Friday 24 January 2020

Read in 2019 - 30, 31, 32

Once again, I am several reviews behind; there are actually five books I have finished reading but not yet written a review for, three of which were read before and around Christmas.


# 30: Nibsy's Christmas
by Jacob August Riis
First published 1893 

Sounds like a rather old-fashioned, maybe sickly sweet read, the way children's books in Victorian times often were, right? Wrong!

Nibsy is not a little boy or fairytale character such as a goblin or dwarf, starring in a Christmas tale aimed at three- to five-year-olds.
No, he is a poor boy selling papers for a living, at home in an overcrowded, dirty, bug-infested New York tenement typical for the time and place. He has a violent father and a suffering mother, barely able to keep her youngest baby alive.
Nibsy himself has not adopted his father's bad ways but somehow managed to keep a kind heart and good moral standards. When just before Christmas he has once more failed to sell all his papers and is threatened by his father, he leaves home to find a sheltered place for the cold winter night, not knowing that he will never come back.

There are several more such stories in the book, all of them sad, all of them describing the horrendous circumstances under which poor children were struggling to survive.
It was NOT a cosy Christmas read but actually rather depressing - and that was the author's intention. 

The unexpected direction of this book made me look him up. Wikipedia has a lot to say about him here. Jacob Riis was a social reformer, journalist and photographer, who used pen and camera to raise awareness of the terrible conditions under which the poor were living.
Himself not a stranger to poverty, he tried to initiate a change for the better by exposing the true face of the tenements.



# 31: The Lost Word A Christmas Legend of Long Ago
by Henry Van Dyke
First published in 1898

A complete change of tone and setting to my previous read, "The Lost Word" tells the story of Hermas, who has become one of the first Christians in what today is Turkey. He has a crisis of faith, and strikes an unusual deal to have his life revert back to its former luxuries and carefree state. But something is missing...

This was not a Christmas read in the traditional sense, but very religious - definitely not for everyone. I enjoyed the quality of the language more than the actual story, which was rather foreseeable.

Here is what Amazon says about the author: 
Henry Van Dyke was an American writer, lecturer, and clergyman. Educated at Princeton, he returned to the school after his graduation as a Professor of English Literature and became an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 1913 he was appointed by President Woodrow Wilson, his former classmate, as the ambassador to the Netherlands and Luxembourg, a job that he maintained throughout the First World War.  After a lifetime of public service and religious leadership, Henry van Dyke died in 1933 at the age of 80.
More about the author can be found here.



# 32: Evenings at Donaldson Manor
or, The Christmas Guest
by Maria J. McIntosh
First published in 1850

This was the most "christmassy" of the three Christmas books I read. It is divided in chapters of individual stories, all within a frame: The setting is the country house of the Donaldson family, where the author is staying for Christmas and New Year along with several other guests, friends and relatives of the hosts.

Every evening, the group make their own entertainment by appointing someone to tell a (preferably true) story, or they arrange a costume play, show drawings or sing and play music.

Some of the stories are rather interesting. My favourite was the one where the narrator is a young man living in a remote part of the United States, where it is his pleasure in winter to skate on the frozen river by his log cabin. One night he is skating again under the moonlit sky, when a pair of wolves consider him as easy prey. The chase is on...

The description of the icy, snowy, moonlit landscape and how the young man feels when he realises that his life is truly at stake are so well described, I could easily picture it all in my mind.

Maria McIntosh lived from 1803 to 1875 and became a writer to support herself financially, after she lost her fortune in an economy crisis. Like most of her contemporaries, her stories were supposed to teach moral lessons. In my case, I don't know how much "better" a person I am for having read this - I simply enjoyed the book as an old-fashioned glimpse into what Christmas and New Year may have been like in a country house back then.

16 comments:

  1. Three totally different and interesting sounding Christmas books. Thanks for the reviews.

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    1. That they were - totally different, and not as Christmassy as I had expected. Thank you for reading and commenting!

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  2. Such an interesting group of old and beautiful books - you certainly know how to find some special reading material. I too enjoy reading old novels/short stories of days gone by when life was so different . . . . . and writing was more poetic and lacked the often course and gritty language of today. Guess I'm an 'old fashioned girl' in many ways, haha!!!!!

    Enjoy your weekend Meike.

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    1. Thanks, Mary, you too!

      The contrast between contemporary and old books is what draws me to reading both, and the old ones certainly allow a glimpse of the past, as most writers are very much "children of their time" (and often place).

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  3. Henry Van Dyke! I am sure I wrote about him on my blog before! He wrote the words to the hymn "Joyful, Joyful We Adore Thee" to the marvelous music of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony! Those words to that hymn...had he not written one other thing in his life, that one song would have been enough.

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    1. I have just been to your blog and found two posts in which you mentioned Henry Van Dyke, both with the poem "Gone From My Sight". Such beautiful words!

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  4. Do you usually read the free Kindle editions or the ones you have to buy? I'd be interested to hear whether you find the paid-for versions have fewer of the scanning mistakes that tend to occur in the free editions. I paid for a Kindle book recently for the first time but it still has a small number of errors.

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    1. It is almost always the free Kindle editions I read; I have spent very little money on Kindle books since I first received my Kindle in 2013 or so. Some have scanning mistakes but that is rarely so bad that it takes away the joy of reading them; unlike some modern novels that I have come across and that have seen very little (if any) editing.

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  5. Those are certainly three very different but equally interesting books. I think I would prefer the third one since it sounds a bit lighter. I love books written long ago and grew up reading authors like Hawthorne. But like you, I also enjoy modern day books and find the contrast striking.

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    1. I would not have downloaded the first one if I had been aware of its content; all I really wanted at the time was some cosy Christmas reading, and only the third book fulfilled that expectation.

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  6. I have never read a book on Kindle, actually I practically don't even know what it is. I don't like to stay too long on the computer, so I prefer to read things printed. In fact if I find interesting articles or stories I print them. I get tired from reading too much on the pc, it must be an age thing.

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    1. Reading at the computer is very different from reading on the Kindle - it's all down to the backlight. The computer screen is lit up and the light has a certain frequency which you do not consciously see, but your eyes (and your brain) are aware of it, and that is what tires you.
      The Kindle has no backlight, there is no "flickering", and your eyes do tire even less than when reading from white paper, as the Kindle is not white - it is a pale grey background with the text in a dark (almost black) grey, and that is very soothing for the eyes.
      Also very good for me is that I can adjust the font size on the Kindle - something I can not do on a paper book! But I will never give up reading paper books, they are my best friends for reading in bed before going to sleep, whereas the Kindle is my best friends when travelling.

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  7. I know of Jacob Riis because of his photography which actually helped a lot in efforts to help the poor in his era. But I cannot imagine this book was a happy one. I also know Henry Van Dyke and have read a bit of his work. But mostly I have several of his books because the covers are so beautiful. Each one I have is a beautiful dark blue with wonderful gold designs on it . You can see some examples on ebay....The third was written by someone I never heard of and sounds very interesting.

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    1. That is what I learned about Riis on wikipedia, too. that his photos were instrumental in the efforts to help the poor.
      The book covers sound beautiful!
      I can imagine you would like the last book.

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  8. I keep being amazed at the number of old books by authors that I never even heard of that have been made available as e-books in our time :)

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    1. Same here, Monica! Some of them definitely deserve not to be forgotten.

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