April 2020 books

The total for April was 9 books and 3 magazines.

That brings the total for the year to 50 books and 15 magazines.

Ben Hardy's Flying Machine

by Frank V. Webster

This book was copyright in 1911.  I don't think the copy I have is that old, but it was my dad's when he was a boy.  Ben Hardy is a teenage boy who builds a monoplane, wins a distance flying contest, survives being stranded in the Canadian wilderness, rescues an aviator whose been missing for a month, escapes a lunatic inventor who almost kills him, rescues a little girl from a runaway horse and carriage, and survives a crash by the same runaway horse -- all the while solving the mystery of the people who have been trying to steal the patents for his father's inventions.  A bit far-fetched, especially toward the end, but an interesting boy's adventure story.

The Lone Scout of the Sky

by James E West

Written in 1928, this is the story of Charles' Lindbergh's historic flight across the Atlantic in May 1927.  After describing the flight and all the welcomes and parades, it talks about his growing up years, his early career, and how everything prepared him for the long, lonely flight from New York to Paris.  What impressed me most was his refusal to cash in on his newfound fame.  According to the book, he refused all offers to get rich through movie or book deals, or other such things. Instead, he used his fame to promote the cause of aviation.  The book even includes a whole chapter of detailed plans to make a working model of The Spirit of St. Louis.  My 11-year old mechanically-minded son zipped through this book and we all watched the Jimmy Stewart movie depicting the story of the flight and Lindbergh's life prior to it.

Two Are Better Than One

by Carol Ryrie Brink

Two 13 year old girls are best friends.  Since neither of them has a sister and since they are so close in age, they call themselves twins.  The book focuses on the adventures they have and create with two little pockets dolls named Lester and Lynette.  I loved reading the "novel" they wrote together, alternating chapters.  It is so typical of the spelling, run-on sentences, and run-away imagination of girls that age. Think Anne Shirley.  I loved the ending!  A sweet story, but probably wouldn't hold the attention of boys.

Marilla of Green Gables

by Sarah McCoy

I've had this on my to-read list since in came out in 2018.  I finally listened to the audio version from the library this month.  There is a scene in Anne of Green Gables where Marilla tells Anne that she and John Blythe (Gilbert's father) "were real good friends once.  Some people called him my beau."  And Anne asks, "Oh Marilla!  What happened?"  Well, this book is Sarah McCoy's attempt to answer that question.  Taking this book by itself, it's a decent story, although it might not mean as much to people who aren't Anne fans.  The author hints at or explains the origin of many little details from the Anne books: the amethyst brooch, the cherry tree sapling outside the east gable window, the start of the Ladies Aid Society, meeting Rachel, Marilla's headaches, and the grandparents of many of Anne's Avonlea schoolmates.  All of these things drew me right back into Avonlea.

Three things disappoint me about this book, however.  Of course the focus is on Marilla and John's romance, but there is way too much physical stuff in there for my taste or, in my opinion, to fit the historical time frame (late 1830s).  Second, the author describes Matthew as courting an Andrews girl and being rejected.  In the original book, it was clearly and emphatically stated that the thought of courting a girl NEVER entered Matthew's mind in all of his existence. Third, the author almost, but not quite, concocts a plausible story for how Marilla changed from being a normal (though very practical and quiet) girl to the stern and crusty woman we meet at the beginning of Anne of Green Gables.  Marilla is affected deeply by her mother's death in childbirth, assumes all the responsibilities of managing the home for her father and brother at age 13, speaks harshly to John in a political argument and is too proud to apologize or receive apologies.  Twenty years pass and Matthew and Marilla have become set in their ways as spinster and bachelor.  If the author had stopped right here, it would have been believable.  And it would have agreed with Marilla's comment in Anne of Green Gables, "I wouldn't forgive him when he asked me to.  I meant to, after awhile -- but I was sulky and angry and I wanted to  punish him first.  He never came back."

But in the last third of the book, John does come back (having never married in all that time) and she swoons over him again...they mend their relationship, and then he reveals that there's a woman he's met and he's going to marry her.  The Blythes and the Cuthberts are friendly toward each other, John comes over one night to rescue Marilla from bounty hunters who try to search her home for runaway slaves from the United States, and the book ends with Marilla making a wish that someday she will know the love a child.  I cannot reconcile this Marilla with the one less than 15 years later who frowns at Anne's dreams and imaginations as "stuff and nonsense."

I was really quite surprised, given the amount of attention the author paid to so many small details in the original story, that she made these two glaringly inconsistent mistakes.

Anne of Green Gables

by Lucy Maud Montgomery

Reading Marilla of Green Gables inspired me to go back and start reading the original Anne books by L. M. Montgomery.  It was such a pleasure to go back and revisit this childhood favorite!  I tried listening to an audio version from Audible, but the voices of the narrator just don't match what's in my head from watching the movie with Megan Fallows, Colleen Dewhurst, and Richard Farnsworth. Reading this as an adult and the mother of a very talkative girl, I found myself identifying a bit more with Marilla and her exasperation at Anne's long speeches when given a simple command to obey.

Anne of Avonlea

by Lucy Maud Montgomery

This second book continues Anne's story, covering the two years that she taught school in Avonlea prior to going to college.

Anne of the Island

by Lucy Maud Montgomery

This third book covers the four years where Anne attended college at Redmond College and learned (finally) that it was Gilbert Blythe she really loved.

Saint Patrick 

by Jonathan Rogers

This was written by the author of the Wilderking series, ant that's why I picked it up.  It's a slim volume that discusses St. Patrick's life, trying to sort out fact from legend.  It is based on the two writings by Patrick that have survived.  At the end of the book is the complete text of these two writings, The Confession and The Epistle.  I found that these writings were easier to understand after having read the previous chapters. Two comments about Patrick stood out to me:

1. "For Patrick to reach out to the barbarians as he did was almost as radical as Paul's outreach to the Gentiles."  (The Catholics at that time seemed to believe that their job was to minister to those who were already believers, not to evangelize those who were not.  Certainly not to a people as wild and "barbaric" as the Irish.)

2. He was remarkable in that he converted people to Christ, not to Roman culture.

There is some reference to pagan practices, including sexual perversion, so this may not be appropriate for younger readers.

Treasures of the Snow

by Patricia St. John

Annette and Lucien live in the mountains of Switzerland.  Annette is proud; Lucien is a bully.  One day, Lucien teases Annette's little brother by pretending to drop his cat over a cliff.  Then he accidentally does drop it, and the little boy falls over the cliff also trying to rescue it, breaking his leg badly in the process.  Annette swears she will never forgive Lucien and does everything she can to make sure people hate and despise him.  In the end, they both learn the power of forgiveness, both from Christ and from each other.  I read this ahead of watching the movie version during family movie night, in order to refresh my memory of the story.