The Princess and the Goblin by George MacDonald is one of the most perfect fairytale stories that exist. From the brisk mountain air to the absurd and terrifying goblins to the transcendent and mysterious Grandmother, with Irene's courage matched with faith and Curdie's courage matched with intelligence and humor, it has everything a fairy tale should have and I will never get tired of it.
I have to read The Princess and Curdie to go with it, and I could hardly say I dislike it, but it's a very, very different book. Our hero and heroine have only advanced from primary to secondary school, but the tone of the book has advanced from childhood wonder to midlife crisis. The villains are not comical goblins, but ordinary people being selfish and cold in ordinary ways. And for that, there is no permanent cure. The last story's happily ever after dissolves and never comes back. The tone is so very different that I do want to sit Mr. MacDonald down and ask him what *was* going on when he wrote the second book.
Other Books:
The Brothers Karamazov: I finally finished this. I loved the trial scenes, although I did probably spend an inordinate amount of time wondering whether the rules of evidence really allowed that or whether it was just the novelist's oversimplification. It ends satisfactorily but untidily, but I am left imagining my own ending in which Dmitri and Gruschenka *do* successfully escape to America where, despite Dmitri's current opinion, they settle permanently and Ivan and Katarina follow, along with Ilyosha, and thirty-five years later everyone is trying to have a nice normal American Thanksgiving for the sake of the grandchildren with all this dramatic backstory which keeps coming up awkwardly.
How to Read Nature by Tristan Gooley. Yes, I will just be working through all of this author's books I can get from the library. This is a small one and highly accessible, packed with very simple exercises that can be done without fancy equipment right where you are. The theme is the opposite of snooty, as Gooley focuses on the conflict, sex and death that always arrest human attention and that are going on all around us all the time.
Monkey King: Journey to the West, by WuCheng'En, translated by Julia Lovell. I actually started this when Dame chose it for school last year but I've taken it slowly and just now finished up. This is a classic Chinese fantasy tale, and it is a wild ride. It reminds me of nothing so much as Looney Tunes with the wisdom of fools and so much slapstick. I presume it's been serialized many times. Monkey King is a subversive, obnoxious, and hilarious trickster hero and I remain a little in doubt that he's actually achieved enlightenment by the end. The translation is pretty accessible but as with most old stories modern parents might want to edit a few parts for the younger readers.
Moby Dick by Herman Melville. I *was* listening to this on Spotify and then they put in a 10-hours max per month audiobook rule so now I'm listening on Librivox. Anyway, the dry Yankee wit is a welcome change from all the Russian drama. (My favorite scene is when Ishmael tells the captain that he wants to sign onto a whaling ship to "see the world." The captain gestures to the water over the starboard side as a fair sample of what he will actually be seeing.)
It's certainly long-winded but I find myself enjoying the diversions and rambles and there's a lot of interesting insight into early natural history and classifications. Think of it as a podcast. It goes well with farming or grinding in video games. Every era has its way of wasting colossal amounts of time and everyone wrings their hands over the current ones and praises the prior ones as superior or abuses them as tedious but the reality is, we're large mammals. While movement is essential, we aren't meant to spend all day every day tearing around like insects or hummingbirds. We're meant to "waste" a good bit of our time, it's how we operate.
Also, I'm making great progress towards my 100-hour reader t-shirt for the first time ever.
Echo North by Joanna Ruth Meyer. There are a lot of retellings of East o' the Sun, West o' the Moon, or as I think of it, the Heroine's Journey (aka Cupid and Psyche or Beauty and the Beast), but that doesn't mean there's no need for more. This one felt a bit cliche to me at first but it drew me in.
Stories in the Stars by Susanna Hislop. Dame has been on an astronomy kick lately wanting to learn to identify some more constellations, so I reserved a bunch of books. (This time of the year is the only time we really have a shot at observing the stars on any regular basis; unfortunately it takes a very long time to get dark.) This one was not particularly helpful for identifying but is more a highly varied sampler of the stories behind them. I did enjoy learning about some of the more modern creations or the myths from different cultures.
A Walk through the Heavens by Milton D. Heifetz and Wil Tirion. This one, on the other hand, is perfect for actually finding new constellations, it starts you off at the Big Dipper and gives step by step instructions to each one. We also discovered that some old red tissue paper over a flashlight works fine for preserving night vision. And I have discovered that my eyes are starting to decline, and I cannot see all the stars that Dame can. I should have spent more time learning constellations when I was younger, I suppose. But I can spot Cygnus now, and Vega of the Lyre.
