Favorite International Book

Because we're reading an originally French book this week, we are picking our favorite international books. Since that's a vague descriptor, let's say "international book" means something originally written in language other than ours, and/or is about/from a culture very different from our own. (Therefore, what constitutes an "international" book varies by person.)

We've discussed Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis and Persepolis 2 on the blog before, but it is the first thing that comes to mind when I think about the parameters set above for an international book.

I really learned things about a culture other than mine that - before picking up these books - I knew nothing about. I also identified with characters who are very different from me. These are the marks of a good international book: bringing readers and writers/characters together despite their many differences.

If I had to pick a favorite book of all time, Les Liaisons Dangereuses, or Dangerous Liaisons in English, would probably be that book.

It takes place in France in the late 1700s.  It's about two rivals (Madame de Tourvel and Vicomte de Valmont), who use sex to get whatever they want in life.  Which, in the 1700s, to write a whole book about sex... well, that was a HUGE deal (And in fact, in the beginning of the book, there's an editor's note that says it was all the idea of the author, and an author's note that says it's all the idea of the editor, who subsequently were both LaClos.  He did it so that he could simultaneously take credit/deny any accusations, depending on how the book did.)

The two decide to make a bet to basically see who's the better seducer (also, so Tourvel could take revenge on an old boyfriend), and the whole thing just goes crazy from there.  The book is told through letters between the characters, so it's even more interesting because you don't actually see anything in real time.  It's all tainted by the narrator of the letter (remember Alex's post on unreliable narrators?  This book is the best example you will ever find of that.)

The book was originally written in French, and you learn a lot about French 1700s etiquette (which, while not so relevant today, is still really fascinating.)

Really, the book is just awesome and fascinating and incredibly well-written. 

Famous first lines

This is totally just something for fun.  I'm going to give you a list of first lines in books.  You tell me the book/author (or just the book is fine.)  On Sunday, I'll give you all the answers.

I have one big, fat rule.  Please, PLEASE do not go onto the internet and look them up and then answer them all.  This is not a contest; we're not giving anything away; it's just to be fun.  So if you know it, GREAT.  Comment and tell us!  If you don't, then leave it be in case someone else does.

Also, as people guess the right answers, I'm going to cross them out. :D

1. It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.
2. Mr and Mrs Dursley, of number four Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much.
3. Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the riverbank, and of having nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, ‘and what is the use of a book’, thought Alice, ‘without pictures or conversation?’
4. Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small, unregarded yellow sun.
5. Who is John Galt?
6. 124 was spiteful.
7. A squat grey building of only thirty-four stories. Over the main entrance the words “Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Centre” and, in a shield, the World State's Motto: “Community, Identity, Stability”.
8. Call me Ishmael.
9. Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed.
10. Ba-room, ba-room, ba-room, baripity, baripity, baripity, baripity--Good.
11. They murdered him.
12. It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.
13. Marley was dead, to begin with.
14. Once there were four children whose names were Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy.
15. In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since. "Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone," he told me, "just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had."
16. Midway upon the journey of our life, I found myself within a forest dark, for the straightforward pathway had been lost.
17. Through the fence, between the curling flower spaces, I could see them hitting.
18. Somewhere in la Mancha, in a place whose name I do not care to remember, a gentleman lived not long ago, one of those who has a lance and ancient shield on a shelf and keeps a skinny nag and a greyhound for racing.
19. The drought had lasted now for ten million years, and the reign of the terrible lizards had long since ended.
20. It was a pleasure to burn.
21. You will rejoice to hear that no disaster has accompanied the commencement of an enterprise which you have regarded with such evil forebodings.
22. Tyler gets me a job as a waiter, after that Tyler's pushing a gun in my mouth and saying, the first step to eternal life is you have to die.
23. Mother died today.
24. "Christmas won't be Christmas without any presents," grumbled Jo, lying on the rug.
25. All this happened, more or less.
26. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
27. 'Where's Papa going with that axe?' said Fern to her mother as they were setting the table for breakfast.
28. It was a nice day.
29. To the red country and part of the gray country of Oklahoma, the last rains came gently, and they did not cut the scarred earth.
30. Not every 13-year-old girl is accused of murder, brought to trial, and found guilty.
31. Ships at a distance have every man's wish on board.
32. It was four o'clock when the ceremony was over and the carriages began to arrive.
33. Nick Naylor had been called many things since becoming the chief spokesman for the Academy of Tobacco Studies, but until now no one had actually compared him to Satan.
34. The boy with fair hair lowered himself down the last few feet of rock and began to pick his way toward the lagoon.
35. It's a funny thing about mothers and fathers. Even when their own child is the most disgusting little blister you could ever imagine, they still think that he or she is wonderful.
36. Two households, both alike in dignity, In fair Verona, where we lay our scene, From ancient grudge break to new mutiny, Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.
37. In an old house in Paris that was covered with vines lived twelve little girls in two straight lines.
38. He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish.
39. It’s hard being left behind. I wait for Henry, not knowing where he is, wondering if he’s okay. It’s hard to be the one who stays.
40. All children, except one, grow up.
41. Here is Edward Bear, coming downstairs now, bump, bump, bump, on the back of his head, behind Christopher Robin
42. The year that Buttercup was born, the most beautiful woman in the world was a French scullery maid named Annette.
43. When Mary Lennox was sent to Misselthwaite Manor to live with her uncle everybody said she was the most disagreeable-looking child ever seen.
44. Once on a dark winter's day, when the yellow fog hung so thick and heavy in the streets of London that the lamps were lighted and the shop windows blazed with gas as they do at night, an odd-looking little girl sat in a cab with her father and was driven rather slowly through the big thoroughfares.
45. True! - nervous - very, very nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad?
46. The Time Traveller (for so it will be convenient to speak of him) was expounding a recondite matter to us.
47. Dog carcass in alley this morning, tire tread on burst stomach.
48. It was a dark and stormy night.
49. The early summer sky was the color of cat vomit
50. Shadow had done three years in prison.

There you go!  50 first lines.  See how many you know.  If you want, leave a first line in the comments that's not on the list to see if anyone else knows it.

Have fun!

Author Bio: Antoine de Saint-Exupery

If you think the author of this week's review book, Le Petit Prince (or The Little Prince) has a mouthful of a name, consider that his full name is Antoine Marie Jean-Baptiste Roger, comte de Saint-Exupery.

Born June 29, 1900, Saint-Exupery was not only a writer but a French aristocrat (thus the long, fancy name) and a pilot, too. He failed his finals at the Naval Academy twice (though it was rumored that this was intentional) and went to study architecture, but didn't finish that program either.

In 1921, he joined the military service in the French Army. While deployed, he took private flying lessons and was transferred to the French Air Force the next year. After a crash, his fiance's family (a girl he, subsequently never married) insisted that he leave the service and take an office job, and he did.



But by 1926, he was back in the sky, paving the way in the field of international postal flight. Also that year, he published his first novella, L'Aviateur (The Aviator).

In 1929, he published his first novel, Courrier Sud (Southern Mail), but he didn't begin to be recognized for his writing until he published Vol de Nuit (Night Flight), about his experiences flying for Aeropostale (not the clothes company) Argentina in 1931.

On December 30, 1935, Saint-Exupery crashed his plane in the Sahara Desert while trying to break a speed record between Paris and Saigon. He and his mechanic-navigator survived the crash, but became dangerously dehydrated. 

Big place... kinda hot and dry.

On their fourth day stranded, a Bedouin on a camel found them and saved their lives. Saint-Exupery wrote about this harrowing experience in his memoir, Wind, Sand and Stars (1939). There are also references to this experience in Le Petit Prince (1943).

He lived in New York City from 1941-43 (which is actually where he hyphenated the "Saint-Exupery," after great frustration over Americans calling him "Mr. Exupery"). While in America, he wrote Pilote de guerre (Flight to Arras) and Lettre a un otage (Letter to a Hostage), the latter written for the French living under Nazi occupation at the time.

In 1942, he met a precocious little boy in Canada, who inspired him to write Le Petit Prince, published in 1943. It was published in French and English, but only in America, until after the liberation of France, at which point it was published there as well. Today, it is published worldwide, in many different languages. 180 languages to be exact, on of with is Toba, and obscure northern Argentinian language. 

Saint-Exupery returned to his piloting in 1943 with the Free French Air Force to fight alongside the Allies in the Mediterranean. He was assigned to a recon mission around the Rhone Valley, on which he disappeared. A French woman reported seeing a plane crash, and an unidentifiable body was found wearing French colors several days after his disappearance.

In September of 1998, a fisherman found Saint-Exupery's identification bracelet hooked on a piece of cloth (presumably his flight suit), but it was far from the flight path he should have been on, bringing many to doubt its authenticity. Nevertheless, it was an emotional discovery for France, as they revere Saint-Exupery for both his writing and his piloting.

In May of 2000, a diver found the remains of Saint-Exupery's plane (which was recovered in 2003). There is much speculation about the circumstances of Saint-Exupery's disappearance and subsequent death, but not much is for certain.

Much of his writing was published posthumously, many of which are written as a series of letters.

There are monuments and historical markers everywhere he lived. He is recognized in a number of museums, in theater and film and music, in the naming of schools, streets, and buildings, and his face appeared on the 50-franc banknote.  In 2003, a small asteroid moon was named "Petit-Prince" after the book. He is well-beloved by French and others alike.

By Its Cover - Shiloh

This book cover I think really shows it's age.  It's that "draw reality" look that was very popular during that time.  It does get the point across (reminds me of the Dear Mr. Henshaw cover.) but it's very 1990s.

These are both updated covers, and I think they're a lot better, especially the one to the right.  It's a lot less complicated, and it has a REAL PUPPY on the cover, which is always a winner.  It's simple, to the point and way less cluttered than the other two.

PUPPIES! That's basically what I think when I see the newer covers. The one on the right looks truer to the story (the one on the left is a little too happy to encapsulate the mood of the entire book) and the fonts on the right fit better (they suggest childhood, which is central to the story; it's a bildungsroman at heart, after all). The one on the left looks like it might be about talking animals going on an adventure, which is - obviously - not the case. (I also don't like the tagline; Shiloh isn't technically Marty's dog for most of the book, and the phrase "the classic story of a boy and his dog" does not entice me to read it.) The old cover was the reason I never wanted to pick this book up; a boy and a dog on a cover might as well be a flashing sign that says Sad Story Ahead.

Review Me Twice - Shiloh by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

I think I've mentioned this week that I read this book when I was a kid.  And you get a very different perception of it as a kid (IE. There's a puppy.  And you want Marty to keep the puppy.)

As an adult, I realize the reasons this won a Newbery Award.  It manages to teach kids good lessons without being overly condescending.  Marty is a fleshed out, real kid with all sorts of idiosyncrasies.  He's CONSTANTLY rationalizing stuff to himself to make himself feel less guilty.  He also problem solves his way out of his problems.

There's a lot of stuff that's some tough material for kids.  There's blackmail in this book and the entire book is, basically, about Marty wanting to keep a dog that's being beaten.  There's poverty and this sense of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" in the community, everyone turning a blind eye if it doesn't have to do with them.

I like that, while the ending is happy, it's not unrealistic.  Judd is still kind of really a jerk.  However, we start to see that, maybe, he's not a jerk all the time.  Maybe he might actually be an ok guy sometimes.

It's a really great book for kids and doesn't treat them like delicate flowers (which I'm always in favor of.)

My Bottom Line 4 out of 5

I avoided this book for a long time. I was never asked to read it in school, I skirted around it when it was on lists like the library's Summer Reading Program or the Accelerated Reader options, and I never received it as a gift as a child. Why? There's a kid and a dog on the cover, and that usually means sadness. And as much as I love a sad story, I don't when it involves an animal. I'm one of those people who loves my cat more than I love most people.

But it wasn't that bad. It is a children's book, after all; the animal abuse is discussed, not described.

Beyond that, I like Marty. Not in the sense that I would be friends with him in real life, but that he's a well-fleshed-out character. And the setting is great, too. I don't live in the country myself, but I have close ties to it, and there is one paragraph early in the book that describes southern culture perfectly: Marty's dad has to talk to Judd (Shiloh's owner) about the dog, but in the south, you don't just drive up and start talking about what you're there to talk about. You have to discuss the weather, the price of cattle, your families, whatever, for 10 minutes, and then you can broach the topic at hand. I've seen this in practice all my life, and Naylor perfectly summarized it.

I didn't love the book and I have no nostalgic attachment to it, but it wasn't bad.

Newbery Award

This week's review book, Shiloh by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor, is a Newbery Award winner, so I'm going to tell you what exactly that means.

The Newbery Medal was started in 1921, and was the first children's book award in the world. The medal is above on the left. In 1971, the Newbery Honor (on the right) was instituted, to be given to runners-up.

The award was named for John Newbery, who published children's books in the 18th century. (The reason that was a huge deal is a topic for another day, but suffice it to say that children's literature didn't get the respect it deserves back then.)

The Newbery is awarded to the author of "the most distinguished contribution to American literature for children" each year by the American Library Association's Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC). The Newbery and the Caldecott are the two most prestigious awards for children's literature, and are widely celebrated yearly when announced at the ALA Midwinter meeting.

In its first year, the Newbery was awarded to six books. It has been given to anywhere between one and eight books every year since.

There is an equivalent British award called the Carnegie Medal, pictured on the right (and two authors have won both a Newbery and a Carnegie: Sharon Creech and Neil Gaiman). There is an equivalent German award too, called the Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis, on the left (and two authors have won a Newbery and a DJ: Scott O'Dell and Jean Craighead George).

Favorite Patriotic Book

In honor of tomorrow being Independence Day here in the States, we're choosing our favorite patriotic books!

There is a (very large) series of books called Dear America. They are fictional diaries of kids from different backgrounds in different circumstances throughout American history. I'm 99% certain I read every single one that had been published when I was in middle school. The series originally was all girls, and then they added boys as well.

Don't get me wrong... I love these books, but it's more about nostalgia than good writing. If you've ever read the American Girl books (my second choice for this post) you know what I'm talking about. They all have the same general story line: there's usually at least one sibling, a love interest (usually reluctantly accepted... these girls aren't particularly swoony), and they usually have to help their family in some way (working in a shop, watching the kids, looking after their parents' health, etc). They're all early teenagers, because the books' target audience of middle schoolers.

The few that particularly stand out in my memory are the girls on the Oregon Trail, on the transcontinental railroad in the Utah territory, on the Titanic, on the Mayflower, at the Alamo, and my favorite: Zipporah, a Jewish immigrant in NYC at the turn of the 20th century.

Despite what I said about them not being great writing, I would highly recommend these to any kids, particularly those who like history.

My favorite patriotic book has actually been featured on this blog before, as Alex's favorite LGBT book.

It's David Levithan, so we already know it's going to be brilliant.  While the book is really more about tolerance and how to handle changes, I kind of feel that isn't that what independence is all about anyhow? 

It does get into some of the basics of American rights: presidential elections, the will of the people, kids who are supportive of their government, campaigning, all that jazz.  But really, the bigger picture, is that this is America, and in America we should respect people's right to be who they want to be (as long as they're not harming anyone else in the process.)