A Fan's Playground

When I was a kid I owned two Karen Cushman books, this one and Catherine, Called Birdy. At the time I didn't like this one as much because Alyce isn't fun and charming like Catherine is. But on rereading it now, I actually really love The Midwife's Apprentice.

Cushman specializes in historical fiction for children set in the Middle Ages, with particular focus on girls. This one is about a girl who becomes a midwife's apprentice, is as perhaps obvious from the title.

Alyce begins the book a rejected and starving orphan child who has never been called anything better than Brat. Over the course of the book Alyce changes name and role multiple times, as she grows up a little and learns more about herself and the world. Nobody in the book is an uncomplicatedly good person (except perhaps Magister Reese!) but Alyce takes from each person and interaction what she needs in order to piece herself together into a person who knows herself and knows what she wants in her life and can stand up for herself and those she cares about.

It's not a book about a person developing close emotional bonds with other people, my usual jam; instead, it's about a person developing a close emotional bond with herself. The arc of the book is about self-determination, and it's really satisfying!

Also this is the 100th book I've read so far in 2020! Only the second time in 13 years I've made it above that barrier! And now I've only gotta read 11 more books this year to beat my all-time best since I first started keeping track of my books. And you know, I think that just might be doable :D

More books from the folktale haul of earlier this year!

The Bird Who Cleans The World And Other Mayan Fables, by Victor Montejo

This one is, as should be obvious from the title, Mayan. The author grew up in a Mayan village with his mother and other elders in the community telling these and other stories, and eventually when he was older he wrote them down so that these stories from his heritage wouldn't be lost. And a fair number of the stories definitely seemed to be to be the sort of story a parent would tell a child. Especially the one about how important it is to honour your mother for all the hard work she did raising you! :P The other story I found particularly interesting was the one with the personification of Death, as Death is gendered female, which isn't something I recall having seen much before.

The Adventures of Nanabush: Ojibway Indian Stories, by Emerson Coatsworth and David Coatsworth

I like that this collection of folk stories actually provides named credit to all the people who told the stories, not just to the compilers. And it's a fun collection to read -- getting a bunch of stories about a single character all together means you get a better sense of that character. Nanabush is something of a trickster, and sometimes he ends the story successful and sometimes not, but something I appreciate about him is that when he faces consequences as a result of a foolish thing he did, he's often like, okay yeah fair I deserved that.

Paul Bunyan, by Esther Shephard

A book of tall tales told by loggers in the 19th and early 20th century in North America - collected and published in the 1920's, a time when the stories were still alive and being told in logging camps, though to some degree on their way out. This author lists many of her sources, the people who told these stories to her. Something I love about what the author's done with collecting these stories is that she's kept in a lot of the talk that might be extraneous to the main thrust of the story but is clearly relevant to the way these kinds of stories were told, which really helps to bring this folk tradition to life for the reader. The point of a folk story doesn't have to be just what the story is, the tangential stuff a storyteller says while introducing the story or interrupting the story can be relevant and interesting too, as is the fact of it being an informal-enough type of storytelling that that's common. (The author is clearly cutting out the swears, though.) (Also, she mentions in the intro that she hasn't included stories that are too closely interested in extremely local details about regions, or insider knowledge about logging, and I for one am disappointed.)

Back in the days after I'd started keeping a list of all the books I read each year but BEFORE I started posting reviews of them, I kept desultory personal notes (ranging from a single word to quite a few paragraphs) on some of the books. And I always vaguely forget I have, and forget where exactly to find them, and I'd like to just have them on my dw so they're FINDABLE again for me. And also some of you might find these interesting/amusing? (N.B. some of these contain what I would now classify as INCORRECT OPINIONS.)

SO HERE'S THREE YEARS' WORTH OF BOOKS IN ONE POST, OKAY GO.

( expand this cut to see nested cuts listing all the books )

At any rate the world doesn't stop having good books in it just because everything else is horrible.

Here's a collection of short book thoughts about some books I liked, that aren't substantive or spoilery enough thoughts to get their own posts.


The True Meaning of Smekday, by Adam Rex

A reread. Still an impressively successful and delightful book! A kid's book about alien invasion(s), told from the point of view of a young biracial girl, with the conceit that it was written by her for a school project with a goal of it ending up in a time capsule. Tip is a really engaging narrator, and the themes the book is addressing are all well handled, and it's just all SO GOOD. I have a lot of feelings.

Also http://archiveofourown.org/works/1087542 is pretty much exactly right for what happens after the book imo. I love this fic. (though really I ought to read the ACTUAL Smek sequel at some point I think. There is one now!)


Quilting: Poems 1987-1990, by Lucille Clifton

An interesting collection of poems written by an African-American woman. Worth reading, though I have nothing to say about it because I'm not comfortable enough yet with poetry to have the words to describe it.


Dogsbody, by Diana Wynne Jones

A well written and charming book, as is to be expected from DWJ. I'm not the right audience for it, since I don't particularly care one way or another about dogs, and our main character is fairly thoroughly a dog for much of the book. But DWJ is a good enough writer to keep me invested despite this, and I did care an awful lot about Kathleen!


The Emperor's Soul, by Brandon Sanderson

A reread. I still love this book. But do I have anything else to say about it that I didn't say last time? No.


The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl: Squirrel, You Really Got Me Now, by Ryan North, art by Erica Henderson

A total delight, just like the last two Squirrel Girl tpbs! I love Ryan North's sense of humour, and Erica Henderson's art is perfect for the story. Doreen and her friends are all amazing, and I love just about everything about this book.

However. The last two issues in this collection are a two-part crossover with Howard Duck. The first part (done by the Squirrel Girl team) was just about as good as the rest of the series but the second part (done by the Howard Duck team) I just wasn't as into. It wasn't as funny or as charming, and I didn't like the art as much, and I just didn't care as much. It's too bad that this is the note the book ended on, because the rest of the book had me gleeful all the way through.

I'm getting sick of still having a backlog of posts of books-I've-read, so I'm just going to throw ALL THE REST UP HERE to get me caught up; I don't have that many left, I think. And then from here on in I can just POST IMMEDIATELY when I read a book. Okay? OKAY. LET'S GO.

( The Story of Canada, by Janet Lunn and Christopher Moore, illustrated by Alan Daniel )

( Cetaganda, by Lois McMaster Bujold )

( Dorothea Dix: Girl Reformer, by Grace Hathaway Melin )

( Tam Lin, by Pamela Dean )

( Fearless Girls, Wise Women & Beloved Sisters: Heroines in Folktales from Around the World, by Kathleen Ragan )

( The Fortune of War, by Patrick O'Brian )