Houston Sculptures

Sometimes you drive down an average suburban street and see something that isn't quite average, or quite suburban. And you know that you need to stop and investigate further. I'm so glad we did. I got to have a brief chat with Mark Bradford "Scrap Daddy", who turns scrap metal into amazing creatures, most of which are cars that actually go! There is an astonishing amount of work in each sculpture. Cutting, beating, welding pieces of metal into his incredible creatures. Some are even made from spoons discarded by the airline industry when they stopped using real cutlery. 

Birds nest on the top of this emu like creature

The Alchemyst

Sometimes it's good to get taken out of your comfort zone. And Irish fantasy is definitely out of my comfort zone. For some reason my 10 year old was captivated with the covers of this series of books, yes kids do judge books by their covers, just like we do. Recently it came the time to start on the first of the series for out bedtime reading. I was dreading it somewhat, although a friend at work had gushed over the series late last year, and she'd read them for herself, not to her kids. If she enjoyed them, perhaps I would be proved wrong? Thankfully I was.

What do we get? Immediate action from the very first page! Fifteen year old twins Sophie and Josh are spending the summer working in shops very near each other in San Francisco. Sophie in a coffee shop, and Josh in the book shop directly across the road. Doesn't sound like the setting for too much excitement, but within pages we are drawn into another world completely. A world where the legendary figures of mythology are real, and still living.

It must be said that my knowledge of mythology isn't that vast. So names like Yggdrasil, Bastet and Scathach don't mean that much to me, and making reading aloud rather cumbersome at times as I stumble across these unfamiliar sounds. But fear not, you don't actually need to undertake an online degree in Norse or Celtic mythology to enjoy the book. Indeed it was only after we finished reading this book, that I wondered if indeed these were indeed real mythologic identities. Michael Scott dips into most of the major world myths and legends at times, to weave an intricate, yet believable fantasy (I know) adventure. But really, once you've suspended one lot of disbelief then whole lot may as well go, no?

It's a classic good vs evil tale. The good here being headed by Nicholas Flamel, and the bad by Dr John Dee. Nicholas Flamel was a real person who lived in Paris in the 14th century. He was a scrivener and an alchemyst. Apparently he figures in the first of the Harry Potter books, but I've only read that once, in 1999, and can't remember. For some reason after he died his grave was opened and found to be empty, thus it was rumoured that he was immortal. There is a Rue Nicholas Flamel and an Auberge Nicholas Flamel in Paris. I know that the young fantasy fan will be keen to see these on our next trip to Paris (there is always one in the planning stages).

Picture credit

The evil is headed up by Dr John Dee, who again was a real person, living in 16th century England, and an advisor to Elizabeth I. Michael Scott describe him as "one of the most brilliant men of his time" in the Author's Note at the back of the book. Here he is working at the behest of the Dark Elders, and has a stench of sulphur when performing his acts of magic. There is an incredible array of monsters that must be battled in their various forms. It's great fun.

Quite incredibly all the action of this book takes place over a mere two days, starting in San Francisco, and moving to various places in California. It's all tied up a bit neatly in the end, but I think we can forgive him that at this stage. I'm quite keen to move on to the second book in the series, The Magician. I'm not sure if the enthusiasm will last for all six books (I'm not all that good with really long series), but hopefully we can get through the first five and be ready to await the final instalment, The Enchantress, sometime in the middle of 2012.

The Slightly Bruised Glory of Cedar B. Hartley

Just as it can be hard taking on a childhood favourite, it can be hard deciding when to tackle a sequel. Say, you've read a book recently that you've loved. And then you find there's a sequel. You don't really have that much time in your heavily regimented reading life, but you know you want to fit it in. Should it be soon, to climb on the shoulders of the wondrous gem you've just finished? Or will it be too samey? What if it's not as good, will the shine start to dull on your new favourite? It's a quandary alright.

But being the brave soul that I am I decided to strike while Cedar's iron was still hot, and jump on to the second Cedar B. Hartley book.

Cedar has grown up a little since her first book. Although if I was over fifty I'd say "Now is that really Cedar B. Hartley? My, hasn't she grown up."

Cedar is facing some new challenges in this book. She's still mad on Kite, although he has done a rather dastardly thing and moved to Albury to join the Flying Fruit Fly Circus. Understandably Cedar is devastated. But then two new people come into her life, Aunt Squeezy, and the mysterious girl down the street.

Aunt Squeezy has been away living in India, and has done a lot of thinking about Buddhist beliefs whilst there. We get lots of well-expressed thoughts from Cedar, Aunt Squeezy and sometimes Cedar's mum (although most of the time she's at work)

In the end, we moved the chairs in the living room and she showed me some yoga and I showed her some balances and Mum took photos and drank wine. She said wine was just as relaxing as yoga but required less effort. 

And there's still wonderful rambling Cedar passages:

I was suspicious. I felt she was stealing my feelings. My unique feelings. She was flouncing round, tipping spices into a big pot of lentils and stealing my feelings. It was kind of great having her around because she cooked food all the time, and since Mum was always at work and too tired to cook, and Barnaby only knew how to make spaghetti with a can of tomatoes, and I only made cheese and tomato Brevilles, it was exciting to have someone making a big deal about meals. She even made porridge in the morning, with dates in it and grated apple and almonds on top. But, best of all, she was always up for a talk. And I mean a  real talk. A chewing and burrowing and blazing-up kind of talk, not just a how-was-your-day kind of talk. She and I got to talking about real things. I'd never met someone who wanted to talk about life as much as I did; about the big stuff like love and difference and hope and lentils and the nervous system and bigotry. 

The mysterious girl turns out to be a refugee from Afghanistan, and the girls discuss their lives in the two countries.

"I feel bad, you know, because you have got such a good country and you do not feel grateful. Here people are so fortunate. They get to have everything. I mean, what else do you want?"

 I can't answer her because I know there is lots that I want, and suddenly it doesn't seem right to be wanting when I can go and play in my street whenever I choose. As we walk back to our street, I can't get her words, what else do you want? out of my head. I think of me wanting to be a circus star, wanting it even more than ever now that the possibility of joining a real circus is here. I even think of Marnie always wanting to look pretty and great, and Mum wanting one day to buy a house, and Barnaby wanting to play his songs to the world. And then I think of all the girls in Afghanistan who just want to be able to go outside and play. It confuses me. Maybe wanting something is just what you do. It's not really about what you have or what you need, it's about something else. 

Refugee politics and the inequities of the modern world are all dealt with rather well.  And Aunt Squeezy is there to give the more adult, Buddhist slant on things.

She said there're two ways to make people richer: one is to give them more money and the other is to teach them how to desire less. 

This book certainly gives us plenty to think about, as well as more of a story pushing us forward than the first Cedar book, The Slightly True Story of Cedar B. Hartley. I read it in two days! Both books make you want to read even more of Martine Murray's work.

The Tower Treasure

It's tricky taking on a childhood icon. Will it have stood the test of time? Will it look dated? Twee? Clunky?

I was really interested to read the first of the Hardy Boys adventures, The Tower Treasure recently. Turns out Frank and Joe Hardy had many surprises in store for me.  Firstly, even though I have quite a number of Hardy Boys books that have survived from my childhood, this, their first book wasn't among them. Thankfully I'd recently come across a 3 in 1 volume of Hardy Boys stories (The Tower Treasure, The Secret of the Old Mill, The Haunted Fort), so still had it on hand. 

The next surprise was that this book was first published in 1927! I suspect that I had no inkling of this when I was reading them in the early 70s. Whilst I definitely remember reading Hardy Boys books, and have some old hardbacks to prove it, with my name written on the endpapers in my childish hand, I don't remember the individual books. 

The biggest surprise was that the author Franklin W. Dixon didn't actually exist! I certainly had no inkling of that in my childhood readings. Dixon, and indeed the Hardy Boys, were the creations of  Edward Stratemeyer, who with his Stratemeyer Syndicate created a vast amount of my childhood reading. Nancy Drew, and The Hardy Boys that I was reading, as well as The Bobbsey Twins who I didn't read, and two other series I hadn't heard of- The Rover Boys, and Tom Swift books. I love the quote in the Wiki article on the Stratemeyer Syndicate that libraries refused to carry these books for decades- apparently they considered them to "cause a mental laziness, induce a fatal sluggishness, and intellectual torpor"! And I thought I was like that because I grew up down the road from a smelter and my lead levels were too high! It was all those books I read the whole time. 

A number of authors wrote under the name Franklin W. Dixon, but the first, and longest serving was Canadian journalist Leslie McFarlane, who wrote what are seen as quintessentially American books. He received $100 for each book, or $85 during the Depression, and was never paid any royalties! Apparently Mr McFarlane was glad for the work during hard times, and happy to make lots of money for other people. The Hardy Boys series still sells over 1 million books a year in the US, with 100, 000 of those being The Tower Treasure. 

And so what of the book itself? It is a somewhat dated, but still charming adventure for young readers. I'm sure the age of the readers for these books will have declined with the generations. My 10 year old has expressed an interest in reading The Haunted Fort because he started reading a copy in the school library, and thought it seemed exciting. The language was definitely that of an earlier time. There were constant references to school chums such as Chet Morton. I think as I will never have a daughter that I will have to call my next female dog or cat Iola- it's such a swell name. 

The Hardy Boys are clean cut, earnest, hard working and diligent. They use words like swell, chums, hobnob and cahoots. They go to school willingly, are saving for their college fund, attend church on Sundays, and are pleased when their father takes them to see a performance of The Merchant of Venice during their detective trip to New York. None of which is bad. It's interesting to note that the Hardy Boys books were "modernized" by Edward Stratemeyer's daughters in 1959. They commissioned rewrites to remove racial stereotypes, speed up the plots for modern audiences- 1959 was already feeling the effect of the television age, and remove dated references. The Tower Treasure shrank from 240 to 180 pages! It was this 1959 rewrite that I read as a girl in the 70s, and a slightly older girl in 2011. Applewood Books publishes the older, original versions of these books- how fascinating it would be to compare them. 

Still, I love that Mrs Robinson on hearing some bad news needs to be revived with "smelling salts and her special medicine". Brandy? We can only hope! I can only presume that more passages like this were removed:

There was a rustle of skirts, and Adelia Applegate appeared. A faded blond woman of thin features, she was dressed in a fashion of fifteen years before, in which every colour of the spectrum fought for supremacy. 

Birds in my Backyard

It's always exciting to get avian visitors in the backyard. Recently we've been seeing quite a few of these two:

European Goldfinch. Carduelis carduelis

 As we are such excellent gardeners we have lots of dandelions in the lawn which the Galahs love to eat

Galah. Eolophus roseicapilla

Saturday Snapshot, is a wonderful weekly meme from at home with books.

Heidi- the Shirley Temple movie

Every Friday night we have a movie and pizza night as a family. It's a lovely tradition that we've been doing for a year or two. Of course it doesn't happen every week, but whenever we're all home it's on. This week was our first chance in ages, and it was my turn to pick. I'd been wanting to watch Heidi since I read the book earlier in the year. Tonight I had my chance, I passed up the endless stream of Dr Who, modern animated features and dinosaur movies that seem to fill our agenda, and picked Heidi.

I guess I had seen a Shirley Temple movie when I was a kid, but don't remember if I saw this particular one. It's astounding to realise that she made over 40 movies. This was certainly the first of her movies that I remember seeing as an adult. She was rather impossibly cute with those ringlets and dimples.

The quality of my DVD copy was rather poor, but it was still enjoyable. The movie followed the book reasonably closely on the whole. The major elements of the story are there at least. Heidi is taken to live with her grumpy, hermit grandfather who she has never met. They make a life in his simple, isolated Alpine cabin. I was actually hoping for more Alpine scenery. I'm not convinced that any of it was filmed in the Alps actually. Certainly we don't get to enjoy Heidi's idyllic time on the Alpine meadows with Peter and the goats as I hoped we would.

There is only really one song and dance sequence, this is slipped in as Grandfather is reading Heidi a story and she imagines herself dancing around as a little Dutch girl in wooden clogs. After the story moves to Frankfurt the plot diverges quite a bit from that of the book. It's all wrapped up at Christmas, a few months earlier than in the book. There must have been a fashion in the 1930s for horse carriage chases, as we have another one here, similar to the 1940 Pride and Prejudice.

Much to my surprise, after some initial grumblings from the boys about the lack of dinosaurs, aliens and disruptions to the space time continuum, we did all rather enjoy Heidi. Perhaps I'll try to slip some more old movies in to our schedule....

Wondrous Words Wednesday 12/10/11

Wondrous Words Wednesday is a fabulous weekly meme hosted by Bermuda Onion, where we share new (to us) words that we’ve encountered in our weekly reading.  

My words today come from Christos Tsiolkas' controversial Australian book The Slap. 

1. Solipsistic (Adjective)

Was art for the good of mankind or was art only good when it was elitist and solipsistic?

I know that I've looked this word up multiple times, for some reason it never sticks. Maybe this time. 

Solipsistic, refers to solipsism

i) The theory that the self is the only thing that can be known and verified.

ii) The theory of view that the self is the only reality. The Free Dictionary. 

2. Firmament (noun)

She drove in ten-hour stretches, seeing nothing but the burnt scrub and the infinite blue firmament, parking the car in isolated service stations and braving the freezing cold of that emptiness while she willed herself to sleep. 

The vault or expanse of the heavens; the sky. The Free Dictionary. 

The Australian firmament

3. Bricolage (noun)

He was the only one with balls enough to denounce the hopelessly outdated postmodern bricolage of the artist's work.

i) The jumbled effect produced by the close proximity of buildings from different periods and in different architectural styles. 

ii) The deliberate creation of such an effect in certain modern developments. The Free Dictionary. 

I noticed the beauty of the bricolage in Luxembourg last year- I just didn't know it had a name!

4. Catamites (noun)

Vasili Grigorovich D'Estaing, the legendary French Huguenot admiral who had defected to the court of Queen Elizabeth I, was infamous not only for being the bastard child of Ivan the Terrible, but also for his ribald behaviour: it was said that he had boasted of one hundred mistresses and a dozen or so boy catamites. 

(This is from a fictional account written by a teenage boy)

A boy who has a sexual relationship with a man. A boy kept for homosexual purposes. The Free Dictionary.