"Tolkien and C. S. Lewis: The Gift of Friendship" by Colin Duriez

Although it took me several months to finish reading this book, that is not because it was boring.  Rather, other books kept shoving their way in front of it.  Library books coming due, ARCs needing to be read before release day, and so on.  Now that my kids are done with school, I have had a lot more time for reading, and I finally finished this!

Duriez begins the book with biographical accounts of J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis from childhood until they met.  He then shows how their personalities, tastes, interests, and ideas blended into friendship.  He spends time discussing the other Inklings too, and how their collective group friendship was important to both Tolkien and Lewis.  Their writing, their faith, and their careers all get explored here, sometimes in depth.  If you are a fan of either author, or you like learning about authors in general, you would probably get a lot out of this book.  I know I did!

Particularly Good Bits:

From his wide experience of reading [Lewis] instinctively rejected a distinction between highbrow and lowbrow literature, serious and popular, and even between so-called good and bad books.  A far more important distinction for him was that between good and bad readers.  Literature, he increasingly felt, exists for the enjoyment of readers, and books therefore should be judged by the kind of reading that they evoke (p. 67-68).

At the core of the friendship of Tolkien and Lewis was their shared antipathy to the modern world.  They were not opposed to dentists, buses, draft beer, and other features of the twentieth century, but what they viewed as the underlying mentality of modernism.  They were not against science or scientists, but the cult of science, found in modernism, and its tendency to monopolize knowledge, denying alternative approaches to knowledge through the arts, religion, and ordinary human wisdom (p. 107).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG for some non-explicit allusions to possible sexual relationships between some adults and discussion of the trauma of wartime for soldiers.

This is my 29th book read from my TBR shelves for #TheUnreadShelfProject2023.

"All You Who Sleep Tonight"

I wrote this the year after I graduated from college and got married.  My husband was a year behind me, so while he did his senior year of college, we lived on campus, and though I did have a full-time job, I got to participate in a lot of stuff at the college with my friends who hadn't graduated yet.  I still attended the writing group when I could, and took part in some events like "poetry jams" they hosted.  They let me compete even though I was no longer a student, and I won first place at one of them with this poem.

"All You Who Sleep Tonight"

All you who sleep tonight,
Full, cozy in your beds:
The world is full of ancient fright
That aches to creep inside your heads.

Beneath your sheets and blankets
You cuddle, dreaming dreams
Of childhood memories and pets
When someone sudden screams.

You bolt upright, eyes wide.
You search the darkness, scared.
The fear you feel so deep inside
Insists its fierceness can't be beared.

Aha!  Two eyes now glow
From somewhere near the door -- 
And from the darkness down below
Your bed, you hear a roar.

Your happy dreams have flown,
Your dolls and dogs forgot.
The fear that all the world has known
Seems here to hold you to this spot.

Another scream rips through
The air -- it sounds like Tom,
Your younger brother, yes, he who
Is favored most by Mom.

Those glowing eyes there at
The door, you recognize
As Jeeves, your Dad's old ugly cat,
Who slowly leaves amid the cries.

You scramble from your bed,
Ignoring Things below,
And run into your brother Fred,
Who falls and stubs his toe.

You disregard Fred's cries
When yet another scream
Shreds through your heart as poor Tom tries
To waken from his horrid dream.

Then opens up the door
That guards your parents' room,
And out upon the shadowed floor
Spills light that parts the gloom.

Your mom and dad appear,
They smile to you and Fred.
Then armed with sword and torch and spear,
They march to rescue Tom from bed.

With Jeeves and Fred beside,
You follow in the wake
Your parents leave as on they glide -- 
The shadows you forsake.

Then suddenly they stop
Just outside poor Tom's room.
They draw their swords, their sheathes they drop,
Then fiercely rush to challenge doom.

You wait in the cold hall
As battle then begins.
With Jeeves and Fred, you one and all
Hold breath to see who wins.

Abruptly, all noise stops.
Your parents reappear,
Their nightgowns splattered with the drops
Of blood from that which you did fear.

And there stands little Tom,
Not harmed by the attack,
And after a quick hug from Mom,
You all demand a snack.

So down the stairs you go
For milk and cookies warm,
But though you're safe now, yet you know
What terrors in your bedroom swarm.

Copyright Rachel (Ohlendorf) Kovaciny, 2003

A Literary Collage of Sorts

You remember that I posted last month about my blogging friend Jamie opening a new literature-oriented shop?  The Books and Beverages Shoppe, to be precise.  I liked the postcards she sent me for a preview item so much, I bought a whole set.  I thought you might like to see what I've done with my three favorites:

This hangs beside our front door now, kind of a daily reminder for me to think about whatever my current writing WIP is.  And also an excuse to display some other postcards I've owned for close to twenty years now and never really done anything with.  The top one is John Wayne and his youngest son on the set of True Grit, the middle one is Montgomery Clift on the set of The Misfits, and the bottom is two actual cowgirls from back when the west was truly wild.  

Anyway, I'd said in my earlier post that I meant to hang up some of these to inspire myself, and thought you might like seeing what I ended up doing with them.  Though, now Jamie has added already-matted 5"x7" versions of these same quotes to her shop here, which makes me kind of wish I'd waited on framing these, hee!  Still, I like how it turned out overall.

"Juicy Pens, Thirsty Paper" by SARK

Last month at the book store, I went looking for a book to give our oldest niece, who will turn 13 this summer.  She likes to write, and I wanted something to encourage her in that pursuit.  I thought this might be just the book, all bright and friendly and cheerful.  So I bought it but, being a prudent aunt, I thought I'd better read through it first, to make sure it would be appropriate for her.  Which, it turns out, it kind of isn't -- I may just hang onto this for her until she's like 16, if she's still into writing then.

Now, if you're a writer who isn't going to be shocked by the use of the word "vibrator" in the introduction (no descriptions of what it's used for) and the inclusion of an amateur drawing of a partially-topless woman much farther in (drawn by a guest contributor, not by SARK), then you might really like this book.  It's vibrant and playful, and most definitely encouraging.  I'm on the verge of beginning a new short story, and this helped me gain enthusiasm to be bold and truly begin it, not keep putting it off.

I really dug SARK's quirky, almost child-like style, with every page hand-written and hand-drawn.  This is from my favorite page in this book:

I need to print that out and paste it above my writing space.  Too often, I feel like I need to wait until everything is perfect before I write (I'm talking about fiction here, not blogging -- I blog in stolen moments throughout the day, which SARK calls "micro-movement"), but for first drafts especially, I need to concentrate on getting the story down on paper and not worry so much about whether I'm wasting time or doing "valuable" writing.

SARK's advice is a little more touchy-feely than some might appreciate, and gets a little humanistic in places ("good is within everyone," "everyone is capable of creativity," that sort of thing).  But if you want a jolt of creative juiciness, you might want to try this out.

If This Was a Movie, I Would Rate It:  PG-13 for the aforementioned inclusion of the word "vibrator" and a non-salacious sketch of a semi-nude woman, and also for non-detailed references to a child being abused.

Book Spine Poetry

The ever-inspirational Kara posted about this here, and I thought the idea was too fun to pass up.  Stacks of books with titles forming a coherent (?) whole -- what could be better?  So here are what I came up with, pulling from my own shelves and a couple of my hubby's.

Lost in a good book

Under the lilacs:

A gathering of days

In the company of others.

Ourselves,

Strangers to these shores.

Desolation island,

A gathering storm,

Battling the elements.

Dirty hands,

An antic disposition...

Trouble is my business.

Kind of like magnetic poetry, only with whole phrases to work with.  And not nearly enough verbs.  Definitely felt the lack of verbs!

"Wishes, Lies, and Dreams" by Kenneth Koch

I fell in love with Kenneth Koch's poetry during my sophomore year of college.  A few years later, my parents gave me this book for Christmas, and I read it once, then set it aside.  But now that I am homeschooling my kids, I pulled it out again to see if maybe I could put some of his advice to work. Plus, April is National Poetry Month, so I felt sort of obligated to read something poetry-oriented.

The book is based on Koch's experience teaching grade school kids how to write poetry back in the '70s.  He explains the different things that he found worked well or worked badly, and he also includes a LOT of the poems written by the kids he taught.  They're exuberant and imaginative, not stilted or hesitant.

Koch found that most kids have an aptitude for writing poetry if you don't try to make them adhere to things like rhyme and meter, which tend to overwhelm and squelch them.  Instead he would give them a subject (wishes, lies, dreams, colors, sounds...) and a bit of form (start every line with "I wish" or include a color in every line, etc), and the kids would take it from there.

I helped my kids (ages 3 and 5) write  poetry on the subject of wishes last Friday, and they loved it!  In fact, my 5-year-old asked me to help him write a poem about recycling yesterday.  I'd say Koch's ideas work :-)

Also, if you're not a kid, but you're looking for a jump-start to your own poetry writing, his ideas work really well for adults too.

"Steal Like an Artist" by Austin Kleon

This is a quirky, fun, inspiring little book.  I'm going to try to remember to read it whenever my muses are absent, my creative well has run dry, and I'm convinced I'll never write another coherent sentence -- much less an interesting one -- ever again.  It's a very quick read, with more than half of the 150ish pages containing very little text.  You could read it in one sitting, unless you have three small children.  Then it will probably take you a couple days, like it did me.

The subtitle of the book is "10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative," though I have to admit I'd read some of his tips elsewhere.  The main idea is that, like the writer of Ecclesiastes told us so long ago, there is nothing new under the sun.  Everyone is just reworking the same ideas in their own way.  And so Kleon suggests that you do things like make lists of who inspires you, then find ways to combine the ideas they give you into some new projects of your own. 

My favorite section is Chapter 3:  Write the Book You Want to Read.  It's very short, but it made me go, "Okay, yeah, I'm going to pay no attention to what's cool in fiction right now, I'm going to write the book I want to read."  Which is a western, because I love westerns, and who cares if they're what people are into right now, they're what I'm into, and I'm the one putting in all the work.  So there :-)

Anyway, you can buy this book for under $10.  If you want to know a bit more about it, go to the author's site here.  I totally recommend this book not just for writers, but for anyone doing creative work who needs a little boost now and then.

(Originally posted on Hamlette's Soliloquy on Oct. 28, 2012.)

"A Gift from the Sea" by Anne Morrow Lindbergh

It's hard to describe why this book has impacted me so strongly. I really feel like I need to read it again -- or for a first time, technically, since I listened to it as an audio book on the way to a friend's house. But for now, let me just say that I think the things I got from this book are what my writing prof was trying to teach me by having me read "A Room of One's Own" by Virginia Woolf. That didn't really speak to me very much, or maybe I wasn't in the right place in my life to listen to it. But this book did touch me in some pretty profound ways.

I've been a fan of Anne Morrow Lindbergh ever since I read Bring Me a Unicorn for my Creative Writing class when I was a college sophomore. Her letters and diary entries reminded me of myself, in a way, a young girl growing up not exactly lonely, but apart somehow. That book crossed my path right when I was ready for it, ready to look back at my childhood and adolescence and think about how it had shaped who I was becoming.

A Gift from the Sea also crossed my path at a rather perfect moment. As my baby grows and stretches my tummy farther and farther, thoughts and curiosities and fears about motherhood occupy a slice of my mental life. Will I still be able to find time to write? Will I want to? Should I want to? Will my need for alone-time, now fulfilled in the one night a week my husband works that I don't, decrease? Will I still need time to myself, but feel too selfish to take any? Lindbergh discusses this exact issue from her vantage point as a mother of five and successful author, and the things she said resonated with me and the ways I expect to feel in the coming years. If nothing else, her words assured me that I'm not the only woman who needs alone time, who needs to create things to feel more complete, be they stories or books or afghans or pumpkin pies.

That's about all I can say about this book right now -- I definitely need to read it again. I'll probably put it on my Christmas list. But if you're interested in women writers and their perspectives, find this book.

(Originally posted on Inscriptions on Jun. 20, 2007.)