with both Anne and Marilla present, instead of the field with Anne alone. Various incidents in the book take place in other places in the TV show, but I recognized all of them from the TV show.

Anne of Avonlea by L M Montgomery   B+

This book continues the story of Anne from the point where Anne of Green Gables left off. Both of these stories are episodic in nature. However, in the first book there was much more of an over-arching plot, that of Anne fitting into her new life with Marilla and Mathew and life in Avonlea that served to tie all the episodes together. That strong over-arching plot is missing in this book, making it more of a series of episodes and character studies rather than being driven by a unified plot.

This story recounts Anne's two years as a teacher in the Avonlea school she graduated from just a year prior. We get to meet and know half a dozen new characters and their backstories. Anne still gets into trouble, but is now much more grown up. 

While there are a couple if incidents I recognized from either the original TV show, or its sequel, much of this book is new material to me. For example, in this book Marilla takes in twin 6 year old orphans on a temporary basis, the children of a third cousin, whose uncle is supposed to come and pick them up in the following summer. This never happened in the TV show.

I consider these books historical fiction, though they were written as contemporary fiction. While they no doubt idealize certain aspects of the  contemporary life of the time, they also highlight certain aspects that might be easily overlooked by today's writer setting a story in that period, or if not overlooked, over emphasized. One such aspect is the commonplaceness of death in these stories. People of all ages die in these stories. No doubt some for the convenience of the plot, but the fact that not only infants and old people in their 50's - 70's die, but middle aged people get sick and die is taken as a matter of course. Sad, but that's life. Or that you had today's high school seniors working as teachers in one room school houses with one year of special training - until, of course they got married, and then they would be fired... Things like this could be found with research, and are, but too often these commonplace facts of life that seem strange to us now, get emphasized in contemporary historical fiction because their unfamiliarity, distorting ever-so-slightly the times they present.

I have the next two books Anne of the Island and Anne of Windy Poplars, downloaded. They seem to be the sources of the the Sequel series, with Anne as a young woman in college and as a teacher at a private school. We'll have to see how soon I get around to them.