Am I welcome back?

I was going to say, "welcome back", but then I realized it was not you, but I who have been absent. Well, readers? Am I welcome back? 
To fill you in on some of my life, I'm doing another "little letters" post.

Dear Little Women,

Performance this week? What?! WHAT?! I was not originally not exactly pleased to be performing you, but I shall be very sad when this is over, and very sad to leave Jo March and her friends behind me. And how cool that I've actually gotten to perform you twice, once in one-act form as Amy, and now as a two-hour production as Jo. 

Dear Mozart,

Bach drives me nuts sometimes, I will admit. But you, I am always in good humor with you. Memorization is still kind of scary, but I will not tire of playing your sonatas.

Dear Brownie-in-a-Mug,

Um, you are way too easy. And addicting. I kind of love you, but I don't think you're good for me.

Dear Arthur,

Dear me but I miss you! I enjoy being busy... but our separation can never bring me pleasure. Soon, soon, we shall be together much more often. I have many plans and ideas welling up, meantime, to be  employed in this last sector before the end, or used for second drafts. Be patient, my dear!

Dear Tolkien,

I am LOVING rereading The Hobbit. You are a brilliant author. Brilliant. I eagerly await the reread of The Lord of the Rings, and one day attacking The Silmarillion.

Dear French Language as-a-whole,

Sometimes I think you drive me NUTS. But honestly, it's usually me who is driving me nuts with my inability to hold onto your slippery, vague words. I still think you are as beautiful as when I started. And I have hope that I will conquer you one day. I therefore keep plugging away.

Dear Driving,

As I think that we ought to go back to the horse-and-carriage days, I feel terribly disloyal to myself to enjoy you so much... but I do! In not so very long I shall have my license and not long after that hopefully acquire a car, even if I would rather have a black percheron or a dappled grey mare. P.S. You can stick around a while more, if you want.

Dear Presidential Elections,

All I can say is that it's a good thing I don't put my trust in the human political leader of a human country, because I would be looking at the cost of living in Ireland right now if so. (Actually I'm looking at the cost of living in Ireland already because... Ireland.) If we escape the one guy only for the other, it will be out of the frying pan and into the fire, I'm afraid. Yet my king is unchanging and his kingdom is unaffected by elections. So I do not tremble, for he is quite capable of dealing with whoever ends up the leader of this country.

Dear Opera,

Getting to see a real, full-length production in March was amazing, even if it was technically a dress rehearsal and the auditorium was filled with public-schooled teenagers (no offense to readers who fall in the category, but for we homeschoolers the typical teenager who is not homeschooled is usually quite different from us, and sometimes shocking or frightening). I admit that I didn't love you as much I had imagined in many memories, but it was also pretty cool to get to see you while acting in Little Women, as it was that movie that first gave me the opera bug. Thanks again for your beauty!

Dear Spring,

I end with you, because, although I resented your early coming and cast many longing glances at winter, I thrill to see your arrival made more evident every day. Your flowering trees, early buds, delicate leaves, and abundance of green! The air of one season is not quite like another, however similar the temperature, and I love the smell, feel, and experience of your air. It's lovely, and so are you.

Love,

Little Women Comparison Post, of a Rather Different Nature

When I wrote my previous post on Little Women I had intended to include another set of comparisons, but apparently my mind was still under the effects of the terrible malady, for I wrote the entire post without once remembering my secondary aim, viz. to show the similar nature between Little Women and The Penderwicks series (considered as one book for the purposes of this post).

(Spoilers for The Penderwicks are in green, spoilers for Little Women are in dark red. Spoilers for both are in black.)

To begin with, the story features four sisters. These four sisters have only one parent around at the beginning of the story, but by the conclusion they have two ( Mr. March returns home, and *SPOILER* Mr. Penderwick remarries). *End SPOILER*
Both the Penderwicks and the Marches live in Massachusetts!

Not all of the sisters match up exactly with their counterparts in age, but there are some similarities:

• The eldest sister is practical. Her name is long (Margaret in Little Women, Rosalind in The Penderwicks), but her family often calls her something short (Meg in Little Women, Rosy in The Penderwicks)
• The second oldest sister is rather a tomboy and pretty stubborn and feisty (Skye in The Penderwicks, Jo in Little Women). 
• One of the sisters is a prolific writer (Jane, the second youngest in The Penderwicks, Jo in Little Women). 
• One sister is artistic and beauty loving (Jane in The Penderwicks, Amy in Little Women). 
• Another is very shy of strangers, sweet, piano-playing and music-loving (Batty, the youngest in The Penderwicks, and Beth in Little Women - hey, both of their names begin with "B" and are nicknames for Elizabeth). Both are animal lovers, too.
• They are all pretty close, but the two middle sisters (Sky and Jane,  Jo and Beth) are closest to each other, and the eldest and youngest (Rosalind and Batty, Meg and Amy) are closest to each other. 

Then we have the clincher: Laurie/Jeffrey. In the beginning of both stories, the girls meet a boy who comes from a rich family but is lonely. He loves music. They informally adopt him as a brother and he is adored by all the sisters. He has only one parental figure (Jeffrey in The Penderwicks has a mother, Laurie in Little Women has his grandfather), who does care about him but doesn't understand him very well and can be stern (Mrs. Tifton is a lot stricter and more snooty than Mr. Laurence, however).
*Spoiler!! You may know this about LW and could guess it in reading TP but be warned!* Laurie/Jeffrey (Lauffrey? Jaurie?) falls in love with Jo/Skye, or fancies himself in love anyway. Jo/Skye (Jye? Sko?) can't see him as anything but a dear brother. Laurie ends up marrying the baby of the family, Amy, who has loved him since childhood. There is one more Penderwick book, which Jeanne Birdsall is currently writing, and I can't help guessing that Jeffrey will marry the baby of the Penderwick family, too: Batty. This is merely conjecture, but do look at this quote from the first book, after Jeffrey had rescued Batty:
"As I was saying [said Mr. Penderwick], in some cultures it's believed that when a person saves someone from death, he or she forever owns a part of that someone's soul. So Jeffrey is now linked to our family whether he likes it or not."
"That's kind of romantic," said Jane.
"Romantic, schmomantic. What the heck would Jeffrey do with Batty's soul?" said Skye.
Batty opened her eyes sleepily. "He could marry me," she said.
"Marry you!" Jane and Rosalind laughed while Skye fell off her chair and rolled around the floor like Hound when his back itched.
What do you think?
*END SPOILER*

Plus, neither the Marches nor the Penderwicks call their mother "Mom" or "Mother": the Marches generally use "Marmee" and the Penderwicks use " Mommy" or *SPOILER* Ianthe. *END SPOILER* Okay, maybe I'm stretching the similarities a little. ;)

There are some differences, of course: as mentioned, Mrs. Tifton is several degrees more unpleasant than Laurie's grandfather. *SPOILER* Rosalind doesn't marry Jeffrey's tutor and have twins, like Meg (as far as we know). And neither Jane (Beth's counterpart in age) or Batty (Beth's counterpart in personality) die. *END this SPOILER, begin THIS SPOILER* In the third Penderwick book, they acquire two more siblings, unlike LW. *END ALL SPOILERS* The Penderwicks are not rich (with a college professor's salary??), but they aren't so poor as the Marches. Obviously (or not so obviously), LW is in the civil war era while TP is modern. TP involves animals more directly than LW. Both sets of sisters get into scrapes, but the Penderwicks get into more, and the March sisters' scrapes are more social awkwardities than problems such as losing people/creatures or making a terrible mess in other people's houses.

These things are quite minor in comparison to the similarities, in my humble opinion. I conclude, that if TP was not based on LW, it is very coincidentally close in characters and setting. I heartily recommend both!

Bookshelf Tour Tag

I have been tagged! I love being tagged, by the way. This particular tag is a Bookshelf Tour Tag, started by LoverofLembas, at Lover of Lembas.

The rules are:

• Once you are tagged, copy and paste the image above into your new post.
• Show readers your book shelf and explain what books are on there.  Pictures are always fun!
• Tag as many other people as you want and copy-paste these instructions onto your post so they know exactly what to do.
• Make sure to leave a link to your post on the site you were tagged.

So! Here is the very small bookshelf in my bedroom:

It's actually an end table but it works quite as well, for the present time.

The top of the shelf is what I call my "display of honor" because it contains (from left to right) Lord of the Rings, a nice hardbound Brother's Grimm collection, and my six Penguin Classics Edition books: Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Emma, and Northanger Abbey. These books on top are some of my favorites that I own.
Just below, however...
There is A Dance with Jane Austen, which has practically all you need to know about dances in the Regency period (I haven't quite finished it, as you might note if you see my bookmark in there, but I find it very interesting). Next, The Words of Jane Austen, from my oldest sister, and then two Agatha Christie novels (Murder on the Orient Express and The Mysterious Affair at Styles), then the last two books of the Dragon Keeper Chronicles by Donita K. Paul. Then we have The Gammage Cup and The Whisper of Glocken, two witty fantasy books that make up a tiny series by Carolyn Kendall. The third, sixth, and seventh Harry Potter books are next, and we finish with The Hobbit and The Unfinished Tales of Middle Earth.
Below the vertical books on the left is a falling-apart collection of Jane Austen's six novels (which I keep only for Persuasion, really, as I own the others), and on the right is Mansfield Park (Jane Austen) and the two volumes of Gail Carson Levine's Princess Tales.

The bottom level of the bookshelf is really the carpet, but who cares?
The far left stack has The Wide-Awake Princess and The Frog Princess by E. D. Baker, The Prisoner of Zenda by Anthony Hope, The Rumplestiltskin Problem by Vivian Van Velde (what an awesome name!), and The Lamb Among the Stars series (minus the first book because it's on loan to a friend).
In the middle I have three books I read for school and one I haven't read at all (guess which one?).
H. G. Well's The Invisible Man, Marcus Zusak's The Book Thief, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, and Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird.

Lastly we have Stepping Heavenward (which is a good book but one I haven't read for a long while), the second and third books of the Enchanted Forest Chronicles, and the four Dragons in Our Midst books.

(I'm noticing a theme here, of crusty old novels and dragons).

The end table has a little pocket on each side. The left one (above) has six books from the Grandma's Attic series, that I have collected. I took the books from the right one and photographed them separately, below. The Princess and the Goblin and The Princess and the Curdie, by George MacDonald, and the first two Green Knowe books by L. M. Boston.

Bonus — I took a picture of the shelf above my clothes in my closet, where I keep my devotional books plus some other random things. Left to right is Divine Design, Writing Magic, Kisses from Katie, Beautiful Outlaw, Girls with Swords (a workbook, actually, which I'm ashamed to say has nothing written in it), Captivating, Paper Doll, The Languages of Tolkien and Middle Earth, Uncompromising, Walking with Frodo, Walking Through the Wardrobe, Walking with Bilbo, Live Life on Purpose, Mere Christianity, Life in 6 Words, Kate Greenaway's Language of Flowers and Kate Greenaway's Birthday Book, then a bunch of journals, and finally Tolkien The Illustrated Encyclopedia. There are far too many titles in that sentence to give authors for all of them, so look them up if you're interested. :) I will say that I highly recommend Kisses from Katie by Katie Davis, Captivating and Beautiful Outlaw by John Eldrege, Live Life on Purpose by Claude Hickman, and Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis. And the language of flowers is just super cool (so are the two Tolkien books, I might add).
Oh? You noticed I skipped two after Divine Design? Well, those happen to be two copies of a book I had printed at Lulu.com, containing three fairy tale rewritings of my own invention (if you have any writings you'd like in hardcopy, let me tell you Lulu is VERY cheap. I printed one for both my grandmas and thought I'd get two for myself while I was at it).
The poster behind is from a play I was in (actually I was in the play on the top half, which you can't really see ;P )

I tag:

• The Author from To Write or Not to Write
• Naomi Bennet from Wonderland Creek
• Skye Hoffert from Ink Castles

Thanks for the idea, Lover of Lembas!

Bookish Tags

Obviously I'm mostly just thinking about books these days, because I'm doing two book-themed tags (the second to follow in the next few days) and then another post concerning Little Women.

I've been reading a fair amount lately, so I think it kind of makes sense. ;) Wuthering Heights is going well so far; I also just read Dear Mr. Knightley, after hearing it recommended multiple places. I can see why some people like it, but I can't give a recommendation, for I wasn't fond of the characters and there was some minor content.

But! Onto the tag! This is from Carrie at Reading to Know.

1. Do you remember the first book you read or really liked?
I don't remember the first I could read myself, but I know as a child I tortured my mother by asking her to reread this picture book:

I mean, it's about a family of dinosaur-ish creatures that clean up a pond by recycling and re-using and create a really cool car that includes a bath tub and a swing set. What's not to love?!

2. How did your love for reading come about (grew up in a reading family, a certain book captivated you, etc.)?
I definitely grew up in a reading family. My mom read Little House in the Big Woods and The Magician's Nephew to us at a very young age (I think I was maybe five) and continued all the way through both series. There were very few lunchtimes where we didn't read something (or in more recent years, I read and eat by myself).

3. What is your favorite genre to read?
Definitely "classics" — fiction from the late 18th and early 19th centuries, mainly. I also love historical fiction and some fantasy (fairy tales).

4. What genre do you avoid reading?
Modern Young Adult novels. Ugh.

5. What is your favorite movie based on a book?
Probably The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, but The Giver was an amazing adaption of the book.

6. What's your least favorite movie based on a book?
Peter Jackson's the hobbit (notice the lack of capital letters in that title, and the fact that I don't associate Tolkien's name with it).

7. What is your favorite time and place to read?
In the corner of my bedroom, in the afternoon sunlight patch on the floor.

8. Are you in any "real life" book clubs or discussion groups?
Not currently.

9. How many bookcases do you have?
Five tall ones, at least two small ones, and a library cart filled with current books for school.

10. What is a favorite quote about books of from a book?

On that note, I conclude.