Princess of Wales

The Prince and Princess of Wales are extremely important members of the British Royal family because they are expected to rise to the throne.  The current Prince of Wales is, of course, Queen Elizabeth II's eldest son, Charles.  His wife Camilla is technically the Princess of Wales, having taken her husband's titles when they married, but the title is so firmly tied to the late Diana Spencer that she doesn't use it and is instead known as the Duchess of Cornwall.  Here's a quick history of the title:  It wasn't used by England's heirs until after the land was defeated and annexed into England in 1282--the first Prince of Wales, the future Edward II, had the title conferrred upon him in 1301.  The title is NOT hereditary--when the Prince of Wales dies or ascends to the throne, the title reverts to the crown and must then be conferred, at the monarch's will, to the next heir apparent.  This does not always happen.  For instance, Queen Elizabeth's uncle, Edward VIII, later Duke of Windsor became the heir apparent on May 6th, 1910, was created the Prince of Wales on June 23, 1911, and became king on January 20th, 1936.  Neither his brother, later George VI, nor his niece, Elizabeth II were every created the Prince or Princess of Wales.  There's an odd bit of history here that I won't get into.  It comes down to males being preferred to females in the line of succession.  No woman has held the title Princess of Wales in her own right.  As it currently stands, the only way I see of having a woman hold the title in her own right would be if William and Kate's son George were to have a daughter as a firstborn child and confer the title upon her.  The title was not filled until Prince Charles was granted the title in 1958, when he was ten years old.  Also interesting is that not every Prince of Wales has had a wife while he held the title.  Going back to Edward II, the first Prince of Wales--He held the title from 1301 to 1307, but did not marry until 1308.  His Queen, Isabella of France, was, therefore, never the Princess of Wales.  Their eldest son, Edward III, was never created the Prince of Wales

The first Princess of Wales in post-Welsh-conquest England was, then, the wife of the son of Edward III and Phillipa of Hainault, Edward of Woodstock.  Edward became known after his death as the Black Prince, likely because his armor was painted black.  He was a warrior prince, created the Prince of Wales on May 12, 1343, age 13, but unfortunately died on June 8th, 1375, barely a year before his father's death.  His wife was a cousin, once removed, Joan of Kent.  Penny Lawne's book Joan of Kent: The First Princess of Wales is, as she reports and my research shows, the first full biography of Joan, who is an incredibly intersting woman.  I always find biographies of people, espcially women, to be especially interesting.  In Joan's case, Penny Lawne has piecd together her life from what we do know--For instance, Wikipedia will tell you that Joan was born on September 29, 1328.  Lawne makes no assertion of her birthdate, but does say that she could be no more than eighteen months older than her brother, John, whose birth is recorded as April 7, 1330, just weeks after their father was executed for treason.  Seven witnesses support that date.  That does not mean that the date of September 29th is wrong, as the math works out to about eighteen months, but it shows one of the gaps in what historical records exist.

Much of Joan's early life is guessed at from what is known.  She lived in Queen Philippa of Hainault's household as a companion to her daughters, although the eldest, Isabella, wasn't born until June 1332.  That Joan would live in the Queen's household is not strange because she was a cousin of Edward III-once removed.  Indeed, Joan's mother was busy securing her children's inheiritance during most of Joan's childhood, so the stability of Court, migrant as it was, was probably good for the girl.  Her story gets very interesting in March, 1840, when Joan is around twelve.  She shows herself to be a headstrong girl and marries Thomas Holand without anyone's knowledge or approval.  The marriage becomes bigamous in 1341 when she is forced to marry William Montague, soon to be the second Earl of Salisbury.  Joan probably told her mother, who told Salisbury, and someone surely informed the monarchs, but they decided to let the bigamous marriage happen and deal with the problem later.  Holand was, after all, fighting overseas.  Due to their age--Joan at 12 and William at 13, they did not live together although they had a hosue in their name.  Montague lived with Prince Edward at the tower and was training to be a knight.  Joan stayed with the princesses.  That matter was not settled until 1349, when the pope decided in favor of Holand.  Joan, at this time, had been living with Montague for a few years.

Joan spent eleven years as Holand's wife, and bore him five children, only one of whom died young.  Holand died in 1360.  At this time, Prince Edward, who had seemily been in love with Joan for years, fought and had his father capitulate to allow him to marry Joan.  They had two children, boys, and ruled Aquitaine as Prince and Princess.  Their marriage was short, however.  The elder of their two sons died in 1370, and they moved from France to England.  In 1372, Edward tried to regain  his father's foothold in France (We are in the middle of the beginnig of the Hundred Years' War), but it shattered his weak health.  He died in 1376.

A year later, Joan becomes even more fascinating.  She's kept the strength and feistiness she showed as a child, but now, Edward III has died, and her son, Richard, is now a child king, Richard II.  Joan was Regent.  She had a great deal of authority that she wielded from the shadows.  Eventually, August 7, 1385, she died.

The most fascinating thing, to me, is how little we know, and yet how much we can piece together of Joan's life.  This is mostly done through notations about her in the lives of men.  And yet, we can piece together the story of an amazing, politically astute, firey woman who definitely forged her own path.

The Five People You Meet in Heaven

I thought long and hard about what book to review today, because today is special.  It's my grandmother's 82nd birthday today.  Or it would be, but we lost her in August, 2016.  I miss her every day.  The more time has passed, the more I miss her.  There are things that have happened in my life that I want to tell her about.  There are things I want her advice about.  There are things that will happen in my life--marriage, children, a full-time non-hourly job--that she will never see.  And I feel like I'll never be able to live up to what she wanted me to be.  But then there's the little corner of my mind that pokes out and yells at me, in her voice, saying that all she wanted was for me to be happy.

Needless to say, I wanted to find something to honor her with today.

I thought about pulling a type of book that she liked from an author like Agatha Christie or Janet Evonovich.  She had a love for a murder mystery that got passed to my aunt, and not so much to me.  I love murder mystery televison, but murder myster books are hard for me to get through.  Then I thought about a book that emphasizes a relationship between a grandparent and grandchild, but that seemed too easy.  So I pulled The Five People You Meet in Heaven from it's spot on my bookshelf.  I hadn't read it before, but I got it after I read Tuesdays with Morrie by the same author, Mitch Albom.  I'd liked his writing style in the memoir--I found it easy to read, and just enough to bring emotion out, but in a soothing way.  A way that makes a reader realize something different.

The Five People You Meet in Heaven is the story of Eddie.  He's turning 83, and it's his last day on Earth, although he doesn't know it.  He fought in World War II (I assume.  We're never told directly, but he was in the Phillipines.), loved a girl, had a difficult relationship with his father, and works as the head of ride maintenence at Ruby Pier, an amusement park.  It's where he's worked since he was a boy, and as much a part of his life as anything else.  On this day, there's a potentially terrible accident coming, and Eddie rushes to make sure that a little girl is not in the way of a falling ride.  This selfless act takes his life.

When he gets to heaven, he meets a series of people who all help him to understand his life.  Each means something to him, although he doesn't know all of them.  Their lives all intersect, and the choices each of them made at different moments define who they are.  It's abook about understanding, and a book about, in some ways, forgiveness.  More than that, it's a book about acceptance.

I found that I rather liked Albom's idea of Heaven.  People who show you how your life has effected and been effected by others.  As I'm typing this, I can't help but wonder who I would meet, and who my grandmother may have.

Anyway.  For my Gran, who never left home without a book, go read something today, okay?

Beauty in Darkness

I've written a shorter post today because I woke up feeling like death.  It's not even the post that I had planned, but it's one I could write based off a reread of the book, so I went for it.

Today's book is a bit of a hard hitter.  I've read it before, but I wanted to read and share it.  It was, for me, a quick read, but I spread it out over a few days because it made me think.  Kristy Cambron's The Butterfly and the Violin is book that has two story lines.  The modern day story is of Sera James, an art dealer who is searching for a painting.  She ends up working with William Hanover, who is searching for the same painting.

That painting is a portrait of a young violinist with a shaved head, serial number tattoo, and beautiful blue eyes.  She is Adele Von Bron, once Austria's Sweetheart.  The daughter of a high ranking member of the Nazi party, Adele is sent to Auschwitz when she is caught helping Jews escape Vienna.  In Auschwitz, she is part of the women's orchestra.  She plays for the arrival of new prisoners, while it is decided if they are to be sent to work or death.  She plays as prisoners march to their jobs.  She plays at private parties for Nazis.  Needless to say, she finds it very difficult.

For me, I enjoyed Adele's story more than Sera's.  Sera was struggling with the aftermath of a breakup and finding new love.  Adele was struggling with life, death, and finding the inner strength to do what seems impossible.  Tied in with Adele's story is that of the artists and the artwork that was found when the camp was liberated.

The Butterfly and the Violin made me think about what human beings are really capable of, from the terrible to the amazing.  It has a sequel, A Sparrow at Terezin that I can't bring myself to read just yet.  I'll read it in a few weeks when I'm feeling happy and need something to make me a little sad.

A Southern Girl in a Yankee City

Ann Rinaldi is a really good author who, while she writes about many places and times, ties her books together by having strong, teenaged, female leads.  Unlike some books, where strong seems to mean "has no faults" or "steps up and fights", Rinaldi's characters are strong because they are, for the most part, aware of their faults.  Her characters, while we may see them at different ages, are generally girls in their mid teens.

So, she asks, why not tell the story of her grandparents?  This is the question of the afterward of Brooklyn Rose, which is the book I'm writing about today!  Wow.  What a coincidence.  Rinaldi's grandmother was a fifteen year old girl from a southern plantation.  Her husband was a silk merchant nearly twice her age.  Rinaldi never knew her grandparents, but she decided to meet them by creating a story for them, and it's a beautiful one.

Brooklyn Rose is told in a journal form by Rose, and it covers just under a year of time.  It's a busy year for the fifteen year old, who recieved the journal she's writing in for her birthday, December 16, 1899.  The first pages are filled with normal concerns of a fifteen year old.  There's a mean girl at school, she's got an older sister and a younger brother.  Is her sister going to get married.  She talks about her  home in South Carolina, and the servants who work with them.  On New Year's Eve, she meets Rene Dumarest, a silk merchant from Brooklyn, New York (although he was born in France).  The same night, her sister Heppi gets engaged, with the wedding set for Valentine's Day.  Rose notices Rene watching her and being very kind to her family, but she doesn't think much of it until the mean girl at school says something.  The day after her sister's wedding, Rene proposes, but gives her time to think, respecting that she is so young.  After an accident, she accepts and her wedding is set for barely a month later. 

Fifteen, newly married, and running her own house in Brooklyn, Rose manages pretty well until Rene's mother comes for a surprise visit.  She starts to make her mark in their neighborhood and help the less fortunate.  But Rose's youth is confirmed when Rene's mother Charlotte comes to visit.  Charlotte is the type of mother in law I don't want.  But she makes Rose feel like even more of a child than she is.  Rene doesn't want to interfere, he wants Rose to find a way to stand up to Charlotte.  Before she can do that, she has to do a little soul searching herself.

The one thing that I wish this book had a bit more of is what happens after?  According to Rinaldi, her grandparents had five children, and they went home to her grandmother's plantation for each birth.  But the afterward also emphasizes the youth of her grandmother--there's a story she tells of "Rose" (We have no reason to believe that her grandparents' weren't named Rose and Rene, but no reason to believe they are.  Rinaldi refers to them by these names, but it could be truth or it could be because that's what she named the characters in the book.) having to be called in from jump roping to feed the baby.  I wish that we could have seem more of Rose and Rene as they aged.  That is one of the great things, though.  Since we know they had a happy marriage, we can imagine the life for them that we want.

I'm off to work on next week's books!  Go read something and tell me why you enjoy it!

The Object: Play to Win

Thanks to my late grandmother, I do love to pick up a "Whodunit" book every once in a while.  To me, the queen of these books will always be the late, great Agatha Christie, but it's difficult to get a child to sit down and read something like And Then There Were None or Murder on the Orient Express.  So Ellen Raskin's The Westing Game is a great way to introduce someone.

One of the things that I love about Christie's books is that she leaves you unsure of which way is up.  When the reveal occurs, you go back digging in the book to try and figure out where she gave you a specific clue. Raskin does the same thing.  So let me set the scene.

Reclusive Sam Westing has died.  He calls sixteen people who seem to have no relation or connection to him whatsoever together at the library of the Westing Mansion.  There, the heirs are told that Mr. Westing's life has been taken--by one of them!   They are split into eight pairs and each pair is given a set of cluses.  They're told that it's not what they have that's important, but what they don't have.  And the game is afoot.  The heirs include Grace Windsor Wexler, her husband Jake, and their two daughters, Angela and Turtle (not her real name).  There's secretary Sydelle Pulaski and Angela's fiancee, Dr. D. Denton Deere.  Jimmy Shin Hoo and his wife, Sun, and Mr. Hoo's son, Doug.  There's brothers Theo and Chris Theodorakis, Judge J.J. Ford, Berthe Crow, Sandy McSouthers, Mrs. Flora Baumbach,  and Otis Amber round out the hodgepodge group.

These sixteen individuals are given clues that appear to be random words, and are told to figure out a  mystery.  But what Westing has done is paired up people who can help each other in some way.  For instance, Turtle and Mrs. Baumbach.  Turtle gains someone who cares for her like a daughter, something that her mother doesn't do.  Mrs. Baumbach gains a surrogate daughter, but not one to replace the daughter she lost.  That's just one example of these pairings helping both partners.

When the heirs recieve a second note, delivered by the wonderful Otis, have they solved the riddle?  Not one bit!  But there is someone who puts it all together!

I definitely reccomend reading this book as an adult, but share it with your friends, and  your kids, or kids you know.  It's engaging and funny, and despite the twists and turns gives a satisfying ending for all the characters.  Well, except the poor, deceased Mr. Westing!

A Story of Love--And Death

Keturah and Lord Death is a book that I read in middle school, then promptly forgot the title of.  Or rather, I forgot the "Keturah" part and remembered the rest.  I also remembered the story, because it is a beautiful one.  It's a mixture of Scheherazade and the Arabian Nights and the myth of Hades and Persephone.

Keturah is a village girl who follows the great hart and gets lost in the forest.  There she runs into Lord Death, and in exchange for one more day of life to marry her true love, if she can find him, she tells him a story but withholds the ending.  Intrigued by the story and that the girl will not trade her life for another's, Lord Death agrees.  In her bargaining, Keturah learns that plague is coming.  When the Lord of her town learns that the king is coming, Keturah comes up with a plan to help save her village.  She convinces the Lord, Temsland, and his son John that the king will think that Tide-by-Rood is the best town in the country if they clean it up and pave the streets.  They agree.  On the first day, Keturah sets in motion a way to save her village from plague, but does not marry her true love.  That night, she spins a new tale, but again withholds the ending.  And so goes on for two more nights, with Keturah asking larger and larger favors until she gets death to agree to save her village.  And in return, she falls in love with death and agrees to be his wife.

I've given away the end--oh no!  But if you know the myth of Persephone, you knew that was coming.  I've loved this story for years, partially because I love that myth.  I also love it because Martine Leavitt writes a believable story, for all it's fantasy elements.  Love is not instant, nor does one recognize it right away.  No matter how you want someone to be your one true love, you have to accept sometimes that they aren't.  Keturah's journey and the reactions of her town to different parts of her story feel true.  The time period the book takes place in is also very short, and yet, the story doesn't feel rushed.  It's just the right length, and, even in death, you will smile at the end.

Burn Bright

Patricia Briggs' newest book in the Mercyverse came out yesterday.  I meant to have my review up before I went to bed but it was a LONG day for me.  Very long.  So I'm writing it out today.  I know I wrote a little bit about the first three Mercy Thompson books, but the Alpha and Omega series is different.  We meet Charles Cornick and his father Bran in the first Mercy book, where we learn that there is a problem with the Chicago packs.  Bran sends Charles to Chicago to get to the bottom of what's happeneing there.  In Chicago, Charles meets Anna, a young woman who was changed into a werewolf by force.  Anna is a unique kind of werewolf though--she's an Omega.  She has all the desire to protect as an Alpha, but none of the dominance.  She can bring peace to those around her.  She's a treasure.  You can read about their introduction in the short story "Alpha and Omega".  It has some really funny moments. 

The newest book is Burn Bright.  The Marrok, the leader of all the werewolves in North America, is away.  While Bran's away, the leadership of his pack falls to his son Charles and his mate Anna, as well as Leah, Bran's mate.  When one of the wolves on the fringes of the pack is killed, she reveals the presence of a traitor in the pack, a traitor who is behind an entire series of events that has changed the course of both series'.  Charles, Anna, and Asil, are the only three who know of the traitor.  Asil is a member of Bran's pack and rather volitle himself, but he is powerful and he is truly one of my favorite characters.  We don't see much of him in the Mercy books, but I love him.  They decide to hunt through the wildlings, the wolves on the fringe, to see if one of them might know who the traitor is.  While Charles gets to fight a pair of Viking twins and their brother, which is awesome,  Anna meets the tortured artist Wellesley.  His story is what sets events in place for Charles, Anna and Leah to hunt down the skinwalker who has been causing so much trouble. 

I was hoping for a lot with this addition to the Alpha and Omega series.  The last book left me wanting more, but this one left me satisfied, even if I did want more at the end.  That's just because of how Ms. Briggs ends here books--they all just kind of stop.  But the next book picks up and it works.  Something that I really enjoyed about this was that we finally got some background on some more characters.  For instance, Leah.  Leah has always seemed like a bit of witch, but, while we finally get a bit more background on her and her relationship with Bran.  It didn't necessarily make me like Leah, (her actions did that) but it did make me respect her a bit more.  It also seemed to connect the characters themselves more for future books, so I definitely can't wait to see how that turns out!

Keep reading!  I'm off to work on my next book!

Man's Best Friend

I had an entirely different theme for the week than I'm going to be using.  I was gong to go on more of a naturalist bent and look at environmentalism and these huge open spaces that make you feel like you're communing with whatever higher power you believe in.  I'll get back to it, but not this month.  My plan changed when, on Friday, I went down to the business center in my building to pick up the package that had my fixed Kindle in it.  I get the Literary Box from Quarterly Co., but I didn't get my address changed quickly enough, so all of the shipping information had my old address.  I had no indication that my box was sent to the right place, and I was bummed.  But when I went down to get my package, I found that my Literary box was there too!  The think about these boxes is that they're curated by the author of the main release that they're promoting.

The main release of this box is The Friend by Sigrid Nunez.  It changed my theme to look at human's interactions with man's best friend: Dogs.  I have two cats myself, Killian and Lucy, but I do love dogs.  I grew up with dogs.  Dogs (and some cats!) become one of the best people in your life.  I remember reading something at one point that it's important to remember that while pets are a part of your life, you are their life.  I'll have my cats until the pass, I I couldn't be happier.  However, in The Friend, the main character's friend has committed suicide, leaving behind a Great Dane that he had adopted.  Wife Three asked the narrator to take the dog, because she doesn't want it.  (None of the characters are named, except the dog.)  Apollo, the Great Dane, is struggling with the loss of the man who took him in.

While this book seems like it's a novel about a woman who takes in a dog, the writing style is interesting.  It's told in first person, but it's as if the narrator is talking to the man who died, like a long, extended oral tale.  We learn things about the narrator's life, like that her friendship with the deceased started when he was her teacher.  Or that she has worked with victims of human trafficking.  It seems like a series of vignettes, but it's difficult to discern a method to them.  Which is a style that works.  For instance, early in the book, it's mentioned that not only are the narrator and the teacher former student and teacher, but that they've slept together.  About two thirds of the way through there's a vignette on sexual harassment in academia and the narrator seeing another teacher start, she is sure, a relationship with a student.  There doesn't seem to be much about Apollo.  I was expecting more adventures of a 185 lb dog in a small Manhattan apartment.

If I'm being honest, there are moments where the book makes me uncomfortable for reasons that I can't even explain, which I'm sure the main character would enjoy.  I'm definitely curious to read some of Ms. Nunez's other books, because I'm curious about this style of writing.  I definitely don't think it's something that I could do.  This book, despite it's ability to make you uncomfortable, also seems soothing, in a strange way.  It's a cathartic release for the narrator, it seems, and even when you can't connect to the individual story, it feels the same for me as a reader.

Another thing I love about the Literary Box that I get--the book is peppered with post it notes that Ms. Nunez has written about the book, the writing process, and about her personal connection with the story.  While they can interrupt the flow of reading sometimes (I've started taking them off the pages when I come to them and then reading them when I get to a section break before sticking them back on the page they come from), they deepen the experience.  I love the connection to the author, even if I've never read anything from her before.  Which I haven't!

Anna Kendrick as a Nobody?

I have to say, since I really began to discover Anna Kendrick (after Pitch Perfect), she's become one of my favorite actresses.  She's funny, she's blunt, and she's not afraid to say what she means.  I also think she's very pretty and have styled myself off of her a few times.  Late in 2016, she published a memoir that she called Scrappy Little Nobody.  I bought it, and it's been on my shelf for a year while I moved, moved again, moved a third time, and dealt with some of the stuff going on in my life.  I'm regretting that now, because the book is funny.  I can connect with the small-ish town New England girl in Kendrick.

Sometimes reading a memoir like this is hard for me.  Kendrick is only seven years older than me, and yet, from the outside, she seems to have her shit together.  She's got two loving parents who went out of their way to help her achieve her dreams.  She's got an older brother she idolizes.  She's got a career and home--like I said.  All her shit together.  But in reading her memoir, I got to see the times when she didn't.  I mean, the girl moved to LA after high school without a car to follow her dream.  That meant a year of living paycheck to paycheck in an expensive city.  She's awkward and like to bake, and not so great with meeting people and making friends.

Not only did reading Scrappy Little Nobody make me laugh out loud several times, I was able to connect on many levels to a woman I really admire.  More than my family telling me that it's okay not to have my shit together, this book made me believe it.  I have a plan going forward,  (Expect some nice law book reviews coming this fall!) and sometimes that's all you need.

It's okay to be a nobody sometimes, but never stop fighting for what you want in life, okay readers?

EDIT:  I'm adding this bit later.  I always have trouble with how much detail to add when I'm talking about a book, whether it's fiction or not.  But here's the skinny:  I work in a hotel and I haven't seen another living human for four hours.  Then, a guest comes in and I mention that I've almost finished my book and like a nice person, he asks me about it.  I got all excited because I can really relate to Kendrick as a human being.  We started life in the same general region of the country (I was raised in New Hampshire, Maine's plucky "big" sister), and my thought process just follows the same pattern.  I never think I'm enough.  When something good happens, it's pure luck.  I have a hard time making friends, and so forth.  I think that's my favorite part of the whole thing--I can connect to and talk about the book because I am that girl too.

And while I love the Pitch Perfect movies, my favorite Anna Kendrick movie is actually Table 19.  Partially because I love the name Eloise.  Partially because of the bit with the cake.....