Amazon Reviews the Original Handcrafted Edition
There is no easy way to define the experience of seeing, holding, or reading J.K. Rowling's The Tales of Beedle the Bard, so let's just start with one word: "Whoa." The very fact of its existence (an artifact pulled straight out of a novel) is magical, not to mention the facts that only seven copies exist in all the world and each of the never-before-told tales is handwritten and illustrated by J.K. Rowling herself (and it's quite clear from the first few pages that she has some skill as an artist). Rowling's handwriting is like the familiar scrawl of a favorite aunt--it's not hard to read, but it does require attention--allowing you to take it slow and savor the mystery of each next word.
So how do you review one of the most remarkable tomes you've ever had the pleasure of opening? You just turn each page and allow yourself to be swept away by each story. You soak up the simple tales that read like Aesop's fables and echo the themes of the series; you follow every dip and curve of Rowling's handwriting and revel in every detail that makes the book unique--a slight darkening of a letter here, a place where the writing nearly runs off the page there. You take all that and you try and bring it to life, knowing that you will never be able to do it justice. With that, let's dig in and begin at the beginning, shall we? --Daphne Durham
1. "The Wizard and the Hopping Pot" [CAUTION: SPOILERS WITHIN!]
As in her Harry Potter series, garnishing the top of the first page of the first fairy tale, "The Wizard and the Hopping Pot," is a drawing--in this case, a round pot sitting atop a surprisingly well-drawn foot (with five toes, in case you were wondering, and we know some of you were). This tale begins merrily enough, with a "kindly old wizard" whom we meet only briefly, but who reminds us so much of our dear Dumbledore that we must pause and take a breath.
This "well-beloved man" uses his magic primarily for the benefit of his neighbors, creating potions and antidotes for them in what he calls his "lucky cooking pot." Much too soon after we meet this kind and generous man, he dies (after living to a "goodly age") and leaves everything to his only son. Unfortunately, the son is nothing like his father (and entirely too much like a Malfoy). Upon his father's death, he discovers the pot, and in it (quite mysteriously) a single slipper and a note from his father that reads, "In the fond hope, my son, that you will never need this." As in most fairy tales, this is the moment when things start to go wrong....
Bitter about not having anything but a pot to his name and completely uninterested in anyone who cannot do magic, the son turns his back on the town, closing his door to his neighbors. First comes the old woman whose granddaughter is plagued with warts. When the son slams the door in her face, he immediately hears a loud clanging in the kitchen. His father's old cooking pot has sprouted a foot as well as a serious case of warts. Funny, and yet gross. Vintage Rowling. None of his spells work, and he cannot escape the hopping, warty pot that follows him--even to his bedside. The next day, the son opens the door to an old man who is missing his donkey. Without its help to carry wares to town, his family will go hungry. The son (who clearly has never read a fairy tale) slams the door on the old man. Sure enough, here comes the warty, befooted clanging pot, now having captured both the sounds of a braying donkey as well as groans of hunger. [Spoiler alert!] In true fairy tale fashion, the son is besieged with more visitors, and it takes a few tears, some vomit, and a whining dog before the wizard at last succumbs to his responsibility, and the true legacy of his father. Renouncing his selfish ways, he calls for all townspeople far and wide to come to him for help. One by one, he cures their ills and in doing so, empties the pot. At the very last, out pops the mysterious slipper--the one that perfectly fits the foot of the now-quiet pot--and together the two walk (and hop) off into the sunset.
Rowling has always made her stories as funny as they are clever, and "The Wizard and the Hopping Pot" is no exception; the image of a one-footed cooking pot plagued with all the "warty" ills of the village, hopping after a selfish young wizard, is a good example. But the real magic of this book and this particular tale lies not just in her turns of phrase but in the way she underlines the "clang, clang, clang" of the pot for emphasis, and how her handwriting gets messier when the story picks up speed, like she's hurrying along with the reader. These touches make the story uniquely her own and this volume of stories particularly special.
2. "The Fountain of Fair Fortune" [CAUTION: SPOILERS WITHIN!]
Featured at the top of what may be one of our favorite fairy tales ever is a picture of a sparkling, flowing fountain. Now that we're thirty pages into the book, it has become clear that Rowling enjoys (and is quite good at) drawing stars and sparkles. The beginning and ending of almost every tale appears sprinkled with pixie dust (à la Peter Pan--fans know that Rowling's pixies are less likely to leave such a pretty trail). This first page of the story also features a small rose bush below the text. It is quite lovely, and as anyone who has tried to draw a rose knows, not that easy to pull off--a fact that makes it less likely that Rowling did it to cover up a mistake (the way some of us might). It is a gorgeous way to start, and it gives "The Fountain of Fair Fortune" a lot to live up to. Perhaps this is why the story begins so grandly and with such a perfectly lush and mysterious fairy tale setting: an enchanted and enclosed garden that is protected by "strong magic." Once a year, an "unfortunate" is allowed the opportunity to find their way to the Fountain, to bathe in the water, and win "fair fortune forever more." Ahhhh, such is the stuff of Harry Potter fans' dreams. In fact, this tale stands out as a favorite partly because it follows the quest arc that fans fell in love with in her novels—the kind we still crave.
Knowing that this may be the only chance to truly turn their lives around, people (with magical powers and without) travel from the far reaches of the kingdom to try and gain entrance to the garden. It is here that three witches meet and share their tales of woe. First is Asha, sick of "a malady no Healer could cure," who hopes the Fountain can restore her health. The second is Altheda, who was robbed and humiliated by a sorcerer. She hopes the Fountain will relieve her feelings of helplessness and her poverty. The third witch, Amata, was deserted by her beloved, and hopes the Fountain will help cure her "grief and longing." In just a few pages, Rowling has not only created terrific fairy tale drama, but an interesting conflict--readers young and old can relate to at least one of the woes of Asha, Altheda, and Amata (and can we talk about how great those names are?), so how can you choose which one should win? The witches (much like the characters from our favorite series) decide that three heads are better than one, and they pool their efforts to reach the Fountain together. At first light, a crack in the wall appears and "Creepers" from the garden reach through and wrap themselves around Asha, the first witch. She grabs Altheda, who takes hold of Amata. But Amata gets tangled in the armor of a knight, and as the vines pull Asha in, all three witches along with the knight get pulled through the wall and into the garden.
Since only one of them will be permitted to bathe in the Fountain, the first two witches are upset that Amata inadvertently invited another competitor. Because he has no magical power, recognizes the women as witches, and is well-suited to his name, "Sir Luckless," the knight announces his intention to abandon the quest. Amata promptly chides him for giving up and asks him to join their group. It is heartening to see Rowling continuing to embrace the themes of friendship and camaraderie so prevalent in her series, not to mention her ability to draw strong, intelligent, female characters. We spent seven books watching Harry learn that it is okay to need the help and support of his friends, and that same notion of sharing responsibility and burden is strong in this tale.
On their journey to the Fountain, the motley band faces three challenges. We're in familiar fairy tale territory here, but it is the strong, simple imagery (a "monstrous white worm, bloated and blind") and way the characters work together to triumph over adversity that makes this story such a rich read, and pure Rowling. First, they face the worm who demands "proof of your pain." After several fruitless attempts to attack it with magic and other means, Asha's tears of frustration finally satisfy the worm, and the four are allowed to pass. Next, they face a steep slope and are asked to pay the "fruit of their labors." They try and try to make it up the hill but spend hours climbing to no avail. Finally, the hard-won effort of Altheda as she cheers her friends on (specifically the sweat from her brow) gets them past the challenge. At last, they face a stream in their path and are asked to pay "the treasure of your past." Attempts to float or leap across fail, until Amata thinks to use her wand to withdraw the memories of the lover who abandoned her, and drop them into the water (hello, Pensieve!). Stepping stones appear in the water, and the four are able to cross to the Fountain, where they must decide who gets to bathe.
[Spoiler Alert!] Asha collapses from exhaustion and is near death. She is in such pain that she cannot make it to the Fountain, and she begs her three friends not to move her. Altheda quickly mixes a powerful potion in an attempt to revive her, and the concoction actually cures her malady, so she no longer needs the Fountain's waters. (Some of you see where this is going, but stay tuned--Rowling has more surprises in store.) By curing Asha, Altheda realizes that she has the power to cure others and a means to earn money. She no longer needs the waters of the Fountain to cure her "powerlessness and poverty." The third witch, Amata realizes that once she washed away her regret for her lover, she was able to see him for what he really was ("cruel and faithless"), and she no longer needs the Fountain. She turns to Sir Luckless and offers him his turn at the Fountain as a reward for his bravery. The knight, amazed at his luck, bathes in the Fountain and flings himself "in his rusted armour" (this is the genius of Rowling--the addition of one word gives us the hilarious image of the knight bathing in full body armor in the Fountain) at the feet of Amata and begs for her "hand and her heart." Each witch achieves their dreams for a cure, a hapless knight wins knowledge of his bravery, and Amata, the one witch who had faith in him, realizes that she has found a "man worthy of her." A great "happily ever after" for our merry band, who set off "arm-in-arm" (it’s particularly nice the way this is handwritten, with the hyphens supporting a visual of linked arms). But the story wouldn’t be Rowling's without a kicker at the end: we learn that the four friends live long, never realizing that the Fountain's waters "carried no enchantment at all." Best. Ending. Ever.
As in her novels, Rowling emphasizes that the true power lies within, not merely in a wand and in a mind, but in a heart. Faith, trust, love give her characters the strength to meet the challenges before them. She doesn't preach to her readers, but the message is definitely there: if you allow yourself the chance to trust and love others, you can harness the power that you already have. What a great message for kids (and adults) to learn, and oh, what a lovely and memorable package.
3. "The Warlock's Hairy Heart" [CAUTION: SPOILERS WITHIN!]
Beware dear readers: Rowling channels the Brothers Grimm for her third and darkest fairy tale. In "The Warlock's Hairy Heart" there is little laughter and no quest, only a journey into the shadowy depths of one warlock's soul. There is no evidence of pixie dust on this first horrible page, instead we see a drawing of a heart covered in coarse hair and dripping blood (again, it's really not easy to draw an actual heart, with valves and everything, but Rowling gets it just right--gross hair and all). Beneath the text is an old-fashioned key with three loops at the top, lying in a pool of blood, making it quite clear that we are in for a different tale than the others. Don't say we didn't warn you....
At the start we meet a handsome, skilled, and rich young warlock who is embarrassed by the foolishness of his friends in love (Rowling uses the word "gambolling" here--a perfect example of how she never talks down to her readers). So sure is he of his desire never to reveal such "weakness" that the young warlock uses "Dark Arts" to prevent himself from ever falling in love. Fans should recognize the beginnings of a cautionary tale here--Rowling has explored many lessons on the rashness of youth and the hazards of such power in the hands of the young in her series.
Unaware that the warlock has gone to such lengths to protect himself, his family laughs off his attempts to avoid love, thinking that the right girl will change his mind. But the warlock grows proud, convinced of his cleverness and impressed with his power to achieve total indifference. Even as time passes and the warlock watches his peers marry and have families of their own, he remains quite pleased with himself and his decision, considering himself lucky to be free of the emotional burdens that he believes shrivel up and hollow out the hearts of others. When the warlock's older parents die, he does not mourn, but instead feels "blessed" by their deaths. At this point in the text, Rowling’s handwriting changes a bit and the ink on the page appears slightly darker. Perhaps she is pressing harder--is she as frightened of and frustrated by her young warlock as we are? Almost all of the sentences on the left page nearly run into the fold of the book, as we read about how the warlock makes himself quite comfortable in his dead parents' home, transferring his "greatest treasure" to their dungeon. On the facing page, when we learn that the warlock believes himself to be envied for his "splendid" and perfect solitude, we see the first stutter in Rowling’s writing. It is as if she cannot bear to write the word "splendid" since it is so clearly not true. The warlock is deluded, making him all the more upset when he hears two servants gossiping--one taking pity on him, and the other making fun of him for not having a wife. He decides at once to "take a wife," presumably the most beautiful, wealthy, and talented woman, to make him the "envy of all."
As luck would have it, the very next day the warlock meets a beautiful, skillful, wealthy witch. Seeing her as his "prize," the warlock pursues her, convincing those who know him that he is a changed man. But the young witch--who is both "fascinated and repelled" by him--still senses his remoteness, even as she agrees to attend a feast at his castle. At the party, amidst the riches of his table and as minstrels play, the warlock woos the witch. Finally, she confronts him, suggesting that she would trust his lovely words if only she thought he "had a heart." [Spoiler alert!] Smiling (and still proud), the warlock leads the young maid to the dungeon, where he reveals a magic "crystal casket," in which lies his own "beating heart." We did warn you that this was going to be a dark tale, right?
The witch is horrified at the sight of the heart, which has turned shrunken and hairy in its exile from the body, and she begs the warlock to "put it back." Because he knows it would further endear him to her, the warlock "slices open" his chest with his wand and places the "hairy heart" within. Thrilled that the warlock may now feel love, the young witch embraces him (surprising, since we're clearly yelling "Get away from him!" by now), and the horrible heart is "pierced" by the beauty of her skin and the scent of her hair. "Grown strange" from being disconnected from his body for so long, the now "blind" and "perverse" heart takes savage action. Would that we could end here, and allow you to just wonder about the fates of the young witch and the hairy-hearted warlock, but Rowling marches the story on, as the guests at the feast wonder about their host. Hours later, they search the castle and find them in the dungeon. On the ground lies the dead maiden with her chest cut open. Crouched beside her is the "mad warlock," caressing and licking her "shining scarlet heart" and planning to switch it for his own. His heart is strong though, and it refuses to leave his body. The warlock, swearing never to be "mastered" by his heart, seizes a dagger and cuts it from his chest, leaving him briefly victorious, a heart in "each bloody hand" before he falls over the maiden and dies. The last paragraph describing the death of the warlock is the first that looks uneven--the handwriting skews up and to the right just slightly enough that it's noticeable, making the ending feel all the more abrupt and unsettling.
Rowling, like most of the really great fairy tale writers, has no pity for the wicked. Acting out of pride and selfishness from the start of the story, isolating and hardening himself against all feeling, the warlock opened himself up to madness, subsequently taking an innocent life, and destroying his own in the process (sound like any other villain you've met?). As with the other tales we've read, the secret lies in the imagery, both real and imagined (particularly once you see the drawings from the first page). The disturbing and indelible vision of the crazy warlock licking the bloody heart rivals the darkest of the Grimm brothers. Given that this story (and the entire text, after all) is meant to be a book of fables for young wizards and witches, it's fitting that Rowling would make a tale about the misuse of the Dark Arts the most horrible and least redemptive of them all. The Dark Arts, as we fans well know, are not to be toyed with--ever.
4. "Babbitty Rabbitty and her Cackling Stump" [CAUTION: SPOILERS WITHIN!]
A large tree stump (with twenty growth rings—we counted) squats atop Rowling's fourth and longest fairy tale. Five tentacle-like roots spread from the base with grass and dandelion clocks sprouting out from beneath them. At the center of the base of the stump is a dark crack, with two white circles that look like tiny eyes peering out at the reader. Under the text is a small narrow paw print (with four toes). Not as horrific as the bloody, hairy heart of the last story (and this time we do see bright pixie dust on the facing page), but we don’t entirely like the looks of that stump.
"Babbitty Rabbitty and her Cackling Stump" begins (as good fairy tales often do) long ago and in a faraway land. A greedy and "foolish king" decides that he wants to keep magic all to himself. But he has two problems: first, he needs to round up all the existing witches and wizards; second, he needs to actually learn magic. Just as he commands a "Brigade of Witch Hunters" armed with a pack of fierce black dogs, he also announces his need for an "Instructor in Magic" (not too bright, our king). Savvy wizards and witches go into hiding rather than heed his call, but a "cunning charlatan" with no magical ability at all bluffs his way into the role with a few simple tricks.
Once installed as the head sorcerer and private instructor to the King, the charlatan demands gold for magical supplies, rubies for creating charms, and silver cups for potions. The charlatan hoards these items in his own house before returning to the palace, but he does not realize the King's old "washer-woman," Babbitty, sees him. She watches him pull twigs from a tree that he then presents to the King as wands. Cunning as he is, the charlatan tells the King that his wand will not work until "your Majesty is worthy of it."
Every day the King and charlatan practice their "magic" (Rowling shines here, painting a portrait of the ridiculous King waving his twig and "shouting nonsense at the sky"), but one morning they hear laughter and see Babbitty watching from her cottage, laughing so hard she can hardly stand. The humiliated King is furious and impatient, and demands that they give a real demonstration of magic in front of his subjects the very next day. The desperate charlatan says it is impossible since he needs to leave the kingdom on a long journey, but the now suspicious King threatens to send the Brigade after him. Having worked himself into a fury, the King also commands that if "anybody laughs at me" the charlatan will be beheaded. And so, our foolish, greedy, magic-less King is also revealed to be both prideful and pitifully insecure--even in these short, simple tales, Rowling is able to create complex, interesting characters.
Looking to "vent" his frustration and anger, the cunning charlatan heads straight to the house of Babbitty. Peering in the window, he sees a "little old lady" sitting at her table cleaning her wand, as the sheets are "washing themselves" in a tub. Seeing her as a real witch, and both the source and solution of his problems, he demands her help, or he will turn her over to the Brigade. It is hard to fully describe this powerful turning point in the story (and any of these tales, really). Try to remember the richness and color of Rowling's novels and imagine how she might pack these bite-sized tales full of vivid imagery and subtle nuances of character.
Unruffled by his demands (she is a witch, after all), Babbitty smiles and agrees to do "anything in her power" to help (there’s a loophole if we’ve ever heard one). The charlatan tells her to hide inside a bush and perform all the spells for the King. Babbitty agrees, but wonders aloud what will happen if the King tries to perform an impossible spell. The charlatan, ever convinced of his own cleverness and the stupidity of others, laughs off her concerns, asserting that Babbitty's magic is certainly much more powerful than anything "that fool's imagination" could dream up.
The next morning, the members of the court gather together to witness the King's magic. From a stage, the King and charlatan perform their first magical act--making a woman's hat disappear. The crowd is amazed and astonished, never guessing that it is Babbitty, hiding in a bush, who performs the spell. For his next feat, the King points the "twig" (every reference of this cracks us up) at his horse, raising it high into the air. Looking around for an even better idea for the third spell, the King is interrupted by the Captain of the Brigade, who holds the body of one of the King's hounds (dead from a poisonous mushroom). He begs the King to bring the dog "back to life," but when the King points the twig at the dog, nothing happens. Babbitty smiles inside her hiding place, not even trying a spell, for she knows "no magic can raise the dead" (at least not in this story). The crowd begins to laugh, suspecting that the first two spells were just tricks. The King is furious, and when he demands to know why the spell failed, the cunning and deceitful charlatan points at Babbitty's hiding place and screams that a "wicked witch" is blocking the spells. Babbitty runs from the bush, and when the Witch Hunters send the hounds after her, she disappears, leaving the dogs "barking and scrabbling" at the base of an old tree. Desperate now, the charlatan shouts that the witch has turned herself "into a crab apple" (which even at this tense and dramatic point draws a snicker). Fearful that Babbitty may turn herself back into a woman and expose him, the charlatan demands the tree be cut down--because that is how you "treat evil witches." It is quite a powerful scene, not only for its "off with her head!" drama, but because the charlatan's ability to whip up the crowd is evocative of the all-too-real witch trials. As the drama builds, Rowling's handwriting appears slightly less polished--the spaces between letters of her words widens, creating the illusion that she's making the story up as she goes along, getting the words down on the page as fast as she can.
[Spoiler Alert!] The tree is chopped down, but as the crowd cheers and heads back toward the palace, a "loud cackling" is heard, this time from within the stump. Babbitty, smart witch that she is, shouts that witches and wizards cannot be killed by being "cut in half," and to prove it, she suggests that they cut the King's instructor "in two." At this, the charlatan begs for mercy and confesses. He is dragged to the dungeon, but Babbitty is not finished with her foolish king. Her voice, still issuing from the stump, proclaims that his actions have invoked a curse on the kingdom, so that every time the King harms a witch or wizard he too will feel a pain so fierce he will wish to "die of it." The now desperate King falls to his knees and promises to protect all the wizards and witches in his lands, allowing them to perform magic without harm. Pleased, but not completely satisfied, the stump cackles again and demands a statue of Babbitty be placed upon it to remind the King of his "own foolishness." The "shamed King" promises to have a sculptor create a statue in gold, and he heads back to the palace with his court. At last, a "stout old rabbit" with a wand in its teeth hops out from hole beneath the stump (aha! The source of those tiny white eyes) and leaves the kingdom. The golden statue remained on the stump forever more, and witches and wizards were never be hunted in the kingdom again.
"Babbitty Rabbitty and her Cackling Stump" highlights the winking ingenuity of the old witch--who should remind fans of a certain wise and resourceful wizard--and you can imagine how old Babbitty might become a folk hero to young wizards and witches. But more than just a story about the triumph of a clever witch, the tale warns against human weaknesses of greed, arrogance, selfishness and duplicity, and shows how these errant (but not evil) characters come to learn the error of their ways. The fact that the tale follows so soon after that of the mad warlock highlights the importance that Rowling has always placed on self-awareness: Babbitty reveals to the King his arrogance and greed, just as the Hopping Pot exposes the wizard's selfishness and the Fountain uncovers the hidden strength of the three witches and the knight. Of the first four of her tales, only the hairy-hearted warlock suffers a truly horrible fate, as his unforgiveable use of the Dark Arts and his unwillingness to know his true self exclude him from redemption.
5. "The Tale of the Three Brothers" [CAUTION: SPOILERS WITHIN!]
If, like us, you raced through your first reading of "The Tale of the Three Brothers" on your way to the finale of all finales, then you missed quite a tale (one that we think can stand among the best of Aesop). Lucky for you, you can open your copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows to Chapter Twenty-One and read it any time you like. If you have not already read the final book of Rowling's series (and what a feast you have ahead of you), you might not want read this review... yet. Give yourself a chance to read the tale in context first. You won't be disappointed.
A trio of toothy skulls stare out at the reader at the top of the last of the five tales (oh how we wish there were dozens more). The skull in the middle has a symbol carved into its forehead--a vertical line in a circle, enclosed by a triangle. Underneath the text is a pile of fabric, upon which lies a wand (spouting a swirling stream of sparkles) and what looks like a small stone.
This spooky tale about three brothers, three choices, and three distinct fates begs to be read aloud--in fact, the first time we meet the three brothers is when Hermione reads the tale to Harry and Ron (and Xenophilius). Three brothers traveling along a deserted road at "twilight" (midnight, according to Mrs. Weasley's version of the story) come to a "treacherous" river they cannot cross. Well versed in magic, they create a bridge with a wave of their wands. Halfway across they are halted by a "hooded figure." Death is angry, and tells the brothers (in a funny moment from Hallows, Harry interrupts the story here with "Sorry, but Death spoke to them?") that they have cheated him out of "new victims," since people usually drown when they try to cross the river. But Death is shrewd and offers a reward to each of them for being smart enough to "escape" him (for those of you interested in the tiny details, our copy uses "escape" instead of the "evade" that is printed in Book 7). Our favorite fairy tales have this same kind of "choose your fate" plot--you can learn so much about a character from a single choice, and the best stories, like this one, lead you away from where you think they're going toward an ending you never expected.
The oldest brother, a "combative man," asks for the mightiest wand ever created--a wand that will win every duel for its owner, one befitting a wizard who "conquered Death." So Death creates the (fateful) wand from an "Elder tree" (capitalized in our copy) and gives it to the quarrelsome, boastful brother. The second brother, an "arrogant man" who is determined to demean Death further, asks for the power to summon others back from Death. Picking up a stone from the ground, Death tells the brother that it holds the power to bring back the dead. The youngest brother, the most humble and wise of the three, does not "trust Death," so he asks for something to allow him to leave without being "followed by Death." Knowing he may have been outsmarted, Death hands over "his own" invisibility cloak with "very bad grace" (as opposed to "most unwillingly" in Book 7). Each brother's choice reveals so much about his motivations: the oldest brother wants the Elder wand to make him powerful over all others; the second brother wants to have power over Death; and the youngest brother wants to leave Death safely behind him.
[Spoiler alert!] Eventually the brothers take their gifts and go their separate ways, toward very different fates. The first travels to a "certain village" ("distant" in Book 7) and tracks down a wizard with whom he had fought, to challenge him to a duel he "could not fail to win." After killing his enemy, he retires to an inn where he brags about the Elder wand, how he won it from "Death himself," and how it makes him all-powerful. That night, a wizard sneaks up on the oldest brother and steals the wand, slitting the brother's throat "for good measure." The haunting refrain, in which Rowling describes Death as taking the brother "for his own," helps both anchor the story as a cautionary tale as well as teach a lesson about the inevitability of death. One of the most important messages from this tale, and from this particular brother, is the notion of using power for good (advice Rowling clearly takes to heart).
The second brother arrives at his empty home, where he turns the stone "over thrice in his hand" (the text in Book 7 omits the "over"), using it to "recall the Dead" (capitalized in our copy). He is thrilled to witness the return of the girl he once wanted to marry, but she is "silent and cold" ("sad" in Book 7), and suffering because she no longer belongs in the "mortal world." Desperate and filled with "hopeless longing," the second brother kills himself so he can join her, allowing Death to win back his second victim.
The youngest brother uses the "Cloak of Invisibility" (even those of you who haven't read Book 7 yet should realize that this may not be just a fairy tale after all) to hide from Death, until at a "very old age" he takes it off and gives it to his son. Then he greets Death "gladly" and "as an old friend," departing from "this life." Such a satisfying close to this tale--it still packs a punch even after a second reading. Simple, powerful, and poignant, "The Tale of the Three Brothers" introduces theories about the use and abuse of power (also strong in the series) and shares important messages about life and death. There are many ways in which this tale informs and enhances Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (the curious should reread Chapter Thirty-Five, "King's Cross," and discuss), but our favorite is highlighted by the message that Dumbledore himself imparts to Harry about accepting Death and embracing life: "Do not pity the dead, Harry. Pity the living, and above all, those who live without love." The youngest brother did not try to cheat Death or harm others with his power; instead, he used his gift to live simply and without fear of Death, so that at the end of a long and happy life, he was able to go willingly from this world.
It is a true testament to Rowling's talent that her fairy tales carry such a strong message, but never appear preachy or overtly didactic (this goes double for her books, and is in part why they are so special). The Tales of Beedle the Bard imparts several of the same lessons as the Harry Potter series, and the stories reverberate with Dumbledore's warning about choosing "what is right and what is easy." Whether she is warning against arrogance and greed, revealing the responsibilities that come with immense power, or extolling the importance of love and faith in oneself, Rowling's boundless imagination and masterful storytelling keep her loyal fans (young and old) coming back for more, ever eager for the next lesson.
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
Friday, November 28, 2008
The Christmas books of Charles Dickens (TopBookStore)
In early December of 1843, Charles Dickens completed the manuscript for a little ghost story about Christmas. He called it A Christmas Carol and the publisher printed the first copies a week before Christmas. By Christmas Eve all 6000 printed copies were sold. The story was overwhelmingly received, being read and repeated in homes throughout London.
Charles Dickens had conceived the idea of writing a Christmas story less than three months earlier. The idea was partially a response to his urgent need to produce some additional income. His publisher had informed Dickens that sales of his novels were not as great as expected and that he would have to reduce the advance income due Dickens until sales increased.
Dickens described his writing plan as "a little scheme," but as the writing of the story progressed, Dickens was overwhelmed by the story??s joyful message. He said that during the writing he "wept, and laughed, and wept again." The little ghost story became a special project that Dickens became passionate about and finished quickly.
Charles Dickens insisted that the book contain numerous woodcuts and etchings and be well-bound. Then he also insisted that it should sell for the small price of five shillings to make it affordable to a wide audience. The book was no longer part of a personal economic plan but was a gift from Dickens to the imaginations of families everywhere and a blessing to everyone.
Dickens called his story A Christmas Carol because he expected the story to be repeated and shared and to bring people together just as the singing of Christmas carols spread joy and brought families together each season throughout London. His carol was a song of praise of the Christmas season and of the redemption of Ebenezer Scrooge.
Cleverly, Dickens called the five chapters of the book "staves." A musical stave is a stanza with a consistent theme and mood. Each stave in the story delivers a different message and each has a definite mood. As in a carol each stave can stand alone but each contributes to the carol??s overall theme.
A good carol also contains a memorable refrain, repeated at appropriate times throughout. In Dickens?? A Christmas Carol the refrain is no doubt the blessing from Tiny Tim, "God bless us every one!" It's a refrain that has been repeated countless times since the publishing of A Christmas Carol.
The story sings the praises of the sentiments of the Christmas season in a memorable way and will be repeated as long as carols and the Christmas season endure.
********************
Garry Gamber is a public school teacher and entrepreneur. He writes articles about politics, real estate, health and nutrition, and internet dating services. He is the owner of http://www.Anchorage-Homes.com and http://www.TheDatingAdvisor.com.
By : Garry Gamber
http://www.flight-hotel-travel.com
http://www.SuperSubmit.net
Thursday, November 13, 2008
Booksellers and Publishers Nervous as Holiday Season Approaches (TopBookStore)
by MOTOKO RICH
November 11, 2008
For the book industry the question for the forthcoming holiday shopping season may be whether more people are like Francisco Clough or like Jacqueline Belliveau. Both were browsing in the Barnes & Noble on Union Square in Manhattan late last week, but Mr. Clough only looked, while Ms. Belliveau bought her second book in two days.
Dressed in a black suit and carrying a zippered leather portfolio, Mr. Clough, 36, said he had quit his job at a small brokerage firm on Wall Street six months ago. Fresh from a job interview, he flipped through a “Green Lantern” graphic novel but didn’t buy it. “There were probably five books I would have bought if I were not unemployed,” he said.
Ms. Belliveau, on the other hand, bought Carole Walter’s “Great Cookies,” just a day after purchasing Michael Pollan’s “In Defense of Food.” An architect who was laid off recently, she has turned down invitations to travel and downgraded her gym membership. She has found another job, but Ms. Belliveau, 40, is still being careful about expenses — except books. “I like to have a collection of the history of what you read,” she said.
Like many businesses across the retail sector, the publishing industry has been hit by a raft of doom and gloom in the past few weeks. Leonard S. Riggio, chairman and largest shareholder of Barnes & Noble, said in an internal memorandum predicting a dreadful holiday shopping season, as first reported in The Wall Street Journal last week, that “never in all my years as a bookseller have I seen a retail climate as poor as the one we are in.”
Last week HarperCollins, the books division of the News Corporation, reported that fiscal first-quarter operating income had slid to $3 million from $36 million a year earlier, despite its publication of the Oprah Winfrey-anointed novel “The Story of Edgar Sawtelle” by David Wroblewski. A week earlier Doubleday Publishing Group, a unit of Random House, laid off 16 people, a 10 percent cut in staff. At the time the company said the move did not presage further layoffs in other publishing divisions, but industry insiders said they would not be surprised to see more.
Also this month Rodale, the magazine and book publisher, laid off 14 people in its book division, a little more than 7 percent of the staff.
Long before the current financial crisis, Borders Group, struggling against online and big-box retailers, had announced it was looking at a potential sale of itself. Given current economic conditions, publishers are nervously watching to see what happens with the company.
Now, most everyone in publishing is bracing for a difficult holiday season while trying to remain optimistic about the enduring allure of books.
“A book is still this incredibly lovely, respectable gift,” said Jamie Raab, publisher of Grand Central Publishing, and is “a lot cheaper than the other luxury items that people tend to buy at Christmas.”
“So we could get lucky and see that it really works in our favor,” she added.
Grand Central is enjoying strong sales of titles by the novelists Nelson DeMille and Nicholas Sparks, as well as of “Dewey: The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched the World,” but it also is waiting to see how Ted Turner’s “Call Me Ted,” for which it spent more than $5 million, will sell. Ms. Raab said the company had printed 625,000 copies and had shipped more than 500,000.
With several publishers reporting that booksellers were cutting orders for January, Ms. Raab acknowledged that she was concerned about a post-New Year’s downturn. “You know to a certain extent people will be in the stores during the holidays,” she said. “What will happen once there is no reason to be in the stores?”
Booksellers are trying new tactics to help ring up sales. At Book Passage, an independent bookseller in San Francisco and Corte Madera, Calif., Elaine Petrocelli, an owner, said she recently instituted a policy giving priority seating at book readings to those who purchase the book. Last month she sold 160 copies at a reading by Katherine Neville, author of “The Fire,” a thriller about a chess prodigy.
Still, Ms. Petrocelli said she had noticed an overall decline in foot traffic at her two stores compared with this time last year. As a result, she said, she has decided not to hire holiday-season help. Usually she hires three or four people part time.
Not surprisingly, publishers, too, are looking for ways to cut costs. Print runs are being scrutinized, and companies are trying to reduce the number of unsold copies that are returned by booksellers, a painful practice in the best of times.
Some publishers are also looking at their (famously generous) travel and entertainment budgets. Steve Ross, publisher of Collins, a division of HarperCollins, said he recently took a job candidate for a drink at a Midtown hotel and was shocked by the $22 price for cocktails. “I think it will be awhile before I will have the pleasure of meeting anybody there,” Mr. Ross said.
For now, both publishers and agents said the penny pinching was not yet sinking seven-figure book deals. Although some might be cautious about signing a debut novelist, most publishers said they were still aggressively pursuing deals for celebrity books and others with natural best-seller prospects. Last month Little, Brown & Company signed a deal with the comedian Tina Fey for a sum reported as more than $5 million, and Jerry Seinfeld was out with a book proposal this week that some publishers suggested could go for a high seven-figure advance.
“The paradox is we have to continue to acquire books and compete against each other in a tough marketplace,” said Jonathan Burnham, publisher of Harper, an imprint of HarperCollins. “We’re trying to be fiscally responsible about royalty advances, and yet the big books are the books that everybody wants, so we’re still in this climate of having to pay large levels of money in these auctions. You can’t really step away from that.”
Christy Fletcher, a literary agent in Manhattan, said royalty advances for so-called midlist authors could come under pressure. “Something may sell for $50,000 that would have sold for $100,000 a year ago,” she said.
Publishers continue to plan for blockbuster sales of marquee-brand books. Free Press, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, for example, has shipped 1.25 million copies of “You: Being Beautiful — The Owner’s Manual to Inner and Outer Beauty,” Michael F. Roizen and Mehmet C. Oz’s next book in their best-selling series of advice titles, which goes on sale on Tuesday. HarperCollins has shipped more than 300,000 copies of “The Hour I First Believed,” the new novel by Wally Lamb. (In March that publisher had announced a first-print run of half a million, though these numbers tend to be exaggerated.)
One silver lining of the downturn: Because many books are not selling as well as they might have in a better economy, it does not take nearly as many copies to have bragging rights about being a best seller.
There still may be something to the theory, much circulated these days, that books can provide an escape from financial misery. When “Gone With the Wind” was published in 1936 during the Great Depression, it sold a million copies in its first year and stayed at No. 1 on best-seller lists for two straight years — before it was a movie tie-in.
Then again, they didn’t have the Internet or television back then. But some publishing insiders suggested that readers might be looking for a respite from the digital world.
“I think that people have not been reading for the past year because they’ve been checking political blogs every 20 minutes,” said Larry Weissman, a literary agent. “At some point I think people are going to say, ‘You know what, this is not nourishing.’ I think and I hope — and maybe it’s just blind hope — I think there is a yearning for authenticity out there, and people are going to go back to the things that really matter, and one of those things, I hope, will be reading books.”
Source: A version of this article appeared in print on November 11, 2008, on page C1 of the New York edition.
If You're Looking For A Book For This Holiday, Visit The BookSeller.
November 11, 2008
For the book industry the question for the forthcoming holiday shopping season may be whether more people are like Francisco Clough or like Jacqueline Belliveau. Both were browsing in the Barnes & Noble on Union Square in Manhattan late last week, but Mr. Clough only looked, while Ms. Belliveau bought her second book in two days.
Dressed in a black suit and carrying a zippered leather portfolio, Mr. Clough, 36, said he had quit his job at a small brokerage firm on Wall Street six months ago. Fresh from a job interview, he flipped through a “Green Lantern” graphic novel but didn’t buy it. “There were probably five books I would have bought if I were not unemployed,” he said.
Ms. Belliveau, on the other hand, bought Carole Walter’s “Great Cookies,” just a day after purchasing Michael Pollan’s “In Defense of Food.” An architect who was laid off recently, she has turned down invitations to travel and downgraded her gym membership. She has found another job, but Ms. Belliveau, 40, is still being careful about expenses — except books. “I like to have a collection of the history of what you read,” she said.
Like many businesses across the retail sector, the publishing industry has been hit by a raft of doom and gloom in the past few weeks. Leonard S. Riggio, chairman and largest shareholder of Barnes & Noble, said in an internal memorandum predicting a dreadful holiday shopping season, as first reported in The Wall Street Journal last week, that “never in all my years as a bookseller have I seen a retail climate as poor as the one we are in.”
Last week HarperCollins, the books division of the News Corporation, reported that fiscal first-quarter operating income had slid to $3 million from $36 million a year earlier, despite its publication of the Oprah Winfrey-anointed novel “The Story of Edgar Sawtelle” by David Wroblewski. A week earlier Doubleday Publishing Group, a unit of Random House, laid off 16 people, a 10 percent cut in staff. At the time the company said the move did not presage further layoffs in other publishing divisions, but industry insiders said they would not be surprised to see more.
Also this month Rodale, the magazine and book publisher, laid off 14 people in its book division, a little more than 7 percent of the staff.
Long before the current financial crisis, Borders Group, struggling against online and big-box retailers, had announced it was looking at a potential sale of itself. Given current economic conditions, publishers are nervously watching to see what happens with the company.
Now, most everyone in publishing is bracing for a difficult holiday season while trying to remain optimistic about the enduring allure of books.
“A book is still this incredibly lovely, respectable gift,” said Jamie Raab, publisher of Grand Central Publishing, and is “a lot cheaper than the other luxury items that people tend to buy at Christmas.”
“So we could get lucky and see that it really works in our favor,” she added.
Grand Central is enjoying strong sales of titles by the novelists Nelson DeMille and Nicholas Sparks, as well as of “Dewey: The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched the World,” but it also is waiting to see how Ted Turner’s “Call Me Ted,” for which it spent more than $5 million, will sell. Ms. Raab said the company had printed 625,000 copies and had shipped more than 500,000.
With several publishers reporting that booksellers were cutting orders for January, Ms. Raab acknowledged that she was concerned about a post-New Year’s downturn. “You know to a certain extent people will be in the stores during the holidays,” she said. “What will happen once there is no reason to be in the stores?”
Booksellers are trying new tactics to help ring up sales. At Book Passage, an independent bookseller in San Francisco and Corte Madera, Calif., Elaine Petrocelli, an owner, said she recently instituted a policy giving priority seating at book readings to those who purchase the book. Last month she sold 160 copies at a reading by Katherine Neville, author of “The Fire,” a thriller about a chess prodigy.
Still, Ms. Petrocelli said she had noticed an overall decline in foot traffic at her two stores compared with this time last year. As a result, she said, she has decided not to hire holiday-season help. Usually she hires three or four people part time.
Not surprisingly, publishers, too, are looking for ways to cut costs. Print runs are being scrutinized, and companies are trying to reduce the number of unsold copies that are returned by booksellers, a painful practice in the best of times.
Some publishers are also looking at their (famously generous) travel and entertainment budgets. Steve Ross, publisher of Collins, a division of HarperCollins, said he recently took a job candidate for a drink at a Midtown hotel and was shocked by the $22 price for cocktails. “I think it will be awhile before I will have the pleasure of meeting anybody there,” Mr. Ross said.
For now, both publishers and agents said the penny pinching was not yet sinking seven-figure book deals. Although some might be cautious about signing a debut novelist, most publishers said they were still aggressively pursuing deals for celebrity books and others with natural best-seller prospects. Last month Little, Brown & Company signed a deal with the comedian Tina Fey for a sum reported as more than $5 million, and Jerry Seinfeld was out with a book proposal this week that some publishers suggested could go for a high seven-figure advance.
“The paradox is we have to continue to acquire books and compete against each other in a tough marketplace,” said Jonathan Burnham, publisher of Harper, an imprint of HarperCollins. “We’re trying to be fiscally responsible about royalty advances, and yet the big books are the books that everybody wants, so we’re still in this climate of having to pay large levels of money in these auctions. You can’t really step away from that.”
Christy Fletcher, a literary agent in Manhattan, said royalty advances for so-called midlist authors could come under pressure. “Something may sell for $50,000 that would have sold for $100,000 a year ago,” she said.
Publishers continue to plan for blockbuster sales of marquee-brand books. Free Press, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, for example, has shipped 1.25 million copies of “You: Being Beautiful — The Owner’s Manual to Inner and Outer Beauty,” Michael F. Roizen and Mehmet C. Oz’s next book in their best-selling series of advice titles, which goes on sale on Tuesday. HarperCollins has shipped more than 300,000 copies of “The Hour I First Believed,” the new novel by Wally Lamb. (In March that publisher had announced a first-print run of half a million, though these numbers tend to be exaggerated.)
One silver lining of the downturn: Because many books are not selling as well as they might have in a better economy, it does not take nearly as many copies to have bragging rights about being a best seller.
There still may be something to the theory, much circulated these days, that books can provide an escape from financial misery. When “Gone With the Wind” was published in 1936 during the Great Depression, it sold a million copies in its first year and stayed at No. 1 on best-seller lists for two straight years — before it was a movie tie-in.
Then again, they didn’t have the Internet or television back then. But some publishing insiders suggested that readers might be looking for a respite from the digital world.
“I think that people have not been reading for the past year because they’ve been checking political blogs every 20 minutes,” said Larry Weissman, a literary agent. “At some point I think people are going to say, ‘You know what, this is not nourishing.’ I think and I hope — and maybe it’s just blind hope — I think there is a yearning for authenticity out there, and people are going to go back to the things that really matter, and one of those things, I hope, will be reading books.”
Source: A version of this article appeared in print on November 11, 2008, on page C1 of the New York edition.
If You're Looking For A Book For This Holiday, Visit The BookSeller.
Thursday, July 24, 2008
sTORI Telling By Tori Spelling (Mall-Mart Shopping Store)
Tori Spelling Is Telling All in New Book
Read About Tori Spelling's Childhood, Career and New Role as a Reality TV Star and Mom
Aina Hunter
—
Prologue:
When you're a kid, you don't worry what anyone thinks. You go around saying whatever pops into your head or picking your teeth, and it never occurs to you that someone might think you're gross, awkward, or ridiculous. That was me - picking my nose, snorting when I laughed, wearing white after Labor Day - I just was who I was.
That all changed one day at the tender age of twelve when I was getting ready for a family photo. We were having a formal family portrait taken with our dogs (doesn't everyone do that?), and I was getting frustrated with my bangs. I couldn't get them to do whatever a twelve-year-old in 1985 wanted bangs to do.
So I went into my parents' bathroom, all dressed up, with my hair done as best I could manage, and asked my mother, "Am I pretty?" She looked at me and said, "You will be when we get your nose done."
I was stunned. My nose, as noses tend to be, was right in the middle of my face, and I had just been told that it was ugly. So long, innocence.
To be fair, let the record show that my mother has absolutely no recollection of making this comment. I know this because in high school I took a class called Human Development, taught by Mrs. Wildflower. In it we had to keep a journal (her name was Mrs. Wildflower - what did you expect?), and when Mrs. Wildflower read my story about the nose incident, she called my parents. That afternoon I came home to find my mother crying. She said, "I never said that. I'd never say something like that." I'm sure she was telling the truth as she remembered it.
Nonetheless, I had my nose done the minute I turned sixteen. Or didn't you hear? But what I realized as a twelve-year-old was bigger than that I was destined for the plastic surgeon's chair. I realized that how other people saw me wasn't necessarily how I saw myself. Feeling pretty or smart or happy wasn't all there was to it. What I hadn't considered before was how I was perceived. And it wasn't the last criticism I'd hear about my nose.
Little did I know then how huge a role public perception would play in my life. My nose, and pretty much every other "prominent" body part and feature, would be prey to gossip and tabloids in just a few years. But the unwanted attention wasn't limited to my body.
According to the press, I was the rich, spoiled daughter of TV producer Aaron Spelling. They claimed I grew up in California's largest single-family residence. They said that my father had fake snow made on his Beverly Hills lawn for Christmas. They said I was the ultimate example of nepotism, a lousy actor who nonetheless scored a lead role in her father's hit TV show. They pigeonholed me as my character on Beverly Hills, 90210 : Donna Martin, the ditzy blonde virgin. They later talked about my wedding, my divorce, and my second wedding. They reported that I'd been disinherited and was feuding with my mother. They told about the birth of my son. What I learned from my ugly nose was true times a million: The details of my life were and would always be considered public property.
Some of what you may have read about me is accurate (my father did hire a snow machine for Christmas), some false (I didn't live in that enormous house until I was seventeen), and some exaggerated (I wasn't "disinherited"). But all the while the life I was living was much more than that. I lived in fear of my own doll collection. I let a bad boyfriend spend my 90210 salary. I planned a fairy-tale wedding to the wrong man. I begged casting directors to forget that Donna Martin ever existed. I was working hard and shopping like crazy. I was falling in love and getting hurt.
My life has been funnier and sadder and richer and poorer than any of the magazines know. Public opinion dies hard. To this day I still look in the mirror and hate my nose. Still, everyone else has been telling stories about me for decades now. It's about time I told a few of my own.
Chapter One: X Marks the Spot
Here's the part of my book where I'm supposed to say, Sure, my family had lots of money, but I had a normal childhood just like everyone else. Yeah, I could say that, but I'd be lying. My childhood was really weird. Not better or worse than anyone else's childhood, but definitely different.
Part of it was the whole holiday thing. My parents liked to make a spectacle, and the press ate it up. Like I said, it's true that my father got snow for our backyard one Christmas. But that's only half the story, if anyone's counting he actually did it twice. The first time was when I was five. My father told our family friend Aunt Kay that he wanted me to have a white Christmas. She did some research, made a few calls, and at six a.m. on Christmas Day a truck from Barrington Ice in Brentwood pulled up to our house.
My dad, Aunt Kay, and a security guard dragged garbage bags holding eight tons of ice into the back where there was plastic covering a fifteen-foot-square patch of the yard. They spread the snow out over the plastic, Dad with a pipe hanging from his mouth. To complete the illusion, they added a Styrofoam snowman that my father had ordered up from the props department at his studio. It was eighty degrees out, but they dressed me up in a ski jacket and hat and brought me out into the yard, exclaiming, "Oh, look, it snowed! In all of Los Angeles it snowed right here in your backyard! Aren't you a lucky girl?"
I'm sure that little white patch was as amazing to a five-year-old as seeing a sandbox for the first time, but my parents didn't stop there. Five years later they were thinking bigger, and technology was too. This time, again with Aunt Kay's guidance, my dad hired a snow machine to blow out so much powder that it not only filled the tennis court, it created a sledding hill at one end of the court. I was ten and my brother, Randy, was five. They dressed us in full-on snowsuits (the outfits were for the photos, of course it was a typical eighty-five degrees out). According to Aunt Kay, the sledding hill lasted three days and everyone came to see the snow in Beverly Hills: Robert Wagner, Mel Brooks & not that I noticed or cared. Randy and I spent Christmas running up the hill and zooming down in red plastic saucer sleds. Even our dogs got to slide down the hill. It was a pretty spectacular day for an L.A. girl.
My parents didn't get the concept of having me grow up like other kids. When I was about eight, my class took a field trip to my dad's studio. It was a fun day - my father showed us around and had some surprises planned, such as a stuntman breaking "glass" over some kid's head. But then, at the end of the day, the whole class stood for a photo. My father and I were in the back row. Just before the shutter clicked, he picked me up and held me high above the class. My face in the photo says it all. I was beyond embarrassed that my father was lifting me up like that. I just wanted to fit in. When I complained to him, he said, "But you couldn't be seen." He just didn't get it.
And then there were the birthday parties. The setting was always the backyard of our house on the corner of Mapleton and Sunset Boulevard in Holmby Hills, a fancy area on the west side of Los Angeles. It was a very large house - though not the gigantic manor where everyone thinks I grew up - maybe 10,000 square feet. It was designed by the noted L.A. architect Paul Williams, whose many public buildings include the famous Beverly Hills Hotel. A house he designed in Bel-Air was used for exterior scenes of the Colby mansion on my dad's television series The Colbys. Our house's back lawn was probably an acre surrounded by landscaping with a pool and tennis court, the regular features of houses in that neighborhood.
As I remember it, the theme for my birthdays was always Raggedy Ann, and there would be a doll centerpiece and rented tables and chairs with matching tablecloths, napkins, and cups. But every party had some new thrill. There were carnival moon bounces, which weren't common then as they are today, and fair booths lined up on both sides of the lawn offering games of ringtoss, balloon darts, duck floats, Whac-A-Mole, and the like. One birthday had a dancing poodle show conducted by a man in a circus ringleader's outfit. Another included a puppet show with life-size puppets. And one year we had a surprise visit from Smidget, who at the time was the smallest living horse. My godfather, Dean Martin, whom I called Uncle Bean, always brought me a money tree - a little tree with rolled up twenty-dollar bills instead of leaves. Just what a girl like me needed.
When my sixth-grade class graduated, we had a party at my house for which my father hired the USC marching band. Apparently, my dad first approached UCLA, but they said no. According to Aunt Kay, who organized a lot of these parties for my parents, my father told her, "Money is no object." Well, it must have been an object to the USC marching band because all one hundred plus members showed up to play "Pomp and Circumstance" and whatever else marching bands come up with to play at sixth-grade graduations. I have to admit I didn't even remember the marching band's presence until Aunt Kay told me about it.
What I remember are the things a twelve-year-old remembers: the rented dance floor and the DJ and hoping that the boy I liked would ask me to slow dance to "Crazy for You" by Madonna. I remember swimming in the pool. I remember feeling sad that we were all moving on to different schools. I remember being only mildly embarrassed that my mother was hula hooping on the dance floor, but I'm sure I was truly embarrassed by the marching band.
My parents were endlessly generous, and those parties were spectacular & on paper. The reality was a little more complicated. For every birthday and Christmas my big present was always a Madame Alexander doll. Madame Alexander dolls are classic, collectible dolls. Sort of like a rich man's Barbie, but - at least in my house - they were meant for display, not play. My mother loved the best of the best, for herself and for me. She was known for her Dynasty-style jewelry - quarter-size emeralds dangling off nickel-size diamonds. Most attention-grabbing was the forty-four-carat diamond ring she always wore. That's right - no typo. Forty-four carats. Walking around with that thing must have been as good as weight lifting. I always begged her not to wear the ring to school functions. But that was her everyday style - put together in blouses with Chanel belts, slim jeans, Chanel flats, perfectly manicured red nails, and a heavy load of jewelry worth millions of dollars.
As for the Madame Alexander dolls, every birthday, as soon as I unwrapped them, they were whisked away, tags still attached, to a special display case in my room that had a spotlight for each doll. No way in hell was I allowed to dress and undress them or (God forbid!) cut their hair. Every time I unwrapped a present, my heart sank a little bit when I saw that same powder blue box. I knew that all I had was a new, untouchable doll to add to my expensive collection. But my mother would be smiling with pleasure. She loved the dolls, had always coveted them as a girl, and wanted me to have something special. I didn't want to hurt her feelings, so I always thanked her and acted excited - she had no idea that all I wanted (at some point) was a Barbie Dream House.
So now imagine another birthday party. I was four or five. The great lawn was festooned with balloons and streamers. Colorful booths lined the perimeter of its downward slope. And in the center of it all was a mysterious white sheet with a big red X painted across it.
In the middle of the festivities a plane flew overhead. I was just starting to read, but our family friend Aunt Kay had spent all morning teaching me how to read Happy Birthday, Tori. Not coincidentally, the plane was pulling a banner saying just that. I read it and was thrilled and proud, jumping up and down and clapping my hands in excitement. Aunt Kay waved to the pilot, and he dropped a little parachute with a mystery gift attached to its strings. So dramatic! It was supposed to hit the X on the sheet, but instead, it landed in a tree. One of the carnival workers had to climb the tree to get it down. I later found out that Aunt Kay had to get special permits for the plane to fly that low over the house.
As soon as my present was liberated, I ran to the box and pulled away the padding until I got to the present. I tore open the wrapping paper, and there it was. The powder blue box. Another Madame Alexander doll. This one was a surprise, along with the plane, from Aunt Kay. (Some of my most valuable dolls were gifts from her collection.) My friends oohed and aahed, and I fake-squealed with joy. Then I handed the doll over to my mother so her dress wouldn't get dirty.
At some point I wondered if all these spectacular events were actually being done for me. Really, how many sixth-grade girls' biggest fantasy is for a college marching band to play at their graduation? Take Halloween. When I was five or six, my mother decided I would go as a bride. No polyester drugstore costume for me, no sir. Halloween found me wearing a custom bridal gown made by the noted fashion designer Nolan Miller, with padded boobs and false eyelashes. And, like many Halloweens, I wore high heels. It wasn't easy to find heels for a young child, so my mother went through the Yellow Pages until she found a "little person" store that sold grownup shoes in my size.
Then there was the Marie Antoinette costume my mother had Nolan Miller make for me when I was nine or ten. My five-year-old brother, Randy, was Louis XVI (a costume that actually suited him - even at that young age, he was already showing a taste for the finer things. We'd go to a restaurant and he'd tell the waiter, "For my appetizer I'll have the escargot.") My Marie Antoinette costume had golden brocade, a boned bodice, and gigantic hip bustles. It was topped off with an enormous powdered wig of ringlets so heavy that I got my first headache. I looked like one of those Madame Alexander dolls ofwhich my mother was so fond. Meanwhile, Randy got off easy in a ruffled red coat and a comparatively lightweight wig.
My parents drove their young royals to the flats of Beverly Hills, L.A.'s prime trick-or-treating turf. The houses were closer together than those in our neighborhood but still inhabited by rich people who didn't think twice about giving out full-size candy bars. Not that we got to keep any of the candy we collected anyway. My mother was paranoid about hidden razor blades and poisoned chocolate, so she always confiscated our booty and replaced it with bags she'd painstakingly assembled herself.
As I wobbled my way down the street trying to adjust to my new center of gravity, some kids threw raw eggs at me. I barely felt the first couple - they must have hit my bustle. But then, as if in slow motion, I saw two eggs coming toward us, one at me, one at my brother. Randy darted out of the line of fire, but I couldn't escape because of my enormous petticoats. An egg hit me in the ear. I wish I could at least claim it was some French immigrants avenging their eighteenth-century proletariat ancestors, but I think I was just caught in run-of-the-mill vampire/Jedi knight cross fire.
After the Marie Antoinette debacle, I'd had it. When Halloween rolled around again, I begged to be anything other than a historical figure. I wanted to be a plain old bunny. You know, the classic Halloween costume: plastic mask, grocery bag for candy, jacket hiding the one-piece paper outfit. My mother agreed to the bunny concept. But instead of drawn-on whiskers and bunny ears on a headband, I had a hand-sewn bunny costume, which had me in (fake) fur from head to toe with just my face showing. Who was I to complain? It was the best bunny costume a girl could ever want. Unfortunately, after four houses I had an allergy attack and had to go home.
For all the effort and fanfare my parents put into my childhood, I'm most sentimental about some of the lower-key indulgences, the ones that had nothing to do with how I was dressed or what kind of party our family could throw. We have a beach house in Malibu, and whenever we went there, my mother and I would walk out to the end of our beach to pick shells. (This is the same beach house where Dean Martin, my Uncle Bean, came to stay for a summer during his divorce. He was a huge golfer and traveled with a stockpile of golf balls that had his autograph printed on them. Every morning he'd set up a driving range on the private beach in front of our house and shoot golf balls into the ocean. People from all sides of the beach would be diving into the water to collect those golf balls as souvenirs, but Uncle Bean would just keep hitting the balls, completely oblivious.)
Anyway, whenever my mother and I went shelling, she always brought her purse, which wasn't suspicious since she smoked at the time. I'd hunt for shells and she'd urge me on, pointing me to spots I'd missed. It never took me long to find a few big, beautiful, polished seashells. I was always telling my friends that Malibu had the most amazing seashells.
My Malibu illusions were shattered when I was twelve. We took a family trip to Europe, but because my father refused to fly, we took the scenic route. It started with a three-day train trip to New York in a private train car attached to the back of a regular Amtrak train. We brought two nannies, my mother's assistant, and two security guards. From New York we took the Queen Elizabeth II to Europe. I loved the boat it had a shopping mall, restaurants, and a movie theater but what excited me most was that they had little arts-andcrafts activities scheduled for the kids. It was the closest to summer camp I ever got. (It was also the farthest from home I ever got. Every other family vacation was spent in Vegas, mostly because you could get there by car.) In England we made the tourist rounds: Trafalgar Square, Madame Tussaud's, and so on. Of course, when my mother saw the Crown Jewels at the Tower of London she commented, "I have a necklace bigger than that." It was true. She did. But I was talking about the breaking of the Malibu seashell mythology.
In England I was reading OK! or Hello! - one of those gossip magazines that were more respectable back in the eighties and I came across an interview with my parents. In it my mother talks about how she used to buy exotic seashells and hide them for me on the beach in Malibu. Total shock to me. So much for the beautiful seashells of Malibu. You know your family doesn't exactly communicate well when you find out things like this in weekly magazines.
Part of why I was upset about the seashells (beyond normal almost-teenage angst) was that it had only been the year before that I realized there was no Santa Claus or Easter Bunny. All I knew was that every year on the night before Easter, the Easter Bunny would call me on the phone and tell me to be a good girl. And every Christmas Eve the phone would ring and Santa's workers would inform my father that Santa had landed and he was approaching our house. A few moments later there'd be a knock at the door and & there was Santa. My brother and I would rush to greet him in our coordinated Christmas outfits. I'd be wearing a red overalls dress with a white shirt and red kneesocks, and Randy would be wearing red overalls shorts with a white shirt and red kneesocks. We'd sit on Santa's lap, one on each knee, and tell him what we wanted for Christmas. Then he'd tell us to get to bed early, that tomorrow was a big day, and he'd ho-ho-ho out the door. It didn't always go so smoothly - like the time that Randy peed on Santa's knee - but for the most part that was what had gone on for years, and I saw no reason to believe the kids at school when they said Santa was bunk. I saw him with my own eyes.
I probably would have kept believing if my cousin Meredith hadn't come over for a sleepover when I was eleven. She was a year older than I was, and that fact alone made her cool. I was really psyched that she was spending the night. It was Easter, and I must have said something about the Easter Bunny's imminent arrival because she was like, "You're kidding that you think there's an Easter Bunny." I said, "Yes, there is." Then she said, "Don't tell me you believe in Santa, too!" The kids at school were eleven like I was - what did they know? Why should I believe them? But Meredith was twelve. She knew stuff. I had to concede. If it hadn't been for her, who knows how long the charade might have gone on. Oh, and after that I never saw Meredith again. I think her disclosures convinced my parents that she was a bad influence.
As a kid I felt deceived to discover my parents had been lying, but now I realize it was pretty lovely. My mother loved decorating for and with us - coloring Easter eggs, carving jack-o'-lanterns, setting up moving Santa scenes at Christmastime. The seashells, the holiday characters, the decorations, these were pure, sweet moments that weren't about putting on a show, they were about making us happy. These were the heartfelt private gifts from my parents for which I never knew to thank them.
Looking back, what I remember with the most affection is being four years old and having a dad who would sit in the Jacuzzi with me and make up stories. My father was a slight man with slouchy shoulders that made him appear even smaller. For all his power in Hollywood, most of the time he'd appear in a jogging suit with a pipe. He spoke in a soft voice with a hint of Texas twang and would come right up to you to shake your hand or give you a hug even if he didn't know you well. The overall effect was very Wizard of Oz man-behind-the curtain - this unimposing, gentle guy is the famous Aaron Spelling? People always felt comfortable with him right away.
He and I would sit in the hot tub, and he'd be Hansel and I'd be Gretel and my mom (upstairs with a migraine) would be the witch. (Yes, I now think this is weird, if not psychologically damaging, that my father let me cast my unwitting mother as the villain. At least I can say that on the day I have in mind I kept looking up at the window of my mother's bedroom, hoping to see the shade go up, which meant the witch felt better and might join us at the pool.) Or we'd play Chasen's.
Chasen's restaurant, which is now closed, was a legendary celebrity hangout on Beverly Boulevard in Beverly Hills. Frank Sinatra, Alfred Hitchcock, Marilyn Monroe, Jimmy Stewart, and most of the Hollywood elite were regulars in their day. When I was a kid, the family would go to Chasen's on Mother's Day or Father's Day for a fancy celebration. So my dad and I would recline in the Jacuzzi and say, "We've just arrived at Chasen's. What should we order?"
A few years later I asked my parents for an allowance because the other kids at school had allowances. My father wanted to give me five dollars, but I wanted only twenty-five cents because that's what the other kids got. Dad told me that in order to earn my allowance, I'd have to help out around the house, so he gave me a job and said he'd do it with me. Every weekend we'd go out into the yard to scoop up dog poo and rake leaves.
That's right, every weekend TV mogul Aaron Spelling, net worth equivalent to some small island nation, went out and scooped poo with his daughter. We hadn't yet moved to the Manor - that enormous house that the press can't get over - but we still had a large yard and four dogs. And of course we had gardeners who were supposed to be taking care of all that. But there was always plenty for us to pick up, and I suspect he told the gardeners to leave it be. Sort of like the seashells, I guess - but a lot grosser. No matter, I loved it. I remember spending a lot of time out on that lawn, hanging out with my dad, playing softball, or working in the vegetable garden with him and my mother. One year we grew a zucchini that was as big as a baby. There are photos of me cradling it. My father was very proud - no matter what it was, our family liked the biggest and the best.
For the most part my father thought that money was the way to show love. Where do you think all those lavish jewels my mother wore came from? Every holiday he bought her a bigger and brighter bauble as if to prove his love. When I asked Aunt Kay to help me remember some of the extravagances, she said, "Money was no object. That's how much he loved you. There was no limit to what he would do for you." When my mom and I were planning my wedding, my father said almost the same thing: "She loves you so much. Do you know how much she's paying for this wedding? That's how much she loves you." When it comes down to it, luxury wasn't the substance of my childhood. Love was, simply, the time my parents gave me. What I wish my father had understood before he died is that of all those large-scale memories he and my mother spent so much money and energy creating, picking up poo is what has stayed with me my whole life.
Copyright © 2008 ABC News Internet Ventures
Read About Tori Spelling's Childhood, Career and New Role as a Reality TV Star and Mom
Aina Hunter
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Prologue:
When you're a kid, you don't worry what anyone thinks. You go around saying whatever pops into your head or picking your teeth, and it never occurs to you that someone might think you're gross, awkward, or ridiculous. That was me - picking my nose, snorting when I laughed, wearing white after Labor Day - I just was who I was.
That all changed one day at the tender age of twelve when I was getting ready for a family photo. We were having a formal family portrait taken with our dogs (doesn't everyone do that?), and I was getting frustrated with my bangs. I couldn't get them to do whatever a twelve-year-old in 1985 wanted bangs to do.
So I went into my parents' bathroom, all dressed up, with my hair done as best I could manage, and asked my mother, "Am I pretty?" She looked at me and said, "You will be when we get your nose done."
I was stunned. My nose, as noses tend to be, was right in the middle of my face, and I had just been told that it was ugly. So long, innocence.
To be fair, let the record show that my mother has absolutely no recollection of making this comment. I know this because in high school I took a class called Human Development, taught by Mrs. Wildflower. In it we had to keep a journal (her name was Mrs. Wildflower - what did you expect?), and when Mrs. Wildflower read my story about the nose incident, she called my parents. That afternoon I came home to find my mother crying. She said, "I never said that. I'd never say something like that." I'm sure she was telling the truth as she remembered it.
Nonetheless, I had my nose done the minute I turned sixteen. Or didn't you hear? But what I realized as a twelve-year-old was bigger than that I was destined for the plastic surgeon's chair. I realized that how other people saw me wasn't necessarily how I saw myself. Feeling pretty or smart or happy wasn't all there was to it. What I hadn't considered before was how I was perceived. And it wasn't the last criticism I'd hear about my nose.
Little did I know then how huge a role public perception would play in my life. My nose, and pretty much every other "prominent" body part and feature, would be prey to gossip and tabloids in just a few years. But the unwanted attention wasn't limited to my body.
According to the press, I was the rich, spoiled daughter of TV producer Aaron Spelling. They claimed I grew up in California's largest single-family residence. They said that my father had fake snow made on his Beverly Hills lawn for Christmas. They said I was the ultimate example of nepotism, a lousy actor who nonetheless scored a lead role in her father's hit TV show. They pigeonholed me as my character on Beverly Hills, 90210 : Donna Martin, the ditzy blonde virgin. They later talked about my wedding, my divorce, and my second wedding. They reported that I'd been disinherited and was feuding with my mother. They told about the birth of my son. What I learned from my ugly nose was true times a million: The details of my life were and would always be considered public property.
Some of what you may have read about me is accurate (my father did hire a snow machine for Christmas), some false (I didn't live in that enormous house until I was seventeen), and some exaggerated (I wasn't "disinherited"). But all the while the life I was living was much more than that. I lived in fear of my own doll collection. I let a bad boyfriend spend my 90210 salary. I planned a fairy-tale wedding to the wrong man. I begged casting directors to forget that Donna Martin ever existed. I was working hard and shopping like crazy. I was falling in love and getting hurt.
My life has been funnier and sadder and richer and poorer than any of the magazines know. Public opinion dies hard. To this day I still look in the mirror and hate my nose. Still, everyone else has been telling stories about me for decades now. It's about time I told a few of my own.
Chapter One: X Marks the Spot
Here's the part of my book where I'm supposed to say, Sure, my family had lots of money, but I had a normal childhood just like everyone else. Yeah, I could say that, but I'd be lying. My childhood was really weird. Not better or worse than anyone else's childhood, but definitely different.
Part of it was the whole holiday thing. My parents liked to make a spectacle, and the press ate it up. Like I said, it's true that my father got snow for our backyard one Christmas. But that's only half the story, if anyone's counting he actually did it twice. The first time was when I was five. My father told our family friend Aunt Kay that he wanted me to have a white Christmas. She did some research, made a few calls, and at six a.m. on Christmas Day a truck from Barrington Ice in Brentwood pulled up to our house.
My dad, Aunt Kay, and a security guard dragged garbage bags holding eight tons of ice into the back where there was plastic covering a fifteen-foot-square patch of the yard. They spread the snow out over the plastic, Dad with a pipe hanging from his mouth. To complete the illusion, they added a Styrofoam snowman that my father had ordered up from the props department at his studio. It was eighty degrees out, but they dressed me up in a ski jacket and hat and brought me out into the yard, exclaiming, "Oh, look, it snowed! In all of Los Angeles it snowed right here in your backyard! Aren't you a lucky girl?"
I'm sure that little white patch was as amazing to a five-year-old as seeing a sandbox for the first time, but my parents didn't stop there. Five years later they were thinking bigger, and technology was too. This time, again with Aunt Kay's guidance, my dad hired a snow machine to blow out so much powder that it not only filled the tennis court, it created a sledding hill at one end of the court. I was ten and my brother, Randy, was five. They dressed us in full-on snowsuits (the outfits were for the photos, of course it was a typical eighty-five degrees out). According to Aunt Kay, the sledding hill lasted three days and everyone came to see the snow in Beverly Hills: Robert Wagner, Mel Brooks & not that I noticed or cared. Randy and I spent Christmas running up the hill and zooming down in red plastic saucer sleds. Even our dogs got to slide down the hill. It was a pretty spectacular day for an L.A. girl.
My parents didn't get the concept of having me grow up like other kids. When I was about eight, my class took a field trip to my dad's studio. It was a fun day - my father showed us around and had some surprises planned, such as a stuntman breaking "glass" over some kid's head. But then, at the end of the day, the whole class stood for a photo. My father and I were in the back row. Just before the shutter clicked, he picked me up and held me high above the class. My face in the photo says it all. I was beyond embarrassed that my father was lifting me up like that. I just wanted to fit in. When I complained to him, he said, "But you couldn't be seen." He just didn't get it.
And then there were the birthday parties. The setting was always the backyard of our house on the corner of Mapleton and Sunset Boulevard in Holmby Hills, a fancy area on the west side of Los Angeles. It was a very large house - though not the gigantic manor where everyone thinks I grew up - maybe 10,000 square feet. It was designed by the noted L.A. architect Paul Williams, whose many public buildings include the famous Beverly Hills Hotel. A house he designed in Bel-Air was used for exterior scenes of the Colby mansion on my dad's television series The Colbys. Our house's back lawn was probably an acre surrounded by landscaping with a pool and tennis court, the regular features of houses in that neighborhood.
As I remember it, the theme for my birthdays was always Raggedy Ann, and there would be a doll centerpiece and rented tables and chairs with matching tablecloths, napkins, and cups. But every party had some new thrill. There were carnival moon bounces, which weren't common then as they are today, and fair booths lined up on both sides of the lawn offering games of ringtoss, balloon darts, duck floats, Whac-A-Mole, and the like. One birthday had a dancing poodle show conducted by a man in a circus ringleader's outfit. Another included a puppet show with life-size puppets. And one year we had a surprise visit from Smidget, who at the time was the smallest living horse. My godfather, Dean Martin, whom I called Uncle Bean, always brought me a money tree - a little tree with rolled up twenty-dollar bills instead of leaves. Just what a girl like me needed.
When my sixth-grade class graduated, we had a party at my house for which my father hired the USC marching band. Apparently, my dad first approached UCLA, but they said no. According to Aunt Kay, who organized a lot of these parties for my parents, my father told her, "Money is no object." Well, it must have been an object to the USC marching band because all one hundred plus members showed up to play "Pomp and Circumstance" and whatever else marching bands come up with to play at sixth-grade graduations. I have to admit I didn't even remember the marching band's presence until Aunt Kay told me about it.
What I remember are the things a twelve-year-old remembers: the rented dance floor and the DJ and hoping that the boy I liked would ask me to slow dance to "Crazy for You" by Madonna. I remember swimming in the pool. I remember feeling sad that we were all moving on to different schools. I remember being only mildly embarrassed that my mother was hula hooping on the dance floor, but I'm sure I was truly embarrassed by the marching band.
My parents were endlessly generous, and those parties were spectacular & on paper. The reality was a little more complicated. For every birthday and Christmas my big present was always a Madame Alexander doll. Madame Alexander dolls are classic, collectible dolls. Sort of like a rich man's Barbie, but - at least in my house - they were meant for display, not play. My mother loved the best of the best, for herself and for me. She was known for her Dynasty-style jewelry - quarter-size emeralds dangling off nickel-size diamonds. Most attention-grabbing was the forty-four-carat diamond ring she always wore. That's right - no typo. Forty-four carats. Walking around with that thing must have been as good as weight lifting. I always begged her not to wear the ring to school functions. But that was her everyday style - put together in blouses with Chanel belts, slim jeans, Chanel flats, perfectly manicured red nails, and a heavy load of jewelry worth millions of dollars.
As for the Madame Alexander dolls, every birthday, as soon as I unwrapped them, they were whisked away, tags still attached, to a special display case in my room that had a spotlight for each doll. No way in hell was I allowed to dress and undress them or (God forbid!) cut their hair. Every time I unwrapped a present, my heart sank a little bit when I saw that same powder blue box. I knew that all I had was a new, untouchable doll to add to my expensive collection. But my mother would be smiling with pleasure. She loved the dolls, had always coveted them as a girl, and wanted me to have something special. I didn't want to hurt her feelings, so I always thanked her and acted excited - she had no idea that all I wanted (at some point) was a Barbie Dream House.
So now imagine another birthday party. I was four or five. The great lawn was festooned with balloons and streamers. Colorful booths lined the perimeter of its downward slope. And in the center of it all was a mysterious white sheet with a big red X painted across it.
In the middle of the festivities a plane flew overhead. I was just starting to read, but our family friend Aunt Kay had spent all morning teaching me how to read Happy Birthday, Tori. Not coincidentally, the plane was pulling a banner saying just that. I read it and was thrilled and proud, jumping up and down and clapping my hands in excitement. Aunt Kay waved to the pilot, and he dropped a little parachute with a mystery gift attached to its strings. So dramatic! It was supposed to hit the X on the sheet, but instead, it landed in a tree. One of the carnival workers had to climb the tree to get it down. I later found out that Aunt Kay had to get special permits for the plane to fly that low over the house.
As soon as my present was liberated, I ran to the box and pulled away the padding until I got to the present. I tore open the wrapping paper, and there it was. The powder blue box. Another Madame Alexander doll. This one was a surprise, along with the plane, from Aunt Kay. (Some of my most valuable dolls were gifts from her collection.) My friends oohed and aahed, and I fake-squealed with joy. Then I handed the doll over to my mother so her dress wouldn't get dirty.
At some point I wondered if all these spectacular events were actually being done for me. Really, how many sixth-grade girls' biggest fantasy is for a college marching band to play at their graduation? Take Halloween. When I was five or six, my mother decided I would go as a bride. No polyester drugstore costume for me, no sir. Halloween found me wearing a custom bridal gown made by the noted fashion designer Nolan Miller, with padded boobs and false eyelashes. And, like many Halloweens, I wore high heels. It wasn't easy to find heels for a young child, so my mother went through the Yellow Pages until she found a "little person" store that sold grownup shoes in my size.
Then there was the Marie Antoinette costume my mother had Nolan Miller make for me when I was nine or ten. My five-year-old brother, Randy, was Louis XVI (a costume that actually suited him - even at that young age, he was already showing a taste for the finer things. We'd go to a restaurant and he'd tell the waiter, "For my appetizer I'll have the escargot.") My Marie Antoinette costume had golden brocade, a boned bodice, and gigantic hip bustles. It was topped off with an enormous powdered wig of ringlets so heavy that I got my first headache. I looked like one of those Madame Alexander dolls ofwhich my mother was so fond. Meanwhile, Randy got off easy in a ruffled red coat and a comparatively lightweight wig.
My parents drove their young royals to the flats of Beverly Hills, L.A.'s prime trick-or-treating turf. The houses were closer together than those in our neighborhood but still inhabited by rich people who didn't think twice about giving out full-size candy bars. Not that we got to keep any of the candy we collected anyway. My mother was paranoid about hidden razor blades and poisoned chocolate, so she always confiscated our booty and replaced it with bags she'd painstakingly assembled herself.
As I wobbled my way down the street trying to adjust to my new center of gravity, some kids threw raw eggs at me. I barely felt the first couple - they must have hit my bustle. But then, as if in slow motion, I saw two eggs coming toward us, one at me, one at my brother. Randy darted out of the line of fire, but I couldn't escape because of my enormous petticoats. An egg hit me in the ear. I wish I could at least claim it was some French immigrants avenging their eighteenth-century proletariat ancestors, but I think I was just caught in run-of-the-mill vampire/Jedi knight cross fire.
After the Marie Antoinette debacle, I'd had it. When Halloween rolled around again, I begged to be anything other than a historical figure. I wanted to be a plain old bunny. You know, the classic Halloween costume: plastic mask, grocery bag for candy, jacket hiding the one-piece paper outfit. My mother agreed to the bunny concept. But instead of drawn-on whiskers and bunny ears on a headband, I had a hand-sewn bunny costume, which had me in (fake) fur from head to toe with just my face showing. Who was I to complain? It was the best bunny costume a girl could ever want. Unfortunately, after four houses I had an allergy attack and had to go home.
For all the effort and fanfare my parents put into my childhood, I'm most sentimental about some of the lower-key indulgences, the ones that had nothing to do with how I was dressed or what kind of party our family could throw. We have a beach house in Malibu, and whenever we went there, my mother and I would walk out to the end of our beach to pick shells. (This is the same beach house where Dean Martin, my Uncle Bean, came to stay for a summer during his divorce. He was a huge golfer and traveled with a stockpile of golf balls that had his autograph printed on them. Every morning he'd set up a driving range on the private beach in front of our house and shoot golf balls into the ocean. People from all sides of the beach would be diving into the water to collect those golf balls as souvenirs, but Uncle Bean would just keep hitting the balls, completely oblivious.)
Anyway, whenever my mother and I went shelling, she always brought her purse, which wasn't suspicious since she smoked at the time. I'd hunt for shells and she'd urge me on, pointing me to spots I'd missed. It never took me long to find a few big, beautiful, polished seashells. I was always telling my friends that Malibu had the most amazing seashells.
My Malibu illusions were shattered when I was twelve. We took a family trip to Europe, but because my father refused to fly, we took the scenic route. It started with a three-day train trip to New York in a private train car attached to the back of a regular Amtrak train. We brought two nannies, my mother's assistant, and two security guards. From New York we took the Queen Elizabeth II to Europe. I loved the boat it had a shopping mall, restaurants, and a movie theater but what excited me most was that they had little arts-andcrafts activities scheduled for the kids. It was the closest to summer camp I ever got. (It was also the farthest from home I ever got. Every other family vacation was spent in Vegas, mostly because you could get there by car.) In England we made the tourist rounds: Trafalgar Square, Madame Tussaud's, and so on. Of course, when my mother saw the Crown Jewels at the Tower of London she commented, "I have a necklace bigger than that." It was true. She did. But I was talking about the breaking of the Malibu seashell mythology.
In England I was reading OK! or Hello! - one of those gossip magazines that were more respectable back in the eighties and I came across an interview with my parents. In it my mother talks about how she used to buy exotic seashells and hide them for me on the beach in Malibu. Total shock to me. So much for the beautiful seashells of Malibu. You know your family doesn't exactly communicate well when you find out things like this in weekly magazines.
Part of why I was upset about the seashells (beyond normal almost-teenage angst) was that it had only been the year before that I realized there was no Santa Claus or Easter Bunny. All I knew was that every year on the night before Easter, the Easter Bunny would call me on the phone and tell me to be a good girl. And every Christmas Eve the phone would ring and Santa's workers would inform my father that Santa had landed and he was approaching our house. A few moments later there'd be a knock at the door and & there was Santa. My brother and I would rush to greet him in our coordinated Christmas outfits. I'd be wearing a red overalls dress with a white shirt and red kneesocks, and Randy would be wearing red overalls shorts with a white shirt and red kneesocks. We'd sit on Santa's lap, one on each knee, and tell him what we wanted for Christmas. Then he'd tell us to get to bed early, that tomorrow was a big day, and he'd ho-ho-ho out the door. It didn't always go so smoothly - like the time that Randy peed on Santa's knee - but for the most part that was what had gone on for years, and I saw no reason to believe the kids at school when they said Santa was bunk. I saw him with my own eyes.
I probably would have kept believing if my cousin Meredith hadn't come over for a sleepover when I was eleven. She was a year older than I was, and that fact alone made her cool. I was really psyched that she was spending the night. It was Easter, and I must have said something about the Easter Bunny's imminent arrival because she was like, "You're kidding that you think there's an Easter Bunny." I said, "Yes, there is." Then she said, "Don't tell me you believe in Santa, too!" The kids at school were eleven like I was - what did they know? Why should I believe them? But Meredith was twelve. She knew stuff. I had to concede. If it hadn't been for her, who knows how long the charade might have gone on. Oh, and after that I never saw Meredith again. I think her disclosures convinced my parents that she was a bad influence.
As a kid I felt deceived to discover my parents had been lying, but now I realize it was pretty lovely. My mother loved decorating for and with us - coloring Easter eggs, carving jack-o'-lanterns, setting up moving Santa scenes at Christmastime. The seashells, the holiday characters, the decorations, these were pure, sweet moments that weren't about putting on a show, they were about making us happy. These were the heartfelt private gifts from my parents for which I never knew to thank them.
Looking back, what I remember with the most affection is being four years old and having a dad who would sit in the Jacuzzi with me and make up stories. My father was a slight man with slouchy shoulders that made him appear even smaller. For all his power in Hollywood, most of the time he'd appear in a jogging suit with a pipe. He spoke in a soft voice with a hint of Texas twang and would come right up to you to shake your hand or give you a hug even if he didn't know you well. The overall effect was very Wizard of Oz man-behind-the curtain - this unimposing, gentle guy is the famous Aaron Spelling? People always felt comfortable with him right away.
He and I would sit in the hot tub, and he'd be Hansel and I'd be Gretel and my mom (upstairs with a migraine) would be the witch. (Yes, I now think this is weird, if not psychologically damaging, that my father let me cast my unwitting mother as the villain. At least I can say that on the day I have in mind I kept looking up at the window of my mother's bedroom, hoping to see the shade go up, which meant the witch felt better and might join us at the pool.) Or we'd play Chasen's.
Chasen's restaurant, which is now closed, was a legendary celebrity hangout on Beverly Boulevard in Beverly Hills. Frank Sinatra, Alfred Hitchcock, Marilyn Monroe, Jimmy Stewart, and most of the Hollywood elite were regulars in their day. When I was a kid, the family would go to Chasen's on Mother's Day or Father's Day for a fancy celebration. So my dad and I would recline in the Jacuzzi and say, "We've just arrived at Chasen's. What should we order?"
A few years later I asked my parents for an allowance because the other kids at school had allowances. My father wanted to give me five dollars, but I wanted only twenty-five cents because that's what the other kids got. Dad told me that in order to earn my allowance, I'd have to help out around the house, so he gave me a job and said he'd do it with me. Every weekend we'd go out into the yard to scoop up dog poo and rake leaves.
That's right, every weekend TV mogul Aaron Spelling, net worth equivalent to some small island nation, went out and scooped poo with his daughter. We hadn't yet moved to the Manor - that enormous house that the press can't get over - but we still had a large yard and four dogs. And of course we had gardeners who were supposed to be taking care of all that. But there was always plenty for us to pick up, and I suspect he told the gardeners to leave it be. Sort of like the seashells, I guess - but a lot grosser. No matter, I loved it. I remember spending a lot of time out on that lawn, hanging out with my dad, playing softball, or working in the vegetable garden with him and my mother. One year we grew a zucchini that was as big as a baby. There are photos of me cradling it. My father was very proud - no matter what it was, our family liked the biggest and the best.
For the most part my father thought that money was the way to show love. Where do you think all those lavish jewels my mother wore came from? Every holiday he bought her a bigger and brighter bauble as if to prove his love. When I asked Aunt Kay to help me remember some of the extravagances, she said, "Money was no object. That's how much he loved you. There was no limit to what he would do for you." When my mom and I were planning my wedding, my father said almost the same thing: "She loves you so much. Do you know how much she's paying for this wedding? That's how much she loves you." When it comes down to it, luxury wasn't the substance of my childhood. Love was, simply, the time my parents gave me. What I wish my father had understood before he died is that of all those large-scale memories he and my mother spent so much money and energy creating, picking up poo is what has stayed with me my whole life.
Copyright © 2008 ABC News Internet Ventures
Monday, May 5, 2008
The Amazing Amazon Kindle
How to Use the Amazon Kindle for Email & Other Cool Tricks: Read and Answer Email Anywhere, Anytime on the Amazing Amazon Kindle (The Amazing Amazon Kindle) (Kindle Edition) by Stephen WindwalkerAuthor Stephen Windwalker's 6500-word article is a Kindle owner's dream, newly packed with great tips and resources including:
How to Use the Amazon Kindle for Email, A Dozen More Great Tips & Shortcuts to Help You Get the Most Out of Your Kindle, Play a Game on Your Kindle, Keep a Photo Album on Your Kindle, Bookmark Any Page, Paginate Your Home Page, Sort Your Home Page, Move Quickly Through a Document, Check the Time, Set a Personal Screen Saver, Skip a Song, Justify Your Text (or Not), Slideshow, A Favorite Source for Free Books, Refresh Revised Content At No Charge, Kindle Accessories, and Links to Great Guides and References.
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Life and Death are Wearing Me Out: A Novel By Mo Yan
Born Again
In the summer of 1976, as Chairman Mao lay on his deathbed in Beijing, the pigs at the Ximen Village Production Brigade Apricot Garden Pig Farm in Gaomi County, Shandong Province, also began to die. The first batch of five were found with “their skin dotted with purple splotches the size of bronze coins, their eyes open, as if they’d died with unresolved grievances.” The commune vet declared they had succumbed to “what we call the Red Death” and ordered them to be cremated and buried immediately. But it had been raining for weeks and the ground was too waterlogged. Dousing the carcasses with kerosene and trying to set them alight simply filled the farm with vile-smelling smoke. Soon 800 more pigs were infected. A fresh team of vets arrived by motorboat with more sophisticated medicines, but their ministrations were of little help. Dead pigs were piled up throughout the farm, their bloated forms expanding and exploding in the heat.Unable to bury the corpses, the farmers “had no choice but to wait until the veterinarians left and, in the fading light of dusk, load the carcasses onto a flatbed wagon and haul them down to the river, where they were tossed into the water to float downstream — out of sight and out of mind.” The farm was in ruins, proof that its “glorious days” were “now a thing of the past.” The foundations of the hog houses collapsed, and raging flood waters toppled the utility poles, cutting the commune off from the wider world. Thus it was only through the village’s single transistor radio that these farmers learned Mao had died. “How could Chairman Mao be dead? Doesn’t everyone say that he could live at least 158 years?”
Mo Yan’s powerful new novel, “Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out,” contains many such vivid set pieces. His canvas covers almost the entire span of his country’s revolutionary experience — from 1950 until 2000, in the so-called “reform era” of post-Deng Xiaoping China. At one level, therefore, “Life and Death” is a kind of documentary, carrying the reader across time from the land reform at the end of the Chinese Civil War, through the establishment of mutual-aid teams and lower-level cooperatives in the early and mid-1950s, into the extreme years of the Great Leap Forward and the famine of the late ’50s and early ’60s, and on to the steady erosion of the collective economy in the new era of largely unregulated “capitalism with socialist characteristics.” At the novel’s close, some of the characters are driving BMWs, while others are dyeing their hair blond and wearing gold rings in their noses.
Yet although one can say that the political dramas narrated by Mo Yan are historically faithful to the currently known record, “Life and Death” remains a wildly visionary and creative novel, constantly mocking and rearranging itself and jolting the reader with its own internal commentary. This is politics as pathology. From the start, the reader must be willing to share with Mo Yan the novel’s central conceit: that the five main narrators are not humans but animals, albeit ones who speak with sharply modulated human voices. Each of the successive narrators — a donkey, an ox, a pig, a dog, a monkey — are the sequential reincarnations of a man named
Ximen Nao, as determined by Yama, lord of the underworld.
Ximen Nao, a 30-year-old wealthy landlord in Gaomi County, is shot on a cold December day at point-blank range by one of his fellow villagers in the first period of land reform after the Communist takeover. Confident that his life on earth has been honest, constructive and valuable to the community, that he has been a good son and devoted father, a loving spouse to a principal wife and two concubines, Ximen Nao protests against the injustice of his fate. Yama responds by observing that it is well known that many people “who deserve to die somehow live on while those who deserve to live die off.” Therefore, Yama agrees to grant a transmigration for Ximen Nao, and it is from that moment that he returns to earth, first in animal and finally again in human form.
Ximen Nao, a 30-year-old wealthy landlord in Gaomi County, is shot on a cold December day at point-blank range by one of his fellow villagers in the first period of land reform after the Communist takeover. Confident that his life on earth has been honest, constructive and valuable to the community, that he has been a good son and devoted father, a loving spouse to a principal wife and two concubines, Ximen Nao protests against the injustice of his fate. Yama responds by observing that it is well known that many people “who deserve to die somehow live on while those who deserve to live die off.” Therefore, Yama agrees to grant a transmigration for Ximen Nao, and it is from that moment that he returns to earth, first in animal and finally again in human form.
Such a fictional procedure is, of course, fraught with difficulties of tone and narration. The five different animal narrators must describe their own experiences in their own animal voices, tinged with some of the emotions and knowledge of their previous lives on earth. Their main anchor to what we might call reality lies in the fact that each has some connection to Ximen Nao’s surviving hired hand, Lan Lian, a tough, dour, hard-working farmer who insists on clinging to his own small plot of family land and adamantly refuses to join any of the successive socialist organizations. Willful, proud and enduring, Lan Lian is the owner or companion of each of the animals in turn. They share their scanty rations and labor together. Though they cannot talk to one another, Lan Lian somehow senses in each of these five beings some joint and nostalgic memory of his own murdered landlord.
Such a brief summary may make the book sound too cute when it is, in fact, harsh and gritty, raunchy and funny. The revolutionaries’ village politics are deadly; sex in the village (whether human or animal) is flamboyant and consuming. Death is unexpected and usually violent. Coincidences of plotting abound. The zaniest events are depicted with deadpan care, and their pathos is caught at countless moments by the fluent and elegant renderings of the veteran translator Howard Goldblatt. One might have thought it impossible, but each animal does comment with its own distinctive voice — the mordant view of the multiple deaths on the pig farm, for instance, comes largely from the reincarnated pig persona. In addition, either Lan Lian or some other human will often pick up the burden of narration and commentary.
The book’s author is also frequently in evidence within the narrative structures. His limitations as a writer and a person are consistently mocked, and we are regularly reminded by Mo Yan the author that the character of Mo Yan represented in the novel is not to be trusted. “Mo Yan was never much of a farmer,” we are told. “His body may have been on the farm, but his mind was in the city. Lowborn, he dreamed of becoming rich and famous; ugly as sin, he sought the company of pretty girls; generally ill-informed, he passed himself off as a knowledgeable academic. And with all that, he managed to establish himself as a writer, someone who dined on tasty pot stickers in Beijing every day.” By the end of the novel, Mo Yan has developed a separate existence as one of the main characters. It is at his home in the city of Xi’an that Lan Lian’s son is able to take shelter with his lover for five difficult years. Mo Yan even makes sure that the couple have a supply of Japanese condoms.
“Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out” is not unremittingly hostile to the Communist system, and at times Mo Yan seems eager to rebuild the very bridges he has been burning. “I have nothing against the Communist Party,” Lan Lian says at one despairing stage, “and I definitely have nothing against Chairman Mao. I’m not opposed to the People’s Commune or to collectivization. I just want to be left alone to work for myself.” But such reassurances of party loyalty seem frail in the context of such a vast, cruel and complex story.
The kind of critique that we find in this book has many echoes within China today. In his new novel, “Wolf Totem,” Jiang Rong includes a ferocious account of the battle between a starving wolf pack and a herd of wild horses that seems tightly geared to showing the value of older ways of living in the steppe, in contrast with the ultimately disastrous values insisted on by the Party. Mo Yan has his own version of such a battle in his account of the donkeys’ struggle against the wolves near the collective farm. Yan Lianke’s “Serve the People!” gives a common soldier and his mistress, the wife of the division commander, a summer of passionate lovemaking, culminating in a wild and randy spree in which they smash all the once-treasured artifacts and memorabilia of Mao Zedong and his outmoded, pointless policies. Such antipolitical passion also surfaces in many of the sexual entanglements Mo Yan describes in “Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out.” It seems that novels in China are coming into their own, that new freedoms of expression are being claimed by their authors. Mao has become a handy villain. One wonders how much longer his successors will be immune from similar treatment.
From: The New York Times: By JONATHAN SPENCE: May 4, 2008
A WOLF AT THE TABLE: A Memoir of My Father By Augusten Burroughs
Returning to the Past and Finding the Bogeyman Is Still There
When Augusten Burroughs wrote “Running With Scissors,” he regaled readers with hilarious tales of the domestic craziness he endured while growing up. Now in another family memoir Mr. Burroughs makes a crazy move of his own. “A Wolf at the Table” is a portrait of the author’s apparently maniacal and Augusten-hating father. Determinedly unfunny, awkwardly histrionic and sometimes anything but credible, it repudiates everything that put Mr. Burroughs on the map.
It’s a bad sign when a book’s cover graphic packs more of a wallop than the text does. But “A Wolf at the Table” startles from afar by depicting a demonic-looking red fork, its tines bent like evil claws, seeming to point menacingly at some hapless victim. Enter the baby Augusten: the author channels his frightened 1 ½-year-old self. He does this with a burst of psychodrama that seems to have been editor-proof.
“Through this pinprick hole I could see the world,” he writes about sitting in his high chair, peeking through the perforations in a saltine cracker. Well, at least he’s not writing in fragments. But by the next page he is. “The thick slippery feel of my bottle’s rubber nipple inside my mouth,” he recalls verblessly. “The shocking, sudden emptiness that fills me when it’s pulled away.”
Well, at least he’s not invoking his toddler years in the present tense. And at least he’s not displaying Joycean affectations. But a line or two later, he is: “High above me is my crib, my homebox, my goodcage, but it’s up, up, up.” And: “I am alone in the awake-pit with the terrible bright above my head.” In case the cause for this free-floating distress is not apparent, Mr. Burroughs soon fingers his culprit. “On the other side of the door,” he writes, “He is laughing.”
He may find twisted humor in little Augusten’s situation, but it’s hardly clear why. “A Wolf at the Table” is as vague as it is hyperbolic about whatever was wrong with the author’s wicked father. This book indicates that the father drank heavily and quarreled with Augusten’s mother (to the point that they separated, and the father was a mere psoriasis-plagued memory by the time of Running with Scissors"). He was away from home a lot and was none too glad to see Augusten when he got back, not even when Augusten greeted him in a homemade dog costume. Don’t even ask what the old man did to Ernie, Augusten’s beloved pet guinea pig. But beyond that, the nature of this book’s indictment is unclear.
A photograph of Mr. Burroughs’s father, accompanying a recent article in The New York Times, depicted a fierce-looking, hollow-eyed man. Unfortunately for “A Wolf at the Table” that image was much more disturbing than anything Mr. Burroughs has put on the page.
Sometimes the book reduces the child to cartoon-character indignation. (“My hatred for him nearly caused my skin to steam, and I was constantly plotting revenge for one thing or another,” he fumes about his older brother.) Some of it exaggerates the simplest details to make them sinister. (The belts in the father’s drawer are said to be “coiled like snakes.”) And some of it pumps heavily metaphoric importance into minor-sounding incidents, clumsily ratcheting up the drama of the boy’s early life. Why was he too filled with dread to eat red velvet cake at a birthday party? Can the answer have been interesting enough to warrant inclusion in this book?
Since it can’t, “A Wolf at the Table” plants the dangerous idea that Mr. Burroughs’s story is a life milked dry. “Dry” was another of his memoirs, detailing a history of substance abuse; “Sellevision” was about his experiences in the advertising business; “Magical Thinking” wasn’t about much of anything. “Possible Side Effects” described the writer’s experience of being on a book tour, something that is also mentioned in the epilogue to the new book.
Prose about book tours attests that Mr. Burroughs has exhausted his vein of autobiographical nonfiction, just as surely as the fate of Ernie (“rigid in his sludge, his feces-caked mouth open in a scream”) proved Mr. Burroughs’s father to be a lousy rodent custodian.
Once it escapes the high chair and begins casting about for material, the author’s recovered memory yields a few stories about his parents’ turbulent and doomed marriage; little Augusten’s crush on a workman (“I had to run away, because there existed the very real danger that I would run to him, leap right up into his arms, and smother him with kisses, like some icky girl”), a few phantasmagorically violent daydreams about the harm Augusten’s father might inflict; and scenes of wild, over-the-top action, written with an assonance (“the jabbing slash of his flashlight”) that bodes badly for a Burroughs move toward poetry. No less strained are this book’s efforts to animate the universe in ways that foreshadow the boy’s burgeoning sexuality: “There were cunning little birds in brazen colors that flashed about like wild thoughts and perverse impulses.”
By the time “A Wolf at the Table” reaches its foregone conclusion — that the father will die and leave his son in some mournful semblance of peace — there is a new kind of suspense in the air. It involves Mr. Burroughs’s literary future. He remains a writer with a large and loyal following, a fluent and funny storyteller whenever he actually has stories to tell. Maybe those stories needn’t be so personal. Maybe his range can expand beyond tales of dysfunction. And maybe some thoughts belong on the page more than others do. No matter how plagued he is by the abuses of the past, he needn’t have confessed here to having had an erotic dream about visiting a mass murderer on death row.
From: Books of The Times: By JANET MASLIN: May 1, 2008
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
This Charming Man by Marian Keyes
'Everybody remembers where they were the day they heard that Paddy de Courcy was getting married'. Lola has every reason to be interested in who Paddy's marrying - because although she's his girlfriend, she definitely isn't the bride-to-be. Heartbroken, she flees the city for a cottage by the sea. But will Lola's retreat prove as idyllic as she hopes? Not if journalist Grace has anything to do with it. She wants the inside story on the de Courcy engagement and thinks Lola holds the key. Grace knew Paddy a long time ago. But why can't she forget him? Grace's sister, Marnie, might have the answer but she also has issues with the past. Her family is wonderful but they can't take away memories of her first love: a certain Paddy de Courcy. What will it take for Marnie to be able to move on? And what of the future Mrs de Courcy...Alicia is determined to be the perfect politician's wife. But does she know the real Paddy de Courcy? Four very different women. One awfully charming man. And the dark secret that binds them all...
About The Author : Marian Keyes is the internationally bestselling author of Watermelon, Lucy Sullivan is Getting Married, Rachel's Holiday, The Last Chance Saloon, Angels, Sushi for Beginners, Under the Duvet, and The Other Side of the Story. Her books have touched readers around the world, and they are now published in 35 countries and in many different languages. Millions of copies of her books have been sold worldwide.
About The Author : Marian Keyes is the internationally bestselling author of Watermelon, Lucy Sullivan is Getting Married, Rachel's Holiday, The Last Chance Saloon, Angels, Sushi for Beginners, Under the Duvet, and The Other Side of the Story. Her books have touched readers around the world, and they are now published in 35 countries and in many different languages. Millions of copies of her books have been sold worldwide.
Sail By James Patterson, Howard Roughan
Editorial Reviews
Since the death of her husband, Anne Dunne and her three children have struggled in every way. In a last ditch effort to save the family, Anne plans an elaborate sailing vacation to bring everyone together once again. But only an hour out of port, everything is going wrong. The teenage daughter, Carrie, is planning to drown herself. The teenage son, Mark, is high on drugs and ten-year-old Ernie is nearly catatonic. This is the worst vacation ever.Anne manages to pull things together bit by bit, but just as they begin feeling like a family again, something catastrophic happens. Survival may be the least of their concerns. Written with the blistering pace and shocking twists that only James Patterson can master, SAIL takes "Lost" and "Survivor" to a new level of terror.
About the Author James Patterson's most recent bestseller is Double Cross. He is one of the best known and best selling authors of all time. He lives in Florida.
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