tuesday june 17
As little girls, I think every woman of my generation fell in love with Atlantic coastal island life when we read Misty of Chincoteague (1947) by Marguerite Henry. The adventures of Paul and Maureen Beebe and their family seemed so exciting and wonderful! I was fascinated by the ponies, the ocean, the islands, and daily island life.
The book opens with the escape of terrified ponies on board a Spanish galleon that runs aground in a storm in the early years of Spanish exploration. These ponies were the ancestors of the present day island ponies that live all along the barrier islands of the east coast.
Henry was awarded a Newbery Honor for Misty of Chincoteauge. She followed it up in 1949 with Sea Star, Orphan of Chincoteague that she was inspired to write on a visit back to Assategue Island, the home of the ponies. Later, she wrote Stormy, Misty's Foal (1963) after the devastating 1962 "Ash Wednesday Storm" ripped into the islands.
I have had the extreme privilege of seeing the wild island ponies on North Carolina's Outer Banks islands. They weren't afraid of us humans, but they really didn't have much time for us, turning their backs pointedly as we tried to photograph them.
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wednesday june 11
Some books just make me grateful that I learned to read. Being able to sit down, open a book, and be astonished by the master craftsmanship and the unimaginable imagination of a writer is such a glorious pleasure. Ian McEwan’s Atonement made me think about that not too long ago. (I finally read it, and if you’ve only seen the movie, you need to read it, too.) Now Margot Livesey’s The House on Fortune Street has made me grateful again.
This is a novel told from four viewpoints. Sean is living with Abigail, for whom he left his wife. Their relationship isn’t happy: Abigail may be cheating on him, and she is certainly leaving him far behind as he drudges through his dissertation while she’s off running her theatre company. Their downstairs neighbor, Dara, extends Sean some sympathy. But then Dara commits suicide.
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wednesday june 04
Okay, I’m recommending a fantasy novel here, and I know that will have many of you scrolling on past. Apart from the Harry Potter books or maybe Tolkien, fantasy is pretty hard to push. But if you enjoy a writer who can twist familiar storytelling elements into something just a bit different, try Lois McMaster Bujold.
Bujold is best known for her science fiction series, the energetically satiric Vorkosigan Saga (definitely something a bit different), but she has written a few volumes of fantasy, too. I recommended her historical fantasy The Spirit Ring last year, and she’s currently writing a more traditional light-romantic fantasy series, The Sharing Knife.
But I wish she’d find time to do more in the splendid series that began with The Curse of Chalion in 2001. Its mix of old-fashioned fantasy and complicatedly original religious mythology was really intriguing.
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monday june 02
I recently snagged Jim Malusa's travel and adventure book, Into Thick Air: Biking to the Bellybutton of Six Continents, published by Sierra Club Books. I found it to be an entertaining and quite amusing ride.
Malusa, a biologist and native of Tucson, Arizona, conceived of the idea of biking to the lowest places below sea level on each continent—he refers to these as "antisummits”—after he and his wife, Sonya, rode their bicycles through Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, crossing over a 12, 400 foot high mountain pass to get to the Turpan Depression in the Takla Makan desert. It's the lowest point in western China, some 500 feet bellow sea level.
They are obviously a couple who enjoy cycling and have a taste for adventure.
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