Biblio Beau: Laura Ingalls Wilder

Saturday, April 18, 2009

38. Wilder, Laura Ingalls. Little House in the Big Woods. 238 pages. 4.17.09.

39. Moore, Christopher. Bloodsucking Fiends. 291 pages. 4.18.09.

A cute and comical contemporary vampire story. Moore's take on vampire lit is a nice break from modern "horror" conventions.

Thursday, April 16, 2009

37. Wilder, Laura Ingalls. Little House on the Prairie. 331 pages. 4.15.09.

Yes, Little House on the Prairie is very obviously a YA novel, but I'm calling it a classic. Really, I think it qualifies.

I have had a box set of the Little House books since I was a child, although I don't know that I ever got through the house series. Lately my son has been stealing Little House on the Prairie off the shelf, so I took it as a sign that I should revisit the books. The second book in the series, LHotP is just as charming as I remembered it. I couldn't help but shake my head and laugh at some of the cultural difference (for example, the emphasis placed on the fact that children are not allowed to speak at the dinner table), and was delighted by the care Wilder takes to explain basic construction, chores (etc) to an audience she knew might not be familiar with how settlers lived their lives. I will definitely have to add the series to the list of books I want to read to my children - I'm sure one day they will find these simple little stories as endearing as I do.

Favorite Quotes

"To tell people what to read is, as a rule, either useless or harmful; for the appreciation of literature is a question of temperament not of teaching [...]. But to tell people what not to read is a very different matter, and I venture to recommend it as a mission..." - Oscar Wilde, "Letter to the Pall Mall Gazette on the Subject of 'The Best Hundred Books'" (qtd. Wright, Built of Books, 317).

"I wish you joy o'th' worm" - Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra, 5.2.270.

"The world must be peopled!" - Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing

"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife." - Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice.

"That a man who has sons brings up chickens for his own table ... whereas daughters are chickens brought up for the tables of other men." - Samuel Richardson, Clarissa (77).

“No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” - Samuel Beckett

And then there is more Oscar Wilde:

"It is what you read when you don't have to that determines what you will be when you can't help it."

"You can never be overdressed or overeducated."

"You will always be fond of me. I represent to you all the sins you never had the courage to commit." - The Picture of Dorian Gray.

"Appearance blinds, whereas words reveal." - Personal Impressions of America

"A poet can survive everything but a misprint." - "The Children of the Poets", The Pall Mall Gazette

"There is no sin except stupidity." - The Critic as Artist

"One should always be a little improbable." - "Phrases and Philosophies for the use of the Young"

"The truth is rarely pure and never simple." - The Importance of Being Earnest

"Even when reading is impossible, the presence of books acquired produces such an ecstasy that the buying of more books than one can read is nothing less than the soul reaching towards infinity... we cherish books even if unread, their mere presence exudes comfort, their ready access, reassurance."
--- A.E. Newton