Seven Non-fiction Books I have Loved

A while ago I wrote a post about seven books I have loved in reply to a facebook challenge. After I'd published it I realised that I'd only mentioned fictional novels. Somehow I assumed that this was what was required. (...that this was what was.... a line of words in one sentence without a meaning among them, LOL.) In reality, there are many non-fiction books that I have also loved. So here are seven of them.

1. The Essence of Style by Joan DeJean (Free Press, 2005)
The blurb on the front cover says: "How the French invented high fashion, fine food, chic cafes, style, sophistication, and glamour." Basically, Louis XIV realised he wasn't going to win in the world quantity stakes so he shifted the mindset of the French to value lesser amounts of quality instead. It was pure genius and the reason people are willing to pay small fortunes for what are perceived to be 'luxury' items. How he did it is the fascinating story in this book. It makes you understand that so much gold is simply dross and at the same time, it makes you want to be part of that quality over quantity mindset.

2. Notes from a Small Island by Bill Bryson (Black Swan, 1995)
One of Bryson's series of travel books from around the world but this one I found particularly hilarious, recognising so much of the peculiarities he depicts about Britain. One of my favourite observations is that the British are endearingly satisfied with with small pleasures. They are delighted if the sponge cake has currants in it and, when a cup of tea was served at 9 pm in the guest house, he had never seen a group of people get so genuinely excited over a hot beverage. Another observation that I only saw after Bryson had pointed it out is the gender differences at the supermarket express checkout. You only have a small number of items so the men tot up the payment and have it ready to hand over. The women seem surprised by the amount due and only then start searching for their purse in their bag, as if they didn't know that they would have to pay. And don't get me started on the uncoordinated country railways where each train would arrive 20 minutes after the connecting train, on a once a day schedule, had left. There's a lot in this book that perhaps died out with the last century but that just makes it all the more worth reading.

3. The Victorians by A.N. Wilson (Arrow, 2002)
We have a love-hate relationship with the Victorians. On the one hand they personify family values and good behaviour, while on the other hand they conjure up horrific scenes of the work houses, squalor, quack surgery, Oliver Twist type orphans living on the streets and cruel governesses like Miss Minchin in A Little Princess. It was the age of the British Empire - once a great source of pride and now never mentioned because of the shame of colonisation. It was the era in which the biggest changes in in lifestyle occurred due to the agricultural and industrial revolutions. It was when Britain stopped being a nation of farmers and became a nation of shopkeepers. And factory workers. It was the beginning of the end of the aristocrat-servant relationship. So much history and change within one century.

4. The Pity of It All by Amos Elon (Picador, 2002)
Disclaimer: I used to do pilates with Amos Elon's wife but this in no way influenced my opinion of this book. ;~) Joking aside and with all the furore about the rise of anti-semitism in Europe, this book is extremely topical. The book shows how "a persecuted clan of cattle dealers and wandering peddlers was transformed into a stunningly successful community of writers, philosophers, scientists, tycoons and activists." The Jews of Germany were more German than the Germans. They were more patriotic and influential than any other minority. And then this small minority came to be seen as a "deadly threat to German national integrity." The pity of it all is that they were never accepted even in their most influential heyday. And, as we know, they never saw it coming until it was too late.

5. Status Anxiety by Alain de Botton (Pantheon 2004)
This is a group entry with The Architecture of Happiness and The Philosophy of Travel (not pictured). Status Anxiety explains what makes us doubt ourselves and our lives. De Botton observes that you are not likely to be jealous of, for examples, Kate Middleton or Meryl Streep because their worlds are far removed from our own. However, the girl you sat next to in primary school and who now owns a property empire can take up not a small amount of envious obsessing. The reason is, of course, it could have been you. She came from the same place and similar opportunities but she did it while you're still wondering if you can afford a week in a caravan next summer.

The architecture book is about the homes that make us happy and the things we put in them. "It prompts us to think about how we live and how we might change things."

Finally, the problem with travel as a form of escape, is that we take ourselves with us. And that glossy brochure showing palm trees on a white sandy beach facing an azure sea, doesn't show the building site behind the cameraman, the beggars who accost you every time you leave your hotel, the humid and oppressive heat, the smell of the leaky sewer, and the shear inconvenient shleppiness of getting there in the first place. So there you have it, a taste of three books to make you love your life.

6. Singled Out, How Two Million Women Survived Without Men After the First World War by Virginia Nicholson (Viking 2007) 

Not Pictured as I gave it to my cousin.

The Blurb says it all. "After the First World War a generation of women who believed marriage to be their birthright discovered that there were simply not enough men left to go round. Tracing their fates, Nicholson shows how the single woman of the inter-war years had to depend on herself and, in doing so, helped change society." I remember loads of spinster teachers from my childhood who all lived with lady friends. Many of these women lost their fiances in WWII or perhaps there were also just too few men to go round in 1945. And maybe this book is even  more relevant today with the rising number of divorced, never-married and childless women.

7. Outliers: The story of Success by Malcom Gladwell (Little, Brown & Co, 2008) 

Not pictured as I gave it to my nephew.

A bit like Freakonomics, this book takes instances of outstanding success and shows how they are as much a mixture of historical background, social, cultural and economic factors, as they are due to individuals with the courage to go for it. For example, Mayor Guliani who came to office in 1994, claims that he vastly reduced crime in NYC. Whist the crime rate did drop dramatically, Gladwell couples this with legalised abortion in the early 1960s. By the time Guliani was in charge of law and order, for the first time in history there were thousands of unwanted young men who had not been born. In another example, the law in Eastern Imperial Russia that forbade Jews from owning land, forced them to become peddlers and tailors. This gave them a economic advantage over the Italian and Irish immigrants arriving in New York and Boston from the mid 1800s, who had largely been farmers. And if you think western airlines are safer than East Asian airlines, it's partly because the international language of aviation is English, but also because of cultures where people defer to their betters in silence and are always polite - we're very low on fuel but we'll wait until you give us permission to land. Oy vey!

You'll notice that the photo includes A Little History of the World by E.H. Gombrich (Originally published in German, 1936) but I've not actually read it yet so I decided that it would be cheating to write about it. It does appeal to me though and I do fully intend to read it asap. 

I loved all these books and I'm not even going to give them away as I want to read them all again. 

The Bible - A Chapter A Day

Whilst in London for Passover, I bought myself a Bible. This is what I wrote about it here.

The Bible
Of course I know the stories from the Old Testament and some others that I've heard second-hand through teachers and discussions around the dinner table. But I've never actually read the Bible - the whole thing. Thirty years ago Rabbi Donniel Hartman told a group of us that he realized this too, one year, and he read the whole thing from cover to cover.

I decided to do the same - a chapter each week corresponding to the portion we read in the synagogue each week. I started with the beginning of Genesis every year for about 10 years and never got further than Joseph going down to Egypt. Part of the problem was my Bible which had both Hebrew and English in the tiniest print and the most old fashioned language.

So I bought a Bible. With big print. And if I'm already buying the Old Testament, I should really read the NT as well. My mother and I both said how we regretted skipping Scripture lessons at school just because we had a 'Jewish' pass. (There's a lot I regret about my education but that's a whole other discussion.)

Well I'd not got round to starting yet when I heard about the 929 project. This is the second time they're doing this. Here's some background to the first time around. Basically, in November 2014 they started an online project to read all 929 chapters of the Bible, Prophets and Writings, from Genesis to the end of Chronicles 11. So that's pretty much everything except the New Testament - as it's a Jewish initiative. 

If you read a chapter a day for five days a week, not counting holy days and festivals, and have the weekends to catch up if that's more your style, the whole thing takes almost three years. They had over quarter of a million people sign up to the website and commit to reading along. This was then, I didn't know about it, and anyway it was all in Hebrew. 

However, two weeks ago they started again and this time there is also an English website. If you follow the link you can see that today we are on Genesis Chapter 12 - where god tells Abraham to leave his family and go to an as yet unknown destination. (Is this the Bible's idea of suspense?).  The English website, like the Hebrew one, has articles, commentaries and maps to help you if you really want to study as you go along. A friend of mine has set up a small facebook group of friends where we share thoughts. There is probably also an official facebook group but I've not looked for it. It's not too late to join in and you don't have to be Jewish. 

So this time I'm really reading the whole Bible. This time they are scheduled to finish on 2/2/22 or 22/2/22 - one of those memorable (ha!) dates. I'm so holy that I have two Bibles on the go. The bigger book is the whole thing including the NT in bigger print and a slightly more modern translation. The smaller, but thicker, book is only the OT parts but with the original Hebrew on the facing pages. Sometimes if something is ambiguous, I read the Hebrew to try to get to the bottom of it.  Of course I'll have to tackle the NT on my own (and only in English as I don't read Ancient Greek) but I don't have to think about that until 2022!

Seven Books I Have Loved

Mrs Fytton and Skallagrigg are missing. 

A friend tagged me on a facebook challenge to share one book a day that I have loved. I usually pass on these things but as I wanted to do a blog post about some great books anyway, I'm doing it here. And all in one day. Thanks Laura.

1. Mrs Fytton's Country Life by Mavis Cheek. (St Martin's Press, 2000)
I mentioned this book a few posts ago because although it's probably my favourite book, I gave it away after re-reading it first. I passed it on to a colleague who is retiring and I'm sure she'll love it. You can read what I wrote about Mrs Fytton here.

2. Behind the Scenes at the Museum by Kate Atkinson. (Doubleday, 1995)
Another favourite because I never saw it coming. The ending I mean. And that the sisters grow up in 1960s England, with many references to the food, tv, and culture that I remember from my childhood.

Ruby, the youngest of three sisters, believes that she is the least important of the three. When asked who's there she always replies, "it's only Ruby." She tells her story of growing up in a working class family in York in alternate chapters. The other chapters tell us about six generations of the family through which we see a pattern of secrets, misery and lies. It's only when Ruby grows up that she's able to break the pattern and discover the missing pieces of her own life.

3. Chocolat by Joanne Harris. (Doubleday, 1999)
How could I not love Chocolat. And I don't even like chocolate that much. I think I fell in love with that single mother, being one myself and quite similar to Vianne Rocher. I also loved the two sequels, The Lollipop Shoes and Peaches for Monsieur le Cure.

Warning: Do not just watch the film and think you know the book. The book is far richer than the film. Far more intrigue and the whole thing about the power of the Church is missing from the film. Seriously, you need to read the book.

4. Skallagrigg by William Horwood. (Viking Press, 1987)
There is whole canon of stories about the Skallagrigg that is shared by physically disabled people when they meet in schools, in care facilities, and in hospitals. They pass on the secret stories between themselves. No one knows how the stories started. Who was the Skallagrigg? How did he become the superhero, champion, and guardian angel of the physically disabled community. Because they are a community who worship the Skallagrigg like a God.

One day a  teenage girl with cerebral palsy decides to search for the Skallagrigg. She narrates her incredible journey, collecting the stories and tracing them back in time until she finds the Skallagrig himself. This is a life changing book, and I don't say that lightly.

I gave my copy to a friend who gifted me her very favourite book - Like Water for Chocolate. Fifteen minutes later and after I'd given her Skallagrigg, she came and asked for her book back as she couldn't bear to part with it. I didn't have the courage to say that I actually wanted my book back too. I thought it would be too rude.

5. Stones from the River by Ursula Hegi. (Poseidon Press, 1994)
A girl growing up in a small village in Nazi Germany. The girl is not ordinary (I won't spoil it) and you only understand how she is different about half way through the book. She uses her differences and her special powers to deal with being different, rejection, the Nazis, and life itself. This book is full of insights into human nature and the secrets we all share.

6. Address Unknown by Kathrine Kressman Taylor (Souvenir Press, 1995)
A very short book (only 54 pages) that was originally published in 1938 to show people how the Nazis were operating in Germany. It's written in the form of a series of correspondence between two business partners, one of whom is Jewish and has escaped to the US. He writes asking his erstwhile partner and friend to help his sister who was still in Germany. The German partner declines to help the young woman so her brother skillfully enacts his revenge by missive. A brilliantly crafted and frightening masterpiece.

7. A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles (Viking, 2016)
Count Alexander Rostov is tried by the Bolsheviks in 1922 and sentenced to life imprisonment in the grand Metropol Hotel in Moscow. The imprisonment lasts an incredible 32 years. On the other hand, if you're going to be imprisoned there are worse places. Instead of going stir-crazy, although he is not confined to his room, he rises to the occasion and creates a whole world for himself in the hotel.

I'm still reading this one. I bought it in London over Pesach (Passover) on the recommendation of a friend. Only 100 pages in I mentioned it to my cousin who raved about it. "He totally reinvents himself, it's amazing!" I'm all for reinvention and half way through the book as I write, I can see it happening. I'm finding it hard to restrict myself to one chapter a night.

Now I'm going to publish this post and then spend the next week remembering a whole load of other books that I loved and should have included. But the challenge was seven books only so another book another post.

Minimalism Phase 2 - Treasured Books

Getting rid of books is a basic part of minimalism and firmly planted in phase 1. I got rid of loads of books. However, getting rid of books is not the same as letting go of treasured books. Treasured books are books you once loved and maybe still do. You can't let them go the first time round but, as I've said before, the more you purge the easier it gets and the less you want to keep. Here are some books I let go of recently. It feels good.

In the photo above are seven books from the cookery and coffee table collections. I still have four other big illustrated vegetarian cookery books so the one in the photo could go - it's the least interesting. Good Cooking, from about 1982 is full of meat and seafood dishes that aren't relevant to me. I don't bake and if I do want to bake in the future (and the internet is down) I have a small cake book that I'm keeping. The Book of New Israeli Food doesn't say anything I don't know already. I'm never going to make sweets and chocolates as I don't even like chocolate and sweets are just sugar. I never treasured the herb book but I found it among the other cookery books so it's going.

I don't know why I held on to the illustrated biography of Elizabeth Taylor. I did read it cover to cover once and I enjoyed it but I wouldn't say that she is one of my idols or life mentors.

That brings The 1000 Clutters Challenge to 952 clutters decluttered and only 48 to go.

Two other books I let go recently but have already counted, are:

Mrs Fytton's Country Life by Mavis Cheek, St Martin's Press, 2000. I loved this book. Angela Fytton gets dumped by her husband of 25 years who goes off to marry his young mistress. He cleverly gives Angela the family home in lieu of any other payments because his teenage children can continue to live there while he and his pregnant new wife start over. But Angela decides she wants to go and live in the country and start over herself. So she sells the family home in London and buys a cottage in a village in Somerset. Obviously she has room for the children to join her. Obviously they don't want to and insist on moving in with their father. Obviously his new wife cannot object and everything in the love nest begins to fall apart.

Meanwhile Angela is embracing all things country. Until she finds out that the country also has its problems and deceptions. Hilarious characters like the baker who gets his bread from the dumpsters behind Tesco. He warms it in his Aga and delivers it to the villagers in a large wicker basket. "Of course it goes stale quickly - it's real fresh bread, no preservatives see." His wife spins and dyes wool which she knits into jumpers. Except that the wool is actually unraveled from jumpers bought in local jumble sales. Another family that moved to the country for more quality family time end up with an isolated and depressed wife, an absent husband because he found a convenient pied-a-terre in London, and sending their children to boarding school so that they don't have to mix with the local children.

I re-read this book. I loved it all over again but I don't need to read it a third time. So I gave it to a colleague who is retiring and I think she will love it too.

The Family at Red Roofs by Enid Blyton. This was a childhood favourite of mine and I kept it all these years. I read it to DD a few months ago. She really got into it. When the snobby friend was obnoxious DD sprang up in bed, wagged her finger at the book and scolded, "that's not how you treat your friends young lady!" On the other hand she asked why the girls aren't allowed to do anything and the boy was in charge of paying the bills even though he's younger. An interesting thing is that it was first published in 1945 but there is no mention of the war, or of there having been a war if it was published after September 1945. As I said, it was a childhood favourite of mine but it has somehow lost some of its magic. It won't be a childhood favourite of DD's even though she did enjoy it. The story has been republished many times, the last time being 2013, so DD could find the book again if she wants to (she won't want to). My copy was just about falling apart so out it went.

By the Way. As I was going through the cookery books I remembered A Proper Tea by Joanna Isles. I loved this book so much that I blogged about it here. I remember that a friend wanted to make a proper tea party for her birthday so I lent her the book. Now I can't remember who the friend was. Dear friend, if you read this post can I have my book back please.

And yet, if I don't get my proper tea book back, so be it. Minimalism does that to you, It's just things.

UPDATE: I remembered the next morning and my friend who has the book told me in the afternoon. All is good. 

Sophie, Wigel, and Fiet Primowees - Righteous Among the Nations

A week ago on Wednesday it was Holocaust Memorial Day in Israel. I didn't write anything this year. We'd just returned from London, I've written about it in past years, I don't know why I didn't mention it last week. However, today, I have the chance to write about a meeting at school with Fiet Primowees whose parents are Righteous Among the Nations.

Last year the Third Grade in my school went to see a play called Hanneke and Fiet, based on the children's book of the same name by Ran Cohen-Harounoff. It's about two little Dutch girls during WW2. Today the real Fiet came to our school. She's 80 and she came to tell the now Fourth Grade her story.

One day in 1942, when she was six years old, Fiet, an only child, came home to find a little girl at home. Her mother, Sophie Primowees, told her that the child, Hanna, was staying for one night on her way to another home. Hanna had been passed from family to family as the danger involved in hiding her was too great for many families to risk. Hanna stayed with the Primowees family for three years.

Fiet didn't know that Hanna was Jewish but she did know that it was a big secret and no one must know that she suddenly had a little sister. She did tell one school friend that she had a new sister but she wasn't a baby, she was already three years old. The friend told her that this was very strange - new little sisters don't come so old. But the friend also understood, somehow, that this was something never to be spoken about. For three years Fiet never had a school friend come over to play. They had no visitors to the house and they could not accept any invitation themselves.

Fiet told us that her family were all blond and Hanna was dark. They looked nothing like each other. There was no way they could have passed Hanna off as her real sister.

Fiet is in the middle with her grandchildren seated on the left.
Right of Fiet is her daughter and next to her, the Dutch translator. 

On one occasion Hanna was very ill. A serious illness that she could have died from. They couldn't take her to the hospital and they had to try to find a doctor they could trust to come to the house. To make matters more complicated, there were Nazi sympathizers living opposite them, who were on the lookout for any strange behaviours.

Once they went to visit Fiet's grandmother. Hanneke could go outside but her grandmother was so afraid that she told them children weren't allowed to speak in the streets in her neighbourhood. One day there was another child in the street with a bicycle. An older woman came over and asked the the child if Hanna could have a ride on his bike. Fiet's grandmother was very scared but the older woman turned out to be Hanna's real grandmother who was in hiding nearby. She had recognized Hanna but Hanna didn't know who she was.

Fiet's father, Wigel (Wim), was arrested and sent to a war camp. Before he left he told her mother to keep both the girls safe and to keep them together. For Fiet, Hanneke was  gift. They loved each other. They were sisters. And then one day, three years later, there came a knock on the door. The war was over. Hanna's parents had come to collect her.

Hanna didn't want to go with them. She didn't remember them at all, even though Sophie Primowees kept telling her that her real parents would come for her after the war. Sophie went with Hanna to stay with her real parents for a few days. Then they both came back. Then they went again. And his went on for a few visits until eventually Hanna had to go to live permanently with her parents.

The two families kept in touch and visited often. When she left school Hanna went to volunteer on a kibbutz in Israel where she met her future husband and stayed, living in Israel and bringing up her own family here.

In 1981, Sophie and Wigel Primowees were honoured by Yad Vashem (the Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem) as Righteous Among the Nations. There was a ceremony and a tree was planted in their names.

On this visit Fiet had brought her daughter, son-in-law, and two grandchildren to Israel to see the tree. She was going to speak at Yad Vashem. And of course they were visiting her beloved sister, Hanneke.

Our children were allowed to ask questions and among the usual questions (Did you and Hanna ever fight? - No. How did you feel when you suddenly had to share your parents? -  I loved Hanna from the beginning, she was like a gift for me.) there were some quite profound questions too.

How did you have the courage to hide a Jewish child? - We didn't feel like heroes, we don't feel like heroes. It is just a part of our family story. We did what we had to do. We did what was right.

How did you feel when the State of Israel honoured you? - We didn't ask to be thanked but it was a great honour. And it is a wonderful legacy from my parents Sophie and Wigel, to their grandchildren and great-grandchildren who never met them.

Stranger by Keren David

Here is the first review from Midlife Singlemum Book Week. I've been waiting for this book for a few years. Ever since Keren, whom I follow on social media, mentioned that she was writing an historical novel about family intrigues, secrets from the past, and events that come back to haunt you. Strangers was finally published on April 5th and my copy arrived the same day from Amazon Prime.

So here's the thing. A hundred years ago in Canada a young girl, Emmy, finds a wild boy in the forest. From then on nothing about the town of Astor, and the families in it, is as straightforward as it seems. In more recent times Emmy's great-granddaughter, Megan, returns home to Astor and unravels all the secrets surrounding the townsfolk.

There are lots of interesting angles to consider when reading this book. One that struck me is that Megan is nursing her own secret, revealed to the reader right at the beginning, that she had a recent abortion. Just left school and abandoned by her boyfriend, it seemed like the most sensible option. She doesn't dare tell anyone in Astor where her great-great-grandparents were founding members of the town. A town full of her extended family and where the only minor scandal she's aware of is that her own parents are getting divorced.

Can you guess where I'm going with this? Oh my goodness! This town is awash with guilt, cover-ups and lies. Only they don't know it because in those days it was easier to keep things hidden. People were arriving from the Old World with no papers to prove or disprove anything. A neighbouring Province was like a remote and inaccessible, foreign country to most people. A person could seemingly appear out of nowhere and others could disappear and not be discovered for 90 years. It wasn't so much a more innocent time as a more secretive time. Believe me, 'Victorian Values' just means no one knew and they got away with it.

I think I've said enough except to recommend that you buy this book for yourselves and for your young adults. As always with Keren David, plenty of intrigue, twists, pleasure and loads to think about.

Follow the links here to read my other reviews of David's YA novels.

Book Week - R2BC

What could be a better reason 2B cheerful than Book Week? It's not an official Book Week like Israel's National Book Week, or Jewish Book Week in the UK, or the Hay Festival (which I would love to go to one day).  It's a private Midlife Singlemum Book Week because I always return from London with books.

English books are very expensive here. In London Amazon Prime really does deliver the next day and we also like to visit a big Waterstones (preferably Hatchards in Piccadilly as it looks and feels like something out of Harry Potter).

In the photo above are the books we came home with. I'm not going to review them today - I've only read two of them so far anyway. Today I'll just tell you why we came home with these particular books. And in no particular order.

1. The Bible
Of course I know the stories from the Old Testament and some others that I've heard second-hand through teachers and discussions around the dinner table. But I've never actually read the Bible - the whole thing. Thirty years ago Rabbi Donniel Hartman told a group of us that he realized this too, one year, and he read the whole thing from cover to cover.

I decided to do the same - a chapter each week corresponding to the portion we read in the synagogue each week. I started with the beginning of Genesis every year for about 10 years and never got further than Joseph going down to Egypt. Part of the problem was my Bible which had both Hebrew and English in the tiniest print and the most old fashioned language.

So I bought a Bible. With big print. And if I'm already buying the Old Testament, I should really read the NT as well. My mother and I both said how we regretted skipping Scripture lessons at school just because we had a 'Jewish' pass. (There's a lot I regret about my education but that's a whole other discussion.)

2. The Obesity Code by Dr. Jason Fung
I've been watching Jason Fung on You Tube and I joined a facebook group of his followers. You can listen to 10 hours of podcasts which read aloud the whole book but I prefer to read it myself if I'm going to 'read' the whole book. Despite hours of Fung interviews and lectures - you need to read the whole book to really understand why he has cracked the obesity code. I did read this book last week. Folks, throw away your calorie counters, it's not about Paleo versus Vegan, and it's not about low or high fat/carbs/protein. If you want to change your life and get healthy - buy this book.

3 & 4. The Liar's Handbook and Stranger, both by Keren David
I've read everything by Keren David - one of my favourite YA authors. Here is my review about a previous book of hers. I was missing these two books so I ordered them. I've read Strangers - review to follow but .... fabulous!

5 & 6. How to Stop Time by Matt Haig and Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman
There was a sale of two books for £5 so I chose two books. Obviously.

7 & 8. Mary Poppins by P.L.Travers and House of Secrets by Chris Columbus and Ned Vizzini
We went into Waterstones and I remembered that I wanted to read the original Mary Poppins. Apparently the original book is far more sinister than the musical lets on. Having seen the film Saving Mr Banks, I'm intrigued. And while we were there, DD chose The House of Secrets. I told her that it looked very scary and she probably wouldn't like it as she wouldn't let me read past the first page of The Wolves of Willoughby Chase for that reason. But she really really wanted it and when your nine year old daughter really really wants a book, well obviously you have to buy it for her.

9. Tom's Midnight Garden by Philippa Pearce
Grandma gave this to DD for her Afikomen present at the Seder. (The kids hide a vital piece of matzah without which you cannot finish the seder, and refuse to say where it is until they are promised a present. Or the parents hide it and the kids find it and withhold it, depending on your custom. We do it both ways - one for each of the two nights.)

10. A gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles
A friend recommended this book to me and I was intrigued so I bought it.

11. Five go off in a Caravan by Enid Blyton
We didn't buy this one, it's part of the complete boxed set that DD got for Chanukah. We're bringing them home a few at a time but I particularly wanted this one as I remember something that I want to check - to see if they changed it. I'll let you know.

Eleven reasons 2B cheerful and reviews to follow. I'm linking up with R2BC which is back with Becky at Lakes Single Mum for the month of April.

Orphan Trains And Potatoes

You can learn a great deal by reading children's books. Sometimes a short, light read ticks all the boxes regarding time and effort and 'bam!' you know a whole topic you previously had no idea about.

I recently borrowed these two books from the school library. The Orphan Trains by Annette R. Fry (1994, New Discovery Books, NY) and The Amazing Potato by Milton Meltzer (1992, HarperCollins, NY).

From the 1850s thousands of immigrants a week were arriving in New York City and Boston. Most of them from Ireland and Germany.

The Irish were initially escaping the results of the Potato Famine. Ireland almost solely relied on potato crops for food so a devastating blight in the 1840s led to mass starvation and emigration, mostly to America. This wave of emigration continued well after the end of the famine and into the 20th century.

The ships from Germany were carrying Europeans from all over Europe but especially Jews escaping persecution in Russia and Poland, and from the 1880s, specifically the pogroms. Later they were desperate to get out of Germany and all of mainland Europe. The Jewish emigration continued until after WW2.

Conditions in the city were terrible. Many families sharing apartments in already crowded tenements with no bathrooms, only a few toilets for the whole building, and shared cooking facilities. So many unskilled (for the city where farmers were not needed) people looking for jobs, rent to pay and food to buy, so much disease from overcrowding in unsanitary conditions, and no family planning. All this led to hundreds of children abandoned, living in the streets, or left in orphanages that were bursting at the seams. Some of them were orphans but many were from families who could no longer cope with another mouth to feed, single parents who had to work to survive, or children who ran away from alcoholic and abusive parents drowning in their own misery.

In 1852 the Reverend Charles Loring Brace saw the need to save the children if they were to have any chance of a good life. He believed that families were the answer, not institutions. The result was the Children's Aid Society of New York, founded in 1853. The society's innovative solution was to send children westward into the American interior where families could adopt them. Families who needed boys to help on the homesteads and girls to help in the house. And couples who just wanted a child, or another child.

Of course the book I read was written for children so it skipped over the fact that many of the children were treated as slaves and abused in their new homes. And many of them resented the fact that they had been sent far away when they already had families in New York. Many of them ran away from their new homes and did not end up as the upright adults they were 'supposed' to have been.

Fry relates the success stories of children loved and educated. Children who grew up to be lawyers, doctors, clergymen, mayors and politicians. They inherited property, they became parents and grandparent across America.

By the 1920s the Western States had big cities of their own with their own poverty and orphans to care for. They didn't want more children dumped on them from the East. Homesteading was no longer the way to make it rich and most of the land had already been claimed. People were more likely to be living in towns and cities where extra children weren't needed so much.

The last orphan train left New York in 1929. Over 200,000 children had been relocated on orphan trains and baby trains over 76 years. And yet, until the 1970s, hardly anyone had heard of this movement. People were secretive, ashamed of their lowly past or frightened of being stigmatized perhaps. Many of the Baby Train children were never even told that they had been adopted.

Some rough mental arithmetic suggests that by 1976, when everything changed, there were over a million Americans whose parents or grandparents were orphan train children and most of them knew nothing about it.

What happened in 1976? I found this fascinating as I remember the event well. In 1976 we all watched Roots on television. Alex Haley traced his family back 10 generations to a black tribesman, Kunta Kinte, who was kidnapped in West Africa and sold as a slave in America. Suddenly one's ancestry was something to be proud of, no matter how lowly. It was the beginning of popular interest in genealogy.

The last orphans now in their 50s to 80s started trying to find out who they really were. If they had blood relatives. Were they Irish or Jewish? And their children suddenly found out that their grandparents were their adoptive grandparents. The story was out.

The Amazing Potato wasn't so sensational except for the tragic chapters about the Potato Famine. It was interesting to make the connection between the two books. All history is connected after all.

One fact I loved in the potato book is that the potato was brought to Europe by the Spanish conquistadors who found people eating potatoes in Peru. They were after gold which they stole in great quantities. The potatoes were just what to eat on the journey home. The potato industry was worth $100 billion a year in 1992. (Almost 30 years later this figure has probably doubled or even tripled.) LOL, they should have left some of the gold and invested in more potatoes.

Tuesday Tidbits #48 - Writing The Great Novel

I am thrilled to announce that The Great Novel is being written in my house at long last.

But not by me.

DD decided that she can write just as well as E. Nesbit so why not do it. So far she's completed about 4 pages of handwritten A4 paper.

Last night she asked: "Have you got a typewriter?"
Me: What?
DD: A typewriter. I need one for writing my book.
Me: People don't use typewriters anymore. They write on the computer.
DD: Really?

Her story is a mystery. There's no plot yet as she's making it up as she goes along.
DD: I'm exploring this world myself even though I'm creating it.

It starts with a girl who wakes up one Sunday morning and her mother and father are gone. She has no idea where they are but she knows there's school that day.
Me: There is school or there isn't school?
DD: There IS! I told you it's a Sunday! (Silly me. People with Israeli children will appreciate this.)

She asked me to write down Elizabeth, Lizzy (I also wrote Lizzie because you can choose either), and Lizard.
DD: Lizzy is short for Elizabeth right? And a mean girl who doesn't like her calls her Lizard. Get it?

So she wrote: Hi, my name is Elizabeth but Lizzy for short. You can also spell it Lizzie you know but I spell it Lizzy.

Of course she has been published before. 

There's a great beginning in which Lizzy knows she has to go to school but she doesn't know which school she's going to or how to get there.
DD: I'm making her 12 because that's when you go to a new school and you're old enough to go by yourself. Shall I tell you how she finds out where her school is?
Me: Mmm yes please.
DD: She finds her school uniform and goes out. Then she sees two girls with the same uniform. The same uuuuniform, get it?
Me: I get it.
DD: Clever eh? So she follows them and gets on the right bus.
Me: Brilliant.
DD: I'm thinking of making it a boarding school. I think that's more fun. This is the first day back after the summer. And then she makes friends with other girls who help her solve the mystery of where her parents are.

Later.
DD: I changed it a bit. Before she went out she ate breakfast. I think that's a bit more realistic than just going straight out, don't you?

I find it interesting that the girl obviously has two parents when DD doesn't. And, btw, we don't do breakfast in our house - neither of us.

Cleansing The Soul - R2BC

Here are my Reasons 2B Cheerful for this week. As usual I'm joining the R2BC linky with Michelle on Mummy from the Heart.

The moon over Jerusalem one night in August

1
Cleansing the soul
It's Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement) tomorrow evening and all day Saturday. Lots of praying and self-reflecting, and general cleansing of the soul for the coming year. I love it that the day after Yom Kippur is Sunday 1st October - what a great date for starting everything afresh.

2
Wadi Qilt again
DD  has been invited to go to Wadi Qilt again tomorrow as there is no school. I didn't have to accept for her this time as she loved it last week and has been asking when she can go back. Once again she gets a fun day out and I get time to get things done.

3
Shutting Down
My summer course is finally finally coming to an end and we are being strict this year - after a few extension periods of course. I have warned the students that I will be shutting down the website for this course on Tuesday. I did it for last year's Year Course at the end of August (official final date was June 30th). So for the first time in seven years I will only be grading papers for one course when the new semester starts on October 15th.

4
Book Vs Film
We finished reading The Railway Children. DD read the last few pages to me as I couldn't see the page through my tears. We then had a grand viewing of the film on dvd. I have always loved that film since seeing it as a child and I've watched it a million times since - but not for a few years and not after reading the book. We were both a bit disappointed. As usual, the book had far more in it than did the film.

Having said that, the films do have added value in that it's wonderful to see the magnificent locomotives, the scenery, the costumes, and the magic, in the case of Harry Potter. So we forgive the films and enjoy them anyway.

Late Night Reader

We're reading The Railway Children. I'm reading it to DD, a chapter a night. We usually both end up in tears over it - it's that sort of book. Or maybe we're that sort of people. Whatever, we're loving it.

I've borrowed the DVD of the film but I won't let DD watch it until we've finished the book. This is the rule for good books. I read the whole of Harry Potter to her - all seven books - before I'd allow her to see the films. It took from June till October last year.

This week I borrowed the DVD of Free Willy. When I told DD I had it she asked, "is there a book of Free Willy?"
"No."
"Phew!"

Anyway back to The Railway Children. We read the chapter about Perk's Pride and as I put the book down I mentioned that the next chapter is, 'The Big Secret,' which we will have tomorrow night. DD begged me to read just one page of it for a taster. So obviously I couldn't stop after one page and she got the whole chapter.

We learned what the big secret was but only Bobbie had found out. DD was desperate to know if she told the others. It was now 10.30 on a school night and I was definitely not reading any more or discussing it any more tonight, despite DD's best efforts to draw me in. I left her to make herself comfortable and turn off the light.

After I'd made coffee and pottered about a bit myself, I looked in on her to see if she was asleep. The light was still on and I marched in to tell her to it was time for lights out and no more messing about. I found her reading the next chapter of The Railway Children. "I'm on the sixth line!" she announced proudly.

I've been waiting for her to pick up a book, a proper book that is, and read of her own volition ever since I realized she could. I wrote a post recently about her being bored into reading but until now it has been easy chapter books of The Magic Tree House ilk. I quietly left the room with her still reading.

"I read a whole page!" she cried from the bedroom a few minutes later. And later still, "two pages!" The clock 'struck' 11 and DD called out, "I don't believe it! I'm at the end of the fourth page! I love reading now. It's getting easier!"

There are some things, no matter how often you tell them, they have to figure it out by themselves.

Finally I heard, "What?! I have another 13 pages of this chapter!" I suggested, "perhaps leave it for now and continue tomorrow?" I went in to see if she was heeding my suggestion but she was already asleep with the bookmark neatly placed five pages into the chapter.

I wasn't going to blog today as I didn't really have anything to write about. :~)

The Eagle Of The Ninth

In English Literature for each term of each year in secondary school, we had to read and study one novel, one play, and a set of poems.

Some of the literature was great - not like lessons at all. Reading The Chrysalids started a life long (metaphorical) love affair with science fiction in general and with John Wyndham in particular. I never fell in love with Shakespeare but I was pleasantly surprised to find that it's not hard to understand. (Only in adulthood did I come to understand the genius of Shakespeare.) I unexpectedly enjoyed Jude The Obscure by Thomas Hardy. Less so The Mill on the Floss but I read it nevertheless. (George Eliot - I had to google it just now as I'd forgotten). I will always remember The Admirable Chrichton (though I never made the connection with Peter Pan at the time). And I was very relieved to be in the class doing To Kill A Mockingbird for O'level rather than Far From the Madding Crowd.

We read Jane Eyre and I'd forgotten the whole of her life before going to be the governess at Mr Rochester's place. It was only when watching a tv drama years later that I realized there was so much more to the book.

I thought The Importance of Being Ernest a bit silly and I refused to read The Trumpet Major - I don't remember who it was by and I don't care. A soon as I found out that our end of term exam was on the play not the novel I stopped even pretending I was reading it. (I couldn't resist googling it and what do you know? Thomas Hardy again! I'm surprised.)

The very first novel we were given to read in the Lower Fourth (Year 7) was The Eagle of the Ninth by Rosemary Sutcliff. It was the sort of novel I would never have chosen to read in a million years. It was, in my opinion, a boys' book. It was about the Romans in Britain and one particular Roman on a quest to the Highlands of Scotland to find the Eagle mascot/banner of the Ninth Legion that had mysteriously disappeared. Why they had chosen it in a girls' school was beyond me.

The first week's homework was to read the first three chapters. It was the weekend and I was finding it heavy going. We had English Lit. on Monday and I was still new enough and young enough in my school career to know think that it had to be done. I remember going across the road to play with my neighbour, Naomi, and my mother told me to take the book with me. At some point, Naomi went to watch something on television with her parents and I sat at their kitchen table and forced myself to read.

A miraculous thing happened during the course of that book. I got into it. By the middle I suddenly wanted to know how it ended. And the language wasn't too heavy or complicated. It was actually a pleasant read.

All this was in 1974. Jump forward 20 years and I came across a copy of the book in a clearance sale at The British Council Library in Jerusalem. I bought it because I remembered that I'd enjoyed it. I thought it would be fun to read it again, especially as I'd forgotten the ending, and most of the beginning and the middle. That was in 1994. Can you see where I'm going with this? It's now 2017 - 23 years later and I'd still not reread The Eagle of the Ninth.

However, I'd not removed it from my bookcase even after a number of book culls - some of them quite ruthless. So there was some commitment there in theory if not in practice.

Reader, this summer I reread it. It did not disappoint. I understand now why it was considered an educational novel for 11/12 year old girls in an all girls school with a ethos of academic and career achievement. Now I will pass the book on. I won't be needing to reread it again.

Bored Into Reading

Or just bore them into it

I think I've cracked the magic ingredient to fluent reading.

I did my MA dissertation on what makes a child an avid reader and my research seemed to support the current thinking of the day in the year 2000. You need to read to your child when s/he is young, have plenty of interesting books at his/her level readily available and easily accessible, have adult readers in the home who model reading as an enjoyable pass-time, you need to validate reading as a worthwhile activity, and you need to provide time to read.

Simple and obvious when you think about it. So I did all that but my daughter did not become an avid reader. Some of it I put down to the fact that she is working in two languages and so she doesn't get the practice in reading English at school. A lot of it was to do with the fact that the computer was far more enticing, not to mention a ready supply of dvds.

We only have the one living room where the tv and dvd player are situated. By the middle of the holiday I was sick of hearing Harry Potter and various other favourites over and over again. The computer that DD played on, broke at the beginning of the summer and I deliberately didn't get it fixed. After a few weeks I was beginning to regret it.

Towards the end of the holiday I thought we'd better start getting back into some sort of routine. I always remember my friend's brother, Philip, telling me how the rule in his house was the children had to be in their bedrooms by 8 pm. I once mentioned this in a blog post and wrote 8.30 because I thought no one would believe that teenagers would go to their rooms at 8. But later I confirmed it with him and they did actually go to bed at 8 all the way through school. On the other hand, it wasn't strict lights out at 8 pm so I expect they did homework or read, but I know for a fact that there were no screens involved, or phones. (Although nowadays teenagers have their own screens and phones in their bedrooms so I don't know if you could enforce that with older kids.)

I started the in bed by 8 pm rule. We often don't manage it as we're out late or in the middle of a game. I read to DD at 8 and leave the bedroom at about 8.30. Then she's on her own and she's bored stiff. Not yet having early mornings and being, like me, a night owl, she's just not tired at 8.30 pm. I tell her she can read. And she started to read because there was nothing else to do. She sometimes does sudoku or tells herself elaborate stories but mostly she reads.

So there you have it. The missing ingredient was BOREDOM! There had been clues of course. When I did my MA dissertation I did mention that many of the children I spoke to were orthodox Jews so they had little else to do on a Shabbat afternoon but read. And my youngest nephew became a book-a-day reader because he wasn't into sport and his older brothers commandeered the tv for watching football and every other sport at every opportunity.

Now I need to figure out a way to bore DD into practicing her recorder, doing her maths workbook, tidying her bedroom, and washing the dishes. Unfortunately every time I suggest one of these worthwhile activities she'd rather read a book.

The Essential Emergency Fund And More Decluttering - R2BC

Some minimalizing progress and some less good events that, with a bit of Pollyanna attitude, I can turn around to be a R2BC. I'm joining the R2BC linky over with Becky on Lakes Single Mum.

1
Decluttering Books

I wrote the other day about sorting out all my books and letting go of my academic dreams. In addition to all the academic books, I got rid of 20 year old guidebooks to various cities around the world, children's books that DD has grown out of and which we didn't love, various out-of-date reference books, and a few novels that I'm never going to read. About 100 books in all.

In addition to the books in the photo which are all being given away, donated, or possibly sold; there were also a pile of magazines and the city guides that went straight in the bin.

That seems incredible as I sort and donate books every year for the Yedidya Bazaar in March. Only two years ago I got rid of 200 books (although that was the first cull in about 25 years). I think it's a process and some books it takes you longer to realize and come to terms with the fact that you don't need them anymore.

SOLD!

2
Empty Furniture

I decluttered a whole chest of drawers out of its usefulness and sold it on facebook. The guy who bought it also took an old armchair down for me and put it by the bins. Within half an hour I saw a man stop and load it into his car.

I also have one empty bookcase but I'm not sure what I'm going to do with it yet.

Gone to a better home in the back of a passing car

3
Not So Wonderful

I had a blocked sink so I had to get the plumber in. It cost not a trivial amount of money. On the other hand, he changed the crappy IKEA drain set-up underneath to a much more efficient arrangement that goes straight into the wall without the long, narrow pipe, which is the part that gets blocked.

I swallowed that cost and moved on. However, I was then alerted by a neighbour that my solar heated water boiler on the roof was leaking big time. Having established that the tank that was falling apart was indeed mine, I needed to get it fixed. I bought this apartment 16 years ago and inherited all the equipment on the roof. I've never had to fix or replace any of it, so it was time.

Yesterday they came with a new boiler, two new solar panels, and a new stand as the old one was rusted through. All new. All fully guaranteed for 5 years. All costing an absolute fortune. But I chose the best and not the cheapest in the hope that I won't be dealing with this again for another 20 years.

4
Emergency Fund

This is when you fully understand how important it is to have an emergency fund. And how important it is not to dip into it for months that are a bit tight or if you want to treat yourself. It's not for an impulsive holiday, a new sofa, or even the new fridge which I had to buy only a few months ago and which could be put on 12 monthly payments without added interest.

The new solar boiler had to be fixed asap as water was dripping into my upstairs neighbour's apartment. And I had to pay all of it up front. Luckily I have been paying small monthly amounts into an emergency fund all year.

Usually I need to use some of it to get us through the summer as I don't get paid for teaching my summer courses until the end of September and I don't get paid an August salary for teaching in school. I was getting excited because we didn't go away this summer and various tax rebates came in so I thought I was going to get through the whole summer without touching the fund. I had dreams of rolling it over for another year. Man dreams and God laughs.

It still makes things very tight for September as the emergency fund won't cover the full amount of the waterworks. But it makes it doable instead of impossible. So we'll do it and be cheerful about having the foresight to save for emergencies.

Letting Go Of My PhD

Have you ever wondered why people talk about 'my degree', 'my M.A.', or 'my PhD.', when they haven't even got it yet, or even not 'yet'? It's like everyone has a Ph.D. by the mere fact of thinking about it, it's just a matter of whether you've actually done it or not.

I got my B.Ed. at the usual time after A'Levels and a gap year. I went back to do my M.A. in my 30s which was almost 20 years ago now. At that time I remember saying, "if I ever start talking about doing a Ph.D. please shoot me." It's a bit like childbirth. After a while you forget about the trauma and start to think about diving into academia again. And exactly like pregnancy and childbirth, it's not the doing of it that one yearns for, it's the having it at the end.

I was never a good student at school. I could have been but I didn't have the sitzfleisch to actually do all the studying required. At college I did ok, but only ok because I didn't get what they were looking for in an academic essay. When I did my M.A. the tutor explained it to me and after that I did really well. Why hadn't anyone ever explained it to me before? Why hadn't I thought to ask? What I learned from that experience was that anyone can do a Ph.D., you just have to find a subject that you're sufficiently passionate about to devote up to five years of your life to it.

I never found that passion although I did rather like the idea of being Dr Rachel Selby, or Rachel Selby Ph.D. So I coddled the dream in the back of my mind and bought a 'how to' book but essentially, I did nothing about it because having an M.A. was enough at my level of academic career. And then it wasn't. Suddenly the colleges only want to hire teachers with Ph.D.s and Head of Department is out of the question.

So I looked into starting a Ph.D. last year. My mother even offered to help pay for the tuition (it's much cheaper to do it in Israel than in the UK). However, the problem is not the cost of the tuition, it's the cost of the time you won't be able to work, the babysitters you'll need for late afternoon/evening courses, and the quality time you won't be spending with your child. Added to this, I'd be nearly 60 by the time I finished. I saw the amount of work involved and scared myself out of the whole idea.

It was too late for a Ph.D. for me. If I'm going to spend that amount of time on a project, it needs to be something lucrative. Why not just write that novel, not have to pay for the privilege of writing it and not have supervisors telling you what to write? And no costly books to buy or find online in order to read everyone else's research before you start - you make it all up. Ha! Why not indeed?

There are five more photos like this - 30 books in total!

Meanwhile my decluttering went up a notch yesterday as I tackled the books. More about that later but suffice to say, I let go all of most of those academic books about linguistics and education. I even let go the 'How to do a Ph.D.' book. I've read it after all so what do I need it for? LOL.

They are all up on the local facebook 'buy, sell, swap' group.

P.S. If I were to do my Ph.D. these books, which are all 20 years old, wouldn't be any use to me anyway so there was absolutely no point in keeping them. I leaned this lesson when I tried being an academic advisor to Benny Lewis for his book, Fluent in 3 Months. I got a mention in the acknowledgements nevertheless but it was all very embarrassing.
  

The Girl Who Could Fly

After abandoning Narnia, I read to DD, The Girl Who Could Fly by Victoria Forester (2008, Square Fish, Macmillon, New York). We both loved it. We laughed we cried. I'm not kidding. There was one point when DD was beside herself, sobbing, because it looked like the girl, Piper, was going to die.

The Girl Who Could Fly is about a young girl who can fly. Duh. When she accidently shows her special talent to the local townsfolk all hell breaks loose. Piper agrees to go away to a school where lots of other children with special gifts are taught together and protected from exploitation by greedy and ruthless individuals and/or governments.

What fun eh? A school where every child has some sort of super power. To be honest, I wouldn't like to teach in such a school but DD and I both said we'd love to be a pupil there.

I chose as my power, to be able to understand and speak fluently, every language in the world. DD can't decide on hers.

Problem is, things at the school are not exactly as described on the box. Bullying, betrayal, heartbreak, daring, suspense, conflict, but also friendship and teamwork, and ultimately ........... (no I'm not giving it away) all feature in this great novel for 7 - 11 year olds (approximately).

I'm stoked that DD shares my love of science fiction. She has a whole collection of John Wyndham waiting for her when she's older. And not too much older - I started with The Chrysalids at age 12 when we had to read it for English Literature at school. From then on I was hooked.

A sure indication of how much DD loved this book was that she made me Google it to see if there is a sequel. There is: The Boy Who Knew Everything. The first book leaves just enough intrigue in the form of one big unanswered question to make you want to go running to get the sequel. However, The Girl Who Could Fly is also a complete story on its own with a very definite ending and most of the loose ends tied up.

DD also made me look to see if there is a film of the book. We found loads of comments along the lines of: As yet there is no movie but there jolly well should be. We totally agreed.

Playing Games And Other Reasons 2B Cheerful

Here are my Reasons 2B Cheerful for this week. Pop over to Mummy from the Heart for the Linky.  

1
Wall of fame
There is a wall of photos up in DD's school and I found DD on it. I think this one is from 1st Grade. I love it - including the wet patch on her t-shirt where she would chew it in times of stress.

2 
Up When We Like.
DD's Summer School has finished so we don't have to be up and dressed to get her there at 8 am for another six weeks! Hooray! We are not morning people. Although I'm thinking of trying some sort of Miracle Morning again. I can do all the stuff, it's just getting up to be there to do them is the problem.

3 
Playing Mancala with DD.
There were a number of rules she picked up at school and a number of rules that I half remembered from when the game first came out. We watched some You Tube instructions and settled on our own set of rules by picking and choosing. We had to try a few variations before coming up with the set of rules that makes for the most satisfying game.

I'm going to encourage some more Kalooki and Shesh Besh (Backgammon). It's a long holiday.

4
Homework
Without resorting to long lists of jobs that must be done or sticker charts on the fridge, DD has accepted the fact that we don't play Mancala, or watch a DVD, or have a chapter of her book until she has read a book or book chapter in English and done some maths workbook. So far so good.

5
Goodbye to Narnia
Having written my definitive review on the Chronicles of Narnia, I decided that there is no point in keeping the full set of seven books. Of course you can't keep the two books you like (The Magician's Nephew and The Lion et al.) and expect to get a good price for the others. A set is a set. So I put up the whole lot on our local Facebook Buy, Sell, Swap group and someone came to pick them up, paying me 100nis. Nice.

The Chronic Ails Of Narnia

The full set of Narnia

A couple of weeks ago I wrote that we were on Book 4 of the Chronicles of Narnia, Prince Caspian, and that we were still enjoying them. Reader, I spoke too soon. And interestingly enough, this is the same place I got to as a child before I got fed up with yet another battle and another quest and more talking animals and more mythical woodland creatures, and just more and more same, same, same.

Last night DD and I finally agreed that we weren't interested in finishing Prince Caspian. However, we did want to know what happened in the end. Not what happened to Caspian - he obviously became King Caspian and who actually cares? But we wanted to know what happened to the children so we read the final few pages of the book and were totally satisfied.

And then we needed to know what happened in the final three books, although not in so much detail that we had to actually fight the battles with them. So we read the blurb on the back and the slightly longer blurb inside the front cover, and the first and last few pages of each book.

SPOILER ALERT!

If you, like us, can't be bothered to read through seven books of very similar plot, here is a synopsis of the Chronic Ails Of Narnia.

1. The Magician's Nephew (1955). Diggory and Polly, next door neighbours in Edwardian London, are sent into another world by Diggory's magician uncle. They find a dying world and wake up an evil witch who follows them as they escape and enter into another new world- Narnia. Aslan the lion (God) creates the new world in a similar fashion to the creation story in Genesis, and appoints a human King and Queen to rule over it. It's all very Garden of Eden. The witch is hiding somewhere on the fringes of Narnia, biding her time. Diggory brings home an apple and plants the seeds in his garden. Wood from the resulting apple tree was used to make the wardrobe in the next book.

2. The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe (1950). Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy are evacuated during WW11. They are staying with an old professor (Diggory) in his country house. The find the wardrobe and go through it into Narnia. There they find that the Witch is in power and it is perpetual winter (though never Christmas). They defeat the witch with the help of the magical creatures and talking animals, and Aslan of course. Aslan sacrifices himself as payment for Edmund's betrayal but comes alive again a few days later. The children become the four Kings and Queens of Narnia and they rule for many happy years before one day, finding the path back to the wardrobe and walking through it to return to the country house just a few minutes after they had first left.

3. The Horse and his Boy (1954). This story was fitted in later and is about one episode that happened while Kings Peter and Edmund, and Queens Susan and Lucy, were on the throne of Narnia. A boy and a girl run away from their lives in an oppressive southern land (Calormen - later thought to be based on pre-Islamic pagan countries in the Middle East) with the help of two talking horses originally from Narnia. They help save Narnia and discover that the boy is in fact a Prince of the neighbouring Archenland who was kidnapped as a baby. They get married and become the King and Queen of Archenland.

4. Prince Caspian (1951). The four children are sitting on the railway platform waiting for their trains to return them to their boarding schools, when they are pulled into Narnia where the orphaned Prince Caspian had blown the magic horn to summon them back. It's a few hundred years after their last reign and they find their castle in ruins. Another race now rules Narnia and they've tried to eradicate the talking animals and magical creatures who are of course living in hiding in the woods. They defeat the oppressive rulers and King Caspian takes the throne. The children get back to the station in time to catch their trains.

5. The Voyage of the Dawntreader (1955). Only Edmund and Lucy go back to Narnia as the other two are too old. They are accompanied by their odious cousin Eustace. In this story they help King Caspian as he voyages on a roots tour to find the seven lost friends of his father. It is Edmund and Lucy's last trip to Narnia.

6. The Silver Chair (1953). Eustace and his schoolmate Jill find Narnia as they try to escape from the school bullies and ineffectual headmistress. Eustace is of course a good boy now. King Caspian is old but his son Rilian has disappeared whilst on a journey of his own. The two children have to find Rilian. After they find him they return to school where Aslan makes sure the bullies and the headmistress catch a glimpse of the magic and are terrified into better behaviour. The head mistress actually loses her mind and her job.

7. The Last Battle (1956). This one is incredible, as in you won't believe how it ended. Jill and Eustace are thrown back into Narnia to find it at its darkest hour. All the baddies are at war in one final struggle between the forces of good and evil. In the midst of all this, Peter, Edmund and Lucy arrive. They were waiting on a station platform for their parents' train which they see approaching and suddenly they are in Narnia. And their parents are there too. And they meet all the characters form the previous six adventures, including Diggory and Polly and the first King and Queen of Narnia. (Susan wasn't with them as she had grown too old and sophisiticated for Narnia "games".)

Can you guess what happened? The train they'd seen approaching had crashed into them and they'd all died and gone to Narnia. I could not believe that that was the ending. C.S. Lewis wouldn't get away with that today. And how come I never knew that? Why didn't anyone tell me before?

Here is a link to the Wikipedia article about religion in the Chronicles of Narnia in which C.S. Lewis is quoted as writing:

The whole series works out like this.

The Magician's Nephew tells the Creation and how evil entered Narnia.

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe the Crucifixion and Resurrection.

Prince Caspian restoration of the true religion after corruption.

The Horse and His Boy the calling and conversion of a heathen.

The Voyage of the "Dawn Treader" the spiritual life (especially in Reepicheep).

The Silver Chair the continuing war with the powers of darkness.

The Last Battle the coming of the Antichrist (the Ape), the end of the world and the Last Judgement.^[3]

So there you have it, the Chronic Ails of Narnia. Next stop E. Nesbit (yes I have the full set). And meanwhile, does anyone want to buy the full set of Narnia for 100 shekels?