Sunday New York Times Book Review Dec.26, 2021

This left over book review from 2021 is my goodbye to the year gone by. I am always a week or so behind in reading the Book Review because there is always so much of interest in it, and because it has such competition with glossier and more colorful reading material - the magazines that are always coming to my mailbox: Discover, Harpers, The Atlantic, The Week, the New Yorker, Vanity Fair. Anyhow, as is so often the dangerous consequence of reading the Bk Rev. I ended up buying two more books from amazon. I bought PERIL by Bob Woodward about the last chaotic and unsatable days of the Trump Regime, and The HEROINE OF 1001 FACES by Maria Tatar. Tatar's book review begins with her asking Joseph Campbell about the missing women in his long career in the archetypes of folklore and fairytales - the Hero's Journey. He responds that women are the mothers, the protectoresses, and the prizes in the men's stories. So Maria Tator writes her own book. The critic was hard on her and said she was unfocused and seemed to be in search of a narrative although she is credited wither "erudite" research. My feeling is that in excavating our own female history and mythology, some female scholar must always begin somewhere and like a female Johnny Appleseed, she provides the seed stock for following scholars, artists and writers. We are collaborative. No woman is an island.

In my life, because I have been that increasingly rare creature, an avid reader from earliest childhood, there has always been a dialogue between the past and the pressent. So when I read in the book review on the Tatar book that so uch is to be found in fairy tales of women's different kind of heroic escapes and journeys, I instantly have an image in my memory of the Orange Fairy Book and the Blue Fairy Book and I am reminded of some of the illustrations such as they one of the woman who opened her mouth and out sprang toads and snakes and other slimy creatures. Stories like this were mentioned in the review when it was observed that in many ancient tales women were silenced, forced to keep the secrets of men. The Greek tale where the woman had her tongue cut out (which still happens in the world when women TELL). Women telling their own stories or the stories of others gets denigrated as 'gossip.' The movements in modern feminism that relate to telling your own story such as the women who signed up for Ms. Magazine to publish their experiences having abortions, or the recent #MeToo movement where women relate the sexual harrassment they have endured are prime examples,so is the recent trial of Ghislaine Maxwell, pimp for Jeffrey Eppstein. She has be tried and found guilty of procurement but has not yet been sentenced. The girls came forward and told their stories in particular one named Giuffre, about a dozen came forward although the true number of victims must be near a hundred over the many years this transpired.

Because I was a teacher, I get a special discount rate on my weekly Sunday New York Times and the Book Review, my most enjoyed section. Yers ago, I used to plead with an old friend of mine to save the BK Review for me, but his friendship, for unknown reasons, always had a thread of spite and malice woven into it and so often he let them accumulate into a musty pile and then put them in recycle instead. Perhaps that thread of malice was simply in his personality and not particular to me.

I often think back on and have often written about the book case in my Grandmother Lyon's basement, my first introduction to a private library when I was far too young to get to a library on my own. There I found THE OUTDOOR GIRLS ON A HIKE, my first true literary LOVE, but also Dickens and Twain, and the Great European Classics. Why this treasure was relegated to the basement is beyond me, but I suppose my grandmother came to see it as clutter and she was a meticulous and compulsive cleanrer. She brooked no clutter and had so few ornaments that I can remember them, a china lidded candy dish with shaped three dimensional porcelain flowers on the lid. There was a slim china cabinet with her blue chocolate pot, which is now mine. She had few pieces of furniture, only what was needed, and I think this simplicity and uncluttered aspect to her home helped her to maintain a calm of mind in the storm of her natural anxiety. I don't remember a book case in my other grandmother's house at all but her son, my father, was an avid reader and constantly self taught. History was his interest and particularly World War II. My mother always bought me books, the children's classics like Treasure Island and The Silver Skates and Little Women (the modern one - I had the original from my grandmother Lyon's bookcase along with Anne of Green Gables). She traded green stamps at the supermarket for the Childrens' Encyclopedia Illustrated! (Oh those wonderful illustrations. I loved those pictures.

Well, the sun has come out and I must reward my patient dog who gave up on lobbying me for her walk and is quietly snoozing on the sofa. We must make hay while the sunshines, but I hope these book recommendations and book thoughts have insprired yours! And I hope you can get to the Sunday New York Times Book Review at your local library.

By the way, my first serious familiarity with a library was in Maple Shade in the late 1950's when my family moved from Philadelphia to New Jersey. It was located behind the police station on Main Street, and the first book I borrowed there was the Trilogy that contained MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY, MEN AGAINST THE SEA, and PITCAIRN'S ISLAND. It had a cobalt blue cloth hardbinding with gold lettering. I remember my thrill at being able to borrow it and the anticipation of such a grand benefit for the future.

Jo Ann

If you wish to, you can reach me at wrightj45yahoo.com

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