The Bog of Lost Scholars

The Anne of Green Gables read-through continues, with Anne of the Island and Anne of Windy Poplars. Anne goes to college, and Anne works for three years as a schoolteacher, in both books meeting various odd people, charming various folks, and improving various awkward situtations. They’re enjoyable books, but would probably be a lot better if I’d read them at fourteen. Fortunately Anne does occasionally run into an impossible person to handle, or I’d need insulin by now. I’m almost glad that the next book, Anne’s House of Dreams is going to have a truly sorrowful event.

(Really, they are good books, and I can see why Anne’s so appealing. And true, the treacle quotient isn’t quite as high as in Alcott’s works — then again, Alcott has the advantage that I started reading her young.)

Anyway, as a total change of pace, I read Hollander’s Saga of the Jomsvikings. A nice quick read, with lots of cool honor culture happenings. I need to reread it and take notes on character names, as some of the folks and relationships ran together, but it was quite a nifty little story, especially where some of the Jomsvikings were snarking at their executioners.

It’s been too long since I visited the public library. When I first spawned, I’d figured that as the kid got older, we’d start going to the library regularly; as it turned out, we produced a mildly autistic kid who thinks that books are cool motor toys and very tasty but not that interesting to just look at (reading? oh, that must be another of those language skills — no thanks). And UT’s library has a pretty good fiction selection, plus I can check the books out for a semester, so I’ve been meeting most of my library needs there.

But recently I wanted to read a couple of general-audience non-fiction titles, which UT’s library doesn’t carry but the public library does. (Aside: I love the fact that the public library’s catalog is online. I can find out which branch a book’s at without driving all over town hunting it.) So I’ve knocked a couple more books off my to-be-read list.

Martin Seligman’s Learned Optimism was recommended by a Bujold list member who said the book had been a huge help to him. I indeed found the book very useful, but I’m glad I checked it out rather than buying it. The book starts with an introduction to Seligman’s ideas and research, then gives a test to help you evaluate where you fall on various optimism-pessimism scales (more on that in a minute), then gives more background on Seligman’s ideas and research.

But then, there’s several chapters where Seligman’s basically in full salesman mode. “This big company used my ideas, and their sales force became more effective!” Yawn. I’m already convinced that the guy is onto something; the following chapters are just a turnoff.

Finally, in the last third of the book, Seligman outlines the practical techniques for becoming more optimistic — the very capsule summary is that you have to first recognize when you’re saying negative things to yourself about a situation, and then analyze your thoughts and see if they’re realistic and appropriate, or if you’re actually overreacting. Basically, you’re changing your habits of thought, so it’s by no means a quick instant process.

It’s too early to say whether his techniques are making any difference for me, but that test…. I’ve always felt like an odd combination of pessimist and optimist, and guess what? I am. When faced with bad situations, I’m basically an optimist — “this too shall pass.” Thing is, I’m the same way when faced with good situations — “yeah, and this’ll pass too.” I’m an optimist in troubled times and a pessimist in good times.

Other book: Lauri Ward, Use-What-You-Have Decorating. The author explains ten areas where people often make mistakes in decorating their homes, and gives tips for making your rooms work better using the things you have rather than buying all new furniture. She gives many before/after examples (some of which I looked at and said, “what’s wrong with the ‘before’ picture?”, others of which made sense), and writes with a pleasant and cheerful style.

I enjoyed reading the book, but what is her fixation on pillows with the points up? I swear she mentions that at least fifteen times in this book! I can also see why some of the Amazon.com reviews complained about the photographs. I didn’t mind myself that they were black-and-white photos, but I did find it annoying that you didn’t get to see before & after shots from the same angles.

I haven’t applied her techniques yet, for the simple reason that most of her suggestions were focused on the Traditional Living Room (sofas and chairs, where three or more people hang out and talk). My living room has to first serve the functions of being my needlecraft and sewing area, my writing area, my music and video area; guest seating is very far down the list, and when I last had guests over, we used the dining room table and chairs as our conversational area. (Come to think of it, my parents have never had The Traditional Living Room Setup either — their den is most definitely a TV-watching area first, and their “living room” is really an office area.) But at some point I’ll go back over the living room thinking about focal points, “conversation” areas, and avoiding roller coasters.

I’ve also recently read L. M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables and Anne of Avonlea, traditional childhood books that I didn’t read for the first time until I was pushing 30. I’ve started reading through the whole series; I’ve read a few of the books, but not all. I’ll talk more about them when I’ve made it through the series, but I’ll just note that I read a couple of the books online and decided they were good enough that I wanted my own copies. Score one for online samples!

Opened the mailbox at 6:30 pm, and discovered that a certain box had arrived from amazon.co.uk a couple days earlier than I’d expected.

Finished reading it at 11:45 pm. (Fed self, fed child, took a walk, bathed child, brushed child’s teeth, and put child to bed in between, though many of these were multitasked with reading.)

Yeah, Rowling’s not a stylist, but if I could write a book that was 75% as much a page turner, I would be very very pleased.

Random spoiler notes follow.

I’m very pleased to see Harry finally getting pissed off. I throughly enjoyed the Harry-Snape section. I’m glad to finally have some reason why Harry’s been forced to live that dismal life with the Dursleys, and some acknowledgement from Dumbledore that it is dismal. I’m glad Ron’s getting some recognition. I enjoyed meeting one more Slytherin who isn’t Nastiness Embodied, even if he was just a picture in Dumbledore’s office. I definitely liked finding out that James Potter at 15 wasn’t the ideal person that Harry thought he was, and finding out that Petunia Dursley has a conscience buried deep down in there.

I’m annoyed that we still aren’t seeing any Slytherin students with positive traits. (No, I’m not a Slytherin; my perception and every online quiz I’ve ever taken suggests that I’d sort Ravenclaw. Nonetheless.) And I’m hoping that sometime in Book 6 or Book 7 Harry will have a chance to say to Snape, “Look, my dad treated you like shit, and it was wrong, and I know that doesn’t change anything that I’m saying it, but I’m saying it anyway.”

Luna was fascinating. I want to armchair diagnose her with spell-induced Asperger’s, except that it doesn’t ring quite right for her behavior. Anyway, I want to see her again.

I’m convinced that Ron was sneaking out at night to do some private smooching with one or more gals, but I don’t think this was ever explicitly stated.

Some of my favorite fanfic is clearly Alternate Universe now, like Clio’s Eight Ways from Sunday, where Sirius is a major mover, and if I’m recalling the Black family tapestry correctly, A. J. Hall’s Lust over Pendle, which has a different family origin for Narcissa.

Perhaps it’s partially because I’d already been spoilered for it, but Sirius’s death didn’t move me that much. I’m wondering, though, what’d happen if Harry got that other mirror from Sirius’s, went to the Ministry of Magic, and threw the mirror to the other side of that arch.

Prophecies are ambiguous. Maybe Neville will turn out to be the prophecied one, even if both Voldemort and Dumbledore think Harry is. That’d be interesting.

And much as I love seeing Dumbledore righteously angry, I still cherish the faint hope that he’s going to turn out to be a Bad Guy in the end.

I’ve only read two books by Elizabeth Goudge, The Little White Horse and Linnets and Valerians, but I’d found both these to be quite charming, just barely on the sweet side of the sweet/treacly line. This weekend I bought my own copy of Linnets and reread it. Still sweet. The four Linnet children, Nan, Robert, Timothy, and Betsy, run away from their overbearing grandmother and end up living with their eccentric Uncle Ambrose, who provides them a wonderful home with a few mysteries.

If this book and Little White Horse had been written by a South American, they’d be shelved under Magic Realism. The magic is there, but very light; it’s 95% prosaic English life and 5% weirdness.

It’s interesting that I can point to several things in this book that ought to punch my treacle-buttons — the childrens’ immediate love of Uncle Ambrose, to start with, and even more things as the plot progresses — and yet they don’t. This is true of Little White Horse as well, and I’m not sure why these books work for me. It’s not childhood nostalgia — I read them for the first time in my late twenties. Perhaps it’s just that the characters are such individuals, all with virtues and faults.

One high point of Linnets for me is where Uncle Ambrose presents Nan with her own parlor, and tells her that this room is hers alone and off-limits to all the rest of the household, including himself, because he knows that she needs a retreat where she can go to be quiet. And then he leaves her to herself, and Nan, who as the eldest of four children rarely gets time alone, suddenly discovers that she likes solitude. I know the feeling exactly.

Overall, a good book for when I’m in a sweet mode.

My ex recently got tapes of four episodes of Margery Allingham’s Campion mysteries starring Peter Davidson, which gave me the urge to reread. So I borrowed my favorite, Sweet Danger in which Campion quests for the missing proofs that the tiny country Averna belongs to Britain, matches wits against a rich and powerful villain, and meets the fascinating Amanda Fitton.