‘Down the Nile’ by Rosemary Mahoney

I can’t say I went into Rosemary Mahoney’s excellent Down the Nile: Alone in a Fisherman’s Skiff completely unbiased. The book may well be the first book about contemporary Egypt I’ve ever read and my first book about rowing and, sure, I’d never heard of Mahoney before picking up the book, so there are a few reasons I ought to have gone into Down the Nile with no pretensions or expectations.

But, the plain truth be told, I’m an Egyptian travel narrative junkie. I can’t get enough of them, particularly female-authored Victorian travel narratives of Egypt.

Late in her book, Mahoney quotes early Egyptian traveler Charles Sonnini, who wrote in 1777, that,

“…this frequence of travelers cannot exclude my pretension to a place among the rest, and I am not to be deterred from speaking of Egypt by the number or renown of those who have trodden the ground before me … Objects do not present themselves to all observers under the same point of view.”

And perhaps that is why I’m so drawn to the form, as much as why people throughout time cannot seem to stop writing about Egypt—objects do not present themselves to all observers under the same point of view. Egypt has, for all intents and purposes, been the same tourist destination for centuries (same sites, same ruins, same tombs, etc.), but people keep writing about it, as if the Sphinx will somehow be better understood for one more description of it.

Rereadings: ‘Stardust’ by Neil Gaiman

I first read Stardust by Neil Gaiman when I was eighteen. I was a first year at college and, what with adjusting to everything from the new rigors of college academics to living in a tiny room in an old house with a gaggle of other equally stressed, but fiercely competent and intelligent young women, I was perhaps more keen than usual for fantastical escape.

Bram Stoker’s “The Jewel of the Seven Stars”

Bram Stoker’s Dracula follow-up The Jewel of the Seven Stars is best-billed as a supernatural Egyptomaniacal Victorian novel. It’s almost unbelievable the lengths to which Stoker went in his novel to make it fit, with blazing accuracy at all points, into all three of those categories.

‘The Night Circus’ by Erin Morgenstern

It’s Halloween-week, which means it’s time for some magic, some spooky, and some tangentially-Halloweeny reads!

I’ve been trying to think of how best to write about Erin Morgenstern’s excellent debut novel, The Night Circus, for a few days now. It’s one of those books that can be categorized, enjoyed, and, upon finishing it, loved, but not one that can be accurately described.

Most of the publicity material for the book has mentioned the dread words “Harry Potter for adults.” Increasingly, I seems to be just stuck on any book that somehow involves magic and isn’t targeted at tweens. Really, neither The Night Circus itself nor Ms. Morgenstern’s writing style evokes anything of the world of Harry Potter or J.K. Rowling. While there is magic in both, that is about where the similarity ends.

The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters by G.W. Dahlquist

I found myself in Zurich recently and bookless. There being only one English-language bookstore in said city, I soon betook myself to Orell Füssli and began to ponder their (impressive) stock. For such a book-lover as me, it is actually a rare occurrence when I just let myself go into a bookstore to browse and buy whatever strikes my fancy. Because that sort of thing can get out of hand, I’m much more likely to make targeted bookstore stops, focusing specifically on the one book I need (or “need,” more accurately), getting it, and quickly leaving before twelve other shiny volumes catch my eye.

But, on this particular day, I was on holiday and determined to allow myself the pleasure of book-browsing. My choice eventually boiled down to a broader internal struggled between the reader I want to be (the one who reads Margaret Atwood and Booker Prize-winning books) and the true nature of my bookish soul (the one who reads Alexandre Dumas and Jules Verne). Not that the two are necessarily mutually exclusive, but you will no doubt agree that it is a rare volume which combines the two. So in Orell Füssli I had a decision to make and, with a slight pain in my heart at abandoning the row of lovely Atwoods, on that particular vacation day, I let my true nature win.

Thus G.W. Dahlquist’s The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters came down off the shelf and into my arms. I knew absolutely nothing about Dahlquist or his book at the time. But some of the best reads I’ve experienced in the past came with the same total lack of information about the book, so I was more than willing to give it a go.

The result was a rather interesting mix of Jules Verne’s steampunk adventure, S. Rider Haggard’s supernatural weirdness (and adventure, bien sur), Neil Gaiman’s imagination combined with Terry Gilliam’s visual aesthetic, probably some Alan Mooreishness, and topped with a dollop of Mina Harker for good measure. Would it be too crazy to say it had everything? Well, it didn’t have Atwood, but it had at least a hint of almost everything else.

Fairy Tale Friday: The Laidly Worm of Spindleston Heugh

As I mentioned last week, as part of the Classics Challenge and as an homage to A.S. Byatt’s Possession, this Friday will be a Victorian Fairy Tale Friday.

Unlike our usual Fairy Tale Fridays, I have not retold this story or changed it in any way. It is taken directly from Joseph Jacob’s English Fairy Tales (1890), the entirety of which you can read at Project Gutenberg if you should be so inclined.

The Laidly Worm of Spindleston Heugh
as told by Joseph Jacob

In Bamborough Castle once lived a king who had a fair wife and two children, a son named Childe Wynd and a daughter named Margaret. Childe Wynd went forth to seek his fortune, and soon after he had gone the queen his mother died. The king mourned her long and faithfully, but one day while he was hunting he came across a lady of great beauty, and became so much in love with her that he determined to marry her. So he sent word home that he was going to bring a new queen to Bamborough Castle.

Princess Margaret was not very glad to hear of her mother’s place being taken, but she did not repine but did her father’s bidding. And at the appointed day came down to the castle gate with the keys all ready to hand over to her stepmother. Soon the procession drew near, and the new queen came towards Princess Margaret who bowed low and handed her the keys of the castle. She stood there with blushing cheeks and eye on ground, and said: “O welcome, father dear, to your halls and bowers, and welcome to you my new mother, for all that’s here is yours,” and again she offered the keys. One of the king’s knights who had escorted the new queen, cried out in admiration: “Surely this northern Princess is the loveliest of her kind.” At that the new queen flushed up and cried out: “At least your courtesy might have excepted me,” and then she muttered below her breath: “I’ll soon put an end to her beauty.”

The French Lieutenant’s Woman by John Fowles

As the end of the year draws near, I’ve been mentally drawing up a personal literary “Best of 2010″ list (stay tuned for the final tally!). While some of the list vacillates as I think about it, the very top, very best, and very life-changing part remains incontestable: John Fowles. He is by far the best thing I discovered in literature this year and with every new book of his I read, the more in love and in awe I am of his writing.

The Eustace Diamonds by Anthony Trollope

It seems to me that Anthony Trollope gets short shrift when it comes to discussions of nineteenth century literature. Everyone glowingly speaks of Thackeray, swoons over Dickens, and is impressed by Eliot, but does anyone bother to note Trollope? This man is one of the most successful and prolific authors of the Victorian era and yet few people have read him let alone recommend him.

I’d like this to stop. I just finished reading his The Eustace Diamonds—which is something of a mash-up precursor to The Woman in White, Vanity Fair, and perhaps Emma with some Dickens tossed in—and I enjoyed it immensely.

The Prisoner of Zenda by Anthony Hope

It may not be immediately apparent from the other books I’ve written about on this blog, but I am a complete adventure novel junkie. By this I don’t mean The Da Vinci Code or any of the Bourne books. I’m talking about classic adventure novels: Treasure Island, The Mask of Zorro, Captain Blood, and The Scarlet Pimpernel. I want swashbuckling and heroism and a dash of romance in my adventures far more than I crave technological advances or sneaky spies.

Since there aren’t a terribly large number of adventure novels that fit the bill, I stockpile them so I don’t go through them all at once and am left with nothing more to look forward to. To that end, I have been saving Anthony Hope’s The Prisoner of Zenda for quite some time. Imagine my reaction, then, when it turned out to be so thoroughly disappointing!

Rereadings: Tennyson

I am, to put it lightly, not a poetry fan. It is a medium I simply have been chronically unable to get interested in or enjoy even a little. The only time I can remember enjoying poetry was in an English class about Victorian medievalism I took my first year of college. In said class, we read Tennyson’s “The Lady of Shalott” and, for the first time in my life, I responded positively to a poem. It was all very Meet Me in Saint Louis: “Tirra lirra!” sang Sir Lancelot, “Zing, zing, zing” went my heartstrings.