Did you see Downton Abbey when it aired on PBS earlier this year? If not, don’t despair, as it will re-run on most stations in December. But the real fun begins on January 8, 2012, when the second series begins airing in America. Here is a sneak peek:
Wings of a Dream by Anne Mateer
I am excited to talk about a new book by another Bethany House debut author, the lovely Anne Mateer. Wings of a Dream is a wonderfully evocative novel about life on the home front during World War I. Our heroine, Rebekah, is a young woman who longs to escape the vast loneliness of life on the rural Oklahoma prairie. Instead, fate takes her to another isolated farm in Texas, where the Spanish Influenza epidemic is in full force. Rebekah is the only person left to look after four children whose caretakers have all died, and whose father is fighting in France.
Rebekah quickly attracts the attention of a number of lonely bachelors in town, but what about the children’s father, with whom she begins a correspondence while awaiting his return from the war? The reader is never quite certain which suitor will win Rebekah’s hand until well into the novel.
I truly enjoyed this book, as the author captured the sense of loneliness and isolation Rebekah feels as the only adult on a remote farm. At the same time, we see the sense of the community that had been established by the far-flung members of this rural Texas area. In a time when so many of the men were called to serve abroad and other people had been clobbered by a life-threatening epidemic, a network of neighbors, including the postman, the pastor, the sheriff, and others band together to help look out for one another. Nevertheless, on most days Rebekah is terribly alone on the farm with four young children to look after at the same time she needs to keep the farm running, get dinner on the table, and try to help her new neighbors as they battle sickness and despair.
The author managed to pull off quite an accomplishment with this book. She included aspects of high drama (people dropping like flies due to the war and flu) combined with the stark, homespun loneliness of an isolated existence created a unique feel to this novel that I highly recommend. I can’t wait for Anne Mateer’s next book!
You can read Anne Mateer’s blog here.
Is That Old Book Priceless?
The Antiques Roadshow was the first of many programs which convinced people they had hidden treasures buries in their attic. In my day-job as I librarian, I regularly receive calls from people asking how much their old books are worth. They often assume that age alone is enough to make an item valuable, but sadly, this is rarely the case.
I distinctly remember a discussion I had with an elderly man who had a copy of his mother’s Complete Works of Shakespeare, dating from 1890. After doing a bit of research, I was able to inform him that it would sell for around $4. He was stunned, dismayed, and asked to see my supervisor…. who confirmed my findings. Shakespeare is one of the most heavily printed authors in history, so his works are almost never considered “rare,” simply because the market has always been flooded with them.
So how can you determine if your old book is a treasure? Let’s take another highly printed author, Arthur Conan Doyle of Sherlock Holmes fame. Most of these books will sell for under $10 at a second hand bookstore, but if you have a mint condition, first edition of The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902) you shouldn’t part with it for less than $110,000.
Now, let’s cut to the chase. There is a great website called Bookfinder where you can enter a title to see how much it is currently selling for at various used and antiquarian markets. I love this site because it is so easy to use, and patrons no longer question my intelligence when I tell them their old book is not worth much.
It is strange what can drive a book to become collectible. Age, condition, importance of the title, and rarity are all important. Many books, such as one of my favorite romances (Laura London’s The Windflower) have become collectible. I paid $3.50 for The Windflower back in 1983, but BookFinder reports it is selling for around $40 in used bookstores. (FYI: The Windflower is a mainstream romance title. Although tame by bodice ripper standards, it would not meet criteria for folks interested primarily in inspirational fiction.)
If you think you have a treasure sitting on your bookshelves, give BookFinder a whirl.
What Inspires You?
I have been helping my parents move, and we were going through boxes of old pictures. Here is one that really captured my imagination:
In the center are my great-grandparents, surrounded by their nine children. They had a pretty difficult life. Both were immigrants from Germany to America in the late 19th century, and never really learned to speak English very well. They were poor. Hand-to-mouth, where-are-we-going-to-get-rent-money poor. And yet, most of their children did quite well in America. I think there is a real pattern among second generation immigrants. They are the children of daring, ambitious risk-takers who took on great sacrifices to forge a new life in America. Perhaps it is no surprise that the children of such people are driven to succeed.
My grandfather is in the back row, second from the right in the three-piece suit. He had an amazing life story. Forced to drop out of school around the 4th grade in order to help support the family, he never had many advantages in life other than being blessed with drive, determination, and a massive dose of raw intelligence. He worked as an errand boy and typist at a bank and was listening and absorbing what he learned. During World War I, he used that intelligence to get placed in a plumb position as the secretary to a General. After the war he gradually climbed the corporate ladder at the bank. When he retired in the 1960’s, he had risen to sit the Board of Directors for a Fortune 100 company.
My other great-aunts and uncles all had fascinating stories that I enjoyed hearing from my parents. As a writer, my mind was whirling with ideas for books. My great-uncle John (standing behind the priest, Father Ed) served in World War I, was gassed, and had to spend considerable time convalescing. By the time he was healthy enough to come home, his fiancé had married someone else. He never really got over it, and never married. I am so grateful I spent that afternoon going through old pictures when I still had an opportunity to hear stories about these people, most of whom I remember only as very, very old people at family reunions.
If your parents are still alive, I urge you to go dig out some old family photographs and start asking questions. You’ll never regret it.
Romantic Movies
I admit to being very persnickety about movies. Frankly, I don’t like most of them. I tend to prefer novels, which allow for much greater introspection than can be portrayed in a typical movie, especially movies that are targeting a mainstream audience. I find when romance novels are made into film, they are pretty bad. All that introspection just doesn’t translate well.
That being said, I’m going to list my favorite romantic movies. Then I’m going to risk public ridicule by listing popular romantic movies others love, but I don’t.
Favorite romantic movies:
Dead Again. I blogged about this movie here, and have gotten a little guff about it. But hey, I love romances where people sacrifice for each other and have a dash of turbulence along the way.
Love Actually. How can’t you adore a movie that’s got Hugh Grant, Liam Neeson, and Colin Firth? This movie explores all aspects of love: familial, platonic, unrequited, romantic, and physical. Simply wonderful.
Cinema Paradiso. I feel a little bad about recommending this one, because although the movie is better than average, I am only recommending it because of the last five minutes. And yes, you have to sit through two hours to get to that staggering final scene, but do those five minutes pack a wallop!
Romantic Movies Other People Love, but I Don’t:
Love Story
Breakfast at Tiffany’s
Sleepless in Seattle
Officer and a Gentleman
The Joy of a Good Memoir
I love a good memoir. I find them so much more interesting than biographies, which are often written by an academic in a dry, dusty tone. Biographies are usually more concerned with getting all the details right, whereas memoirs tend to give you insight into what it was like to be a different person. People are notorious for shading their own life story, but memoirs provide fascinating insight into what makes people tick.
An example: I read an old memoir written by Princess Ileana of Romania (pictured at the left). She lived a life of immense privilege during the twilight years of European royalty, but also one of great turmoil. As a young girl she lived through World War I, then as a married woman she endured World War II. Romania had an uneasy alliance with Hitler, a man known to despise royalty, so she was in a precarious position for more than a decade. During the war Princess Ileana turned her castle into a hospital and did her best to treat wounded soldiers, but it was a dangerous time to be a princess. Romania fell to the communists shortly after the war, and although she tried to reach some sort of compromise with the country’s new leaders, she ultimately fled Romania with her children and built a new life for herself in Newton, Massachusetts. Her marriage had been a political alliance and did not survive her emigration. Princess Ileana ultimately decided to take holy vows, and lived the rest of her days as an abbess in a Pennsylvania convent.
Well! Quite the story there! She wrote her memoir, I Live Again, in 1952. Frankly, the princess could have used a good editor. The book is a long-winded slog and almost unreadable by contemporary standards, but the memoir is loaded with fascinating insight about what her life was like. She writes about what it is like to live in a castle (drafty and uncomfortable) how to make friends with communists (watch out for the charming ones) and what to do when your brother is a king but also a national embarrassment (help his son stage a takeover.)
Naturally, Ileana lead an immensely controversial life. Literary critics would classify her as an “unreliable narrator.” Her husband flew for the Luftwaffe and she spent a number of years trying to forge shifting alliances with both the Nazis and the Communists. She paints herself in a highly sympathetic light, and from this side of the Atlantic it is almost impossible to peer through past the walls of her castle to know what was really going on all those years.
So why am I rambling on and on about a memoir? As a writer, it is through devouring memoirs that I glean insight into what it is like to be somebody else. Perhaps because I write about the late 19th century, I prefer memoirs written during that era. I also enjoy contemporary memoirs, but they tend to dwell on psychological issues more than those of earlier days. Here are a few other juicy old memoirs I have recently enjoyed:
My Four Years in Germany, by James Gerard (the U.S. ambassador to Germany during WWI)
Memoirs of a Publisher, by George Putnam (a real gadfly who knew absolutely everyone in the literary world of the late 19th century)
Why not Try God, by Mary Pickford (you know who she is!)
Five Things I’ve Learned from Romance Novels
So much chatter about romance novels in mainstream America comes from people who have never read one. Common misconceptions accuse them of generating unrealistic expectations, condition women to await Prince Charming’s rescue, or suggest romance novels contain nothing but smut. The reality is starkly different. Strip away the covers of heaving bosoms and the sometimes over-wrought cover quotations, and you usually have a novel that reflects traditional values and celebrates the strength of women. I would have no concerns about sharing romance novels with impressionable young women, because I think if a young reader embraces the themes that are common to romance novels, they will do well in life.
Here are a handful of things I learned from reading romance:
1) You can’t judge a book by its cover. Romance novels have a regrettable history of cringe-inducing covers, but if you crack one open, you are likely to find stories of amazing poignancy, insight, and courage. Thankfully, most covers of romance novels have gotten much better in recent years, but the rush to judge something, or someone, by appearance is a universal problem. The plots of some of the most famous romances of all time feature characters who also jumped to famously poor conclusions. Didn’t Elizabeth Bennett dismiss Mr. Darcy before she truly knew him? Time and again we see the heroes underestimate the heroine due to meaningless surface details like her appearance, her parentage, the way she speaks. Always the characters are wiser by the end.
2) No Heroine Should Expect to be Rescued. Any heroine who waits for a rescue will never get the respect of the reader. Novelist Barbara Dawson Smith said, “Unlike other forms of fiction, romance novels spotlight a woman who struggles but always wins in the end.” The heroines of romance novels almost always have something they cherish, and will fight any odds to protect it. Remember Scarlett O’Hara slogging through the Georgia countryside to get back to Tara? For every flailing heroine who occasionally appears in a romance novel, she is dwarfed by the hundreds of women who have the backbone, fortitude, and resilience to weather any storm. Frankly, the Damsel in Distress is not a very attractive character unless she is doing something about her plight. She is rarely seen in romance novels.
3) If you Don’t Treat Your Man Well, Someone Else Will! Back to Scarlett O’Hara. Time and again she snubs Rhett, driving him straight into the attentive arms of Belle Watling. Many romance novels feature a wicked Other Woman who is waiting in the wings. She is usually portrayed as a dazzling, amoral creature who is sending out lures to trap the unsuspecting hero. Rarely in fiction, but sadly in real life, she is simply a soft place to land after the heroine has been tossing a load of guff at the hero. That was who Belle Watling was for Rhett. She is far more dangerous than the cardboard caricature of the wickedly evil woman, and a smart heroine needs to be on the lookout for her. There is a certain amount of routine maintenance that goes into a great relationship. Men don’t like being taken for granted any more than women do.
4) Judge your man by his actions, rather than his words. Heroes in romance novels tend to do extraordinary things on behalf of the heroine. They take risks, slay dragons, cross a raging sea on her behalf. One thing they aren’t so good at is delivering the perfect turn of phrase. That is because men are hard-wired to be doers, rather than talkers. Ironically, it is usually the villain who is good with words. He is the man who will tell the heroine what she wants to hear, but when it comes time to deliver, he is nowhere to be found. I think most teenaged girls would be well-served if they learned to stop listening to what boys tell them, and simply observe their actions.
5) Falling in Love involves Risk. For a relationship to take root and flourish, both sides need to open up, share their deepest thoughts, vulnerabilities, fears and aspirations. This is scary. When you lay your heart on the line, there is always the danger that it is going to get stomped on. The characters in a romance novel will learn how to overcome embarrassment, the risk of rejection, and become vulnerable enough to fall in love. That is huge. Some people go through their entire lives and never learn how to do it, but not so in a romance novel.
Happy Birthday to the King James Bible
One of the greatest books in the English language turns 400 this year. The translation was the work of 47 scholars, who labored for seven years on the project. First printed in 1611, buyers could opt for loose-leaf pages for ten shillings, or a bound copy for twelve.
In celebration of the famous Bible, the Museum of Biblical Art is hosting an exhibition that explores the historic context of the King James, an examination of its predecessors, and over fifty bibles of historical interest. I have heard great reviews of the show.
If you are in New York City, the exhibit runs through October 16, 2011.
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Mary Ann or Ginger?
If you are of a certain generation, that phrase needs no explanation. For those who were born after 1980 or so, perhaps it does. Gilligan’s Island was a popular sitcom back in the 60’s and 70’s, before the typical household had 300 television channels to choose from. The show featured two pop culture icons who were polar opposites of each other.
Ginger was the bombshell sex goddess. Brazenly gorgeous, she oozed sex appeal as she slithered through her scenes with a knock out figure, dazzling repartee, and a promise of unabashed sexuality. In contrast, Mary Ann was the homespun farm girl with her hair in pigtails. Low-maintenance and non threatening, it is said that Mary Ann was preferred three to one by men surveyed on the topic.
I’ve always been partial to Mary Ann, simply because I could never carry the Ginger attitude off. Besides, I think Ginger always seemed like someone who would come to a bad end in a James Bond movie.
In the fictional world of Romancelandia, Mary Ann is also the hand-down winner. I don’t see many heroines modeled after the sex kitten. It simply isn’t something most women aspire to. It might be fun to look like Ginger for a day, but I don’t think many women would want to walk in her shoes for a lifetime.