Melody's Blog

So funny—odd, not ha ha—how often what one read intersects so closely with something in life. Just this morning I was talking with my friend Miriam before we started to work about theology and religious ethics, one of our usual topics, and we were talking about imagination and joy and how some Christians suppress joy and enter into such self-denial that they cannot have any fun. I think we had started this conversation by talking about carols, another topic of interest to both of us. And then we were talking about festivals, church and pagan. And so moved on to the kinds of things people did to celebrate. All this discussion was in the context of the dissension in Christianity between those who believe that God made us to be joyful versus the ones who believe they will have to “put down the cross of self-denial” as the “Poor Wayfaring Stranger” remarks in his last verse. Anyway, all of this is to say that I thoroughly found And Condors Danced by Zilpha Keatley Snyder (my 1987...

Update on Persephone Readathon! I've kept up somewhat with Jessie's Daily Challenges . I posted my photos of my Persephone books, most still having their own Persephone endpage illustration bookmark. I posted a few shoutouts--writers who Persephone readers might enjoy: Angela Thirkell, Richmal Crompton, and Margery Sharp. I wrote a six word summary of the Persephone book I am currently reading (well, I'm not since I exhausted my current stash), but I posted about The Hopkins Manuscript , which I also reviewed on this blog, "interminably bleak, not dull, cataclysm narrative." And on Jessie's blog I posted a favorite quote from a Persephone book. This one is from The Crowded Street by Winifred Holtby. I think I may need to find some more Holtby to read for A Century of Books , though she did not write very many; she died tragically young. Here is the lovely quote from The Crowded Street :   Fiercely she fought this sense of inexorable doom for the salvation...

So glad to have finally finished my 1939 book for A Century of Books , The Hopkins Manuscript , by R. C. Sherriff and published by Persephone . For Christmas I usually have my daughter who was living in London, now in Liverpool, just stop by the Persephone shop and buy me a couple books. She did so again this year and decided to see if they had something sciency, since that is her area and I do have an interest in reading up on some science. She came up with the science fiction book that has taken me three weeks to read. I am not one bit sorry that I have read it, but I HAD to keep putting it aside. R. C. Sherriff is an amazing writer but this was one of the bleakest books I have in my entire life read. (Others say they found hope in it, but I found precious little.) The Hopkins Manuscript of which Sherriff writes was penned in the late 1940s and found by an expedition of the Royal Society of Abyssinia 1000 years later. Every vestige of “white man” by which the Abyssinians mean a...

I got off to a rather good start of reading for A Century of Books with the new year, then hit a snag when I had three days of complete fatigue, just sleeping with nothing else gonna happen! When I woke up from that, I realized that I not only did I need to start blogging about books but that I also need to keep reading. Also realized that I was very behind in my regular work of editing other folk’s writing so I didn’t feel I could start my own blog resurrection until I got a bit of that behind me. But I can dictate voice to text on my phone laying my bed so that is what I’m doing now in order to start my blog posts about reading. I think I’ll try go in order as I read them to get started (that didn’t last long). The first book I read this new year was one my daughter had recommended to me this past summer when we were together, my 2016 entry, The Essex Serpent . I could hardly put it down. This historical novel set in the late 19th century is very beautifully written, wit...