What's good that you've read lately?

so thoroughly that I periodically reread the series even today is "A Wrinkle in Time."

We can admit that we're killers ... but we're not going to kill today. That's all it takes! Knowing that we're not going to kill today! ~ Captain James T. Kirk, Stardate 3193.0

I did read a book in my childhood that changed my life. In between 5th and 6th grade I read 'Bury my Heart at Wounded Knee'.

Pretty young for such a heavy dose of reality, it was eye-opening. This was also in the early 70's and it was a very timely read.

-----------------------------

Around these parts we call cucumber slices circle bites

First time I really felt let down by the US government.

A Wrinkle In Time (you all know that one, right?)

A biography of Elizabeth Blackwell, the first woman M.D. At the time I was thinking I'd be a physician when I grew up, mostly because an uncle I idolized was one. That was before it was forcefully brought home to me that I become incoherent at the sight of blood. But her story stuck with me.

The Phantom Tollbooth.

I'm sure I can think of more. I read a lot.

... wait, how long does "childhood" last, anyway?

First science fiction book I ever read: Galactic Derelict.

Jules Verne, not so much. Though I loved Around the World in 80 Days, because I like phlegmatic heros.

the The Scarlet Pimpernel by (i kid you not)Baroness Emmuska Orczy. I was probably in 7th grade or something. I ditched church to keep reading it I thought it was so good.

It was set during the French Revolution. Turned me into a Francophile, a complete Fr Rev geekster..

odd that I am a writer today..

Oh, and do these count as childhood books... Classic Comics! Does anyone remember those? All the cool novels.. condensed to pictures.. couldn't get enough of them.

Also Scholastic Books--you ordered them through school and they came in a couple of weeks. And Treasure Chest comic.. the school actually sold subscriptions for them! those were the days...

dupager

Oh yeah.

I remember some:

A book called "Come on, Seabiscuit" or something like that...

A book of famous mysteries of the sea. I actually loved that one and read it about a hundred times. My favorite was the story of Theodosia Burr Alston. I'm not sure why I was so taken with these.

If I were not so tired I'd try to look up the actual titles of these books...

(I think it was.) They were generic, but I read all of them.

[ ] Very tepidly voting for Obama [ ] ?????. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.

The libertarian/conservative cant of the "Little House" books was invisible to me as a child, because she did such a wonderful job of evoking history through the eyes, ears, and other senses of a child, and because she so skillfully allowed the child to mature as the series went on in time. I'm sure I picked up the books only because the NBC series started when I was an early grade schooler, but I read and re-read those books to shreds. I'm also convinced that they're why I decided to study history professionally, although I'm not a nineteenth-century historian.

I've had the opportunity to re-read _Little House in the Big Woods_, _Little House on the Prairie_ and _On the Shores of Plum Creek_ recently, and they're very compelling models for me now that I'm writing a biography of an eighteenth-century girl and woman from age 7 on.

You'll regret asking though, I am sure!

My biography of Esther Wheelwright (1696-1780) is going well. I've got two chapters drafted, with two or three more to go. (It will be a short-ish book, less than 200 pages excluding notes and bibliography, because there's only so much evidence we have about eighteenth-century girl children and women.)

Thinking about my subject as a girl child, rather than simply an age-undifferentiated female, has been a great exercise in thinking about power in colonial America in new ways. There's a new literature out there on the history of childhood that comes out of women's history in large part, and it's very helpful. I also think that by introducing my subject as a girl rather than as a woman, I may be able to convince my readers of the value of feminist historical analysis. I'm thinking that perhaps the girl child may seem more "approachable" or knowable to lay readers, most of whom have experiences with children or remember their own childhoods.

Looking back, they were terrible, but I read them all.

And I remember being puzzled when told that, by a boy, that Nancy Drew was "for girls." (It's a story!)

[ ] Very tepidly voting for Obama [ ] ?????. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.

I read Nancy Drew and some Hardy Boys and the Bobbsey Twins too. As I recall, the Bobbsey Twins were for very young readers, say 6-8, whereas the teenage detective stories were more for the tween set (9-12 or so.)

Growing up in the 1970s, Judy Blume was really huge. I remember passing around a copy of _Forever_ among my friends in something like 5th grade. (That's the one where the teenaged boyfriend and girlfriend "do it!!!!") We each had one night with the book, and so took to our rooms immediately after returning home from school until well past lights-out so that we could finish the story before having to surrender it the next morning. The sense was that our parents wouldn't have approved had they known what we were reading, but gosh--it all seems so innocent and unplugged compared to contraband media for kids today. (I imagine that a lot of parents would be so grateful if their kid spent an entire afternoon and evening reading a book by themselves that they probably wouldn't care about the content!)

Penny and Julie Wheelwright used me as a consultant, and I appeared in the movie (mostly at the beginning and at the very end) as a "talking head." That's cool that you've actually see it! Julie and I also became collaborators on writing and research--she's writing her own book on Esther W. for HarperCollins Canada. Her angle is very much that of a descendant with her own interesting family story about crossing borders. (Her mother was evacuated from England to Canada before the blitz--Julie and her sisters grew up in Canada.)

My interest in Esther Wheelwright is in her multiple border-crossings, political, geographical, linguistic, and of course religious. I think her life tells us a lot about early America that is marginalized or invisible in the nation-state based narratives that structure most U.S. American history courses.

And Lambert: kind of like the twin girls in The Shining? Come play with us! Come play with us!

TP, I didn't see that you only had heard of the movie. Sorry for the mistake. And as for diaries--I wish! Her nephew left a journal recording two visits to see his Aunt in Quebec, but she never left any personal records like that. It would have been very out of character for an 18th C nun to keep a personal diary at all, let alone one that gave any insight into her personality or character. There are those diaries in the 18th C, but they're mostly by men, and are still very dominated by the generic conventions of journal keeping/commonplace books.

The notion that one is a unique being with a self that has an inner life that needs to be recorded is a very modern notion. (More of a 19th and 20th C thing, I think.)