Comments | rockinlibrarian: Happy Birthday, (Original) Madeleine!

rockinlibrarian

Happy Birthday, (Original) Madeleine!

Nov 29, 2012 19:18

Ladies and gentlemen, 94 years ago today, a baby girl was born in New York City, who would grow into the woman I named my daughter after. Such an event cannot be taken lightly, oh no, particularly not when this IS The Year Of the Tesseract. (I KNOW. I haven't written one of those posts in ages. I apologize profusely if you only started following me ( Read more... )

year of the tesseract, books

Comments 6

elouise82 November 30 2012, 14:38:16 UTC

That book looks so intriguing. I sometimes hesitate to read biographies of people I admire, because inevitably they are shown to have feet of clay, but I've already (accidentally, really) read some things about Madeleine indicating those clay feet, so something like this might be good. Give me more of a whole picture.

I also read your linked article about DWJ. HOLY COW. The two uppermost thoughts from that? I am so not as bad of a parent as I thought; and who would have thought Beatrix Potter would be such a crank?

rockinlibrarian November 30 2012, 20:06:48 UTC

HOLY COW is right, not to hijack the conversation away from the birthday author here. But yeah, DWJ's autobiography is just mindblowing, and you feel weird because you're laughing hysterically and then you're like "Wait, is it okay to laugh at this? This is terrible!" And then you laugh anyway. Also, I think historians (of the rare sort that study the history of this sort of thing) are uncertain if that WAS in fact Beatrix Potter or if it was Beatrix Potter's sister or mother or something. HOW DOES ANYONE KNOW, ANYWAY. I think Betsy Bird is actually planning to address that story in that book she's writing about weird backstories of children's literature.

Right, of course everyone has faults. And it's not so bad if you can see those faults balanced with the rest of them. Because then it's just like, I Love That Person, warts and all, just like you love your family members or close friends. It always helps to draw from a wide variety of sources in painting pictures of people!

elouise82 December 1 2012, 00:03:47 UTC

This makes me think of Molly's critique of the difference between how Americans and British view their heroes in Susan Cooper's Victory! - she says Americans want their heroes to be shiny and perfect (and, she implies, boring) in every area, while the British prefer them flawed and interesting. I've always thought that was a neat (and mostly just) way of seeing it.

rockinlibrarian December 2 2012, 01:29:33 UTC

I was thinking that I want to write a post on this topic, but as it is this day has run away with me and I'm certainly not getting to it now. (It's been a good running away with me, though: I spent most of the late-morning/early-afternoon taking the kids to the Christmas festival in our town. I feel like I've been a good parent today!)

sapphireone November 30 2012, 17:31:38 UTC

Yay! a post!
I bought the book for my 800s collection, and have it at home waiting to be read right now. i was going to tell you about it, except now you already know.
I remember reading "Walking on Water" in high school and having someone tell me the title looked boring. Really? You can walk on water yourself?

rockinlibrarian November 30 2012, 20:15:35 UTC

Oh, I've been waiting for the Listening for Madeleine book for at least a year! I read about it in an interview with Leonard Marcus, just one line in a What He's Working on Now response, and I thought OOO, is that coming out next year during the Year of the Tesseract?! So I was on the alert!

Probably the COVER of Walking on Water looked boring at least! Maybe it sounded religious-and-therefore-preachy to them.