The 12 Days of Christmas Book Tag

I saw this fun, seasonal Book Tag from Ruth @ A Great Book Study and straight away wanted to have a try. The aim is to match each of the gifts from 'my true love' with a suitable book. Here goes. 

1) A Partridge in a Pear Tree - Book that involves Agriculture

Anna Karenina! I'm thinking of the scene in which the wealthy young land-owner, Konstantin Levin, really wants to help mow his own grass for the satisfaction of a job well done. He gets down and dirty with his hired peasants, who laugh at him for bothering, as do his fellow gentry friends. But Levin doesn't care, since the appeal of the great outdoors and using his muscles is so strong for him.

2) Turtle Doves - Book about a long-lasting relationship.

I'll choose West From Home by Laura Ingalls Wilder for this one, but we must draw from her whole Little House series for the full effect. Laura and Almanzo go through so many hardships, and experience far more downs than ups, yet they stick together through thick and thin and live well into their nineties. These books are always a pleasure to read.

3) French Hens - Book that takes place in France.

I highly recommend Little by Edward Carey. It's an amazingly creative novel in which Marie Curie of waxworks fame tells her own life story, and brings the crazy days of revolutionary Paris to life. 

4) Calling Birds - Book where people talk on the phone.

OK, it's James Herriot's All Creatures Great and Small series about those awesome Yorkshire vets. I'm thinking specifically of the hilarious incidents when Tristan keeps phone-pranking James, imitating local farmers with horrendous jobs that urgently need to be done. But James gets back at him in a vulnerable moment with the phone prank to beat all that came before.

5) Golden Rings - Book with multiple romances.

Jane Austen's Emma! There are many perfectly unexpected pairings by the time we turn the final page, and none are the matches Emma Woodhouse initially expects, least of all her own. I approve of Emma and Knightley, and also Frank and Jane, but most of all I'm glad about Harriet and Robert Martin. I'm also pleased that smarmy Mr Elton gets the woman he truly deserves. 

6) Geese a Laying - Book with a birth or featuring babies.

It's fresh on my mind because I re-read it just recently. Anne's House of Dreams, by Lucy Maud Montgomery. It's the book in which Anne and Gilbert finally get married. After the heartache of losing their first baby, they welcome a healthy son, little Jem, into their family. His birth takes place toward the end of the story, which makes a wonderful, uplifting culmination to the novel. 

7) Swans a Swimming - Book where someone goes swimming.

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. It's that second task of the Triwizard Tournament where the competitors have to retrieve something of great value from the bottom of the Hogwarts Lake. Harry, Cedric, Fleur and Krum must all get their thinking caps on to figure out how to do their best and most effective swim. And Harry's use of gillyweed is quite ingenius, even though he doesn't come up with it alone. Harry rarely does, and we discover why. 

8) Maids a Milking - Book with cows.

 Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons. The Starkadder cows are like extensions of the family, especially because their names suit the grim, melancholic tone of the place. They are Feckless, Graceless, Pointless and Aimless, not to mention the bull, Big Business. 

9) Ladies Dancing - Book with a Dance Scene.

I'm going to draw from the brilliant Jane Austen again, with Pride and Prejudice this time. It's the ballroom scene that sets off a whole lot of friction, when Elizabeth overhears grumpy Mr Darcy refusing to dance with her, because she's not pretty enough to suit him. What a face palm. I would have taken at least as long as Elizabeth to forgive him for that. 

10) Lords a Leaping - Book with Athletes.

I hope it's not a cop-out to go with the Harry Potter series again, and all the wonderful quidditch playing. It was quite as exciting to read about the Quidditch World Cup at the start of The Goblet of Fire as it must have been to actually attend. Harry becomes quite a champion seeker himself throughout the series, and deserves a mention.

11) Pipers Piping - Book with Someone Playing a Musical Instrument.

I'll highlight the work of Louisa May Alcott this time. When Jo March and Professor Bhaer get married, they open a school for boys. One of their students is an orphan named Nat Blake who has a great gift playing the violin. Throughout Little Men and Jo's Boys, they are able to help him hone his skills and make his way in the world as a musician. 

12) Drummers Drumming - Book with Characters in the Military. 

My first impulse is to choose Rilla of Ingleside when Anne and Gilbert's sons go off to fight in World War One. But there's enough doubling up, so I'll go with Vanity Fair, in which the main men of the story, George Osborne, William Dobbin and Rawdon Crawley are all brave soldiers fighting in the Napoleonic War. (See what I did there, squeezing in two for the price of one.)   

There we have it. I'd love for anyone else to take up the baton, so I can read your answers. Please let me know if you do in the comments. And I wish you all a blessed and merry Christmas. 

2020 Back to the Classics Challenge Wrap-Up

Well, it's over for another year. Some I loved and admired tremendously, others I didn't think highly of at all, but as usual I read wider than I would have. Here they are, chosen and reviewed throughout the year. And now I'll eagerly wait to see if there will be a new challenge announced for yet another year.  

19th Century Classic - The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte

20th Century Classic - My Antonia by Willa Cather

Classic by a Woman Author - The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim

Classic in Translation - Kristin Lavransdattar; The Wreath by Sigrid Undset 

Classic by a Person of Colour (any classic by a non-white author) -
To Sir With Love by E.R. Braithwaite

Genre Classic (any classic novel that falls into a genre category) - The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien

Classic with a Person's Name in the Title - Charlotte's Web by E. B. White

Classic with a Place Name in the Title - Bleak House by Charles Dickens

Classic with Nature in the Title (except animals) - The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame

Classic about a Family - The Harp in the South novels by Ruth Park

An Abandoned Classic (that you just never got around to finishing) - Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell 

Classic Adaptation (any classic that's been adapted as a movie or TV series) - Vanity Fair by W.M. Thackeray

'The Signature of all Things' by Elizabeth Gilbert

In The Signature of All Things, Elizabeth Gilbert returns to fiction, inserting her inimitable voice into an enthralling story of love, adventure and discovery.

MY THOUGHTS:

 This is a wonderful sweeping epic across time and place that spans almost the entire nineteenth century as well as the life of its main character, for Alma Whittaker was born in January 1800 and grows up to figure out the theory of natural selection long before Charles Darwin ever published his groundbreaking book. 

The first part of the story introduces Alma's colourful, larger-than-life family. Her father, Henry Whittaker, is a pharmaceutical importer/exporter millionaire who got his start in life as a cheeky teenager stealing plants from the great Sir Joseph Banks at Kew Gardens. Her mother, Beatrix van Devender, is the brainy, austere and demanding daughter of a Dutch garden curator who could see Henry's potential. Later they adopt another little girl to be Alma's sister; the stunningly beautiful and compliant Prudence, who's no academic at heart. Prudence contrasts with Alma's physically plain, scrappy, cerebral brilliance. Needless to say both girls suffer by the family arrangement, in matters of the heart as well as self-esteem.    

To distract herself from disappointment and lack of fulfillment, Alma decides to become the foremost world expert on mosses. To focus on something so tiny, quiet and unobtrusive does her good. She concludes that mosses are intelligent, hardy, modest and dignified, even though they're overlooked and trodden on. All these are attributes she believes they share with her. Despite her brilliant research, Alma's study brings her no recognition beyond the few souls in the world who care about mosses! This emphasis on painstaking work solely for its own sake is super soothing to read. I doubt I could muster up sustaining interest in bryology itself, but reading about Alma Whittaker's passion for it is truly a joy. 

The significance of the novel's title becomes evident when Alma meets the younger man she falls passionately in love with. The gorgeous Ambrose Pike is a botanical artist of extraordinary genius who produces lifelike paintings of orchids, homing in on their very essence. He is fascinated by spiritual and mystical topics to the extent that he aspires to tap into the angelic realm while still alive. Ambrose respects the work of sixteenth century botanist Jacob Boehme who believed that God has hidden clues for the benefit of mortals within the earth's botany. In other words, the signature of all things is to be found within flowers, leaves and trees.

To say that this couple suffer from conflict of interests is a vast understatement. From the outset, Alma gets nowhere when she tries to fathom all the theories Ambrose is on about with the aid of her razor sharp reason and intellect. He even says, 'I am touched that you are trying to understand through rational thought that which cannot be understood at all.' But the full brunt of their misunderstanding is something that emerges only after they tie the knot. (The awkwardness is something that must be read to be believed, so be prepared to blush in sympathy for both of them.)  

Alma's quest to understand the true nature of her husband in retrospect as well as she understands mosses leads her to Tahiti, which she knows as the resting place of so many great explorers of the previous century. From there she moves on to Amsterdam, the birthplace of her maternal relatives. Elizabeth Gilbert's prose is so beautiful and unexpected, I was quite willing to keep turning any amount of pages just to see whatever epiphany Alma has next.

The main one is pretty big! What I love about Alma's own personal natural selection theory is her reluctance to publish, because the actions of people in her live have helped give her a niggling conviction that something is incomplete. Although survival of the fittest makes sense across a broad spectrum of nature, she cannot account for the pesky existence of human sacrifice and altruism. Of course Alma waits too long for evidence of something that can never be pinned down and examined beneath the microscope. Charles Darwin beats her to the finish line, but I love Alma's gracious acknowledgment that his 'On the Origin of Species' is a far more eloquent masterpiece than anything she would have put forth, so he was the man who was born to change the world's way of thinking. (Even though he doesn't account for the problem of altruism either.) 

As to the answer to Alma's question, along with the existence of human emotions, ethics and love, Gilbert only has her characters echo debates which are still raging to this day. What more can she do? She's written an ambitious, probing story, but it's a huge ask to expect her to present a neat solution which would please all readers. Personally, I thrilled to the speech that Alfred Russell Wallace (a real life scientist) put forth when Alma finally got to meet him.

Wallace says, 

'I will tell you why we have these extraordinary minds and souls. We have them because there is a supreme intelligence in the universe which wishes for communion with us. This supreme intelligence longs to be known. It calls out to us. It draws us close to its mystery and it grants us these remarkable minds in order that we try to reach for it. It wants us to find it. It wants union with us more than anything.' 

Alma calls it a beautiful theory which comes as close to answering her question as anything has, but points out that it's still answering a mystery with another mystery. And she still seeks answers from empirical science as she was born to do. 

I'm giving this novel 5 stars not because it addresses these questions and doubts to everyone's satisfaction (which it can't), but because my interest in Alma's story never once flagged. The sense of curiosity, energy and innovation which characterised the nineteenth century comes through clearly, and each character comes across as a living, breathing creation, including many of the botanical ones.

It's probably fair to add a tip that this novel gets steamy at times. Not steamy enough for poor Alma, but perhaps too steamy for some readers. But I think Elizabeth Gilbert is one of the authors of the 21st century whose work I'll always look out for.  

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'To Sir with Love' by E.R. Braithwaite

The modern classic about a dedicated teacher in a tough London school who slowly and painfully breaks down the barriers of racial prejudice, this is the story of a man's integrity winning through against the odds.

MY THOUGHTS:

This is my choice for the Book by an Author of Colour category of the 2020 Back to the Classics Challenge. The action takes place in the mid forties, which astonished me because I imagined it was the sixties. That's probably because of the movie starring Sidney Poitier, which was released in 1967 and set around the same time as far as I can recall. But the actual book on which it's based is a real mid-twentieth century classic. 

 Rick Braithwaite is an ex-RAF pilot who came out of the War with honours. With a Science and Electronics degree behind him, he applies for some engineering positions for which he's highly qualified, but potential employers keep deciding against him on sight because of his skin colour. Every! Single! Time! Braithwaite grows to resent the people who so callously and unfeelingly deny him a right to earn a living. 

At last he's interviewed and accepted for a school teacher job at the daunting and dubious Greenslade Secondary School. His position turns out to have a higher turnover than a Harry Potter DADA teacher, because his predecessors have a history of walking out on the spur of the moment. The senior class in question is a bunch of delinquents from the wrong side of the tracks who are disillusioned enough to keep flouting authority. As far as the ruling powers are concerned, Braithwaite, being a coloured man, is second best for them just as they, the dreaded rebels, are for him. But he accepts the challenge with energy and enthusiasm, because he's delighted to have a job at all. 

Rather than tailoring his lessons to their supposed standard, Braithwaite makes it clear to the students that he expects them to raise theirs to meet his, which he assures them isn't too high because they are intelligent young men and women. It's really cool to read how he draws the best from each of them. It's one of those paradoxes of life. Advice to not cast pearls before swine makes sense, but so does treating others like the people you want them to be, trusting they'll honour your faith.

Changing times is evident throughout this story, which still comes across so modern, although it took place almost eighty years ago. I appreciate Braithwaite's stern words to the boys, after young Potter turns on the gym teacher Mr Bell, who has mistreated his friend Buckley. 'Are you going to resort to clubs or knives every time you're upset or angered?' He then reasons that there will always be bullies and idiots who anger them on the workplace, which is a fact they must get used to, and insists that Potter apologise to Mr Bell. This is a great scene, yet I can't help wondering if in the twenty-twenties, this lesson of self-control might be allowed to slide in favour of 'standing up for your rights!'  

One thing that hasn't changed enough is racial discrimination. You can't read this book without getting angry over the way Braithwaite is treated across the board. I was groaning in sympathy for him and shame for all those others who reject him on sight. Everything he attempts to do, whether applying for jobs or taking his girlfriend out for dinner, attracts the same negative attention. I was fed up with the appalling behaviour of the general public just after reading this 180 page novel, so the pain of facing the same old flak every day of your life for something completely irrelevant and unchangeable must be unimaginable. 

The poor guy has to psyche himself up to meet his white girlfriend's parents just as a matter of course. It's all in a day's work, but shouldn't be. Braithwaite describes how defensiveness and edginess can become wound up in a person's integral make-up, all because of the prejudice of others. 'Sticks and stones may break your bones but names will never hurt you,' is truly a limited maxim. 

I wasn't crazy about the thread with Braithwaite and his fellow teacher, Gillian Blanchard, because it doesn't seem to fit this particular story. The book's focal awesomeness is all about the changing relationship between him and the students, so whenever it shifts to Braithwaite's romantic life, I wanted to return to the main theme ASAP. I wasn't enthralled with her character, so whatever spark they had didn't work for me.

On the whole, I applaud Braithwaite for writing this book. Without giving himself much of the spotlight at all, he comes across as the dignified, gracious human-being he was, and a great example to take life as it comes with aplomb and tact. As I read, I found myself humming the old song, 'To Sir with Love' sung by Lulu, who played Barbara Pegg in the old 1967 film. Although it's a hard-hitting story, there is also plenty of fun. 

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