So I've been filling this blog with books, stories, trivia and other delightful non-essentials.

Let me take a minute to focus on something else.  Something that isn't just a book for a change, although increasing numbers of people around the world are starting to see it as a work of fiction.

The birth of our Savior, Jesus Christ.

At this time of the year, many people celebrate the Savior's birth at Christmastime.  I proudly count myself among that number.  And I love to buy gifts for my loved ones, and hang up tinsel and holly, and decorate the tree and crunch through the snow - but that is not all there is to Christmas.

Let me tell you.

Two thousand years ago, give or take a few, the Savior of the World was born in Bethlehem - a tiny city in what we now call the Middle East.  He was and is the Son of God, come to show us the right way to live, teach us love and understanding and truth, and ultimately take our sins upon himself.  This means that if we turn to Him, even our darkest and deepest mistakes and sins can be forgiven and taken away, as if they never happened.  He died a tragic death, and then became the first man ever to defeat death and rise to live again, making it possible so that we all can live again, after we die.  Jesus Christ is now with His Father, actively watching over us.  He will return to this earth again someday, with power and great glory, on a day full of joy and gladness.

This is no myth.  This is the truth - God's truth.

Merry Christmas!


Click to learn more about the story of Christmas.

Thy Servant, A Dog

"Please may I come in?  I am Boots.  I am son of Kildonan Brogue - Champion Reserve - V.H.C. - very fine dog; and no-dash-parlour-tricks, Master says, except I can sit-up, and put paws over nose.  It is called 'Making Beseech.'  Look!  I do it out of own head.  Not for telling...  This is Flat-in-Town.  I live here with Own God.  I tell:"

Did you like Black Beauty?  Beautiful Joe?  Or were they too sad for you?  How about Lady and the Tramp or Fox and the Hound or 101 Dalmatians?  If the answer to any of the above is yes, then I have the book for you!  In fact, after watching this,  you're going to wonder where Disney got a lot of their inspiration!  Remember in 101 Dalmatians where the two dogs meet and inadvertantly get their masters involved?  Check!  We've got it right here!  How about in Lady and the Tramp where the rat tries to get into the baby's cradle, and Tramp fights it all over the nursery?  We've got a parallel here too - only the Disney writers must've decided to change a letter - in Thy Servant, A Dog, it's the household Cat who tries to get in with the baby.

I consider this book, Thy Servant, A Dog to be Rudyard Kipling's second most unexpected book ever.  (I haven't talked about his most non-typical book yet - but I will soon!  Don't worry.)  In fact, I was absolutely astonished to find out that Rudyard Kipling wrote this charming, delightful, not-quite-written-in-English book.  I mean, of course it's written in English - you can see that from the excerpt above - Kipling just played with it and made it his own.

This book gives us a rare opportunity to see inside the head of a dog and look at things through his eyes.  It's a very interesting world from his point of view.  What is even more interesting is the way Kipling wrote it so we as humans, if we read carefully, can detect subtle nuances of the situations that completely escape the dog's perception.  For instance, after a particularly touching point in the book, Boots merely notes that the horse's saddle girth needs to be adjusted, but if you read it carefully, you get a clear picture of a deeply moved groom, busying himself with a trivial detail to give himself time to blink the tears out of his eyes.  I call that mastery!

Do you have a dog?  Then you'll love the clever little touches to Boots' character that makes every dog-owner laugh and shake his head.  Boots eating grass and getting sick, Boots begging for scraps under the table, Boots feeling "uncomfy" when his owners are sad... The picture that is drawn is one of a loyal little dog, with a heart too big for his body, loving everyone in his world.  (Except maybe for the cat!)  I particularly love the way that Boots refers to his masters.  "Own Gods" he calls them, quite consistently.  I love it - it just radiates dog-ness!

Now, some notes about the book itself - it can be found online, because it is in the Public Domain.  Want to read it?  Click here for a link to the copy on Gutenberg Australia.  Also, the book is made up of a number of shorter stories.  My ravings only cover up until, but not including, Toby Dog.  If you want a happy ending, stop before you read Toby Dog.  I wanted a happy ending - but unfortunately nobody told me to stop there, so I read Toby Dog too.  Perhaps it wouldn't have made me quite so sad, except that my cat right now is dying, so I'm a little touchy.  Then the stories after Toby Dog look good, but I haven't read them yet.  They're not about Boots, and he's the one I love, so he's the one I'm raving about.  But certainly read the first two stories, and under no circumstances must you neglect to read the second of the two - The Great Play Hunt - it was absolutely delightful!

Carry On, Mr. Bowditch

Have you ever felt lonely?  Forgotten?  Disadvantaged?  Felt like there was nothing that you could do, that you were stuck in one place forever?  So did Nathaniel Bowditch, yet he sailed "by ash breeze" to become one of the greatest authorities on navigation in the world.

This has got to be one of my absolute favorite books ever, and yet so few people have heard of it or the man whose life it sets forth.  I find that terribly tragic.  Nathaniel Bowditch saved the lives of many men, through his tireless effort and ceaseless learning, and nobody learns about him any more.  Jean Lee Latham did her best to remedy this horrid injustice when she wrote this Newbery Medal Winner, Carry On, Mr. Bowditch.

We first meet Nathaniel Bowditch as a boy.  This was at a time when America had just gained her liberty from England, and was struggling to compete on the high seas and in the world of trading.  Hundreds of men left American shores on contraptions of wood, metal, tar, and fabric, to reach distant shores with nothing but the sun, moon, stars, and their few navigational tools.  Their success astounds me, two hundred odd years later.  But even so, the toll on human life was staggering.  Some men tried to follow the charts and tables, published by notable British scholars, but there were too many errors in them to be reliable.


Nathaniel Bowditch, with almost no formal schooling, but with plenty of experience and knack for these things, could not help but notice the errors and the price that his family and those he loved had to pay, in worry and grief for their loved ones.

Carry On, Mr. Bowditch encourages me every time I feel down or discouraged.  Don't let the sad parts turn you off - what is a good story without some sorrow to temper the glory?  The ending of the book is one of the most powerful and compelling of any book I have ever read. 

This then, is the true story of how an obscure American young man became supreme in the world of navigation, which up until then, had been controlled almost solely by the British.  Ultimately, it is a story of love, grief, hard work, perseverance, and values.

Stuntman

Have you ever wondered how the people in the movies do all of their stunts?  You know, getting shot, falling off of a building, toppling over a cliff, riding a bucking bronco, all of those things?  Of course, they'd never have the actor do all of those things, because they could get killed or suffer serious injury before the filming was over.  So they use stuntmen - a daring group of people who can do things I would break my neck attempting.  But who are these people?  Where do they come from?  What happens to them once they get too old to do stunts anymore?

Stuntman by Yakima Canutt answers all of these questions and more.  Studded with thrilling descriptions of daring feats, and explanations as to how they were done, this is what I consider to be the ultimate book on pre-computer-generated-stunts.  And yes, it has lots of pictures!

Yakima Canutt started out as a cowboy.  Let me rephrase that.  Yakima Canutt started out as a boy who wanted to ride broncos at the local rodeos.  After becoming a really successful bronco buster, he worked his way up, eventually getting into some westerns, usually as a villain.  Once westerns started being done in sound however, Yakima switched to stunting.  From there, the rest is history.  When he got too old to do stunts, he successfully made the transition into a stunt director.  Yakima Canutt worked closely with many movies that you will have likely heard of, both as a stuntman, and as a stunt director.

You've probably seen Yakima Canutt in action, if you've seen Gone With the Wind, Disney's Old Yeller, the classic western Stagecoach, and many others.  Remember the part in Stagecoach where John Wayne falls off the wagon, and goes between the wheels?  Guess who doubled for him?  Incidentally, the shot was later copied in the first Indiana Jones movie!  Also, in Gone With the Wind, Yakima played two different parts.  One was as the renegade who pulled Scarlett O'Hara out of her buggy.  This is actually a really nice moment to get a clear look at his face, since in most of his movies, he is doubling for the main actor, and as such, his face is concealed.  The other part Yakima Canutt played was as a double for Clark Gable, during the sequence where they are riding through the burning city.  During one of the takes of that scene, the wagon flipped over, and Yakima was knocked out.  He was so groggy after he came back out of it, that even though he went right back to work, he couldn't figure out what movie he was working on for a long time.

You've also probably seen films which Yakima Canutt was the stunt director for, including Ivanhoe, Spartacus, and Ben Hur.  As an added piece of trivia, Yakima Canutt's son doubled for Charlton Heston during the epic chariot race, and Yakima describes his sensations in Stuntman as he watched his own son take an unplanned front-flip off of the front of the chariot, while negotiating a ramp Yakima himself had designed..  While this sequence was unexpected, and a result of a bad hand position of the front rail of the chariot, the little slip-up was expanded into one of the more knuckle-whitening sequences of the movie.

It's also fun to read about Yakima Canutt and his relations with other actors offset.  He tells funny stories about actors goofing off when not on camera, like the time when he and another actor staged a shoot-out while at dinner, among their unsuspecting fellow diners.  He also gives you a close-up picture of classic Western star, John Wayne, and others.  By the way, John Wayne was born in Iowa.  So where did he get his cowboy walk and talk?  I'll leave it to you to guess whom he modeled his persona after!  (Hint: his initials start with Y.C.)

These are only a few of my favorite parts of the book.  Read the whole thing!  I hesitate to call it non-fiction or an autobiography, because these words turn many people off even faster than I could blink.  Rather, I'd call it an exciting, adventurous tale, that touches on many movies you will have heard of, and tells interesting, behind-the-scenes stories.  If you're anything like me, you'll be boring people with fascinating movie trivia for days, weeks, or even months after reading it!  It's delightful to find out what it is like, to live the life of a stuntman.

The Margaret Montfort Series

This is seriously one of my favorite series. It was written by Laura E. Richards, the first book being published in 1987 and the last book in 1904. The chronology runs as follows -

Three Margarets
Margaret Montfort
Peggy
Rita
Fernley House
The MerryweathersThe first book, Three Margarets, deals with three cousins, all named Margaret Montfort, who come to spend the summer with their Uncle John, whom they have never met. The three Margarets (called Margaret, Peggy and Rita) have never met each other either - one is from New England, one from the West, and one from Cuba. They spend the summer together at Fernley - Uncle John's home - with their great-aunt Faith, and while they wait for their Uncle John to return home from a trip, they get to know each other.

The second book is called Margaret Montfort. Margaret is with her Uncle John at Fernley, and misses companionship of her own age. Uncle John arranges for three motherless distant cousins to come and stay for a while - Basil, Merton and Susan D. (or Battle, Murder, and Sudden Death, as their father calls them). At the same time, an elderly and persnickety cousin of Uncle John arrives unbidden, determined to keep house for him. This book also introduces Gerald Merryweather - a jolly young man.

The third book is Peggy. Peggy is determined to follow the example of her beloved Margaret by becoming educated, so she goes away to a boarding school. While there whe meets a host of other schoolgirls and must decide whose example to follow. Chief among these girls are the Snowy Owl (Gertrude Merryweather, sister to Gerald), the Fluffy, and the Goat (Grace Wolfe, a scapegoat and somewhat of a fascinating lone wolf).

Anyway, I am absolutely not going to spoil all the books for you by giving a book report on them.  Also, there are a lot of them, and they also connect into the author's Hildegarde series, and I wouldn't know where to stop.  Suffice it to say that Rita has got to be one of my favorite books out of the series, but you must read Three Margarets first.  Well, I suppose you don't have to, because it can stand on it's own well enough, but it's better if you do.

But read them all!  They're all online, and you can find them easily at Gutenberg.  A great series, and one of my favorites!

Introduction

I am a college student, and as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I am a Christian. One might also call me slightly old-fashioned, since I enjoy many books of which my peers have often never heard. I have often wished that other people would create blogs of their favorite books, so I might get new ideas of what to read, but I have never found any such that have similar values to mine. Since I am absolutely certain that I am not the only girl in the world who loves older, less well known books, I thought I would create this blog. All of the books I will discuss in here will be compatible with my own values, but they will come from many different genres - fiction, nonfiction, fantasy, science fiction, autobiographies, biographies, historical fiction and many others. I hope you will enjoy looking through, and that you will find books to read which you will like.