Monica read and liked Abigail's review of Lost Magic:

"Ceridwen, an orphan known for her first twelve years simply as Waif, is taught herblore and healing by the traveling Wise-Woman Gallena, who warns her that all magic must have a purpose, and that simple tricks and illusion are the work of the Devil. ...more Ceridwen, an orphan known for her first twelve years simply as Waif, is taught herblore and healing by the traveling Wise-Woman Gallena, who warns her that all magic must have a purpose, and that simple tricks and illusion are the work of the Devil. When she heals Lord Robert, lord of the very castle in whose shadow she has always lived, Ceridwen finds her life transformed with dizzying swiftness. Proclaimed the Wise Woman of Bedevere, she is given her own garden and room in the castle, and after being made the companion of Lord Robert’s young daughter, Elinor, is given the precious gift of literacy, reserved only for the privileged few. But the jealousy of Dame Bewick, a castle servant with grand ambitions and an unpleasant disposition, and the arrival of the Plague at Bedevere, spell trouble for Ceridwen's new life and happiness...

While the transformation of Ceridwen’s social station seems unrealistic for the fourteenth century, the folk-lore elements of Lost Magic are intriguing. The "magic" practiced here seems mostly to be herblore, though there are references to more powerful spells, and some genuinely supernatural elements, from fairy changelings to ancient sorcerers, are included. The Wise-Woman figure has been explored by authors such as Monica Furlong and Frances Mary Hendry, as well as featuring (not so positively) in Joan Aiken’s The Cuckoo Tree, and readers interested in this archetype should seek out those authors.(less) "

Monica read and liked Jessica's review of The Street:

"I'm hesitant to give this four stars for a couple of reasons: one, because I know it was flawed in certain important ways, but to me the stars have to do with how much I personally enjoyed a book, not how technically "good" it was, so I thi...more I'm hesitant to give this four stars for a couple of reasons: one, because I know it was flawed in certain important ways, but to me the stars have to do with how much I personally enjoyed a book, not how technically "good" it was, so I think that's okay. The main reason I'm afraid of singing this book's praises too loudly is that I really loved it, and being able to see its problems and knowing other people might not think it's good really hurts my feelings. I feel protective of this book, and it upsets me to think about other people maligning it. So please don't read this unless you're going to like it!

The Street is Ann Petry's 1946 novel about single mother Lutie Johnson's efforts to raise her son and escape poverty while living on 116h Street between Seventh and Eighth Avenues in Harlem. Young, black, beautiful, poor, and socially isolated, Lutie is constantly and acutely aware of the ways in which her existence and her son's future are limited and crushed by the forces of racism and class. I am sure that today's college students really freak out about this book for its sophisticated mid-twentieth-century examination of the paradigm of intersectionality: race! class! gender! It's all here, in this artfully structured novel that moves easily among the perspectives of a handful of the Street's denizens. I found the characters in this book to be brilliantly crafted. Petry has us see through the eyes not just of Lutie but of her eight-year-old son; their malevolent, predatory, mentally-deranged super; the super's pathetic, oppressed, but resilient companion; the building's massive and fire-scarred, red-kerchiefed madam; and other characters whose individuality comes to life, even as Petry lends them each the dignity of her distinctive and -- I thought -- quite beautiful voice. That's really hard to do, and this book accomplished it. The characters make decisions and behave in ways that are often strange, morally questionable, or undoubtably wrong, but the author successfully makes them so human that we understand their reasoning and can't fully judge them.

The Street suffered from two major problems: one, social novel syndrome, by which I mean that Petry's obvious efforts to show the effects of racism and injustice on individuals' lives did often overwhelm the story and get too annoyingly obvious. Every page has Lutie's meditations on the the effects of racism, poverty, and segregated urban slums, and it did get tiresome and undermined the book's power. But a lot of this might have been due to its other flaw, first novel syndrome: The Street was Petry's first book, and it has many marks of that including unnecessary repetition, a failure at crucial points to trust the reader, and what I thought was a hasty, melodramatic, and unbelievable ending. I'm definitely interested in reading Petry's other books to see what she was like when she matured more as a writer. Her gifts of character and description are, I thought, sensational. I can picture Lutie's apartment, the building, and her street nearly as vividly as I can see my own, and all the characters were as physically and nearly as psychologically real to me as the people I encounter in daily life. Since few books can convey a physical environment to me so well, I really found this to be special.

I definitely recommend this book to anyone interested in a depiction of Harlem in the days before drugs (on a wide scale), guns, housing projects, white gentrification, and extensive social services and welfare benefits. I'm pretty familiar with the neighborhood she's talking about, and it was very interesting to see how things have and have not changed since the 1940s. This is one of the better novels I've read about Black American urban life in the pre-Civil-Rights era, and I might recommend it for that to some parties. But the real reason I thought The Street was so good was on its merits as a work of fiction. While I know the social novel stuff could turn off a lot of readers, I felt the same delight from this as from a good children's storybook -- a very disturbing, upsetting children's storybook with a lot of sex and violence and human suffering. But it almost seemed illustrated, that's how vivid it was. I will definitely be reading more by Ann Petry and I'll recommend this book despite my concerns, though if you think it's bad I don't really want to hear about it.(less) "

Monica read and liked Paul's review of Reading Lyrics: More Than 1,000 of the Century's Finest Lyrics--a Celebration of Our Greatest Songwriters, a Rediscovery of Forgotten Masters, and an Appreciation of an:

"Before the Beatles, British people gaped in awe at the outpouring of pop songs from America. We all thought you HAD to be American or be Noel Coward to write a song, there was some kind of law. But very occasionally, a British song, one that wasn't b...more Before the Beatles, British people gaped in awe at the outpouring of pop songs from America. We all thought you HAD to be American or be Noel Coward to write a song, there was some kind of law. But very occasionally, a British song, one that wasn't by Noel Coward, crept out into the limelight. This is my favourite pre-Beatles British song, a song regretting the end of an affair, which as someone wrote was "the kind we would all like to be regretting".

THESE FOOLISH THINGS (1936)

Oh will you never let me be?
Oh will you never set me free?
The ties that bound us are still around us
There´s no escape that I can see
And still those little things remain
That bring me happiness or pain

A cigarette that bears a lipstick's traces
An airline ticket to romantic places
And still my heart has wings
These foolish things
Remind me of you

A tinkling piano in the next apartment
Those stumbling words that told you what my heart meant
A fairground's painted swings
These foolish things
Remind me of you

You came, you saw, you conquered me
When you did that to me, I somehow knew that this had to be

The winds of March that make my heart a dancer
A telephone that rings - but who´s to answer?
Oh, how the ghost of you clings
Gardenia perfume lingering on a pillow
Wild strawberries only seven francs a kilo
And still my heart has wings
The park at evening when the bell has sounded
The Isle de France with all the gulls around it
The beauty that is spring
These foolish things
Remind me of you

I know that this was bound to be
These things have haunted me
For you´ve entirely enchanted me

The sigh of midnight trains in empty stations
Silk stockings thrown aside, dance invitations
Oh, how the ghost of you clings
First daffodils and long excited cables
And candlelight on little corner tables
And still my heart has wings
The smile of Garbo and the scent of roses
The waiters whistling as the last bar closes
The song that Crosby sings
These foolish things
Remind me of you

How strange, how sweet to find you still
These things are dear to me
That seem to bring you so near to me

The scent of smouldering leaves, the wail of steamers
Two lovers on the street who walk like dreamers
Oh, how the ghost of you clings
These foolish things
Remind me of you

Music by Jack Strachey and Harry Link; lyrics by Holt Marvell, which was a nom de plume for Eric Maschwitz, a scriptwriter for the BBC.

I would have liked to append the brilliantly cut-glass performance by Leslie "Hutch" Hutchinson from the 1930s - he was a popular black cabaret singer from Grenada who sang in this extraordinarily posh upper class accent, enunciating every syllable and throbbing with vibrato like an elegant dinner gong, but Youtube not surprisingly can't find it. So here's a very camp version by an amazingly young Bryan Ferry here - not as good, but not too shabby. He sings nearly all the words, and there are a lot of them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klz1MOq3Z...

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