These Old Shades - Book 14

I first read this book back in 2002 or 03, I think.  I was well into Georgette Heyer by that time.  I remember thinking it was one of her better ones.  I picked it up to read again because I am really getting into French history and I remembered that much of this book is set in France during the reign of Louis XV.  Well, it was a wonderful reread!

The Duke of Avon, Justin Alistair, is not a good person.  He is almost 40, smarter than everyone else, rich and cynical and he's made some real enemies with his playboy ways.  One of these is the brother of a girl he tried to run away with, the Count Saint-Vire.  Saint-Vire has a nasty temper and bright red hair.  While walking down the street in Paris one night, the Duke literally bumps into a young street boy who looks remarkably like his arch enemy.  Avon buys the boy from his abusive older brother and changes the course of both their lives forever.

Heyer's writing really shines in this book; her character development through succinct description and great dialogue is just pitch perfect.  The Duke has a wry sense of humor and it made me laugh a lot.  The Duke is not a good person, but he does have a heart and he has a growing sense of shame over his unwholesome ways.  Even though he is hardened and cynical, the boy he buys, who turns out to be girl(!) steals his heart.  She is a delightful character.  You can't help falling for her right along with the Duke.  And I've read enough of these books now that the 20 year age difference doesn't bother me anymore.  I can suspend my modern sensibilities enough to not let that affect my enjoyment of a good story.

The ending of the book is a little bit hard for me to take, both in its believability and also in its morality.  The Duke gets his revenge and laughs diabolically about it.  He also gets the girl and is duly humbled by it.

This book is a gem.  I highly recommend it.

And just to defend my love of Georgette Heyer novels, here is an article about A. S. Byatt's love for Heyer.

For more book reviews go to Read 52 Books in 52 Weeks.

My Mom Singing

Growing up, sometimes when my mom and dad were in a romantic mood, like it was their anniversary or something, we'd pull out this record (might have been a 78) and listen to it.  My mom somehow made it for my dad I think when he was at war.  He was a Navy pilot in the Pacific during World War II.  She had a lovely voice, though untrained.  My mom sang to us in that lovely voice.  Lots of lullabies, folks songs and songs that were hits during the 40's Big Band era.  She loved to sing.

My nephew Dave does some recording stuff and he somehow found the record and made it playable again.  And Hannah put it on her sound cloud.  So you can hear my mom singing this love song to my dad.  I miss my mom so much. Hearing this gives me a great big lump in my throat every time.  Miss you so much Mom!  Thanks for everything!  You were a wonderful mother.  So good and true and wise.

https://soundcloud.com/hannnnnnnnnnah/always-beryl-brophy

And now I will go have a good blubber.

The Scarlet Pimpernel - Book 13

All my life I've heard of The Scarlet Pimpernel but had never gotten around to reading it.  I had heard about what a wonderful story it was.  I have even avoided watching the movie versions because I didn't want to spoil the ending.  Finally, I got around to reading it out loud to Becky and Sean as part of our study of the French Revolution, so excitedly we began the book and . . .

Nobody told me this book is unintentionally funny.  We keep laughing at it.  Even though the author is absolutely incapable of any type of wit.  I know it is supposed to be a swashbuckling adventure story.  I was imagining something like Sir Walter Scott or Alexander Dumas.  But those guys can actually write.  This is the equivalent of a Harlequin romance level of writing.  Except Harlequin sometimes publishes better writing.  I am rereading Georgette Heyer's These Old Shades (Harlequin republished Heyer back in the 1960s and 1970s) and she is heads above Orczy in writing talent.

This book is turning into sort of a how not to write lesson for us.  Here are some of problems:

Baroness Orczy tells and never shows anything.  There is no character development.  We are just told over and over again what the characters are.

We read over and over again how beautiful the heroine is and description after description of how handsome the hero is.  The author repeats herself too much.  She overuses the same words.  It is clunky, clunky writing.

The author just has poor word choice.   For instance one line was something like:  "he relaxed his lazy attitude."  Becky was really puzzling over that one.  I had to explain that what the author meant was the character was feigning laziness but then stopped feigning.  This kind of inarticulate expression is all over the place throughout the book.

The plot is so full of holes it is laughable.   I know that with these types of books you have to suspend your disbelief, but it does help if it somewhat makes sense.

The melodrama is cartoonish.  I know this is high melodrama but c'mon!  This is an actual line in the book:   "No! No!  No!  A thousand times no!"  I feel like I am reading a comic book at times.

Baroness Orczy might be the first person to use the word 'literally' to mean figuratively   She does this twice!  My kids were hooting over this!

You know that line about 'worshipping the ground she walks on?'  Orczy has her hero literally (not figuratively) kiss the steps his love has walked up.  We could not stop laughing over that one.

Nobody ever told me that this book is anti-semitic.  I can't quite tell if the author is using anti-semiticism as a plot device or is actually okay saying horribly anti-semitic things.

In spite of finding the book almost a parody of the swashbuckling romance, I still want to see the movie versions.  I think the story is so theatrical that it would be better in a visual context.  You get to see the dashing handsome hero in his clever disguises, the beautiful lady determined to save him and atone for her sins, the villainous Chauvelin, desperate to capture the Scarlet Pimpernel.

I was discussing the book with someone and she said she read it when she was a teenager but when she tried to reread it as an adult she couldn't get through it.  I think maybe I waited too long to read this book.  Perhaps when I was younger, I would have been caught up in the excitement and romance.  It does not make a good read aloud though because of the awkward writing.

Anyway, I am pretty amazed that this book is such a classic.

For more book reviews go to Read 52 Books in 52 Weeks.

Song at the Scaffold - Book 12

Song at the Scaffold is a novella written by Gertrud von Fort, a German author back in the 1930s.  The book was translated into other languages and Georges Bernanos, the great French author (known mostly for his Diary of a County Priest) wrote a play based on the novella.  Then Francis Poulenc the composer created an opera, The Dialogues des Carmelites based on the play.

The book is a brilliantly written telling of the events that lead up to the execution of the Carmelites of Compiegne during the Reign of Terror in France.  It is told as a letter from an unknown priest to another, explaining what happened.  It details the story of Blanche la Force, daughter of a petty nobility; her father is sympathetic to the republican movement, her mother dies bearing her after a terrible fright where the carriage the mother was traveling in was attacked by mobs fleeing the fireworks accident that marred the coronation of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette.

Blanche struggles with fear her whole life.  She is afraid of everything.  Her governess teaches her to trust in the Infant Jesus of Prague, the statue of which is kept in the nearby Carmelite convent.  When Blanche becomes of age she desires to become a Carmelite.  Much of the story is about Sister Marie who is in charge of novices and Sister Theresa who is the abbess.  The story, even though short, is complex and really portrays the complexity of the political and spiritual situation.

Two thumbs up!  For more book reviews go to Read 52 Books in 52 Weeks.

A Commonplace Book - Book 11

I have a crush on a dead guy and his name is Alec Guinness.  I recently read one of his memoirs, Blessings in Disguise.  I loved it.  All his books are out of print for some weird reason.  Maybe he was too openly Catholic for modern publishers' taste.  Maybe his son has something to do with it?  I don't know.  But I was looking through the list of books he has written and I saw one I hadn't seen before!  A Commonplace Book by Alec Guinness.

I love commonplace books!  I have talked about them before.  We do copy work every week, but really I consider our copy books to be commonplace books.  These are our collections of sayings written down in our notebooks that are meaningful in some way.

Alec Guinness kept commonplace books!   Here he published some of the favorite things he jotted down over the years.  It is the most charming collection of Shakespeare quotes, sayings, little observations, jokes, bon mots and charming drawings by Sir Guinness himself.

Here are just a few of my favorites (so hard to choose!):

Ralph Richardson, with me on his arm, entering a grand hotel in Zurich and saying to the maitre d', "Two tables, please".

All our goodness is a loan; God is the owner.  God works and His work is God. (St. John of the Cross)

On Sunday Mr Green paid a visit from Lichfield, and, having nothing to say, said nothing and went away.  (Dr. Johnson, 1775)

The point of knighthood for British actors is to enable them to play butlers.

Cause me to hear thy lovingkindness in the morning. (Psalm 143:8)

[I just learned this week that Napoleon is the one who stopped the religious persecution in France during the Revolution and then what quote do I find?]  

If you take the faith away from the people you will end by producing nothing but highway robbers.  (Napoleon)

Of poetry:  "It is original, not in the paltry sense of being new, but in the deeper sense of being old; it is original in the sense that it deals with origins." (G. K. Chesterton on Robert Browning)

On our return from church:  Lapsed Catholic:  "Have a nice Mass?"  Self wanted to reply:  'Oh, you know, the same old thing.  The Real Presence at the altar, body, blood, soul and divinity of Christ, as usual.' 

He ends with this one:

But the multiplying brood of the ungodly shall not thrive, nor take deep rooting from bastard slips, nor lay any fast foundation.  (Wisdom of Solomon 4:3) 

There is much, much more.  I didn't quote any of the much longer pieces, like poems by Kipling, Auden and e e cummings.  And Guinness loved a pithy, tongue-in-cheek remark very well!

Anyway, I found the book delightful.  Just my cup of tea.

I am determined to get his other two memoirs and read them soon.

For more book reviews go to Read 52 Books in 52 Weeks.

The War of the Vendee

The War of the Vendee; The Forgotten Martyrs of the French Revolution,  is a pretty amazing little film made by a bunch of Catholic young adults and children.  I was quite impressed by it.  They made a movie of high caliber, and in spite of the fact that amateurs and children were playing the roles, the movie is intelligent and engaging.

It must have been professionally edited.  Maybe I need to watch the commentary to find out exactly how it was done.  So far I've just viewed the movie twice.  Anyway, the pacing and the editing are really good.  There are a couple of scenes where it is hard not to chuckle at the campiness, but for the most part, it moves along like a professional movie.

The story is set in the area of France known as the Vendee.  These people are far from Paris but the French Revolution begins to impinge on them.  Their priests are arrested, the church property taken, and then the revolutionary government institutes the draft and they are required to fight for a France they don't believe in.  They want their priests back and they want to restore the monarchy.

I read up on some of the history and this movie is true to it all.  In reality though it seems there was a lot of slaughtering going on on both sides of the fight.  The War of the Vendee definitely tells it from the Catholic point of view.  And it isn't subtle!  Satan hovers over Robespierre's shoulder while an angel hovers over the priest saying the Mass.  But I think whoever wrote the script did a great job of telling a very dark story in an accessible way to children.  There are a lot of lighthearted moments.

Because of the region's resistance, the French government sent in the 'infernal columns' which basically decimated the countryside and murdered men, women and children.  It was Napoleon who finally stopped the horror.   In his self-serving way he realized he could never win a fight against the faith.  So he restored the priests and the property and let people have their freedom of religion.

I watched this once with Rick and we were both impressed.  Then, the next day, I watched with Sean and Becky and they were a tougher audience.  Sometimes I rue the day we ever saw our first MST.  It seems as though the kids now think that in order to watch a movie you have to jeer at it and make cutting remarks!  But in spite of this I think they enjoyed it.  I think they were impressed too.

I also was impressed by the soundtrack of the movie.  Apparently the music is an original piece written especially for it.

The movie fits into our study of the French Revolution really well, so I appreciate it very much on that score.  I really think this movie is worth watching.  Two thumbs up!

Interview with a Catholic Relaxed Homeschooler - #1

This is an interview (well she filled out a short, informal questionnaire!) with Elizabeth Belske, a member of our Catholic Relaxed Homeschooler facebook group.  I hope to publish several interviews of this sort, so that we can get glimpses into the lives of those women who see themselves as 'relaxed' in their approach to homeschooling.

1) Tell a bit about yourself and your family – how many kids, how long you’ve been homeschooling, your own schooling experiences, what made you choose to homeschool.

  -Hi, I'm Liz.  I am 40, expecting #8 in May.  My children are ages 4-14 and have been homeschooled from the beginning.  

    - My decision to homeschool was based originally on my own horrible school experience.  I was bullied for my shyness and lack of fashion, harassed by teachers for my older siblings troublesome behavior,  and never felt comfortable in any scholastic endeavor.  I vowed I would not let my children live through that; even if I never bought a curriculum, my future children would still be better off than I was in school. 

My philosophy has changed since then.  I no longer homeschool to shelter the kids from bad experiences as much as to give them a better family and learning experience. 

2) What do you think makes you see yourself as a ‘relaxed’ homeschooler?  

 - we don't bow to a schedule.  Our day is relaxed in that we follow a natural flow or rhythm.  

We have done boxed curriculums some years and completely unschooled other years, and what I've learned is that while every child is different in learning style, all children benefit from low anxiety schooling or a relaxed approach.  

3) Tell us about how your days flow and how you found your homeschooling rhythm.

  -the early years were rough.  It was me trying to impose a school at home approach -scope and sequence, meeting state goals - and my oldest wasn't capitulating...at all.

He fought tooth and nail against all convention and at 6 told me he doesn't want to learn to read.  I sensed anxiety so I backed off and focused on his brother.  Oldest did ZERO school until he was almost 9.  He came to me and said he was ready.  I started him out in 3rd grade curriculum and by the summer he was "on par".  But I had learned that those standards didn't matter.  That summer vacation he rose to the 6th grade reading level when only a year earlier he was a non reader.  Currently he is pretty much upper high school level in everything but Math.  Next year I am hoping to get him a low level college Math and see if it will help him in that. 

  Second son was not the same child, but now I knew you could wait until 8 to teach reading and still succeed, so we did.  This one was a Math minded kid so we played card and dice games for fun.  I couldn't find anything he was interested in reading though, and I worried I had failed him. No fiction kept his interest.  But he would read his father's sports mags in the bathroom so I found some old popular mechanics magazines and he loved them!  He reads airplane schematics I print out, and loves my old college physics textbook.  All at his own pace. 

My more structured children have created their own schedule almost in spite of my relaxed approach. 

For example, My 11 year old is first awake, pulls out the biggest stack of eclectic textbooks and workbooks and doesn't stop until he's finished what he feels is a full day of work. 

There are times he asks me to assess where he's at and where he "should" be, "test me mommy", LOL so it's kind of like a quarterly review.  His system evolved completely from his own desire and tendencies, I never pressured him at all. He also happens to be dyslexic so all of this comes harder to him, but he taught himself how to overcome his dyslexia through creativity.  He's a solid rising fifth grader. 

His 9 year old sister seems to be following his lead, but she's not as dedicated as he is yet, doesn't care where she is in her workbook, spends more time on the subject she wants to that day.  She's about a fourth grader in all her subjects except reading level where she's solid 6th grade.

  My 8 year old DS and 6 year old DD are almost at the same level.  He has sensory and motor skill issues I have to help him overcome.  He couldn't hold a pencil and put it to paper until this year, and doesn't relate well to phonics yet but loves adding and subtracting.   She however is all over her workbooks and loves sounding out words as well as numbers work. 

   Life of Fred is our Math of choice. They all love it and go at their own pace. We have constant interaction, teachable life skill moments and discussions throughout the day to help commit what they have learned to long term memory. 

4) How do you incorporate your faith life into your homeschooling life?

 - our day centers around the Liturgical calendar.  We read from the bible, draw pictures, learn the saints, go to Mass, do appropriate devotions for the season, and often relate current or historical events to Church history and doctrine. 

  Morning prayers at breakfast, grace every meal, examination of conscience at night with Act of Contrition.  Rosary for the kids who can handle it without me losing my mind.  For Lent we have a sin basket and a bean jar.  We write our daily sins on little pieces of paper to be burned on Good Friday, and we put a bean in the jar for any prayer/sacrifice/good deed done daily. 

5) Can you tell us the most compelling or rewarding experience you’ve encountered yet while homeschooling?

- our local Catholic homeschool is a very scholastic/academic group.  They all enroll their children in Seton, Mother of Divine Grace, Kolbe, and there's a lot of tutoring etc. going on.  These kids are extremely book smart and academically disciplined, so to watch my kids interact and hold their own at our get togethers is at least confirmation for me that we are on the right track. 

At the blue Knights 2 years ago, My oldest (then 12) had to give an oral report on St Athanasius.  I showed him how to search the net for info.  He wrote out the report but forgot it at home, forcing him to talk off the cuff from memory.  His leader was amazed and impressed with his ability to both speak in public so easily and talk about the saint with no cue cards or paper.  That was rewarding for him and me. 

--additionally, and most importantly my kids are always being complimented on their behavior, attentiveness and kindness.  

5) What practical advice would you give a newbie or someone burned out who wanted to change up her style of homeschooling?

--don't be afraid to take a break. Let them explore their interests without the pressure of performing to a standard.  Love learning and they will love it.  Teach them to communicate and love because your relationship with them is a greater indicator of their future success than any test result. 

6) How do you respond to critics of your relaxed approach? 

--I invite them to speak to any of my children.  Just bring up a topic, ask them a question, and see where it leads.  

   The first thing people notice is the ease with which my children speak to adults - the certainty and maturity they approach a conversation with, and sometimes a passion for the topic that most school children lack. 

Only then can they pass a judgement on my education style.