July 14th is Bastille Day in France. It’s France’s equivalent of our Independence Day, when France and people of French ancestry around the globe celebrate the storming of the notorious Parisian fortress-prison, which set its revolution in motion in 1789. The events of that day, the events of that time, also inspired some of our most enduring classic literature.

Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities, Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables and Baroness Orczy’s Scarlet Pimpernel place characters in the Bastille. Hugo, Voltaire and the Marquis de Sade were but three of the well-known authors who were imprisoned at some time in the Bastille. During one of his several incarcerations, Sade handwrote the manuscript for The 120 Days of Sodom, considered his crowning achievement and the cornerstone of his thought.

The often recited opening lines of A Tale of Two Cities, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,” describes the years leading up to the French Revolution. The English romantic poet, Percy Bysshe Shelly, described the French revolution as “the master theme of the epoch”. Another English poet, William Blake, wrote the book-length poem The French Revolution. He felt there was a strong connection between the American and French revolutions, that these revolutions had a universal and historical impact.

One of the most famous and mysterious prisoners of The Bastille came to be known as “the man in the iron mask”. Many theories were spun about the identity of the prisoner who went by different names over his 34 years in the custody of the same jailer. Voltaire theorized he was an illegitimate half-brother of King Louis XIV. Alexander Dumas used this theory in his book The Vicomte de Bragelonne, but made the prisoner an identical twin of Louis XIV. This book has served as the basis of the movie The Man in the Iron Mask.

The Fall of the Bastille is credited as having greatly influenced Gothic literature through representations of prisons and imprisonment. Castles and imprisonment also feature prominently in Lord Byron’s Romantic-era The Prisoner of Chillon, a verse narrative inspired by the story of Francois Bonivard, a sixteenth-century Swiss monk imprisoned at the Chateau de Chillon for political activism. Even a children’s book, The Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett, references the Bastille as a place a child imagines herself to be in as a way to cope with abuses she must endure.

Open that bottle of champagne, enjoy that croissant with a creamy slathering of brie, and sweeten your day with a lovely light crepe. But don’t forget to salute Bastille Day by picking up one of the many books influenced by that day and those times.

Now that we are officially in summer – both by the calendar and by sultry weather – lists are sprouting like weeds, recommending books for “summer reading”. It’s a funny concept – that some books are more appropriate to one season than another; that summer brings out lighter literary works in the same way it brings out lighter clothing.

School may be out and vacations may be in but our brains and imagination crave stimulation. Yet, there is that odd thing called a “summer read”. What, exactly, does that mean? How does a book qualify? Why would we want to use our valuable time reading a book that is recommended for the summer, as if it would be less worthy in other seasons?

I decided to check out some of this year’s summer reading recommendation lists. Many books carry a summer theme, which I thought would be better to read in the dead of winter when one pines for those sizzling summer days and steamy nights (how quickly we forget that we try to dodge summer’s discomforts by seeking the nearest chilled environment). Some books on the lists seem light enough to blow away like the puffball seeds of a dandelion flower. There are also books that sound like they’d be spectacular reads, no matter the season; they just happened to debut at the start of summer. Like summer travel, there’s a destination to suit every taste and interest.

You can check various lists of “summer reads” if you’re so inclined. You can order books online, to be shipped to wherever you find yourself. You can download a boatload of books if digital is your preferred reading source. If you ask me, summer should be the time to stroll to your local bookstore or library, saunter through in relaxed summer style and let books pull you in. Kind of like waves along a shoreline that beckon and promise to share secrets hidden below the water’s surface, if you accept their invitation.

I suppose if one lives long enough, one will experience war up close or from a distance. Our attitudes toward war, toward those who engage in it or are subject to its consequences, are influenced by the times and circumstances in which we live, by the people we know, by the experiences we have … and by the books we read.

Every war generates its own literature in its time and in later generations. The same war does not automatically generate the same story, or viewpoint, or reader response. The best war literature makes us contemplate the meaning of war to us, personally and as part of larger communities, nations and a diverse species sharing a singular planet.

Whether you choose to read a classic or contemporary book about war, consider following it with a book that approaches the same conflict from an opposing viewpoint. Stretch your vision of humanity. The point is not to change your opinion, although that is possible, but to give you a greater understanding of the human experience.

This blog post honors those who serve and sacrifice on behalf of the rest of us.

After a relentlessly white winter, I was so happy to not see snow that even a Mother’s Day rainstorm couldn’t dampen my spirits. As the week continued with one rainy day following another, I thought less about winter and more about the sunny spring that is struggling to break through this gloomy gray wetness. How we view rain depends so much on past experiences and current circumstances.

In the literary universe, rain is used as a symbol for life, death, miracle, disaster, hope, fear, purification, corruption, etc. It can create atmosphere or become a plot device. Perhaps no other weather condition offers so many symbols – and at polar opposites!

It isn’t hard to think of examples where rain plays a role in story telling: Noah’s Ark and the 40-day rain that brings destruction, then restoration; the sweet April showers that introduce The Canterbury Tales; in countless Shakespearian plays; providing atmosphere and a plot device in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights; the rain, both hopeful and tragic, at the end of Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath; and, of course, the stereotypical “It was a dark and stormy night.”

The next time it rains where you are, stop, observe and imagine what story might be inspired by the type of rain, the setting and the circumstance you are experiencing. Is it an “ahhh” rain, an “oh!” rain or an “aww” rain? Then, come in out of the rain, cozy up and grab a good book to read!

Categories: For Booklovers

Mother Goose. Old Mother Hubbard. The old woman in the shoe who had so many children. The fairy godmother. The wicked stepmother. From earliest childhood, mothers are key characters in the literature we hear and then read.

Drawn with broad brush strokes that are easy for young minds to understand in nursery rhymes and fairytales, the literary mother-character’s complexity grows as we do.

On Mother’s Day, we celebrate great mothers – those in our lives and the lives of others. In literature, widely celebrated mothers include Margaret March (“Marmee”) in Little Women, Ma Ingalls in Little House on the Prairie and Molly Weasly in the Harry Potter series.

Great mothers are further elevated when we realize how many really bad mothers populate the world … or so it would appear from their frequent portrayals in all forms of story-telling. Some that come to mind are the mythological Medea, the fictional Corinne Dollanganger in Flowers in the Attic (a rotten apple that did not fall far from the tree) and Mommy Dearest herself, Joan Crawford (as described by daughter Christina Crawford). Bad characters seem to interest us more, so it makes sense they inhabit so much of the literary landscape.

If you are fortunate to have a great mother – or your know one – show her she is special this Mother’s Day by presenting her with a book!