The Stones of Green Knowe

by L. M. Boston
Finished September 29, 2009

This ends The Green Knowe Chronicles. What a great series of books. I'm glad I read them.

The Stones of Green Knowe takes us back to the beginning. Eight hundred and fifty years before Tolly (of the first book) Roger d'Aulneaux, the son of a Norman lord, watches the construction of this marvelous "modern" home. It has a fireplace! Two stories tall! Stone walls with arrow slits for windows! But Roger soon sees marvels beyond his wildest imagination.

In exploring an overgrown hill on his father's property, Roger comes across two large stone throne-like chairs. He cuts the overgrowth and sits on the "King's Chair" and is immediately transported into the future of Toby, Alexander and Linnett. He's enchanted by the three children and is delighted to learn that the stone manor house still exists five hundred and forty years later.

On later visits to the stone chairs he is transported to Susan and Jacob's time. When Tolly arrives in Roger's time, he learns that the "Queen's Chair" is a portal to the past. He is frightened when visiting five hundred and forty years in the past and sees his grandmother's Saxon ancestors invading the land.

As frightening as the war scene was, it wasn't as disturbing to Roger as was his visit to Tolly's time. Airplanes, trucks, cars, modern neighborhoods and paved streets give Roger a bleak picture of what's to come. The only consolation is that the stone manor still exists.

L. M. Boston has a love of history and preservation. She wrote the books after restoring an old manor house - The Manor at Hemingfor Grey. In The Stones of Green Knowe, she shows a distain for modern man's destruction of the past. The book has a sad ending, symbolic of our push to the future without a thought for our history.

When I began reading Stones, I wasn't sure I'd like it. It seemed to be unconnected to the rest of the series. Once Roger finds the stone chairs, however, the entire series comes together as Roger meets Tolly, Toby, Alexander, Linnett, Susan, Jacob and even a young Grandmother Oldknowe.

Roger's description of and reaction to each time period is excellent.

The Stones of Green Knowe not only brings each book's characters back to mind (except for Ping, Oskar and Ida) , but sythesizes the themes running throughout the six books.What an excellent, elegant ending to a great series.

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This is a photo of the Manor at Hemmingford Grey, the model for Green Knowe.

An Enemy at Green Knowe

by L.M. Boston

Finished reading September 23, 2009

I called The Children of Green Knowe a creepy book, and so it was. An Enemy at Green Knowe is also a creepy book, but in a very different way. In the case of the first book, creepy meant disturbingly odd. This last book -the fifth in the Green Knowe series - is creepy! It's even pretty scary at times.

Tolly has returned and has become fast friends with Ping, who is now living at Green Knowe as well. One afternoon, Mrs. Oldknowe tells the boys one of her stories about the past inhabitants of the house. In 1630 Dr. Wolfgang Vogel, a famous scholar and alchemist, has been called to Green Knowe to tutor Roger, the sickly son of Squire and Mrs. Oldknowe. Vogel is a mysterious, disturbing man and Roger comes to dislike him. He wishes for his old tutor, the vicar Piers Madely. Stories about Dr. Vogel begin circulating among the locals. Some say that they've seen him lurking about at night. Others say that a hooded figure had come to a woman, offering to buy her stillborn baby for a piece of gold. Has Vogel been looking for bodies to use in his black magic? Roger's illness becomes worse and he tearfully begs his parents to take him away from Dr. Vogel. They finally relent. A week after Roger's departure, Dr. Vogel sends for Piers Madely to come to him immediately.

"He found Dr. Vogel in a lamentable state, hardly recognizable. He had had no sleep for nights on end. He was unbrushed, and his clothes were torn as if from a fight. He said that he wished to make a confession, and as he stammered it out, he behaved as if the room were full of threatening enemies..."

After Vogel tells Madely what's troubling him, the vicar tells him to burn all of his books and certain of his belongings. They begin burning the books.

"Dr. Vogel repeatedly cried out, 'Make haste! Before the moon rises,' and he poured pitch and tallow into the fire...Once Dr. Vogel saw in the firelight a book lying open and unburnt, showing a page of intricate diagrams, and he let out a scream and pitch-forked it into the heart of the flames. Finally there was nothing but a glowing mass. The Doctor sank exhausted on the threshhold of the vault, his head in his hands. Piers managed to say a compassionate, 'Now peace be with you as your trust is in God'... 'Alas!' groaned Dr. Vogel, pointing at the smoldering books and looking not less woeful because his exhausted eyes were straying separately. 'What's thought cannot be unthought.' "

Two hours later, Piers Madely hears a scream coming from Green Knowe, across the meadows from his house. Dr. Vogel was never heard from again.

As with many of Grandmother Oldknowe's stories, this one comes back to them in the form of Melanie Powers, a scholar researching English private libraries. She has come to Green Knowe to find a certain very rare old manuscript belonging to Dr. Wolfgang Vogel. Grandmother invites her to tea, but tells her that Vogels books were all burnt. Powers won't be dissuaded. Her curiosity about the house and her strange manner disturb Tolly and Ping who suspect her of being a witch.

Melanie Powers becomes less friendly and begins to show her true colors as she stops at nothing to find Vogel's missing volume. Curses befall the Green Knowe household and Tolly and Ping begin to fight back.

This is an exciting chapter in the Green Knowe series. Melanie Powers is genuinely a creepy, eerie character. Tolly has grown out of the milquetoast boy of the first two books. Ping, as always, is an interesting character. Even Hanno makes somewhat of an appearance.

There's something for everyone in the Green Knowe series.

A Stranger at Green Knowe

by L. M. Boston
Finished September 21, 2009

This is the book that caused me to start reading the Green Knowe series. Searching for children's books about apes (for a storytime about the letter A), I found this title in the catalog. Not wanting to read a book from the middle of a series I had never read before, I started at the beginning. The journey to this fourth book has been worth the trouble.

Ping, one of the children from the last book, returns to spend the summer with Grandmother Oldknowe. Ida is to spend the holiday with her cousins. Oskar has been adopted by a family. Only Ping is left in the refugee hostel. Feeling sorry for him, Ida writes to Mrs. Oldknowe, asking if she'd invite Ping to visit. Of course, she agrees.

The first third of the book happens before Ping's visit, however. We're introduced to Hanno, a gorilla who is captured as a baby from his home in the Congo and grows up in a zoo in London.

Ping visits the zoo for the first time with his school's class . He's very disappointed to find that
the zoo is not a place with lush greenery and an atmosphere as wild and natural as its inhabitants. He sees Hanno - his first sight of a gorilla - and feels an instant connection with the magnificent ape. Ping is devastated to see such a noble beast in a concrete jail cell. He thinks back to the concrete rooms in which he has been forced to live as a refugee. Hanno is a "displaced person" like himself. The only consolation he has is that Hanno's keeper raised the gorilla from a baby and treats him kindly. He readily shares with Ping the secrets to dealing with Hanno.

Ping arrives at Green Knowe and soon learns that Hanno has escaped from the zoo. Coincidentally, he ends up in the thicket behind the garden at Green Knowe. But Green Knowe is a magical place, so perhaps it isn't such a coincidence.

This is the only book in the series (so far) that has not had a magical element - other than the connection between Hanno and Ping.

As with Treasure at Green Knowe, L. M. Boston shows great compassion and a sense of justice. She obviously isn't enamoured of zoos - at least zoos of the 1960s, which were pretty hard on the animals. Hanno's story is heartbreaking. I wish we could have seen more interaction between him and Ping.

A lovely book.

More thoughts on The Lost Symbol

Just a few more thoughts about The Lost Symbol. When looking for the source of the scripture passage "The works I do you can do...and greater," I found the quote on this website: http://www.hiddenmeanings.com/storiesjuly02.html

I thought, at first, that this site had been thrown up after the release of The Lost Symbol because it contained so many of the bits of information that Dan Brown included. The site, however, is copyright 1998 and says "july02" in it's URL. Could this possibly be one of the sources of Brown's extensive research?
I wouldn't be surprised at all.

I also ran across this excellent summary of The Lost Symbol's plot.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2009/sep/15/lost-symbol-live-reading-dan-brown


Finally, this is one of the best book reviews I've ever seen on Amazon. It's hilarious and so very true. It's a one star review by Valannin "Pantheon Outcast" with the title "I'm pretty sure it went down like this" and it begins:

"Three years ago, Dan Brown and top executives in Hollywood and the publishing world assembled Thomas Harris, Dean Koontz, Michael Crichton, Paulo Coelho, Jimmy Wales, Abir Taha, and Rhonda Byrne in one room and said..."

The rest can be found on Amazon.

The Lost Symbol

by Dan Brown
Finished September 20, 2009

I took a break from the fabulous Green Knowe series to read Dan Brown's latest mystery/thriller. In other words, I took a break from a savory gourmet dish to eat a fast food burger. You know me...I enjoy a fast food burger, but I certainly know the difference between a Big Mac and beef bourguignon.


I looked up "savory" in Merriam Webster to make sure that I was using the right word. Here's the definition: 1. Piquantly pleasant to the mind. 2. morally exemplary (edifying) 3. pleasing to the sense of taste especially by reason of effective seasoning.

The definition of "piquant": 1. agreeably stimulating to the palate. 2. engagingly provocative.

The Green Knowe series (with the exception of the first book) is both savory and piquant. The Lost Symbol is not.

Before I continue, I have to explain that I enjoyed reading the book. All three of Brown's Robert Langdon books have been a lot of fun. I wouldn't have read The DaVinci Code, Angels and Demons, and now, The Lost Symbol if I did not find them to be interesting. Dan Brown's writing style, however, is laughable. It's so ridiculous and predictable, it makes me feel smart.

As an example, here are a few lines. This takes place as the CIA is chasing Langdon and Katherine (the requisite female scientist related to the friend of Langdon who is in mortal danger). The pair are running to escape capture:

"They ran northeast across the courtyard quickly disappearing from view behind an elegant U-shaped building, which Langdon realized was the Folger Shakespeare Library. This particular building seemed appropriate camouflage for them tonight, as it housed the original Latin manuscript of Francis' Bacon's New Atlantis, the Utopian vision on which the American forefathers had allegedly modeled a new world based on ancient knowledge. Even so, Langdon would not be stopping."

I love it! The book reads like a term paper. Dan Brown has found lots of interesting facts and bits of history and he is determined to cram every last bit into his story, even in the middle of a life-or-death chase.
Another Brown idiosyncrasy is his use of italics. I like italics, but every other sentence? Brown has pulled out his template and filled it in with familiar characters. I've already mentioned the female scientist. She, once again, is investigating something groundbreaking that will change the world as we know it. The scientist's relative is in mortal danger and is the reason Langdon is caught up in this mess. The villain is once again a twisted nut job, this time borrowing some of his villainous methods from Thomas Harris' playbook. And there's Robert Langdon, always wondering to himself how many people know that....[fill in the blank with an obscure fact about a commonly known object, belief, person, piece of art...]
Back to the definition of savory. A savory dish (and book) is "morally exemplary or edifying" and it's "engagingly provacative." Dan Brown's books are certainly provacative, but they are not engagingly so. Engaging: "tending to draw favorable attention or interest." I suppose it is favorable to the author that his provocation increases his sales. In my world, however, his provocation is simply irritating. Brown's books are not edifying. In my world, they are not "morally exemplary." Concerns with Brown's views on religion have been dismissed with, "It's just a book." "It's fiction!" I agreed with these statements after the first two books. The Lost Symbol, however, is a little different. After the crisis is averted and the villian is thwarted, after the heroes are safe and sound, the book continues. It continues for eight more chapters and one epilogue. There are 45 pages of religious philosophy regarding God and man. Here are a few examples:

"In fact, Thomas Jefferson was so convinced the Bible's true message was hidden that he literally cut up the pages and reedited the book, attempting, in his words, 'to do away with the artificial scaffolding and restore the genuine doctrines.' Langdon was well aware of this strange fact. The Jeffersonian Bible was still in print today and included many of his controversial revisions, among them the removal of the virgin birth and the resurrection."
---

"Peter lowered his voice to a whisper, "The Buddah said, 'You are God yourself.' Jesus taught that that 'the kingdom of God is within you' and even promised us, 'The works I do, you can do...and greater.' Even the first antipope - Hippolytus of Rome - quoted the same message, first uttered by the gnostic teacher Monoimus: 'Abandon the search for God...instead, take yourself as the starting place.' "

[Note: the full quote from Jesus is this: "Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever belives in me will do the works that I do, and will do greater ones than these, because I am going to the Father. And whatever you ask in my name, I will do, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son." John 14: 12-13]
[Another note: Hippolytus quoted the gnostic teacher Monoimus in his book Refutation of All Heresies, a book that was written to "expose and refute the wicked blasphemy of the heretics." Hippolytus considered Monoiumus and his quote to be heretical.]

"When you start to understand the cryptic parables in the Bible, Robert, you realize it's a study of the human mind."
---

"We are creators, and yet we naively play the role of 'the created.' We see ourselves as helpless sheep buffeted around by the God who made us. We kneel like frightened children, begging for help, for forgiveness, for good luck. but once we realize that we are truly created in the Creator's image, we will start to understand that we, too, must be Creators."
---

"Exactly! Langdon had never understood why the very first passages of the bible referred to God as a plural being, Elohim. The Almighty God in Genesis was described not as One...but as Many. 'God is plural,' Katherine whispered, 'because the minds of man are plural.' "
---

"God was the universal constant for man. God was the symbol we all shared...the symbol of the mysteries of life that we could not understand. The ancients had praised God as a symbol of our limitless human potential, but that ancient symbol had been lost over time. Until now. In that moment, standing atop the Capitol, with the warmth of the sun streaming down all around him, Robert Langdom felt a powerful upwelling deep within himself. It was an emotion he had never felt this profoundly in his entire life. Hope."

---
"For America's Masonic forefathers, the Word had been the Bible. And yet
few people in history have understood its true message."

Dan Brown is all about telling us what "few people in history have understood." Brown's readers should either be fascinated by this revealed knowledge or be insulted that he is, in effect, calling us ignorant sheep. Sales figures tell me people are fascinated. Knowing the errors he made throughout The DaVinci Code and Angels and Demons, I am skeptical.
As Philip Pullman did in The Amber Spyglass (the third volume of Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy), Brown doesn't hold back in presenting his agenda. When the story ends, Brown gives us eight chapters of his philosophy.
Of course, it could be simply a marketing stragegy. His editor may have said, "Dan! You haven't given any religious controversy. Remember, that's what made DaVinci Code a best seller. You gotta give me something that'll rile up the Christians. Don't bother rewriting. Just give me a few more chapters I can tack on at the end."
There's so much wrong with a Dan Brown novel. There are so many stupid mistakes and bad writing and unlikable heroes. Why does he sell millions of books? Why do I read them? Why do I enjoy them?
Why do I enjoy fast food?

The River at Green Knowe

by L. M. Boston

Finished reading September 15, 2009

This is the third book in the Green Knowe series.

Grandmother Oldknowe and Tolly are absent. Perhaps they went to Cornwall, as was mentioned at the end of Treasure of Green Knowe.

The protagonists of this book are Ping, Oskar and Ida. Dr. Maud Biggin and her old friend, Miss Sybilla Bun, have rented Green Knowe. They invite Dr. Biggin's great niece (Ida) and two refugees from the Society for the Promotion of Summer Holidays for Displaced Children (S.P.S.H.D.C) to spend the summer with them.

Interestingly enough, the two women leave the children to their own devices as Dr. Biggins is too busy writing a book called A Reconstruction of the Habits and the Diet of the Ogru: A Summary of Recent Discoveries. Apparently, ogru are giants. Sybilla thinks only of cooking. Thus, the children are able to leave the house at any time of day or night to explore the river and it's many islands near Green Knowe.

The Children of Green Knowe involved ghosts of past inhabitants. Treasure of Green Knowe seemed to have a time travel element. Rivers introduces an even more fantastical theme of magical creatures, including winged horses and giants. There is one kind of frightening scene that brings back the time travel element when Ping, Oskar and Ida witness a pagan moon dance or celebration.

I enjoyed this book quite a bit. It's obvious why the series has been revived over the past several years. Thanks to the popularity of Harry Potter classic fantasies like the Green Knowe series as well as books by E. Nesibt, George MacDonald, Edward Eager and the more recent Susan Cooper series have been given new life. By design the cover art of these new editions of "The Green Knowe Chronicles" by Bret Helquist connect this series to others such as The Spiderwick Chronicles, Chasing Vermeer and A Series of Unfortunate Events.

So far, each of the three books has had a different flavor. The first was a dreamy ghost story. The second was almost a historical novel with a very few fantasy elements. This was an adventure fantasy. I can't wait to read the next.

One of the most interesting things about this book was the abrupt ending. It was startling, but carried out Boston's theme of the imagination of children and the inability of adults to see past their own assumptions.

Treasure of Green Knowe

by L. M. Boston

Finished reading September 13, 2009

Originally known as The Chimneys of Green Knowe, this is the sequel to The Children of Green Knowe. Tolly returns to Green Knowe on his Easter holiday. He continues to explore the house and gardens, learning things about its past inhabitants. Grandmother Oldknowe is mending a patchwork quilt and each bit of fabric inspires her to tell a story from the end of the 18th century when Captain Oldknowe, his wife Maria and children Sefton and Susan lived in the manor.

This book is much better than the first. The activities of Tolly and Grandmother Oldknowe are simply a frame that holds the wonderful story of blind Susan who has been stifled by her indifferent mother and her well meaning, but woefully misguided Nanny Softly. Captain Oldknowe is devoted to his daughter and is the only one who doesn't seem to treat her as an imbecile or a helpless, fragile doll. Unfortunately, he is most often away at sea on his ship the Woodpecker. While in Barbados the Captain meets a young black boy named Jacob who asks him, "Captain, buy me?" Captain Oldknow despises slavery and refuses to buy the boy. But he finally relents in order to give Jacob a free life. He brings Jacob home to live at Green Knowe and to be Susan's helper and guide. Jacob opens the world to Susan. Through him, she begins to explore the house and gardens.

L. M. Boston has a lot to say about justice, fairness and human decency. Her depiction of the family's treatment of blind Susan and black Jacob is heartbreaking.

The treasure referred to in the title is a collection of jewels belonging to Maria, Susan's mother. Tolly spends his vacation searching for the missing jewels so that his Grandmother won't have to sell the painting of Toby, Linnett and Alexander (from the last book). Tolly is less annoying in this book than the last. He still seems to take the presence of spirits in stride, although the spirits don't appear as often in this book. There is almost a time travel element to this book rather than a haunting.

This book was so good that I plan to read the rest of the series.

The Children of Green Knowe

by L.M. Boston
Finished September 9, 2009

What a creepy book! It wasn't scary and it wasn't really eerie, but it was just an unusual, sweetly creepy book.

I've known of this book for years but never thought to read it until I came across the description for A Stranger at Green Knowe" which is about a Chinese boy who befriends a gorilla at the zoo. I decided to read the first book in the series before reading A Stranger. I'm not really sure this is a series of continuous stories. It seems to be a series of stories which happen to be set in the English manor called Green Knowe.

The Children of Green Knowe is about a boy named Toseland (Tolly) who goes to spend the Christmas holiday with his great grandmother at Green Noah (aka Green Knowe). His mother is dead and his father lives in Burma with his stepmother who insists on calling him Toto.
Tolly usually has to spend the holiday by himself at boarding school. All of the other children get to go home. Tolly must stay with the Master and Mistress of the school who pretty much ignore him.

Green Noah is a welcomed change of pace for the boy and his great grandmother is warm and gracious and loving. Tolly feels immediately at home. This is where it gets creepy.
Tolly begins hearing sounds of children laughing. The rocking horse in his bedroom seems to move on it's own. Little unexplainable things happen. But none of this seems to bother Tolly at all. He takes it all in with an insipid childlike wonder. The book never tells Tolly's age, but he seems to be around 8 or nine, with an emotional age of four. I don't mean that L.M. Boston wrote about an emotionally stunted boy. He had a cloying, immature personality .

The children that Tolly hears turn out to be the spirits of Toby, Alexander and Linnet, three children from four hundred years past. Tolly longs to meet them and to see Toby's horse Feste.
Magical things happen throughout the book as little by little, the children trust Tolly enough to reveal themselves.

There's a slightly scary incident with a hedge man called "Green Noah" and a statue of St. Christopher.

The book reads like a foggy dream. It was difficult to read for me. It's not that the text was complex or difficult. It's just that I felt in such a fog reading it. Someone else could take this book and make an excellent novel out of it. As it is, The Children of Green Knowe is a good idea for a book.

L.M. Boston wrote the Green Knowe books for herself, not any audience. She was inspired to write this one after renovating an old manor house. In that case, this book is exactly what she wanted. I wanted more, however.

You Tube has a clip from the 1986 BBC series based on the book. I was able to see the first 9 minutes of the show. It looks to be very good and Toseland (Tolly) in the series isn't the insipid, pasty little boy I imagined him to be. I would love to see that series.
I will read the other Green Knowe books in hopes that they are better than this one.

Punching In

The Unauthorized Adventures of a Front Line Employee

by Alex Frankel

Finished September 4, 2009

I read an uncorrected proof of this book that I got from the table in the break room at work. Started it while I was on vacation and used the receipt from Cracker Barrel as the bookmark. I mention these little things because often I associate a book with where I was when I read it or what time of year or what I ate while reading it. I still think of eating banana sandwiches at the breakfast room table on University St. when I think of the book October Country by Ray Bradbury. To Kill A Mockingbird was read while laying on the bed in the guest room at Aunt Mickey's house in Nashville.

So, I'll think of Cracker Barrel when I read this. Funny, because the places Alex Frankel worked in gathering material for this book were pretty much the opposite of Cracker Barrel. They were mostly trendy places. I'm not sure if he chose those on purpose.

Alex Frankel worked at UPS, Enterprise Rental Car, The Gap, Starbucks and The Apple Store.

It was an interesting book, although not as well written as it should have been. I wanted more detail than he gave. It was written like a term paper for a college class - a good term paper, but supeficial, nevertheless. The story he told about each workplace was interesting and revealing. I wanted more, however. This is a management book or a book about the workplace, not about these individual workplaces. The section on UPS was the best, so it's not surprising that it was the most detailed and was about the workplace he liked the most. By the end of the book I was getting as tired of reading his descriptions as he was in working at these places.

The most interesting chapter was about Enterprise Rental Car. They are a successful company, but it seems (at least when Frankel worked there) to be a horrible company. The employees were stress out and over worked. The company communicated a good line about opportunities for advancement and committment to the employee, but practiced the opposite.

The most interesting piece of information was the application process for some companies like Home Depot. There's a questionnaire that the applicant must answer, with over 100 questions. The questions are incredible - "Other than pens or paper, what items have you taken from your workplace?" "True or false: I dislike having conversations with strangers." Frankel answered these quizzes with answers he thought the organization would like. He didn't get hired.

All in all, a good book but not great.