The best cures for depression

Noble deeds and hot baths are the best cures for depression.
~Dodie Smith

A little quote, there, from today’s Friday Find, a lovely little book called I Capture the Castle. by Dodie Smith. You may have heard of Smith’s more famous work: One Hundred and One Dalmations, boasting one of Disney’s most aptly named villains, Cruella de Vil.

The fact that Dodie Smith’s last name is the same as my own is purely coincidental—although I must say it gives me half an idea for a theme for my Sunday posts. What say you to Smith Sundays? In which we investigate famous people named Smith? I don’t know. I’ll have to think about that.

Anyway…I Capture the Castle is a quirky sort of coming-of-age novel about Cassandra Mortmain (Isn’t that a great name?) and her family. Her father is a once-famous and now-blocked writer, her stepmother is the overly-dramatic but not at all wicked Topaz, her elder sister is tired of the life of poverty in spite of the fact that the family really does live in the eponymous castle. There’s a younger brother and a family friend rounding out the household—all of whom have their lives up-ended when wealthy American brothers inherit the nearby Scoatney Hall.

It’s hard to do the book justice in a description.

Perhaps it will help if I tell you that the first sentence of the book is “I write this sitting in the kitchen sink.” (I’m a sucker for intriguing first lines.) Or that J. K. Rowling lists it on her website as one of her favorite books.

Book recommendations are hard. Fiction, especially. One person’s treasured tome is another person’s snooze-fest.

But I Capture the Castle has a lot to recommend it: multi-dimensional characters, a narrator with an original turn of phrase, a surprisingly involved exploration of the psychology behind writer’s block, plot twists, suspense.

Find it. It’s worth a read, I think.

Run away.

“Art is the only way to run away without leaving home.”

~ Twyla Tharp

Do y’all know Twyla Tharp? I find it hard to believe you’ve never heard the name—and once heard, it’s likely to be remembered, isn’t it?

But, not everybody pays attention to certain things, so it’s possible that you don’t know that Ms. Tharp has been one of our most eminent choreographers for over 40 years. She has studied with the greats of Modern Dance, had her own dance company, worked with the American Ballet Theatre, created Broadway shows.

One of those careers of stunning achievement.

When that happens, it’s really great when the achiever lets you in on some of the secrets.

So, here’s something I found a few years ago that I re-read from time to time:

The Creative Habit: Learn it and Use it for Life
by—you guessed it!—Twyla Tharp

It sits on my shelves near my copy of The Artist’s Way with which it shares some common ground. Not quite as much of a workbook, maybe, The Creative Habit reinforces the idea that creativity is something you can work toward.

There are useful exercises and a strong, practical approach, an understanding that creative work is work. I get the sense that Ms. Tharp agrees with Pablo Picasso: Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.

I know that this book is a good one for me to go to when I’m just floundering around, not doing anything. At the very least, it reminds me that doing something is better than doing nothing. It gives me practical tips on figuring out what to do and how to shape it. At the best, it inspires me to keep working.

Who could ask for anything more?

If you thought Spenser was tough—

Meet Jack Reacher.

I found these books. I love it when I find a good writer who has written a whole series of books. (Of course, my favorite writer ever is Harper Lee, and she only wrote one book—but she only needed to write one.) It doesn’t happen often at this point, because I read a lot. It often seems like I’ve already read all my favorites—and sometimes more than once.

Just recently, however, I came upon Lee Child and his Reacher series. You wouldn’t have thought I’d like them. I tend to prefer the genteel English murder mystery to machismo and militarism. Violence doesn’t appeal to me.

But I had these books.

So, I checked them out.

I’m big on first lines. In my experience, a good first line is a good first step. It usually means the writer knows how to put words together. She knows how to get your attention. Chances are she will be able to keep it. (It doesn’t always work. The very best first line I ever read came in a book I could not finish. Just couldn’t get to the end of it. And I finish almost every book I start. That one was very disappointing.)

There are great first lines, and there are first lines that are just okay. I’m thinking the first line of the first Reacher novel was sort of in between. Averagely good. Which is to say, above average. Enough to set up that question in your mind: Why? And what’s going to happen next?

So, I kept reading. All the way through the next 15 novels.

The plots are surprisingly complex—with new twists. Not the same old action-adventure stuff at all.

The writing is good. There’s a voice there, a command of language, some psychological insight.

I know, for sure, that I would not like Jack Reacher if I met him in person—but I’d sure want him around if I were in danger. He meets violence with violence, and I’m not sure I approve of that in the real world (some would say it’s arguable that I don’t actually live in the real world)—but since he never attacks first, and the bad guys are like really bad, it works for me in the books.

He’s larger than life, of course, with a number of nearly super-human characteristics and an unlikely ability to figure out what the bad guys are going to do by just putting himself in their place. I mean, it’s not really believable that a person can stand outside the Four Seasons in New York, look at the surrounding blocks and decide that the quarry must be in the third brownstone on the left out of all the millions of places to hide in the city. But I can suspend my disbelief that far.

I like competent characters. Reacher is that, for sure. Those first 15 books were a good find.

Now I’ve got to go find the last two.

Untidy Murder

A Maybe Miracle

I may be premature in announcing this to be a Monday Miracle, because it hasn’t actually arrived yet. However, I did get an email notification that the book has shipped.

Shipped, I tell you!

And you tell me, “We don’t know what you’re talking about!”

Explanations are in order.

Once upon a time, when I was about twelve, I discovered a series of murder mysteries written by Frances and Richard Lockridge. They featured a pair of amateur detectives, Mr. and Mrs. North. They featured them, in fact, in a series of 26 novels, a Broadway play, a film, and a couple of TV and radio shows.

I don’t remember which book I read first. I do remember I got it out of my grandmother’s library one summer. And then another and another.

They were smart books. Funny. Full of the flavor of NYC in the Forties and Fifties. Unusually for the time period, it was usually Mrs. North who figured out who the murderer was.

Over time, I read them all. And I wanted to be able to re-read them all at will. Thus, they were high on my list at used book stores and flea markets. I picked them up here and there, and then, some time ago, a number of them were re-released. I was able to find them at regular book stores.

For years now, I have had 25 of them on my shelves. Untidy Murder, written in 1947, was the lone volume missing. Twice, I have nearly had it. The internet greatly facilitates the search for ancient tomes. When I have remembered to check, copies of it have appeared to be for sale. But twice, I have ordered, had the order accepted and, subsequently, gotten a “We’re sorry, we no longer have that book” email.

Just two weeks ago, I decided to spend part of the $40 I did not have to pay my doctor (thank you, President Obama) on Untidy Murder. It was a splurge. Out-of-print and in demand books are not cheap. I ordered it. And five days later, I got the “We’re sorry” email.

Undaunted and determined–it’s the last book in a forty year search–I remembered that another copy was available, for a higher price, and I ordered it again.

Yesterday, I got the email that it had been shipped.

Hooray!

I haven’t read Untidy Murder in a long time. How great to finally, finally, finally have the whole series! I’m excited.

Now, it should be noted that these are not first editions or anything. They are simply good reading copies of “good reads.”

But isn’t that what a book is for?

The Gammage Cup

The other Muggles

Once upon a time, there was a children’s book that resonated with adults. It was full of humor, adventure and whimsy, and the author’s imagination concealed some profound truths about humanity.

It was not by J. K. Rowling.

The Gammage Cup by Carolyn Kendal was published in 1959. It won awards: a Newbery Honor book and an ALA Notable Children’s Book. It’s about being yourself and following your heart and how those in charge could be totally wrong and how doing things just because they’ve always been done that way can get you into a whole lot of trouble.

Mostly, it’s a lot of fun.

With heroes called Minnipins, how could you go wrong?

Add in some misfit Minnipins–Gummy, Mingy, Walter the Earl, Curly Green and the aforementioned Muggles–banished from Slipper on the Water because of a refusal to paint their doors a proper Minnipin green (among other things), and an inability to conform to the standards of behavior laid down by the ruling class of Periods (so-called because Fooley the Balloonist had a list of abbreviations among his things when he crash-landed years ago, and his descendants have been named things like Ltd. and Co. ever since) as well as a contest among Minnipin villages for possession of the Gammage Cup just at the point when the Minnipins’ mythical enemies, the Mushrooms, reappear, and you have a gentle, very clever fable that entertains as well as enlightens.

This book, although well-loved by those who know of it, was never a blockbuster, as far as I can tell. It’s still in print, though, and available from Amazon if your local library doesn’t have a copy.

Check it out. I think you’ll like it!

Where have all the book sales gone…

Wondering Wednesdays

Wondering Wednesdays is a new feature I’m introducing here at the blog. Monday Miracles, Tuesday Tips and Thankful Thursdays having been so helpful in providing a little structure for coming up with ideas. With a Friday Finding appearing last week, it seemed like Wednesday could have a theme, too.

I started out thinking it might be Wednesday’s Woes (and we may detour into that some weeks), but it seemed a little less woeful to devote this post to things about which I am wondering.

This Wednesday, I am wondering about book sales.

When I was a kid, I loved my school fair every year. It wasn’t the rides or the goldfish toss or the occasional celebrity appearance by Batman.

It was the book sale.

Tables and tables of used books set out in the cafeteria at five for a quarter or something insane like that.

I would spend hours looking through them, and then I would buy armloads.

And I am wondering what is going to happen to used book sales now that we are all transitioning to Kindles and iPads and Nooks and eReaders of all shapes and descriptions?

In the last few years, I have noticed fewer and fewer shelves of books at flea markets and street fairs. Thrift stores still have them. The library periodically (no pun intended) does a fundraiser of a book sale.

Aren’t they going to run out of material? Won’t books–actual hard copy books–known rather snidely these days as “dead tree books”–become so rare that they will no longer be available at a quarter apiece? Will those terrifically musty, dusty stores–where you take in a stack of old paperbacks and get store credit of one-fourth the cover price to be applied to new stacks of old paperbacks you can purchase at one-half the cover price–will they just disappear from lack of product to sell? What about the “Take One, Leave One” shelves at marinas all up and down the Intercoastal Waterway?

I like my Kindle. It sure makes it easier to travel with plenty of reading material. Mine uses eInk and no back-light, and it is easy on the eyes. I really like it.

But I can’t read it in the bathtub without worrying about dropping it, I can’t lend a book to a friend, I can’t sell those I’ve finished at a yard sale, and I will never be thrilled to discover the one Mr. & Mrs. North murder mystery I don’t own in a cardboard box in the back of garage.

Win something, lose something.

I’m wondering if we are ahead.

Elaine Smith Writes