Yesterday, as I was sitting in front of the TV watching the Super Bowl and knitting at the same time, I realized that was exactly the same thing I was doing 44 years ago, for the first Super Bowl!

So, what was I reading 44 years ago right now?  Great Expectations, by Charles Dickens.

Life is changing. It’s been a number of years since we gave up our newspaper subscription because we just weren’t finding the time in our busy work weeks to sit down and spend time reading the morning news. However, for the last two weeks, I’ve been enjoying a trial subscription to the Kindle edition of The Seattle Times, and it’s been a very interesting experience. There are no photographs, no crossword puzzle, no “funnies,” so the focus is entirely on the writing and reporting. I’d forgotten how much I enjoy reading well-written news.  I was trained as a journalist — always worked on the school newspaper, that sort of thing — so I do appreciate good writing. And with my new Kindle, I can try out different newspapers from around the world, carry them all with me in my bag, and rediscover the pleasure of good journalism.

photo by Tina Hilton

There have been many times as a knitter that I finally decided to “frog” a project that just wasn’t working out for me.  For whatever reason, the time wasn’t right for the project, so I unraveled it and wound up the yarn for later.  I did that this week with a book…frogged it. Nothing new to us as readers, but I’d never used the word to describe what I do when I simply stop reading a book because it’s not the right one for now.  I was disappointed, because I wanted to like Connie Willis’s novella, Remake. But I frogged it, and maybe will pick it up again later on and give it another chance.

The Tale of the Rose:  The Passion That Inspired The Little Prince, is an unusual memoir of a marriage written by Consuelo de Saint-Exupery.  She was the wife of pilot and writer, Antoine de Saint-Exupery, who wrote the beloved children’s classic, The Little Prince.  Theirs was a passionate, tumultuous, childish marriage.  He was one of those brilliant shooting stars from another time and place–charismatic, self-absorbed, romantic. “His head in the skies” describes him perfectly.  She was the wife he both adored and disliked, that he cheated on time and again but couldn’t let go of, either.  She was child-like and demanding, filled with jealousy (with cause!), but she was also his muse and his inspiration.

“Of course I love you,” the flower said to him.  “It is my fault that you have not known it all the while.  That is of no importance.  But you–you have been as foolish as I.  Try to be happy….  Don’t linger like this.  You have decided to go away.  Go now!”

For she did not want him to see her crying.  She was such a proud flower….

–From The Little Prince.

It was hard to read this memoir word for word, because I was always trying to figure out where was “true north” in the stories she was telling.  But at the same time I was fascinated by their ups and downs, their constant fighting and getting back together, and their amazing lives historically, and I couldn’t put it down. Yes, it was a little bit like watching a train wreck. They were so bad for and to each other–they couldn’t live together, but they also couldn’t live apart.

I knew very little about “Saint-Ex,” as he was called, but I was curious about his relationship with Anne Morrow Lindbergh, whose writing I greatly admire.  I’d read that she fell in love with him at one point in her life, found him to be her writing soulmate.  So I wanted to learn more. I’m not sure I cared very much for the person I saw through the eyes of Consuelo.

The best part of the book for me was the last section where there were long quotes from the letters they wrote each other shortly before Saint-Ex disappeared over the Mediterranean.  Those were profoundly romantic, and quite beautifully written.  It was clear that they loved each other, and loved being in love.  It was the” dailyness” of marriage that they couldn’t handle.

]]> http://afondnessforreading.wordpress.com/2010/02/03/the-tale-of-the-rose/feed/ 3 Robin 11111-Un-libro-sobre-Saint-Exupery-impugna-a-su-viuda-Consuelo-Suncin_noticia_full antoine_de_saint-exupery_lyon avec_consuelo_suncin http://afondnessforreading.wordpress.com/2010/02/03/birthday-celebrations/ http://afondnessforreading.wordpress.com/2010/02/03/birthday-celebrations/#comments Wed, 03 Feb 2010 19:03:11 +0000 Robin http://afondnessforreading.wordpress.com/?p=2387 ]]>

Life has been pretty hectic recently, and I’ve taken some time off from blogging simply because there was little time or energy left at the end of the day.  All is well, just busy!  And since I last posted here, I’ve passed my 3 year anniversary of starting this blog, and also had my own birthday, so some belated celebrations are in order!

My three years of blogging have been a wonderful experience for me. I’ve loved the reading, the sharing, and being part of the community of  book people. You have all enriched my life and inspired my reading, and I celebrate each one of you.

To celebrate my birthday, we spent the birthday weekend with family on the Oregon coast, YURT camping near Tillamook.  If you’ve never heard of yurt camping, you really must check it out. The campground was so nice and clean, the area was absolutely beautiful, and the only complaint we had was that a family of raccoons made thumping noises under our yurt the last night we were there.  We were, of course, invading THEIR territory.

It’s been a long, dark winter in the Northwest, but I realized today that Spring is coming!  It won’t be long now!  I’m always surprised when I see signs of early spring. I guess I just get into this mindset where I think the dark and the rain will last forever…but they don’t!  It’s comin’!

My first Kindle read:  the newly announced Newbery Award Winning book, When You Reach Me, by Rebecca Stead!  What a great book to start off my love affair with my new Kindle.  I couldn’t stop reading it, and was very excited that this very creative and engaging book won the Newbery medal.  It was well-deserved.

I didn’t know anything at all about this book before I read it, so it was terrific to simply experience it.  It’s very unusual and I found myself loving the way it was written.  It also incorporates a book that I know many of you love as much as I do:  Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time.  It’s part mystery, historical fiction, science fiction, magical realism, all rolled into one great story. It makes me wish I was teaching 6th grade again, so I could read it aloud to my students, who would love it.  But that would only be after I read them A Wrinkle in Time so they could fully appreciate the connections between the two books.

Now I completely understand why people were so happy last week when the Newbery Award was announced.

From the publisher:

Four mysterious letters change Miranda’s world forever.

By sixth grade, Miranda and her best friend, Sal, know how to navigate their New York City neighborhood. They know where it’s safe to go, like the local grocery store, and they know whom to avoid, like the crazy guy on the corner.

But things start to unravel. Sal gets punched by a new kid for what seems like no reason, and he shuts Miranda out of his life. The apartment key that Miranda’s mom keeps hidden for emergencies is stolen. And then Miranda finds a mysterious note scrawled on a tiny slip of paper:

I am coming to save your friend’s life, and my own.

I must ask two favors. First, you must write me a letter.

The notes keep coming, and Miranda slowly realizes that whoever is leaving them knows all about her, including things that have not even happened yet. Each message brings her closer to believing that only she can prevent a tragic death. Until the final note makes her think she’s too late.

Here is a book for the whole family to share on this day of celebrating Martin Luther King, Jr.:  As Good as Anybody: Martin Luther King and Abraham Joshua Heschel’s Amazing March Toward Freedom.  Beautifully written by Richard Michelson, with lovely illustrations by Raul Colón, this book won the Sydney Taylor Book Award in the younger readers category in 2009.

from the publisher:

MARTIN LUTHER KING, Jr. and Abraham Joshua Heschel. Their names stand for the quest for justice and equality.

Martin grew up in a loving family in the American South, at a time when this country was plagued by racial discrimination. He aimed to put a stop to it. He became a minister like his daddy, and he preached and marched for his cause.

Abraham grew up in a loving family many years earlier, in a Europe that did not welcome Jews. He found a new home in America, where he became a respected rabbi like his father, carrying a message of peace and acceptance.

Here is the story of two icons for social justice, how they formed a remarkable friendship and turned their personal experiences of discrimination into a message of love and equality for all.

Click here to listen to a podcast of the author and illustrator presenting and discussing their book at the Association of Jewish Libraries convention in July of last year.

A lucky find at the library last week was Moon-Flash, by Patricia A. McKillip, one of my favorite authors. This book was an early experiment with the science fiction genre by this award-winning fantasy author, and it was written in the same beautiful language I have come to love in all her novels. Written for young adults, this story does what I enjoy so much about science fiction–it makes you look at life and our world from a different angle, so it was a perfect choice for Carl V’s January/February Sci Fi Experience 2010.

From a very nice review by Camille Alexa, at the Green Man Review web site:

The storyline of Moon-Flash is deceptively simple: a young girl named Kyreol, on the eve of her marriage, sets out with her childhood boyfriend (also betrothed — to somebody else) to traverse the great river of their world beyond the boundaries of what for them is the known universe. Ostensibly, she is in search of her mother, who disappeared years earlier. But as the journey progresses, it becomes clear that what really drives Kyreol ever further — just over the next waterfall, just beyond the next forest, just to the realm of the great beasts who live in the river — is the eternal quest to discover for discovery’s sake, to experience the not-yet-experienced purely for the joy and exhilaration of doing so. It is this which makes Moon-Flash a satisfying read for the eternally curious of any age.

Moon-Flash is actually the first of two books telling the story of Kyreol and Terje.  The second volume is called The Moon and the Face, and luckily that volume is also available through my library, so I have another enjoyable read ahead for this week.