Week 18: Enchanted Glass

By -

Enchanted Glass, by Diana Wynne Jones

Diana Wynne Jones is my all-time favorite writer, so don't expect an unbiased critique of Enchanted Glass from me.

Andrew inherits his uncle's house but has no memory of the powerful magic and work that go along with the place. When a frightened boy named Aidan fetches up on his doorstep, they start to help each other figure out what's going on and why the reclusive Mr. Brown seems to think he owns both of them.
That summary doesn't do justice to the story. Jones has been working out themes of land magic in a couple of her recent books (The Merlin Conspiracy, The Pinhoe Egg) and this new book continues that train of thought. Of course, I enjoyed Enchanted Glass and of course, I'll be rereading it many times. Nobody compares to Diana Wynne Jones!





The Ultimate Career, by Daryl Hoole
Way back in the 60's, Daryl Hoole (who is female) wrote The Art of Homemaking for an LDS audience. I've never read it myself, but evidently it was extremely popular--everyone but me knows about it. A few years ago, with the help of her daughters and daughters-in-law, she wrote The Ultimate Career for modern LDS homemakers. I picked up a used copy; I like to collect and read these books, though I'm not much good at the actual job.

The title is taken from a C. S. Lewis quotation: "The homemaker has the ultimate career. All other careers exist for one purpose only--and that is to support this ultimate career." I have not actually been able to find a proper citation for this particular bit, but I did find another, similar quotation from a 1955 letter to a Mrs. Ashton:


"I think I can understand that feeling about a housewife’s work being like that of Sisyphus (who was the stone rolling gentleman). But it is surely, in reality, the most important work in the world. What do ships, railways, mines, cars, government etc exist for except that people may be fed, warmed, and safe in their own homes? As Dr Johnson said, ‘To be happy at home is the end of all human endeavour’. (1st to be happy, to prepare for being happy in our own real Home hereafter: 2nd, in the meantime, to be happy in our houses.) We wage war in order to have peace, we work in order to have leisure, we produce food in order to eat it. So your job is the one for which all others exist."
Well. Now that the librarian in me is satisfied, we can continue with the review of the book. The first half covers the physical basics of running a home well: organization, setting up a system, chores for children, and so on, plus sections especially for women with outside jobs and people just getting started. The second half is about motherhood and more spiritual topics, especially caring for children with special needs and coping with chronic illness. It's all about maintaining a happy, comfortable home, pretty much.
I quite enjoyed the book and certainly got something from it. It will go on the shelf with my other homemaking books and I'll use it again.

Comments

Post a Comment

I'd love to know what you think, so please comment!

Popular posts from this blog

The Four Ages of Poetry

By -
Image
  "The Four Ages of Poetry," by Thomas Love Peacock I am becoming fond of Thomas Love Peacock.  Besides his unbeatable name, he was a lot of fun.  Peacock was a minor literary figure of the early 19th century; he tried his hand at poetry but mainly succeeded in satire.  I read his short novel Nightmare Abbey last year, but at the time I didn't know that the young hero of the story, Scythrop, was modeled on Peacock's good friend Percy Shelley.  He and Shelley were quite close and Peacock was the executor of Shelley's will. Thomas Love Peacock Percy Bysshe Shelley "The Four Ages of Poetry," a tongue-in-cheek essay on the history and development of poetry, was published in 1820 in a new magazine called Literary Miscellany , which promptly died.  It would probably have been completely obscure and unknown--it nearly is anyway--but for Shelley.  Peacock sent a copy to his friend, who I guess didn't really have much of a sense of...
Read more

A few short stories in Urdu

By -
Image
 Back in August, I got hold of a book of Urdu short stories translated into English.  It's a large book, so I wanted to read just the women authors for WIT, and that would still be a good amount.  August got away from me, and I only read one or two stories back then, but I've continued reading them since.  I've now finished all the short stories in the book that were written by women (luckily for me, there are short biographies in an appendix, since I could only tell from the name about half the time).  I'll just highlight a couple: "The Wagon," by Khalida Asghar, is a hallucinatory, apocalyptic story.  The narrator meets three strange men who are watching the evening sky and point out that it has become red.  No one had noticed until they said so, but the sky is now strangely red.  Then a smell arrives, so offensive and sickening that it causes real pain -- but only once it's pointed out.  And finally, a mysterious wagon, which may be the s...
Read more

Faerie Queen Readalong I: Redcrosse, the Knight of Holiness

By -
Image
I did it, I read all of Book I!  My minimum requirement was two cantos a day, but I managed three a couple of times.  I'm hoping to read ahead, because I'll be gone for two weeks in the middle of this event and I'd like to be able to prep a post ahead of time...but the schedule is already pretty demanding.  The reading is not terribly difficult, but it is slow.  I keep thinking that I've read a large chunk, only to look back and realize that in fact I have read six verses.  So here we go with analysis... Each book in the Faerie Queene features a knight, and a story, about a particular virtue.  The Redcrosse Knight, to be known as St. George after he accomplishes his feats, is all about Holinesse .  This does not mean that Redcrosse already exemplifies holiness; he doesn't.  Holiness is what he's working towards and struggling with.  His foes symbolize various forms of unholiness, and he falls into their clutches at least as often as he ...
Read more