I was going to read The Last Chronicle of Barset next…

Except, it won’t play through my audible reader, so I’m reading The Adventures of Tom Sawyer instead.

Sigh.

In The Small House at Allington, Trollope didn’t resolve one of his stories, and I want to find out what happens!!! Plus it’s got characters in this next one I’ve been wanting to return to.  That stiff poor clergyman from Framley Parsonage.  The fantastic Mrs. Proudie.

Whine, whine, whine.

Tom Sawyer, however, I’ve read before.  I decided to re-read it this year because I haven’t read the rest of the books, and I wanted a refresher.  Did you know there were four books in the Tom Sawyer series?  There’s:

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Tom Sawyer Abroad

Tom Sawyer, Detective

I hadn’t realized there were two after Huck Finn.  And I’ve always been ashamed that I’ve never read Huck Finn.

 

Especially because Tom Sawyer is delightful.  Have you read it?  Remember the funeral scene?  Or the cave stuff?  It was magical.  A magical transportation back to childhood via Mark Twain.

Anyhoo, Mark Twain was an interesting fellow.  He had lots of financial troubles, filed bankruptcy, but repaid his creditors later anyway.  He was a huge supporter of the rights of people of all races and women’s rights as well.  Plus he lived next door to Harriet Beecher Stowe for a while and helped Helen Keller go to college.  Mark Twain once said that the big lie is that that white people aren’t as “savage” as the rest of the races.  The lies we tell ourselves, right?

 

Continuing the tradition of awesome hair is Twain’s mop and outstanding ‘stache.

I’ve never been one for American Literature.  Who knows why…  I guess I was entranced by British history with their Lords and Ladies long before I ever realized that we were writing too.  *shrug*  My foster daughter, FiestyPants, may come by her obsession with princesses and the fairytale life on her own, but it’s always appealed to me too.

 

This is the one we’re watching over and over again now.  Less romantic as a frog than when they have the ball gowns, but the music is fun.

Somehow the story of valiant pioneers or the crushing of the Native American tribes was less appealing to me.  I wonder why.  *sarcastic smirk*  I prefer, of course, the pretty life of the upper class Brits with their servants, teas, and dressing for dinner.  It’s more fantastic.  Even if my many times great grandfather fought in the Revolutionary War or my other many times great grandfather crossed the plains with the Mormons after being expelled from Nauvoo, Illinois.  Sure, that might be my history, but at heart–I’m a princess.

A kungfu one.

~Amanda

 

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