featured
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A Place In The Country
Sometimes all you need is a place in the country. An old farmhouse is ideal, with well-worn couches and creaky floorboards. It should have a front porch to drink tea on in the mornings and a well-filled woodshed for campfires at night. It should be set in the middle of nowhere so you can pretend that you are the only people in the world. Ideally, it should have a reading nook and bookshelves jammed with books by Josephine Tey and Wilkie Collins and Dorothy Dunnett. You should be able to walk out the door onto dirt roads that seldom see a car. You will want to happily meander down them,…
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The Books That Make Us
My son was talking to me the other day about the narrow outlook so many people have. It tends to bother him that people are frequently unable to understand other viewpoints and that their world does not reach beyond the small circle they live in. He thinks many of his friends would be better off if they were forced out of their comfort zone and were exposed to a wider world view. We were in the midst of this conversation when he turned to me and told me that he was glad he was raised to be a reader and thought the world would be better if people read more.…
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Memories Are Made Of This
The smell of molasses cookies fresh out of the oven. The words you say over and over. “Shut the door.” “Have you done your homework?” “It’s time for bed.” The feel of Lego bricks and Matchbox cars under your feet. If there is one left on the floor your feet are guaranteed to find it in the dark and when you yell in pain you will wake the baby. The words of the board book you read over and over, so often you can still recite it now years later. The pudgy hands starfished against your leg and the toothy grin you see when you bend down. The smell of…
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A Day Out–Bletchley Park
On the last full day of our trip to London, we took the train to Bletchley. It was an easy trip from Euston station, under an hour, and only 16 GBP for a return ticket. Bletchley Park is clearly marked and you can walk to it in under 5 minutes from the train station. Bletchley Park was the site of top-secret code-breaking during WWII. The codebreakers regularly cracked codes of the Axis powers including the German Enigma. Their work is credited with shortening the war by two to four years. The movie, The Imitation Game has helped to bring the work of these men and women into focus for many.…
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Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
Fanny Price is no Elizabeth Bennett. But really, why should she be? There is no reason for Jane Austen to have written the same character and the same story over and over. However, it seems that many people fall in love with Pride and Prejudice and then expect Austen’s other works to be the same. They want all her novels to be “light and bright and sparkling” as Austen described Pride and Prejudice. Mansfield Park is a darker, less sparkling book but it stands squarely on its own merit. It is a novel with a quiet, meek, yet morally strong heroine and it contains a biting commentary on the society…
