Category: Bookish Thoughts (Page 9 of 43)

The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle, by Avi

March 26, 2025 / Cadie

In early summer 2024, I was busy writing my pirate novel, and I remembered there is an incredible storm scene in The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle by Avi. Since I was working on a storm scene of my own, I decided it would be beneficial to reread the book for storm scene ideas. Have you read it?

Thirteen year old Charlotte finds herself to be the only female passenger on a merchant ship crossing the Atlantic Ocean. The book follows her through her fears, uncertainties, friendships and adventures. There is a mutiny, a storm, and eventually, Charlotte is faced with a decision that could alter the course of her life forever.

True Confessions reads like a cross between a diary and a novel. Before her journey, Charlotte’s father instructed her to write everything down in her journal, and he would read it when she arrived safely home in Providence. He thoroughly disapproves of what she wrote, telling her she must have been making it all up. If I remember correctly, he burns her original journal so she has to write it all down again with a preface that states she is willing to swear that everything therein is true. Hence the name, The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle.

Avi is a master storyteller. He usually writes young adult fiction, so his stories are colorful and fun and they move at a fast pace so there is rarely a boring page. He covers many genres, but his historical fiction is my favorite. If you enjoy True Confessions, you may also like Crispin: Cross of Lead (a medieval mystery), Poppy (the tail of the mouse who saved the forest), Something Upstairs (a colonial ghost story), Night Journeys (another colonial adventure without ghosts), and Who was that Masked Man Anyway? (a WWII era coming-of-age tale). One of the great things about Avi is that he touches so many genres and types of stories that if you don’t like one of his books, you will probably like another.

Have you read any of Avi’s books? Leave me some suggestions in the comments.

Words are like Stories

March 26, 2025 / Cadie

“Words are like stories, don’t you think, Mr. Sweatman? They change as they are passed from mouth to mouth; their meanings stretch or truncate to fit what needs to be said. The Dictionary can’t possibly capture every variation, especially since so many have never been written down -”
Esme to Mr. Sweatman, in The Dictionary of Lost Words, by Pip Williams

Words Change

March 25, 2025 / Cadie

“Words change over time, you see. The way they look, the way they sound; sometimes even their meaning changes. They have their own history.”
Da to Esme, in The Dictionary of Lost Words, by Pip Williams

Words are Tools

March 25, 2025 / Cadie

“Never forget that, Esme. Words are our tools of resurrection.”
Aunt Ditte to Esme, in The Dictionary of Lost Words, BY Pip Williams

Assuaged

March 24, 2025 / Cadie

Assuaged – to pacify, calm, satisfy, or quench

“And always it assuaged me

from the dry bowl of the very far past.”
Mary Oliver, “Mornings at Blackwater“

Mornings at Blackwater, by Mary Oliver

March 24, 2025 / Cadie

For years, every morning, I drank
from Blackwater Pond.
It was flavored with oak leaves and also, no doubt,
the feet of ducks.

And always it assuaged me
from the dry bowl of the very far past.

What I want to say is
that the past is the past,
and the present is what your life is,
and you are capable
of choosing what that will be
darling citizen.

So come to the pond,
or the river of your imagination,
or the harbor of your longing,

and put your lips to the world.
And live
your life.

("Mornings at Blackwater", Mary Oliver, printed in Devotions, 2017)

The Gift, by Mary Oliver

March 23, 2025 / Cadie

After the wind-bruised sea
  furrowed itself back 
    into the folds of blue, I found
       in the black wrack

a shell called the Neptune - 
  tawny and white
    spherical,
       with a tail

and a tower
  and a dark door,
    and all of it
       no larger

than my fist.
  It looked, you might say, 
    very expensive.
       I thought of its travels

in the Atlantic's
  wind-pounded bowl
    and wondered
       that it was still intact.

Ah yes, there was
  that door
    that held only the eventual, inevitable
       emptiness.

...

There's that - there's always that.
  Still, what a house
    to leave behind!
       I held it

like the wisest of books
  and imagined
    its travels toward my hand.
       And now, your hand.

("The Gift", Mary Oliver, printed in Devotions, 2017)

Banditti

March 18, 2025 / Cadie

Banditti – plural form of bandit – an outlaw, robber, or highwayman

“Do you think, O blue-eyed banditti,

Because you have scaled the wall,

Such an old mustache as I am

Is not a match for you all!
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “The Children’s Hour“

The Literary Life, by Billy Collins

October 19, 2024 / Cadie

I woke up this morning, 
as the blues singers like to boast,
and the first thing to enter my mind,
as the dog was licking my face, was Coventry Patmore.

Who was Coventry Patmore?
I wondered, as I rose
and set out on my journey to the encyclopedia
passing some children and a bottle cap on the way.

Everything seemed more life-size than usual.
Light in the shape of windows
Hung on the walls next to the paintings
of birds and horses, flowers and fish.

Coventry Patmore,
I'm coming to get you, I hissed,
as I entered the library like a man stepping
into a freight elevator of science and wisdom.

How many things have I looked up
in a lifetime of looking things up?
I wondered, as I set the book on the piano
and began turning its large, weightless pages.

How would the world look
if all of its things were neatly arranged
in alphabetical order? I wondered,
as I found the P section and began zeroing in.

How long before I would forget Coventry Patmore's 
dates and the title of his long poem 
on the sanctity of married love?
I asked myself as I closed the door to that room

and stood for a moment in the kitchen,
taking in the silvery toaster, the bowl of lemons,
and the white cat, looking as if
he had just finished his autobiography.

("The Literary Life", Billy Collins, in Nine Horses, 2002)

What an awesome way to describe entering a library: stepping into a freight elevator of science and wisdom.

Hawthorne, by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

April 21, 2024 / Cadie

May 23, 1864

How beautiful it was, that one bright day
In the long week of rain!
Though all its splendor could not chase away 
The omnipresent pain.

The lovely town was white with apple-blossoms,
And the great elms o'erhead
Dark shadows wove on their aërial looms
Shot through with golden thread.

Across the meadows, by the gray old manse,
The historic river flowed:
I was one who wanders in a trance,
Unconscious of his road.

The faces of familiar friends seemed strange; 
Their voices I could hear,
And yet the words they uttered seemed to change 
Their meaning to my ear.

For the one face I looked for was not there,
The one low voice was mute;
Only an unseen presence filled the air,
And baffled my pursuit.

Now I look back, and meadow, manse, and stream
Dimly my thought defines;
I only see - a dream within a dream - 
The hilltop hearsed with pines.

I only hear above his place of rest
Their tender undertone,
The infinite longings of a troubled breast,
The voice so like his own.

There in seclusion and remote from men
The wizard hand lies cold,
Which at its topmost speed let fall the pen,
And left the tale half told.

Ah! who shall lift that wand of magic power, 
And the lost clue regain?
The unfinished window in Aladdin's tower
Unfinished must remain!

("Hawthorne", Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: Selected Poems, 1988)

Hawthorne footnote: On this date Longfellow attended the funeral of his friend and college classmate [Nathaniel] Hawthorne at Concord, Massachusetts.

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