"The Warrior's Path" by Louis L'Amour

The Warrior's Path had a much more focused plot than the previous two Sacketts books, which I appreciated.  Kin and Yance Sackett (sons of Barnabas, who was the star of those first books) get word that Yance's wife's young sister has disappeared up in Massachusetts, along with a young woman that people believe to be a witch.  Kin and Yance set off through the wilderness, arrive at the colony where the girls lived, discover nobody is particularly inclined to seek the lost girls, and set off to find and rescue them.  

That section was my favorite, as it was filled with the kind of woodcraft and woodlore that has always thrilled me.  I used to read these junior biographies of Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett and Kit Carson and their woodsy brethren over and over and over as a kid -- I even had sections of my favorites memorized.  I would practice tracking critters in the snow: my cats, our dog, birds, raccoons, my little brother, and anything else that traipsed through.  Good, good times.

The Sacketts find and rescue the girls, but Kin thinks this is not enough.  They've uncovered a "white slaver" ring -- we would call them human traffickers today -- that is stealing teenage girls from the colonies in America and selling them to planters in the West Indies.  Kin is sure that, unless they can catch and convict the ringleaders, more girls will keep getting kidnapped and trafficked, over and over.  So he sets off for Jamaica, tracing one of the leaders to Port Royal.

Kin's totally right about the trade in white women not slowing down just because they rescued two girls.  The gang's leaders are making too money to be stopped by the loss of two captives.  They even manage to re-kidnap the older one, Diana, and take her to Jamaica, thinking they can force Kin to stop fighting them by threatening her or something.

But these guys clearly don't understand Sacketts.  Kin won't stop until the gang of traffickers is brought to justice, either at the end of a rope or the end of his sword.  The last quarter of the book has a lot of swashbuckling and swordplay and fist fighting and other thrilling heroics.

Also, Kin and Diana get married.  This is not really a spoiler, as you should be able to see that coming by the time you've finished chapter one.

Particularly Good Bits:

"To make a country we need all kinds.  He is a thoughtful man, and such are needed.  He reads, he thinks.  Too many of us are so busied with living that we do not" (p. 62).

Yet aside from her beauty there was much in her to admire, for she was a quietly capable person who did not scream, faint, or cry so far as I had seen.  She looked matters in the face and did something about them (p. 73).

"You have your books.  They are the best companions" (p. 80).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It:  PG for lots of violent fights, the understated but obvious fact that these teen girls were being sold as sex slaves, lots of peril and danger, and a handful of old-fashioned cuss words.

This has been my 18th book read from my TBR shelves for #TheUnreadShelfProject2023.

"To the Far Blue Mountains" by Louis L'Amour

This second book about Barnabas Sackett was a lot of fun.  But I don't think I liked it quite as well as Sackett's Land, mostly because this one had more exciting adventures and less downtime to get to know the characters.  I commented to my husband a couple of times that L'Amour tosses his characters into one thrilling escapade after another so quickly that the reader really never has a chance to catch their breath between one set of heroics and the next.  Each adventure that befalls Barnabas was cool, but the pacing didn't quite hit me the way I'd like.

Barnabas Sackett is a cool dude, though, and no mistake.  You just can't keep him down.  He refuses to be daunted.  And I loved that.  I also loved a new character in this one: Lila, the maid to Barabas's intended.  She can swordfight and shoot a rifle, ride a horse all day and all night, cook so well that men will mutiny on her behalf, and is generally a completely awesome person.  I wish there was a book about her all on her own, because I bet it would be a roaringly good time.

Once again, Barnabas Sackett spends the bulk of this book just trying to get to America and set up a home there.  Which he does, eventually, but not before multiple shipboard battles, kidnappings, treasure hunts, and so on.  He and his wife do eventually build a home together, have kids, and raise those kids to adulthood.  But it takes quite a while to get there.

Particularly Good Bits:

We must not lose touch with what we were, with what we had been, nor must we allow the well of our history to dry up, for a child without tradition is a child crippled before the world.  Tradition can also be an anchor of stability and a shield to guard one from irresponsibility and hasty decision (p. 21).

I had never complained, for who cares for complaints?  If something is wrong, one does something (p. 64).

"I do not wish.  I do what becomes the moment.  If it be a cook-pot, I cook.  If it be a needle, I'll sew, but if it be a blade that is needed, I shall cut a swath" (p. 76).  (That's Lila, btw.  Precisely what I love about her, really!)

"The tongue of Wales is music, and you write it well" (p. 84).

How deep, how strange is the courage of women!  Courage is expected of a man, he is conditioned to it from childhood, and we in our time grew up in a world of wars and press-gangs, of highwaymen and lords sometimes as high-handed as they.  We grew up to expect hardship and war.  But a woman?  I'd seen them follow their men to war, seen them seeking over battlefields to find their lonely dead, or the wounded who would die but for them.  I have seen a woman pick up a man and carry him off the field to a place where he might have care (p. 129).

Where go the years?  Down what tunnel of time are poured the precious days? (p. 248)

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG for lots of violent fights, deaths, captures, escapes... but all told in non-gruesome or terrifying ways. It does have a handful of old-fashioned cuss words. 

This is my 11th book read from my TBR shelves for #TheUnreadShelfProject2023.

Top Ten Tuesday: Time for Some Thrilling Heroics

This week, That Artsy Reader Girl is giving us a freebie for Top Ten Tuesday!  I've decided to share my top ten favorite swashbucklers with you.

To me, a book or movie is a swashbuckler if it has adventure, sword fights (or brawls), daring escapes or rescues, and a certain amount of swagger.  I adore stories like that!  Here are my ten favorite, complete with a few story elements you'll find in them.  All titles are linked to my reviews.

The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas -- prison escape, long-lost love, revenge, murder, disguises, tall ships, young love, damsels in distress, bandits...

Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson -- stolen inheritance, kidnapping, shipwreck, escape, mismatched buddies, disguises, treason, assassination, fencing, bagpipes...

The Princess Bride by William Goldman -- fencing, fighting, torture, revenge, giants, monsters, chases, escapes, true love, miracles...

The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood by Howard Pyle -- archery, banditry, outlawry, brawling, courtly romance, captures, rescues...

The Mark of Zorro by Johnston McCulley -- fencing, disguises, rescues, chases, more fencing...

Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson -- pirates, treasure, tall ships, maroonings, sieges, rescues...

The Black Swan by Rafael Sabatini -- pirates, damsels in distress, kidnappings, rescues, tall ships, sea battles, fencing, brawling, treachery...

The Prisoner of Zenda by Anthony Hope -- mistaken identity, disguises, fencing, kidnapping, doomed romance, rescues...

The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Orczy -- disguises, rescues, chases, fencing, romance, mistaken identities, damsels in distress...

Sackett's Land by Louis L'Amour -- exploration, chases, escapes, fencing, brawling, tall ships, sea battles, fortune seekers, romance...

And there you have it!  Are you a fan of swashbucklers too?  Got any to recommend?

Top Ten Tuesday: Hello There

This week's Top Ten Tuesday prompt from That Artsy Reader Girl is "New-to-Me Authors I Discovered in 2022."  Sometimes I get stuck in a rut and read mostly books by authors I'm already familiar with, but I actually tried quite a few new-to-me authors last year!  Here are ten that I would like to read more books by, plus the books I read of theirs in 2022.  I've linked to my reviews of those books, plus provided what genre they are.

John Dudley Ball -- I read In the Heat of the Night (mystery)

Colleen Coble -- I read Silent Night/Holy Night and All is Calm/All is Bright (mystery)

Susan Coolidge -- I read What Katy Did, What Katy Did at School, and What Katy Did Next (slice of life)

Anthony Hope -- I read The Prisoner of Zenda and Rupert of Hentzau (swashbuckler)

Britt Howard -- I read Song of the Valley (clean romance)

Morgan Hubbard -- I read This Cursed Line (fantasy)

Rafael Sabatini -- I read The Black Swan (swashbuckler)

Luke Short -- I read Vengeance Valley (western)

Carly Stevens -- I read Laertes (dark academia)

Candice Pedraza Yamnitz -- I read Unbetrothed (fantasy)

Have you tried any of these authors?  Are any of them on your TBR shelves?  Who did you discover last year!  Do share!

"Sackett's Land" by Louis L'Amour

Do you know what I was absolutely not expecting this book to be?  A swashbuckler.  But that's what it is!  Complete with swordfights, shipboard fights, chases and escapes and various other thrilling heroics.  It's absolutely smashing.

Barnabas Sackett falls afoul of a pampered nobleman by, well, laughing at him.  And then failing to be easy to beat up.  The nobleman vows revenge and keeps trying to find Barnabas and wreak his vengeance, but Barnabas just keeps getting wind of his attempts, or slipping through his fingers, or beating him in various ways. 

Barnabas, meanwhile, never makes any secret of the fact that, basically, he's on his way to America.  It's the early 1600s, he's living in England and wanting to start life fresh somewhere bigger and wilder, and America sounds like the perfect spot.

But, while he's just about to embark for the New World, he gets shanghaied by friends of that same nobleman.  But he manages to stay alive all the way across the ocean while surrounded by ruffians aboard ship, then escapes them and sets about trading with the American Indians for furs.  And then he gets kidnapped again, and escapes again, etc.

Barnabas has a great knack for making friends with awesome guys like him who are brave, honorable, and doughty.  Unfortunately, his nemesis has a great knack for killing off Barnabas's new friends while trying to kill Barnabas.  But some of them do survive.  Barnabas eventually makes his way back to England with his fortune pretty well made.  The woman of his dreams agrees to marry him, and they get ready to go back to America and build a new home together there.

It's just a roaring good yarn, I tell you.  And when was the last time you read a Louis L'Amour book that involved going to see a performance of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar at the Globe Theater in London... with William Shakespeare as one of the actors?  I mean, how cool is that?

Particularly Good Bits:

"Each man owes a debt to his family, his country and his species to leave sons and daughters who will lead, inspire and create" (p. 18).

"A man needs heroes.  He needs to believe in strength, nobility and courage.  Otherwise we become sheep to be herded to the slaughterhouse of death" (p. 58).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG for lots of violent fights, deaths, escapes... but all told in non-gruesome or terrifying ways. It does have a handful of old-fashioned cuss words. There's also just the smallest insinuation that something really bad could happen to the female love interest when she falls into the hands of some bad guys, but she comes through just fine.

This is my first book read for My Years with the Sacketts and my third book read off my TBR shelves for #TheUnreadShelfProject2023.

"Prince of Thieves" by Alexandre Dumas

Alexandre Dumas wrote books about Robin Hood?  Say what now? 

Yes, it is true!  In fact, he wrote more than one.  Prince of Thieves is the first, and it's an origin story for Robin Hood.  It's rather different from the usual Robin Hood origin stories you get from authors like Howard Pyle.  Robin Hood here is the son of a nobleman, yes, but he's taken as an infant and given to a forester to raise because his father is dead and there's someone out to get his inheritance, and so on.  Robin grows up happily in the forest (I mean, who wouldn't?) and is in his mid-teens when he starts to have adventures, meets Maid Marian and Little John and Friar Tuck, and so on.

Most of the plot revolves around some friends of his who are trying to get married, but the girl's dad forbids the match and tries to have her intended killed, and there's all manner of skulduggery and mayhem, along with some hijinks.  It's a totally different story from any Robin Hood I've read before, and I had a lot of fun imagining Dumas just chuckling with glee as he came up with it.  It definitely stars the cheerful kind of Robin Hood that I like best.  But it's almost more of an ensemble piece, really.  I assume the sequel, Robin Hood the Outlaw, probably deals more with getting Robin's rightful inheritance back?  We shall see!  It's sitting on my TBR shelves.

Prince of Thieves was first published after Dumas's death.  It has nothing whatever to do with the Kevin Costner movie with the same title, sorry.  The version I read was translated into English by Alfred Allinson, and it has deliberately archaic language, which I'm assuming Dumas also affected, full of prithee and mayest thou and so on.

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG.  It has some violence and even killing, but it's totally not gory or scary or even intense.  Still, people do die, sometimes in somewhat distressing ways if you have a vivid imagination, so I wouldn't give it to a kid younger than at least 10.

This is my second book read and reviewed for my fourth Classics Club list and my 49th for #TheUnreadShelfProject2022!

"The Black Swan" by Rafael Sabatini

I adore the 1942 movie The Black Swan, which is supposedly based on this book.  I'd heard that the book is quite different from the movie, so I've avoided reading it for years because I was afraid that I was going to be disappointed by it.  

Well, that was silly.  The book is ENTIRELY different from the movie, except that it involves Captain Henry Morgan, Tom Leach, and another pirate who pretends a lady is his wife in order to keep her safe.  Those are literally the only similarities.  Which was awesome, because that allowed me to enjoy this book for its own sake.  I'm so glad a couple friends on Bookstagram convinced me to try this book after all.

This book is about a French pirate who protects a young lady by pretending she's his wife when they both run into the dastardly pirate Tom Leach.  The bulk of the book takes place on an island, and there's lots of awesome swordplay, and there's one short sea battle between ships, too.  This is not a deep or weighty book -- it is unashamed of being a rollicking good time, and I am eager to read more of Sabatini's books now too!

(From my Instagram)

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG-13 for some innuendo, mild violence, and a smattering of old-fashioned curse words.

This has been my 47th book read and reviewed for my third Classics Club list and my 38th book read off my TBR shelves for #TheUnreadShelfProject2022.

Top Ten Tuesday: Summer Reading, Having a Blast...

This week's prompt from That Artsy Reader Girl is "Books on my summer 2022 reading list."  I have actually already chowed through several books on my summer TBR list, thanks to lots of extra reading time while laid up with my broken arm, but here are ten that are still waiting for me:

1. The Black Swan by Rafael Sabatini
2. Gilead by Marilynne Robinson
3. Laertes by Carly Stevens
4. Moonfleet by J. Meade Falkner
5. Possibilities by Debra White Smith
6. The Prince of Thieves by Alexandre Dumas
7. Robin Hood the Outlaw by Alexandre Dumas
8. Rose Petals and Snowflakes by Kendra E. Ardnek
9. Simply Sara by Hillary Manton Lodge
10. What Katy Did Next by Susan Coolidge

(from my Instagram)

How about you?  Do you have some books you've been saving for this summer?  Or new releases you're looking forward to?

"The Count of Monte Cristo" (Manga Classics) by Alexandre Dumas (original story), Crystal S. Chan (story adaptation), and Nokman Poon (art)

This manga blew me away.  Particularly the artwork by Nokman Poon.  I mean, the Anne of Green Gables in this series was super cute, but this retelling of The Count of Monte Cristo is fabulous.  The artwork in particular is magnificent.  Sometimes, I would stop reading and just bask in the glorious art.

The original book is my second-favorite novel of all time (you can read my review of it here), so I had high expectations for this manga.  And it did not disappoint.  At all.  They included nearly all the parts I consider necessary and portrayed nearly all the characters in ways that absolutely delighted me -- there was not enough of Grandfather Noitier's beautiful relationship with his granddaughter, but that's my only real quibble.  As soon as I finished reading this, I handed it to my kids, who all took turns devouring it too!

(My favorite page...)

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate it: PG for plot points involving poison, illegitimate babies, attempted infanticide, kidnapping, dueling, and murder.  They're handled delicately, but I probably wouldn't give this to a kid under 10.

(Mine from my Instagram account)

This has been my 29th book read off my TBR shelves for #TheUnreadShelfProject2022.

"Rupert of Hentzau" by Anthony Hope

Argh. Argh. Argh. Argh. Argh. Argh. Argh. Argh. Argh.

I thought the ending to The Prisoner of Zenda was frustrating and melancholy?  Well, Anthony Hope doubled down on that with this book.  

Argh.

Rudolf Rassendyl comes back to Ruritania to stop Rupert of Hentzau from ruining Queen Flavia's reputation by making public a letter she has written to Rudolf, bidding him goodbye because she's now married to King Rudolf, his distant relation that he's a dead ringer for and impersonated in The Prisoner of Zenda.  She's not being untrue to the king, but Rupert of Hentzau is going to make it appear that she is, and so all kinds of intrigue gets set in motion.  Rudolf tries to stop that with the help of his old buddies Colonel Sapt and Fritz von Tarlenheim, plus a couple of new friends.  And they succeed, but at great cost.

Argh.

I mean, the ending makes sense, and it's really quite fitting, but I am still greatly displeased by it.  So there.

(Mine from my Instagram)

Particularly Good Bits:

"Pooh!" said Sapt.  "Nothing is wonderful: some things are unusual" (p. 65).

I think that the queen told my wife more, but women will sometimes keep women's secrets even from their husbands; though they love us, yet we are always in some sort the common enemy, against whom they join hands (p. 104).

I lay small store by such matters, believing that we ourselves make our dreams, fashioning out of the fears and hopes of to-day what seems to come by night in the guise of a mysterious revelation (p. 163).

Helga will never admit that she is clever, yet I find she discovers from me what she wants to know, and I suspect hides successfully the small matters of which she in her wifely discretion deems I had best remain ignorant (p. 170).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG for insinuation that a wife has been unfaithful to her husband, some swashbuckling violence, and possibly a couple of mild curse words.

This has been my 41st book read and reviewed for my third Classics Club list, as well as my 21st book read off my TBR shelves for #TheUnreadShelfProject2022.

"Kidnapped" by Robert Louis Stevenson

I love this book.  I loved it as a teen, I loved it in my twenties, and I love it now.  And, my goodness, is it ever fun to read aloud!

When David Balfour's father dies, he sets out to find his uncle, whom he has never met.  His uncle Ebenezer turns out to be a horrible miser, unkind and unfriendly, even hateful.  He has David kidnapped and shipped off to a slave colony in the Carolinas, but the ship never leaves Scottish waters.  A Highland gentleman, Alan Breck Stewart, befriends and rescues David, and the two run around Scotland having adventures and trying to make their way back to the lowlands.  Alan Breck then helps David Balfour acquire his rightful inheritance, but they have to part ways, which always makes me sad.  Still, it's such a jolly adventure.  And I do love Alan Breck.  My goodness, he's such a splendid character.  So fierce and loyal!  Not that I don't love David Balfour too, because I do, but my heart really belongs to Alan Breck in this book.

In fact, I discovered that there's this little phrase I'm fond of saying that I totally got from this book as a teen, and then forgot over the years where I had gotten it.  When Alan Breck kind of remembers something, but doesn't want to swear to it, or if he doesn't want people to know he knows something for sure, he'll say "it sticks in my mind that..."  I say that fairly often!  And now I know where I got it from!

Now that I've finished reading this aloud to my kids, we're going to have to watch the classic Disney movie version.  It's not on Disney+ because of course not, but I do have it on DVD, so yay!

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG for gunplay, swordplay, shipwreck, and other bits of violence.

This has been my 39th book read and reviewed for my third Classics Club list.

"The Prisoner of Zenda" by Anthony Hope

Well, this was a jolly romp of a tale!  Kind of a grown-up version of The Prince and the Pauper, in a way, but with the switch of commoner and royalty being deliberate and done for an actual reason.

Rudolf Rassendyll, a wealthy young man idly wasting his life at gentlemanly nonsense, goes to visit distant relatives in the middle-European (and fictional) country of Ruritania.  There, he meets another Rudolf, his distant cousin who is about to be crowned king.  After a night of drunken revelry, the almost-king is unable to attend his coronation.  His advisors press Rassendyll to take his place so as to avoid scandal and to thwart the new king's brother, who is scheming to take over the country.

You can guess what happens next, right?  It's rather like the movie Dave (1993) -- Rudolf Rassendyll has to keep on pretending to be the new king because the actual king gets kidnapped by his rotten brother and held prisoner in the Castle Zenda.  

Love and intrigue ensue, as the fake king must keep up the pretense of wooing the beautiful Princess Flavia so the real king will be able to marry her eventually.  Fist fights and sword fights and daring rescue attempts also ensue, and it all ends happily for almost everyone.  

Now I want to see the 1937 Ronald Colman movie version because the front cover of my copy is a picture from it :-D

Is this a weighty and thought-provoking book?  Nope.  It is, as I said, a jolly romp, and it's not pretending to be anything else.  Though it did have a few introspective parts, my favorite of which is below.  I love that it actually spawned a minor genre, called Ruritanian Romance.  Hope also wrote a sequel (Rupert of Hentzau) and a prequel (The Heart of Princess Osra), and I'm on the lookout for copies of those now.

Particularly Good Bits:

Ah!  But a man cannot be held to write down in cold blood the wild and black thoughts that storm a brain when an uncontrolled passion has battered a breach for them.  Yet, unless he sets up as a saint, he need not hate himself for them.  he is better employed, as it humbly seems to me, in giving thanks that power to resist was vouchsafed to him, than in fretting over wicked impulses which come unsought and extort an unwilling hospitality from the weakness of our nature (p. 91).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It:  PG for swashbuckling violence and veiled commentary about a woman's virtue being threatened.

This has been my 38th book read and reviewed for my third Classics Club list, and also my 10th for #TheUnreadShelfProject2022.

"The Count of Monte Cristo" by Alexandre Dumas

I haven't read the full text of this book since I was eleven.  Thirty years ago, I fell in love with Edmond Dantes, and this book has been in my top 3 ever since.  When I was a teen, I bought my own copy.  I reread it.  And I was a little confused because I remembered things about the story that seemed to be missing.  Like all this stuff about a baby in a box.  I finally decided I'd just confused The Count of Monte Cristo with some other book, and shrugged it off. 

It wasn't until a few years ago that I learned that many, many English translations significantly abridge this book.  And never bother to call themselves "abridged."  They cut out certain plotlines that the translators find distasteful or think modern audiences won't like... such as all that stuff about the baby in the box.  Well, once I learned that, I set out to find a good, reliable translation.  What I learned is that the Penguin edition pictured here, with a translation by Robin Buss, is considered the most accurate modern translation, so that's the version I've got now, and the one I read this summer.

I'm really not sure how they'd make a bunch of this work without the baby in the box, as that's kind of central to a big part of the plot, and I'm not surprised that I wondered where it went when I read that other version.  If you're scratching your head and saying, "I read this book, and there was no baby in a box," then you probably read a sneakily abridged version too.  I'm just sayin'.

Anyway, I read the real thing this time.  And I adored it all over again.  Yes, this book is 1200 pages.  It's a brick.  A chunkster.  A tome.  And I gobbled it right down.  For the last few hundred pages, I was so excited and happy I would put the book down and just bounce up and down with joy from how beautifully everything was slotting together.  My goodness, what a breathless ride.  

Quick summary of the plot in case you don't know it: Edmond Dantes is thrown into prison after being wrongly accused by a couple of men who are jealous of him.  He eventually escapes, becomes fabulously wealthy and sophisticated, and returns to France to wreck the men who wrecked his life, stole his fiancée, and starved his father.

I think two things set this apart from ordinary stories of revenge. First, I love how Dantes, as the Count of Monte Cristo, uses his enemies' own past crimes, as well as their pet sins, to ruin them.  He doesn't steal their fortunes or slander their names or steal their wives and sweethearts.  He just patiently brings their own long-buried secrets to light and lets them suffer the consequences of their own wrongdoing.  That's brilliant.

The other is that Dantes learns, eventually, that revenge can get away from the avenger and cause more harm than intended.  He discovers that, though he considers himself a tool of God for striking down wrongdoers, he is NOT God, and his strikes can cut too wide a path.  He also learns that revenge hollows you out, while helping others fills you up, and turns from one to the other at the end.

(Mine from my Instagram)

Particularly Good Bits:

"Happiness is like one of those palaces on an enchanted island, its gates guarded by dragons.  One must fight to gain it" (p. 42).

"Hatred is blind and anger deaf: the one who pours himself a cup of vengeance is likely to drink a bitter draught" (p. 385).

"There are two medicines for all ills: time and silence" (p. 523).

"I like everybody in the way that God ordered us to love our neighbours, that is, in Christian charity.  I only bestow true hatred on certain people" (p. 747).

"I do not think this is the moment to give way to sterile misery: that may be enough for those who want to suffer at their ease and have time to drink their own tears" (p. 786).

"He's a wonderful person for raising one's spirits, because he never asks questions: in my opinion, people who don't ask too many questions give the best consolation" (p. 938).

Moral wounds have the peculiarity that they are invisible, but do not close: always painful, always ready to bleed when touched, they remain tender and open in the heart (p. 952).

People were hanging on his every word, as is always the case with those who say little and never waste words (p. 1048).

So, do live and be happy, children dear to my heart, and never forget that, until the day when God deigns to unveil the future to mankind, all human wisdom is contained in these two words: 'wait' and 'hope'! (p. 1243)

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG-16 for suggestive dialog, drug use (including a pretty racy drug-induced dream), some mild profanity, violence, and poisonings.

This has been my 26th book read and reviewed for my third Classics Club list.

"The Scarlet Pimpernel" by Baroness Orczy

WHY did I wait this long to read this delightful book?  I absolutely loved this jolly story of derring-do.  It's escapist fiction at its finest -- no one in this story really takes their grave danger too seriously, and you never doubt for a minute that the Scarlet Pimpernel will triumph.  The fun is in finding out how.

I watched the 1934 movie starring Leslie Howard close to twenty years ago, and the 1982 miniseries starring Anthony Andrews much more recently than that, so I knew the basic story (and the real identity of the Scarlet Pimpernel) already.  But most of the plot had kind of faded from my memory, so that was fresh and exciting for me.  By the last ten chapters or so, I was on tenterhooks to see how it would all get resolved.  In fact, I did my housework extra-fast so I could finish it :-)  And that's just what I want from an adventure novel!

I took a class in college on the French Revolution, so I know that Orczy doesn't particularly cling to facts in this -- hundreds of heads weren't actually getting chopped off every single day, and so on.  But the atmosphere of fear and antagonism was very, very real, and I think she got the emotional truths just right.

After I finished the book, I read the introduction in my MacMillan Collector's Library edition, and it annoyed me so much.  The intro was written by Hilary Mantel, and it is snide, holier-than-thou, and seems to entirely miss the point of this book being about people using their wits and talents in the service of others.  Mantel's whole attitude grated on me so much, I've deleted her books from my to-read lists.  I was especially vexed by her missing what I believe Orczy's point was in the part where she repeatedly describes a Jewish man as being despised, degraded, cringing away from other people, and so on -- Orczy constantly talks about how the French people are despising them, reviling them, and behaving very racistly toward this Jewish man.  I think she's making a point here about the horribleness of her villains, NOT trying to say that Jewish people are despicable, degraded, or animal-like.

Anyway, I definitely recommend this book, just not that introduction ;-)

Particularly Good Bits:

The rest is silence! -- silence and joy for those who had endured so much suffering, yet found at last a great and lasting happiness (p. 315).  (Awww, it's a Hamlet quotation!)

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It:  PG for some scenes of peril and violence.

This is my 17th book read and reviewed for my 3rd Classics Club list and my 13th read off my TBR shelves for #TheUnreadShelfProject2021

"Stardust" by Neil Gaiman

This book was not what I was expecting.  I was expecting more of an urban fantasy sort of thing, with someone from the modern world stepping into one filled with magic, or vice versa.  I don't even know why I thought that's what this was.  But anyway, it's not.

It's actually about people living in a little town on the other side of the wall from a gap between the "real world" and faerieland.  And about two boys, one the father of the other, who go through that gap and change their lives forever.  It's also about a fallen star who breaks her leg when she lands, brothers battling for a throne, and an evil crone who reminded me a lot of Mother Gothel from Tangled (2010). 

I have to say this is not my favorite Neil Gaiman book so far.  I didn't like it as well as The Ocean at the End of the Lane or Fortunately, the Milk, and I definitely didn't love it like I love The Graveyard Book.  But it was a diverting read, and I polished it off in a single day.

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: R for two semi-explicit love scenes, quite a bit of bad language, some fairly gory bits of violence, and various mentions of bodily functions.

This is my 18th book read for #TheUnreadShelfProject2020.

"The Princess Bride" by William Goldman (again)

I'm pretty sure I've mentioned here before that I teach literature and creative writing to some of my homeschooled nieces and nephews for high school.  I teach them over the internet because they live so far away, and I love it.  I'm working on converting our studies together into a format I could share with other parents too, so watch the "Lit and Writing Resources for Homeschoolers" page here on this blog for that to show up this spring.

Anyway!  This year, I'm teaching a nephew who is in tenth grade.  He's good friends with my son, who is in sixth grade, but who reads like a high-schooler as long as the subject matter isn't too intense for him.  So my son has been doing the same lit course with my nephew, which lets them discuss books together instead of it just being me and the nephew, and gives them stuff to talk about when they're together once a year too.  (We started this last year when my nephew asked to read The Lord of the Rings for lit, and my son had been begging to read that too, and they asked if they could read it together, and I said yes, and they had so much fun doing so that they wanted to continue studying together.)

This month, we spent two weeks reading and discussing The Princess Bride by William Goldman.  And my mommy-heart is SO full and happy because my son LOVED IT!  I think he read it four full times in two weeks.  He goes around quoting it now.  He'd seen the movie before -- my brother and I actually took him to see it on the big screen a couple of years ago, one of those TCM + Fathom Events showings.  But he was about 10 when he saw the movie and didn't really get the wonderfulness.  Now he gets it :-D

I don't always reread the books that we're studying together, especially if I've read them within the last few years.  But I hadn't read this since 2013, so I decided I was due for a reread.  And I loved it all over again.  The witty dialog, the sarcasm, the send-up of so many fairy tale and adventure story tropes, the wonderful characters, the delicious authorial asides... it's just a delight for beginning to end.  

(I suppose I should mention that this is a humorous fantasy story about a beautiful girl and a handsome boy who fall in love, are parted by pirates and princes, find each other again, lose each other again, and everything turns out pretty happily in the end.)

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It:  PG-13 for violence, torture, and some bad language.  Also a little extremely veiled suggestive material.  But yes, I let my 12-yr-old read it anyway.

"Treasure Island" by Robert Louis Stevenson

I remember liking this book as a pre-teen, and I own a couple different movie versions because I love pirates (Disney's 1950 classic and the 1990 one with Charlton Heston and Christian Bale, if you're curious).  So I was excited to re-read it as an adult, and I decided to go ahead and read it aloud to my kids while I was at it.  They love pirates too because one of the few computer games we own is Sid Meier's Pirates, and they all love playing it.

This book did not disappoint.  It didn't disappoint me, as at it may be even more awesome than I remembered.  And it didn't disappoint my kids because it had all the piratical thrills they were hoping for, and then some.  My almost-9-yr-old says this is her new favorite book.  She actually grabbed it and hugged it when we finished it.

I also taught this book to my high school lit students, and while prepping for that, I learned that Stevenson wrote the first fifteen chapters in fifteen days.  My mind is properly boggled by that.  No wonder this book gallops along at a breathless pace!

And yet, it doesn't sacrifice character development for thrills.  Jim Hawkins starts out as a somewhat heedless teen boy who doesn't appreciate the stability and peace of his life at the inn he and his mother run.  By the end of the story, he's matured into a person who recognizes his mistakes and learns from them.  He's also changed from trustful and credulous to being able to see through the machinations of adults.  Most of the adult characters don't have much of a character arc, but it's not really their story, so that really doesn't matter.  To me, anyway.

I suppose there might be a few people here who don't know the basic plot of Treasure Island.  It involves a teen boy named Jim Hawkins and a bunch of adults, some honest and some pirates, all going to an island to try to find a fabulous treasure buried there by Captain Flint.  Long John Silver, the one-legged gentleman of fortune, is the prototype that almost all our modern notions of pirates are based on.  The book as a whole more than earns its reputation as a rip-roaring adventure yarn.

(My Bookstagram photo of my copy)

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It:  PG for some piratical violence, including a boy being threatened and having to shoot guns to defend himself, plus lots of drunkenness and perilous situations.  I had no qualms about reading it aloud to my kids, the youngest of whom is 7, but kids younger than that might find it too tense.

This is my 26th book read and reviewed for my second Classics Club list.

"The Further Adventures of Zorro" by Johnston McCulley

As you might be able to tell from the cover, in Johnston McCulley's second serialized Zorro story, Zorro takes to the high seas.  Because what could possibly be more exciting than the first Zorro story?  Why, Zorro plus pirates, of course!

On the eve of Don Diego Vega's wedding to Senorita Lolita Pulido, a band of pirates attacks Los Angeles, looting and pillaging.  The presidio just happens to be empty of soldiers at the moment because Captain Ramon sent them on a fool's errand so the pirates could have free rein.  His reward?  They kidnap Lolita Pulido for him.  Back in the first Zorro story (originally titled The Curse of Capistrano), Captain Ramon had tried unsuccessfully to woo the senorita, but of course lost out to Diego/Zorro.  Now Ramon is determined to ruin his rival, claim the girl as his own, and make people think he's a hero.  If he has to make -- and break -- a few pacts with some pirates, oh well.

Naturally, Diego dons his Zorro persona once again and sets off to rescue his lady love.  If you're not used to reading serialized adventures like this (think the swashbucklers of Alexandre Dumas), then you might get a bit weary of the long string of escapes, captures, failed rescues, and so on.  I thought it was a very fun story, and I liked that the damsel in distress did some plotting of her own, involving several bids for freedom and a successful trick to free Zorro.

This is not great literature.  However, this is highly entertaining literature, and I'm so glad it's available in e-book form and not lost to the world.  I read this with the Kindle app on my phone, and while it had numerous typos, still... I'd rather have to decipher a word here and there than not get to read it at all!

Particularly Good Bits:

"If a thief, be a thief!  If a pirate, be a pirate!  But do not play at being an honest man and try to be a thief and pirate at the same time."

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It:  PG for lots of swashbuckling violence and Captain Ramon intending to have his way with Senorita Pulido if she does not consent to marry him.

This is my 34th book read and reviewed for The Classics Club.

"The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood" by Howard Pyle

Oh, how I wish I'd read this book when I was younger!  Not that I didn't love and appreciate it now, because I did, but because I could have enjoyed it so many times by now.  

It took me rather a long time to read this because it was so delightful, I didn't want it to end.  And, to be truthful, I did not read the epilogue.  When I was young, maybe under ten, I made a vow never to read the end of a Robin Hood story that ended with him dying.  That way I can always think of him still merrily having bold adventures somewhere in the wide world.  And so, I never have.  I only know he dies at the end of many retellings because the one I was reading when I made that vow had a chapter called "The Death of Robin Hood," and I couldn't bear to read it.  

So imagine my joy when the epilogue of this book began with these words:  "And now, dear friend -- you who have journeyed with me in all these merry doings, -- I will not bid you follow me further, but will drop your hand here with a "good den," if you wish it" (p 319).  Pyle himself acknowledged that people like me won't want to read this part, and he readily excuses us from doing so.  What an obliging person!

Okay, but anyway, I loved this book.  Dearly.  It is, at the moment, my favorite retelling -- even surpassing the Henry Gilbert, which I read so often in my youth.  I might even have to rearrange my list of favorite books so this can be probably in the top ten. 

This of course is a pretty basic retelling of Robin Hood's adventures, though I was surprised that Maid Marian is really not in it at all.  Robin mentions her once or twice in a vague way, but she never appears at all.  However, Little John and Friar Tuck and Will Scarlet and Will Stutely and Alan a Dale are all here.  And the Sheriff of Nottingham is the main antagonist.  Guy of Gisborne only shows up at the tail end in one chapter, and is swiftly dispatched.  And Prince John isn't around at all -- for most of the book, King Henry and Queen Eleanor are on the throne, and then at the very end, King Henry dies and King Richard arrives.  It isn't until after the main book ends that Robin goes crusading, unlike many versions that have him coming home from the wars and becoming an outlaw then.

I especially love the characterization of Robin Hood.  As King Henry said toward the beginning, "He is a saucy, rebellious varlet, yet, I am fain to own, a right merry soul withal" (p. 32).  He is a cheerful, happy man, not given to brooding even when he accidentally kills a man and has to go into hiding at the very beginning of the book.  He is repentant of that killing, and mentions several times how it gives him sorrow, but overall, he's happy-go-lucky.  As it says elsewhere, "it took but little to tickle Robin's heart into merriment" (p. 222-23).  Doesn't he sound fun to hang out with?

I have lots of favorite lines, so I'm going to share many of them here to show you the book's delightful, joyous flavor, which is much of what makes me love it.

Particularly Good Bits:

As for mine host, he knew how to keep a still tongue in his head, and to swallow his words before they passed his teeth, for he knew very well which side of his bread was spread with butter, for Robin and his band were the best of customers, and paid their scores without having them chalked up behind the door (p. 26).

"Hold, friend!" cried Robin to the Miller; whereupon he turned slowly, with the weight of the bag upon his shoulder, and looked at each in turn all bewildered, for though a good stout man his wits did not skip like roasting chestnuts (p. 119).

Now happenings so come upon us in this world that the serious things of this world become so mixed up with the merry things that our life is all of a jumble of black and white, as it were, like the boards of checkered black and white upon which country folk play draughts at the inn beside the blazing fire of a winter's night (p. 123).

So passed the seasons then, so pass they now, and so they will pass in time to come, whilst we come and go like leaves of the tree that fall and are soon forgotten (p. 174).

"Gaffer Swanthold speaks truly when he saith, 'Better a crust with content than honey with a sour heart" (p. 208).

If This Was a Movie, I Would Rate It:  PG for mild violence.  

This is my 23rd book read and reviewed for The Classics Club.  I'm almost halfway done with my challenge!

Because I'm spending a year reading about Robin Hood, I treated myself to something special back in May:  a handmade Robin Hood-themed bookmark!  I got it from the Etsy shop BookNiche and I like it a whole lot.  Do check out their shop if you like thong bookmarks!  There are nearly a hundred of them in stock right now, all different and all nifty.