Wind in the Willows

 Wind in the Willows, someone once said, is not a book that you judge: it is a book that judges you. But it is a kindly judgment, not the imperious magistrate casting you into the gaol, but the friends dragging you back home for your own good. It is a book I feel sorry for people who never got to read, or who cannot appreciate it. And I can understand why some people struggle with it (beyond those who have no enjoyment for anything fantastical): the pacing is erratic, lurching between pastoral lyricism and the crazy adventures of Toad. But so be it. It is not for us to judge. 

Whereas Winnie the Pooh deals with life's small and ordinary feelings and encounters, Wind in the Willows dives right into some of its hardest tangles: the line between supporting friends and enabling them; the tension between the longing for home and longing for adventure; the overwhelming weight of glory and the mercy of our day to day agnosticism. 

The thing that struck me most of all on this reread was that Grahame succeeds in a way almost unique to bring the modern (to him at least) world into his fantasy without losing any of the sense of wonder. It is extremely easy--nearly every modern YA fantasy book does it--to render magic into mere technology. It is not particularly unusual to write fantasy, like Tolkien did, in which technology is the enemy and hostile to magic. But to make a world where Mr. Toad can steal a motor-car--and a train for good measure--and yet every tree and streamlet is laden with mystery and purpose--that is quite uncommon. 

It had been too long since I read it (not since Dame and Dash were second graders, so eight years at least), and I will do my best not to let so long go by again. 

Other Books:
I finished How to Read a Tree, by Tristan Gooley, but I really think I need to own it because it's a book to read a tiny bit of and then go for a lot of long walks and noticing. Not that I get to spend a lot of time noticing since my walks are usually desperately trying to restrain or hopelessly trying to locate the dogs, but I still am spotting some more. Looking forward to trying out more by this author, the library has a bunch. 

I also got back from the library and finally finished The Soul of an Octopus by Sy Montgomery. Last year everyone was reading Incredibly Bright Creatures, including our book group, and while we enjoyed it pretty well (especially for the local setting and for being more cheerful than *most* of the local books we get to read), the best part was definitely the octopus and if you really want to spend some time with octopuses, The Soul of an Octopus might be more what you want.

Our book club's newest selection is In The Heart of the Sea by Nathaniel Philbrick. I am looking forward to hearing everyone's opinions on it--it's the true story on which Moby Dick was based. I think everyone will enjoy it, except perhaps Barb who has some cannibalism-related trauma due to being a child before movie ratings systems came out. Adventure on the high seas and all that. I really want to give Moby Dick another go now (I last read that as an extremely stubborn but largely uncomprehending 10 year old) but I'm still only about a third of the way through the Brothers Karamazov. I definitely want to check out more by this author. 

In children's books that came out since my time, I've been reading a whole slew of Harriet Hamsterbone and Danny Dragonbreath adventures by Ursula Vernon. They're in the gaining fluency stage, somewhere between a graphic novel and a chapter book, and they're hilarious and inventive and in my opinion a significant cut above the better known series in that range. Harriet and her battle quail solve various fractured fairytale crises, while Danny and his small reptilian buddies cope with various more or less mythical monsters. They manage to have great adventures without dead or absentee parents, potty humor, or any excessive degree of family turmoil. I also highly recommend Castle Hangnail. 

The Brothers Karamzov I have moved to audio book--it's way easier to keep the characters straight with an actor doing different voices than it is to remember who is going by which name in what context. Russian literature, I suspect, is rather like watching reality TV or soap operas: one's own life can hardly escape looking better by contrast. It is great and profound and thought provoking and also sometimes I just want Flora from Cold Comfort Farm to show up and convince everyone to stop being so melodramatic. 

I saw a bunch of recommendations to try Louise Penny as a modern mystery writer and I must say the titles and cover art were very compelling. I read A World of Curiosities and found it pretty well done but in the end I really don't like the grittier kind of mystery very much. (Even though, if you think of it, cozy mysteries are far more disturbing--to think that an ordinary person living their ordinary life could have personal knowledge of dozens of murderers who mostly murdered for rather humdrum and ordinary reasons--is far more troubling than to think that the chief detective for a large metropolitan area would need to deal with the occasional serial killer.) But I will probably read a couple more because the titles are so lovely, but not right before bed.

Due to wanting to inspire Dame to keep up on her Latin I started doing Latin on Duolingo, but the course is not very long and I have already gotten to the part that's only review while still being very far from actually reading anything interesting in Latin. So I'm very excited to have purchased Scribblers, Sculptors and Scribes along with Wheelock's Latin, which promises reading real Latin writers from the very beginning, even if we have to start with graffiti and copybook headings.