Posted in Books, Books and More Books
My brother is getting married very very soon =) A week from Saturday, i think. Maybe you knew this, but I didn't know, until this year, that the typical wedding recessional is a piece by Mendelsshon from A Midsummers Night Dream. But even more strange than that, in my opinion, is the fact that the processional piece heard at many weddings (the ubiquitous Here Comes the Bride) is from a Wagner opera (Lohengrin). Who knew that the "Kill the Wabbit" guy was also the "Here Comes the Bride" guy!! (ok, different operas). But what does all of this have to do with books??I actually didn't go looking for wedding trivia this evening, I have been jumping around looking for confirmation of my thought that an opera alluded to in our current bedtime story was the Ride of the Valkyries (or "Kill the Wabbit" if you are a Bugs Bunny fan....) opera (the only name I know it by). And that bit of wedding trivia came up so I thought I'd share. We just finished reading Henty's For the Temple out loud. That went about mach 10 over the younger girls heads, but Lukas got a fair amount of it and even Eden can now say 70 A.D when I ask her when the fall of Jerusalem occurred (well, the AD one...). So after the girls were such good sports about the boy book, I decided I should find a lighter and more entertaining book. We are now reading The Saturdays by Elizabeth Enright. It was written and set in the 1940's (New York) and is delightful. My kids get annoyed with me while I'm reading outloud b/c I keep stopping to admire her wonderfully rich vocubulary and descriptive language. Here is part of the exchange this evening:
Me: "He went tiptoe down the iron cellar steps into the great warm subterranean room where the furnace crouched glaring amid its coiled tentacles of pipe like the minotaur in the labryinth." Oo, isn't that a great picture? What a great way to say that! She could have said "he went downstairs to the furnace room." Instead she said "The furnace crouched" What a great strong verb! And who remembers anything about the Minotaur in the labryinth??"
Them: Moooooommmmm, can you Please just READ?
(Can you tell we are in the middle of IEW writing assignments?)
She uses alot of similies, too, that are very picturesque. Another thing I love about this book is that she throws in references like "the minotaur in the labrynth", assuming that her readers will know what she means. One of her characters CHOOSES to spend an afternoon at the opera, part of tonights chapter described it and his thoughts about it (and his attempt to tell the story to the household handyman...). Which is what inspired me to go online and figure out which one it was so maybe we'll listed to a few snippets of some of the music tomorrow. Learning is so fun!
Anyway. This is a strange post for one who's not posted in Months! I really do mean to be better about blogging.
Someone asked me last night about how hold Christopher is and I had to stop and count. Oh dear, he's 6 months old in 2 weeks, that means I really should think about starting him on solid food at some point!
Posted by Jen M
