Word Wenches

What We're Reading!

Here's a round up of what the wenches have been reading this month. In the comments, let us know what you've enjoyed. It's a great library builder!

Nicola:

The Girl and the Sword by Gerald Weaver (UK link) is a historical epic in the true sense of the word. It covers decades and looks a great span of ideas and history. It’s set in the 13^th century and tells the story of Pauline de Pamiers who is a young girl from the oppressed Christian sect, the Cathars, and how she refuses to accept subjugation but forms an alliance with one of the most famous crusaders of all, Simon de Montfort. There are big themes in this book – the role of women in medieval society, the establishment of parliamentary democracy, the dominance of religion.

Whilst the character of Pauline is fictitious, Simon de Montfort was, of course, very real and in his author’s note, Gerald Weaver talks about taking an “American” view of a man who has primarily been written about by English historians. It’s fascinating to see the different perspective that he brings to the character and actions of de Montfort, seeing someone who has often been dismissed as an ambitious opportunist as, in fact, a fundamentally good man who was responsible for sowing the seeds of democracy.  Whilst I might not have agreed with his interpretation of some of de Montfort’s actions, I did love the sheer swashbuckling scope of the story. This Simon is a real hero of integrity, courage and action. Pauline is an admirable woman and their relationship is a tender and true love story. My favourite aspect of the book was their dialogue which was funny and clever and very entertaining. So if you are a fan of epic historical novels with feminist heroines and knightly heroes, this could be the book for you.

Georgette Heyer & Faro's Daughter

Anne here again, bringing you the next post in the Georgette Heyer series, with excerpts from Jennifer Kloester's upcoming book, The Novels of Georgette Heyer, which has not yet been published.

Today I'm focusing on Faro's Daughter, another favorite of mine, and focusing on a few excerpts from letters Heyer wrote to her publisher. They read almost as a conversation — or at least as if he's sitting beside her and occasionally arguing or interrupting. The tone of the letters is most entertaining — funny and ironic and familiar — and you can see that they got on well.

Of particular interest (to me, at any rate) is the letter in which she begins telling her publisher about her still quite vague ideas for her new novel, and by the end, she's worked out the whole plot! And beware, if you haven't yet read Faro's Daughter, there are spoilers below.

Georgette Heyer to L.P. Moore, letter, 28 April 1941.

Must talk to you about my new book. No, not Casca – he’s nearly finished, & nothing to talk about anyway. The new one, I said. Do you recall a short I once wrote, & you or Norah sold to Woman’s Journal for a pittance? Well, it was a poor short, but it has the makings of a novel, & it is going to grow into a lovely romantic bit of froth for Heinemann. Title will remain the same – Pharaoh’s Daughter. Not Moses’ girl-friend, but a lady addicted to gaming.

After the Amazon

by Mary Jo

There is a lot of cachet in saying that one has been vacationing on the Amazon!  It sounds impressive even if one is traveling on a safe, comfortable ship as we were.  I once counted and I think we've been on 13 different cruise lines and all have been good, but Viking is perhaps our favorite for a number of reasons.  Besides taking care of passengers really, really well, they really honor their Viking roots, and that includes a small heritage display just outside the entrance to the main dining room. 

There are historical costumes and other artifacts to keep guests amused while waiting for the restaurant doors to open. (This is Christina Courtenay territory since she's our Viking expert@)

The mouth of the Amazon is river is over 200 miles wide, and the delta is such a maze of channels and islands that it took half a day for the ship to sail through to the Atlantic.  Then we headed north to the Caribbean, which is one of the world's most popular cruising areas, and justly so because of the warmth, turquoise seas, and the multitude of islands, each with its own history and culture.

Here is a blog I wrote several years ago which describes several different islands we visited on another cruise. 

On this trip, we revisited the gorgeous island of St. Lucia, and took a boat ride along the coast to sail around the Pitons, the Twin Peaks, which are the island's most famous features.  Along the way we were told that St. Lucia is famous for its different varieties of bananas, which all taste much the same but can be long, short, straight, or curved.  In honor of this island crop, we were offered ripe bananas (delicious) and banana chips served with drinks, also delicious though probably not as healthy. <G>

A new island for us was Antigua, the larger of the two main islands of the sovereign nation of Antigua and Barbuda. It was part of the British West Indies, which means driving on the left like all the formerly British islands.  It was also the site of the Nelson Dock Yard, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and a major Royal Navy facility that was once commanded by Captain Horatio Nelson before he became the famous admiral and victor of the Battle of Trafalgar.

The harbor is excellent and safe, and the dockyard has been modernized as a pleasant touristy area with restaurants, hotels, and shops where one can sip a drink and watch the boats in the sunny harbors, which is one of the reasons people visit the Caribbean! But beware the coconuts and don't walk under the palm trees!

Our journey ended in San Juan, Puerto Rico, which is a staging area for travel throughout the Caribbean. We chose an excursion to the Ron del Barralito rum distillery, which is the oldest distiller in Puerto Rico, founded in the mid-19th century.  Rum is made on many Caribbean islands; as the Mayhem Consultant says, people tend to make alcohol of whatever is available, and in the Caribbean, that means sugar. 

Besides a tour of the production facilities, we were treated to a tasting of their rums, which are graded as two, three, four, and five stars. Ratings are determined by how long the rum has been aged.  Here is the tasting set up, with four glasses containing a splash of run at each place setting. The Two Star rum is aged 3 to 5 years and is a good everyday rum. Three Star is aged 6 to 10 years and is their best known product. The Four Star is available only at the distillery visitor's center and is aged for 20 years. 

But the Five Star rum was the true star of the tasting.  A limited edition product, it's aged for 35 years and if you can find a bottle, it will cost $750!!!!  I'm not much for drinking spirits and fall into the "rum drinks with fruit on sticks" category, but it was interesting to taste the different rums because even a novice like me could tell the differences. 

And the Five Star rum?  It struck me as similar to the fine brandies that one of my dukes would serve to favored guests!  It was an incredibly subtle and layered flavor, and the splash we were each served was probably about $50 worth. <G> 

As always the cruise was interesting and multi-faceted--and the next day we went home where my most expensive drink is fresh squeezed orange juice. (And really, I'll take that over rum any day!)

Have you been to any of these islands? If not, would you like to visit them?  As I said, there is a reason why the Caribbean is so popular!

Mary Jo

PS:  Please forgive the shortage of pictures; the software was having a cranky evening!  So I put in Viking chess pieces since I couldn't show the rum tasting.

The Art of Marbling

Andrea here, talking today about books. No surprise there—we do that a lot here at the Word Wenches! But my topic today isn’t about the words on the printed page, but rather the remarkable art of the decorative papers that were traditionally used to create beautiful cover and endpapers in book.
 
Alas, today it’s becoming a lost art, but I recently saw a marvelous exhibit at the Grolier Club (it’s a wonderful society dedicated to the arts of the book and book collecting) in New York City on the art of contemporary marbling, so I thought I would share some of the fabulous creations and give a short explanation of the history and process of marbled paper.

Wooden Spoons

Anne here, and today I'm blogging about a very humble, yet often beautiful implement many of us will have in out homes. I'm talking about wooden spoons.

I have quite a collection of wooden spoons. I love the look and the feel of them, but also the practicality of them. Wooden spoons don't scratch your pans or bowls, they don't conduct heat, they don't react with your food or leave harmful chemicals, or change the cooking temperature. The photo on the right is of some of my wooden spoons I keep in a metal egg basket. I keep it on the bench top beside the stove and I like it because I can see whichever spoon I want at a glance.

Some of my spoons are beautifully carved, some are simple but hand-made, and others are probably machine-made. Some were gifts from people who know I like lovely wooden spoons. A few are souvenirs.

Wooden spoons are pretty much universal and reflect the domestic life of ordinary people. They have a very long history, probably starting from the earliest times of human cooking, when sticks were used to stir or cook food. Spoons predate forks by thousands of years, going back as far as the Paleolithic Era. Wooden spoons have been uncovered alongside gold and silver versions in the tombs of ancient Egyptians, indicating that their owners saw them as useful enough to be considered essential even in the afterlife.

Ten Favourite ... Pieces of Viking Jewellery

Christina here with a new feature on Word Wenches, where we will list favourite objects in a category of our choice. Today I have chosen Viking jewellery, because I find it fascinating and beautiful to look at, and there is so much to choose from!

As part of my research into the Vikings, I have obviously visited an awful lot of museums to view artifacts from that era. I am always especially drawn to the jewellery and although it was incredibly difficult to choose, below is a list of my top ten favourites so far. The Vikings were superb craftsmen and I would happily own any/all of the following:-

No 1 has to be the ring that inspired the first of my Viking stories. It is kept at the Historical Museum in Stockholm, and as I’ve mentioned previously I own an exact replica of it. Some jewellery company was given the right to reproduce part of the treasures kept in Scandinavian museums and I was lucky enough to be given this by my parents. The ring is a stylised snake or dragon with two heads, and I love the intricate design as well as the overall simplicity.

An Amazon Adventure

A Return to the River Sea

By Mary Jo

The Mayhem Consultant likes a good warm weather winter getaway, so when I studied some possibilities, I saw that Viking was doing cruises between Manaus, Brazil and San Juan, Puerto Rico.  (The picture at the left was taken as we took a tender out to the Viking Sea when we arrived in Manaus at sunset.)

Manaus is on the mighty Amazon river, a thousand miles from the Atlantic Ocean.  In 2014 we did a cruise of the Upper Amazon coming from Peru and it was great.  We were on a very small ship and spent much of our time on skiffs going into the jungle to see sloths and giant lily pads.

The Amazon is the largest river in the world in terms of water flow.  (The Nile might be longer, but that question is debated.)  This cruise on the Brazilian Amazon was very different from the upper Amazon.

The Amazon watershed is vast and many rivers flow together to make a river so mighty that it has been called the river sea. (The image of the Amazon watershed on the left is from Wikipedia.)

Manaus is the capital of the Amazonas province, and it's smack dab in the middle of the Amazon rain forest.  Driving from the airport to the riverside, I was struck by how any land that wasn't covered with buildings or asphalt was being claimed by the jungle. Intense bursts of greenery were everywhere, such as the picture on the right.  I took that when we were on the bus to the river to show the rain forest exuberance.

At the height of the late 19th Century rubber boom, Manaus was one of the richest cities in the world and many great singers and dancers performed at the dazzling neo-classical opera house.(Picture of the facade is on the left.)

One reason I was intrigued by the idea of Manaus is because it's the setting for most of Eva Ibbotson's wonderful A Company of Swans, the tale of Harriet Morton, the shy, dance-loving daughter of a rigid Cambridge academic who runs away from home to join the chorus of a Russian ballet company

A Company of Swans is Eva Ibbotson at her witty, romantic best, and I couldn't resist the thought of visiting the opera house where Harriet and her friends performed.  But the end of the rubber boom was hard on the city, and there are still signs of poverty. 

The picture of the colorful banner on the right was taken from the opera house garden and a dark and rather rundown building is visible between the banner and the opera house. The opera house was closed for most of the 20th century, but has now reopened as a performing arts center, and the city has developed a sizable industrial economy.  It's also a major port for shipping on the river.

We got home just last night and I'm very travel fatigued, so I'll say more about our journey later.  For now, I'll suggest reading A Company of Swans so you can fall in love with Eva Ibbotson's magical Amazon!

Mary Jo

Ask A Wench: Young Wench Writers

Susan here. For our usual AAW (Ask-A-Writer) feature, we asked each other -- Were you a young writer? What was your first story? Was there a book (or books) that made you love stories so much that you wanted to write your own?  Here's what we said . . .  

Anne says:

I don't remember writing stories when I was a child. Most of my childhood memories are about being out of doors, with a dog or some other animal in tow. Even if I had written any, we moved so often, and so much was thrown out between every move, that if I had, it wouldn't have been kept. School reports? Gone. Special projects? Gone. Favorite clothes? Gone. (I was growing, and I was the youngest, so . . . )  I was lucky to hang onto my teddy. But I might have been a storyteller back then. Family legend has me sitting in the sand pit telling long involved stories to the dog, the cat, the horse and any other animal I could entice. We left that place when I was four, and moved every year or two after that until I left home to go to university, moved into a student share house, and settled down.

But throughout my childhood I read, insatiably. Every new town we moved to, one of the first things I found was the local library, and I joined up and devoured the books there. So I probably absorbed a lot about story structure and writing techniques just by reading. When I was older and travelling overseas a lot (backpacking) I wrote letters home and to friends all the time, and people used to say they found them very entertaining. I think I was storytelling then, too. And when I went backpacking again, many years later, I still wrote lots of letters home, but other stories started to spin in my head as well — fictional stories.  I bought a large A4 notebook in Quebec and started writing. And I haven't stopped since.

What a Quiz!

Nicola here. This weekend we took part in our local village charity quiz, fifteen teams trying to answer questions on everything from the names of Disney princesses to Olympic swimming champions. Amazingly, we won - as a team we knew a lot of obscure, random general knowledge! - plus we raised some money and enjoyed an evening out with friends and neighbours. It was all very good humoured, unlike some of the quizzes I've been involved with where professional teams got very irate if they didn't win!

I’ve always liked the word “quiz.” It's got a fun feel to it, and, being a writer, I've often wondered where the word originated from. I remember it featuring in Georgette Heyer, but as a description of a person rather than an activity. So I set out to find out more.

Perfume Unmasked

Pat here: As I may have said before, one of the fun parts of writing historical novels is the dive down research bunny holes. I’ve just spent a lovely few hours scrounging around in the insane details of British law, how magistrates were appointed and criminals brought to court, when there was essentially no police force in rural environs. And along with that, I followed a side trail into manorial law, an entire blog by itself. Suffice it to say, my hero, as heir to a manorial estate, is a law unto himself. He doesn’t like it much, though. (above photo is manor and accompanying village--not quite the one I imagine as I write but pretty anyway. See the manor way in the background?)