A Fan's Playground

A children's book from the 90's, this book holds up surprisingly well! It's historical fiction set in the 13th century about two young folks who go on pilgrimage from their village in England to Santiago in Spain.

The style of the book is a little too abrupt for me, switching between short little vignette scenes constantly, and often with different POV's. But it's a really good and solid depiction of the experience of medieval pilgrimage and medieval life, and of the main characters' growth and change on the way. It even manages to include an interlude with a sympathetic muslim character.

Feng Menglong published Stories Old and New in the 17th century in China; it's a collection of stories which were traditionally told by popular story-tellers. Cyril Birch then chose six stories from that collection that he saw as "representative" and translated them and presented them in this book which I read.

It makes for a very interesting read, to be sure, but I am curious about how actually representative Birch's selections are or aren't. And also I have concerns about what biases Birch's translation has introduced! There's one place where his endnote makes it clear he has bowdlerized something: "I have however preferred to follow the 1947 reprint of the original in omitting a few phrases, which add nothing but might be found offensive." He also in one story translates the name of a type of bird local to China as a "canary" because it'll be more familiar to the presumed reader. Which means I do not exactly trust him as a translator to be presenting me with stories that are a close reflection of the original. Even though he noted these two egregious changes in his endnotes, what other more insidious changes might he have made without thinking it worth mentioning?

At any rate I did enjoy reading the collection. I appreciate that these are traditional stories collected and retold by a person from the same culture as the stories themselves; so many folk stories now available to read were collected by 19th century upper-class European men to "save" the oral traditions that their own colonialism was in the process of wiping out, which is sure a thing. China has its own traditions and its own history of publishing and scholarship though, and the stories in this book come out of that instead! Even if my monolingual self had to read them through the lens of Cyril Birch. SIGH.

My favourite story in the collection was The Canary Murders, which is a fun murder mystery about all the knock-on effects of people dying as a result of one initial murder. Good times. My least favourite was probably The Fairy's Rescue, which I found just kind of uninteresting. Possibly I lack the cultural context to be able to emotionally invest in the story. It's definitely the story with by far the most explanatory endnotes, but endnotes can only do so much in bringing a reader along for the ride. Or possibly having my eyee glaze over for all the poetry was more detrimental for this story because it's got a higher proportion of poetry.

I do want to give special recognition to The Lady Who Was A Beggar, which contains two morality tales within it, each about a spousal rejection, and the difference in what happens to the rejecting spouse when it's the wife vs the husband is sure, uh, NOTABLE. The wife who rejects her husband dies in shame. The husband who rejects his wife (by trying to murder her!!) gets a second chance at happiness in their relationship and remarries her!

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 )

This is the last book in the Brother Cadfael series! Not the last one for me to read, though. Alas. I've still not managed to get my hands on #14, The Hermit of Eyton Forest. But I've now read all but that one!

At any rate: Brother Cadfael's Penance started unfortunately really slowly and it took me forever to start feeling actually engaged. You can tell this is the case because I started reading this book on July 20, kept on attempting to plug away at it for a MONTH but never made it even as far as a quarter of the way through, and then on August 23 when I pretty much had nothing else to do but read this book I finally broke through the boring bit and all of a sudden it was AMAZING and I was delighted that I had nothing else to do but read this book and I finished it in one morning.

The problem, I think, is that the first bit of this book is too directly about Empress Maud and King Stephen, and up close and personal they're just petty and uninteresting. The interesting part about the civil war between them over the course of the series is the way that it affects the lives of ordinary people. I mostly don't actually care about them in themselves. So spending that much time at their attempted peace meeting is just a yawn, especially since it's obvious the peace talks are going to go absolutely nowhere.

But after things break up there it gets GREAT. I love Cadfael here, I love how this is the most uncertain I think we've ever seen him. ( spoilers! )

Recommended to me quite some time ago by china_shop, as being her favourite Crusie. And it is extremely charming! I like Lucy a great deal, and love her relationship with her sister. And the buddy cop stuff that china_shop talked about is indeed great, and I definitely see what she meant in comparing Zack with Ray Kowalski. And I like the Lucy/Zack relationship too, though it moves a little fast for me and also I can't help thinking that beginning a relationship in the circumstances is inappropriate and a bad idea.

But in general the book is a fun read!

Drat, it's been too long since my last book thoughts post, which means to many of these thoughts are extremely abbreviated. That's what happens when I don't write down my thoughts right away! Sigh.


( The Olive Fairy Book, by Andrew Lang )

( The World of Christopher Robin, by A.A. Milne )

( The Shakespeare Stealer, by Gary Blackwood )

( Catherine, Called Birdy, by Karen Cushman )

( The Enneagram Made Easy: Discover the 9 Types of People, by Renee Baron and Elizabeth Wagele )

( Plain Tales From The Hills, by Rudyard Kipling )

( Hans Brinker: or, The Silver Skates, by Mary Mapes Dodge )