How To Be a Daring Girl

Also: Amor Towles and other discoveries I made very close to home

Readers: Where’s the strangest place you found a book you ended up taking home and reading? Writers: have you ever planted a copy of your book in an unexpected location hoping it will find a reader or two?

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I Dare You To Take This Book

Frida and Lily are learning how to walk on a leash. I am in charge of helping them. So, each day, we spend some time walking around the neighborhood, which is to say they charge ahead like wild ponies one minute then screech to a halt the next in order to mark a patch of grass or smell the local news left by other animals. I untangle them, feed them treats and try to reward them each time they allow another dog to pass on the other side of the street without comment. 

They fail to appreciate that the walk is an opportunity for me to sniff around and take in my world too. For example, I try to observe the progress of the fig tree in my neighbor’s yard, see what folks are setting out on the curb with a hand-written sign saying “FREE,” or have planted in the alley like this chair just waiting for a director to sit in it and yell “Action.”

Last week we’d nearly made it to the cliffs when, just in front of the last house on my right, on the little stone wall surrounding the front garden, lay a book: a worn copy of The Daring Book for Girls by Andrea Buchanan and Miriam Peskowitz. I couldn’t take my eyes off it. While the dogs tugged me forward and then swirled impatiently around my ankles, I began to leaf through this book with the fascinating title. Lumped in with some of the games and crafts I remember from when I was a Brownie in Girl Scouts (how to make a sit-upon, telling ghost stories, slumber party games) I saw chapters titled:

• How to be a Spy

• Finance, Interest, Stocks and Bonds

• How to Negotiate a Salary

• Going to Africa

• How to Whistle with Two Fingers

• Books That Will Change Your Life

• Climbing

I put the book down. I picked it up again. I weighed the risks of hanging onto the book and the two dogs for the entire three-mile walk. I decided that it was the kind of daring move a daring girl would make. The book fell from my arms a few times on the way home but we made it and I have been poking around in that book ever since. 

Turns out, naturally, that the boys got their book first. The authors of “Daring Girls” and its sequel The Double Daring Book for Girls  were inspired by Conn Iggulden who wrote The Dangerous Book for Boys with his sons Arthur and Cameron and followed up with his own sequel, The Double Dangerous Book for Boys. 

Maybe the titles oversell the contents just a tad. How daring is it to make a sit-upon or learn about real-life modern-day princesses? On the other hand, how easy is it to just be a kid at all any more? And the informational nuggets embedded throughout – “Modern Women Leaders,” “A Short History of Women Olympic Firsts,” “Queens of the Ancient World,” “Explorers,” “Reading Tide Charts,” “Making a Seine Net” – reward a reader with knowledge that inspires or demystifies the kinds of questions a girl might not even think to ask but empower her when she knows the answer. 

Not that all the instructions are foolproof. I have always wanted to whistle with two fingers. I followed the instructions to the T. Nothing came out but the faint wheeze that has always come out when I’ve tried to whistle. And the instructions for tying a sari tied me in knots. 

But I liked the fresh sense of possibility that comes with just trying something. As I leafed through the book, I picked up a faint echo of summer days when I was a girl sleeping overnight in my friend’s field while bats soared overhead and every rustle of the trees made us dive into our sleeping bags. It was a long night but the world seemed bigger in the morning. A girl needs that. 

Going Back In Time With Amor Towles

After telling myself I really ought to get around to reading A Gentleman in Moscow, by Amor Towles, I borrowed a copy from the local branch of our library last month thinking that it could not possibly live up to the praise showered upon it since its launch in 2016. I was wrong. I sank into this story about Alexander Rostov, a Russian aristocrat who is sentenced in 1922 to house arrest in Moscow’s Hotel Metropol where he must remain for the rest of his life. 

“A Gentleman” is a big, sumptuous old-fashioned kind of novel with a richly drawn-protagonist and a cast of equally funny, graceful, rich supporting players including a child whose presence causes all adults around her to change. A period piece with timeless themes: how to live when circumstances change, discovering purpose, love, friendship, family and reconciling those things we can control with those we can’t. Rich, romantic, funny, dark, full of heart. 

For the first time in ages, I read to savor instead of to analyze. I have long since finished it but cannot bring myself to return it yet to the library. I don’t know why. Reading it again now would feel like eating two lobsters back to back. To savor the second round, it is important to fully digest the first and allow some time to pass – don’t you think? 

My solution to the problem arrived via a neighbor who was exercising her dogs at the beach one early morning when we were there. Although she lives only one and half blocks down and I pass her house every day, I’d known her only distantly and from her book club which had discussed Casualties a while back. In seconds we were talking about books and she had just finished Towles’ third novel: The Lincoln Highway. Would I like to borrow it? Yes, I would. 

It’s good, very good. But it lacked something of the magic I found in A Gentleman in Moscow,. 

The Lincoln Highway  is a straight-out road story/coming-of-age novel that unfolds over ten days in 1954, a year Towles picked because it was a time when so many things were “about to happen but hadn’t happened yet.” The story comes to us not from the perspective of a single protagonist but in the voices of a group of characters ranging from 18-year-old Duchess, the son of a drunk and conman, to Billy, an eight-year-old whose presence both centers and illuminates the entire story. As the title suggests, the actual Lincoln Highway, Route 44, is the road all travel one way or another to get where they want to go. Some make it to their destinations. Others do not. Towles’ site has a great summary of it and I really enjoyed listening to him explain how he purposefully “changed things up” for each of his novels in the video clip below: 

Both books got me thinking about the attractions of reading and writing a period novel. Looking back in time is not distressing in the same way reading a novel set in the current moment (or as current as any novel can catch a moment). Both reader and writer can explore themes that are universal and eternal without the same urgency. There is room to breathe and poke around and quietly realize how humans and their behavior and concerns don’t change all that much over the years. We can take our own measure of how far, or not, we’ve come since the period in question. 

I’ve taken a look at the first pages of Towles’ first novel, Rules of Civility, another period piece set in 1930’s Manhattan, and the truth is I’m not sure I’m going to love it. I am, however, going to read it. I’m curious about Towle’s evolution as a writer. 

Finally: First Fiction From the Famous

My most recent find is a glimpse into the early days of 41 famous writers – before they were famous and before they were good. I was about a mile and a half from home when I spotted the newest “Little Free Library” on my regular route. I crossed the street as soon as the man with the two large boxers had finished browsing. A few mysteries. A thriller or two. Some kid’s books. Then, right in front, on its side, a white paperback called First Fiction, an anthology of the first stories well-known writers ever published. 

The writers include Shirley Jackson, Ernest Hemingway, Norman Mailer, Margaret Atwood, Charles Bukowski, William Faulkner, Muriel Spark, Kurt Vonnegut, Alice Munro, James Baldwin, Alice Walker, Dorothy Parker, Ursula Le Guin. 

There was no question, this one was coming home with me even though I had not learned my lesson from the The Daring Book for Girls to never leave home without a satchel. I tucked the book under my arm, made a bargain with the dogs, and somehow we made it home.

Live Longer and Happier With a Good Book 

In case the benefits of reading were not already obvious, here is a short list of the reasons you should feed your brain some good books courtesy of Spark Community member Harald P. We’ve also added Literally, the blog from Scribd, to our list of Resources for Readers and Book Clubs who are looking for their next audiobook or online read.

Before we go…

We’re half-way through the year: what were your top three reads for the first half of 2022?

That’s it for this fine summer Saturday. Let me know how you are and let us all know what you’re reading. Wherever possible the books mentioned here are available on the Spark Community Recommendations Page at bookshop.org where every sale supports local bookstores. If we earn enough commission we will donate it to a literacy program chosen by the community.

Ciao for now.

Gratefully,

Betsy

P.S. And now, your moment of Zen…Lily, daring girl, on a mission

Click to see if how low she goes…

egmarro_spark

A post shared by Betsy Marro (@egmarro_spark)

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