[Lindsay 23] John the Painter: Terrorist of the American Revolution by Jessica Warner

I had never even heard of John the Painter when I first encountered this book, so between that and my general interest in American Revolutionary history, it seemed like a worthwhile purchase. (Plus I got it half price at one of those warehouse/bargain bookstores.) James Aitken, a.k.a. John the Painter, isn't one of the more notable figures of Revolutionary history, and not much has been written about him. He was a Scot sympathetic to the American cause during the Revolution who attempted to cripple the British navy by burning down five major dockyards across England. Ultimately, he failed in this venture, and was captured and sentenced to hanging. Despite his unremarkableness, I found myself fascinated by his story and Warner's commentary on it.

I really appreciate the way Warner pieces this book together. There aren't many written sources on Aitken other than his court testimony and records of his last days before being hanged, so she had to be creative in order to give a fuller account of his whole life. The book covers Aitken's birth to his death, but his childhood in particular isn't terribly well documented. Warner uses accounts written by other people not necessarily tied to Aitken at all to describe his early life, from the conditions of his home, to his time at school, to the more general experience of growing up in Edinburgh at the time. Warner is careful, however, to make it very clear when she is relaying first-hand documentation versus this second-hand piecing, and because of that it makes it easier to just roll with it and enjoy the narrative.

[Lindsay 20-22] Winnie-the-Pooh by A.A. Milne

I'm not quite sure what to say about this classic collection of stories about a bear and his friends, other than I love love love it. Here we first meet Pooh as he tries to trick some bees into thinking he is a rain cloud so that he may steal some of their honey, then as he gets himself stuck in Rabbit's hole, and as he hunts for the Woozle with Piglet. Eeyore celebrates a birthday and loses his tail, Kanga and Roo come to the 100 Acre Wood, and Christopher Robin is always around to get everyone out of trouble.

Milne wrote these stories based on his own son, Christopher Robin, and the toys that he played with. I wonder if the stories are based on real games Christopher Robin played with his stuffed animals, or if Milne wrote them for the sake of something different for his son to be entertained by. Either way, it's impossible not to appreciate this book for the way that it captures the innocence, imagination, and ingenuity of childhood. The characters are all a little childlike in their own ways (even wise old Owl and grumpy-but-hilarious Eeyore), and the Wood itself is a physical representation of childhood. Milne's writing is very sophisticated, however, so even though it's targeted for young readers, the richness and subtleties of the book's language make reading it as an adult just as enjoyable as reading it as a kid (though I say that somewhat hypothetically, having only read this one as an adult).

The House At Pooh Corner, however, I have been reading since I was ten. I can't remember if that was before or after I participated in the Winnie-the-Pooh play with Oddfellows, so I don't know if I joined the play because of the book or bought the book because of the play. Regardless, I've always loved it, and even though it's the second book in the collection, the stories within it stand fine on their own. Here, Eeyore and Owl get new houses, Tigger comes to the Wood, Piglet discovers he is useful after all, and everyone plays Poohsticks.

These are the only two books of stories about Pooh and his friends. Milne also wrote a book of children's poetry and a book of Pooh-centered poetry, neither of which I've read. I don't know if it's because he just ran out of stories to tell, or if what was happening in House At Pooh Corner was mirroring what was happening in real life: Christopher Robin was growing up and leaving behind his toys. A whole story is devoted to the animals in the Wood trying to figure out where Christopher Robin goes in the morning, and it is discovered that he has started going to school. In the final story, all the animals throw Christopher Robin a going-away party, and there is a real sense of finality with these proceedings. The ending is quite sad in its inevitability of the future: that even though Christopher Robin will sometimes be able to visit the Wood, eventually he will grow up enough that he will stop coming for good. There is a conveyance of hope that Christopher Robin will, at least, always remember Pooh no matter what, and even in his old age he will still understand and appreciate the imagination of his childhood and the friendships with his toys.

Finally, just because Ben had a copy on his bookshelf, I read The Tao of Pooh by Benjamin Hoff. I really didn't have any expectations, good or bad, about this book, but in the end it really didn't make much of an impression on me. The title really says it all; Hoff links the ancient philosophy of Taoism to Milne's characters. It's a decent concept, but Hoff's execution is a little awkward. The bits about Taoism are interesting and, on the surface, applicable to the Poohverse, but he illustrates his points with excerpts from Milne's stories that are way. too. long. I really felt that all his Pooh quotations could have been paragraphs shorter, and more infused with analysis rather than mere summary. Further, Hoff doesn't always seem to fully explain what his Pooh quotes really mean to him or why he's tying them to Taoism, so he doesn't always do a very good job of explicitly linking the two. It's not that the ideas he presents are all that complex or difficult to comprehend, but sometimes he doesn't always make it clear why he includes the quotes that he does. Overall, the book didn't really give me any new insights into the world of Pooh, but it did help me begin to learn a little about Taoism.

[Lindsay 15-19] More Darkover by Marion Zimmer Bradley and others

I recently came across a newer Darkover novel at Borders, so I decided to read it and re-read a few others (though I don't think I'll be reading more anytime soon).

First was Darkover Landfall, which I mentioned in my first entry for the year. It's the origin story of human life on Darkover, and is about a crashed spaceship that had been on its way to colonize a new planet but ended up somewhere wholly unexpected. The book tracks a few main characters as they deal with injuries and deaths of fellow passengers resulting from the crash, establishing their location on the planet and in the galaxy, encounters with the native species of the planet, and the mysterious Ghost Winds that drive everyone into a sexual frenzy. Plotwise, it's not terribly expansive, and the book is short at only 160 pages. It's primarily a story about survival on a completely unknown, uncharted planet, and the two major conflicts are human vs. wild and human vs. human (primarily in their divisiveness over whether to accept their fate and just settle where they are, or to hold on to the hope that they will at some point, in another generation or two, be able to repair their ship and get off the planet).

While it's chronologically the starting point of the series, it's not a good place to start reading the series. I think it's better to already have an understanding of the names, customs, and places that are common to the rest of the books, because they're easy to spot in Darkover Landfall. I don't know that the plot and scope of DL on its own is enough to keep a potential new reader interested in the series, though. The events between this book and the next are separated by a millenium, so there's nothing overly blatant that connects them. I almost wish Bradley had made DL a little longer and tracked the progress of the planet at every few hundred years or so, or had just written more books that took place between the founding and the Ages of Chaos. Even as it is, the book is adequate in its role as a sort of history of the beginning of the human presence on the planet, and the beginning of many of the cultural and linguistic practices that are displayed in later books.

Exile's Song was the first Darkover novel I ever read after my dad bought it for me in middle school. He himself had read some of the books when he was younger and was a fan. The book is about Margaret Alton, daughter of Lew Alton, himself a Darkovan representative on the Terran Senate. Margaret is a University scholar who studies folk music, and she is sent to Darkover to collect samples of the planet's songs. Lew had taken Margaret off the planet when she was five or six so he could serve on the Senate, and didn't pass on any knowledge to Margaret about the planet of her birth. Much of the novel deals with Margaret (Marguerida) battling with a strange force that has overshadowed her mind since childhood, learning to deal with her late onset of laran, and coming to terms with being a part of Darkovan nobility and a patriarchal society that has little patience with independent, strong-willed women such as herself. Overall, it's primarily a story of psychological growth on Marguerida's part.

The Shadow Matrix is the sequel to Exile's Song, and has two very distinct parts. In the first half, which has a pervading feel of a mystery story, the focus is on Mikhail Lanart-Hastur, Marguerida's cousin and love interest. (Yeeeeah, there's a lot of incest of this nature on Darkover.) Mikhail is sent to the house of the Elhalyns, the Darkovan line of kingship, in order to designate an heir to the throne of the planet. While there, he must try to take care of the five children and the grounds, all of which are severely neglected, and embark on a battle of wills against a powerful telepath living in the house and assisting the children's mother. This part ends in a bit of a showdown, resulting in Mikhail bringing the children back to the main city with him. In the second half, Mikhail and Marguerida are summoned into the past, where they meet a powerful and legendary telepath named Varzil the Good. Their encounter with him has a profound impact on their own lives, the nature and strength of their laran, and the safety of the whole planet.

Both Exiles Song and The Shadow Matrix were ghost-written by Adrienne Martine-Barnes, and because of this I've never been able to really love them. Her writing is, to put it simply, annoying as all hell. Her dialogue is even more stilted than Bradley's, and everyone sounds way too light-hearted. As a result, I neither want to take any of them seriously as realistic characters, or care enough about them to feel any sense of impending doom when they are in dangerous situations. Barnes writes caricatures, not characters, and I hate them all.

Barnes' other problem is that she writes way too much. Both Exile's Song and The Shadow Matrix could easily be hundreds of pages shorter, but Barnes insists on including overly long scenes with pointless description and unnecessary conversations. It would be fine if these things added something to the core conflicts, but they don't. Fluff with a capital F. Annoyingly written fluff, at that.

I skipped Traitor's Sun, the sequel to The Shadow Matrix, because I couldn't deal with any more Barnes Darkover. I went on to The Alton Gift, one of the newest books, sequel to Traitor's Sun and written by Deborah Ross. It's about Domenic Alton-Hastur, the 20-year-old son of Marguerida and Mikhail, as he comes into his own as the heir to the Darkovan throne. Also featured is Lew Alton, Marguerida's father, as he comes to terms with an event from his past in which he used his laran to cause forcible memory loss to a group of Terran assassins (this itself happened in Traitor's Sun). All the while, the entire Darkovan population battles a breakout of Trailmen's Fever, a deadly disease they are once again susceptible to now that the Terran Federation has left the planet, and taken with them their medical know-how.

Though this book is the same length as the ones Barnes wrote, Ross' use of its space is much better than Barnes'. Ross writing is much closer in tone and style to Bradley's (though obviously unique at the same time), and she has a much better sense than Barnes when to really flesh out a scene and when to simply mention it in passing for the sake of pushing through the story. As a result, Ross' Darkover is much grander, with a number of important characters getting the limelight, as opposed to Barnes' one or two. Ross does have some awkward character development moments throughout the book, but on the whole I much more enjoy her writing. She's written a few other books since Bradley died, and at some point I will definitely read those.

I also read Sharra's Exile, which features Lew Alton, Marguerida's father, when he is still in his twenties and dealing with his involvement in the Sharra Rebellion. The book is a sequel to Heritage of Hastur, probably my favorite Darkover book, which details the events of this rebellion. It was actually the first Darkover novel Bradley ever wrote, originally titled Sword of Aldones. That book is much shorter, and she eventually expanded and rewrote it into Sharra's Exile after she had matured as a writer. If I end up reading Heritage of Hastur again this year, I'll be sure to do a plot summary for Sharra's Exile at that time, cause it's hard to explain one without the other. I'm definitely gonna take a break from Darkover for a bit, though. There are quite a few books in the series, and some of them group together quite nicely in terms of chronology and recurring characters. Maybe over the summer I will read another thread.