Stareted reading The Search for Justice by Robert Shapiro; I didn't know one of Marlon Brando's daughter helped out The Dream Team and was going to law school. I'm also on The Girl who :ayed with Fire, and Dolls by John Noble. Eclecticism is good.

A Bibliography of Doll and Toy Sources is now on Kindle. http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00J5VOIJE. It's bee a wonderful ride writing and promoting this book. I hope I am blogging corredtly;t his is a difficult site for met o navigate for some reason :)

All i can do is comment on my own blog. Here is a quote by C. Bronte from elsewhere on the site, and we wish her a Happy 198th Birthday:

“I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will.”


— Charlotte Brontë

From Jane Eyre

It's been a while but here I am again. I've just finished "The Orphan Master's Son," by Adam Johnson, and am on "Mrs. Poe." Many more books in progress, both that I'm writing, or reading. Catch my column at About.com Doll Collecting, colletdolls.about.com, and my blog posts for Antique Doll Collector Magazine, www.antiquedollcollector.blogspot.com. Happy Reading!

I found the blog again, don't know how to add a post, so I'm commenting.
Ann Patchett
State of Wonder
New York: Harper Perennial, 2012.

“The news of Anders Eckman’s death came by way of Aerogram . . . begins the novel State of Wonder by Ann Patchett. So, also begins, the quest of Dr. Marina Singh, failed resident, gifted research for a major drug company. Yet, this novel is not so much about Dr. Singh as it is about Dr. Annick Swenson, a Kurtz-like character who leads a tribe of diverse and interwoven Natives and researchers through a dance as mysterious and tangled as the tropical vines and giant anaconda snakes that weave their way through the jungle.

I had a dear friend who used to write me about twice a month, for 14 years from England. She used Aerograms. The last Aerogram was from her daughter, telling me that my friend had died. Good news apparently does not come in flimsy, near transparent envelopes. But, they do lead Marina on an Odyssey up and down the Amazon in search of Dr. Annick Swenson, her old professor, and in search of the truth of what really happened to Anders Eckman.

The similarities to Heart of Darkness do not end there; in fact, Dr. Swenson is even more enigmatic than Kurtz, though Marina, who suffers from malaria and drug induced nightmares, is a far cry from Marlowe and the Narrator of Conrad’s classic. Yet, Marina’s mission is similar; she is supposed to find the elusive Dr. Swenson, check on the progress of the research she is doing, and bring back Dr. Anders Eckman, presumably dead and not alive. By the end, she has more in common with the people who make the jungle their home, and with a small, deaf native boy who arouses maternal instincts in her in ways that working with newborns could not.

Dr. Swenson, who rules her tribe, the Lakashi, a little like Dr. Moreau ruled the creatures on his island, is at best, an ambivalent character, at worse, a cruel despot and renegade doctor, the kind malpractice lawsuits are meant to save us from. She is researching the bark of a certain tree, and certain magic blue mushrooms that, among other things, make it possible for women of the tribe to bear children into their 70s. By the end of her study, she queries whether her hypothesis should not be whether women over 50 can have children, but whether they should. She can quell the Lakashi with a mere look, and she is as pale and Scandinavian as they are swarthy and indigenous to the jungle. Coleridge might recognize her as his creation, Death in Life from “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.” Conrad would say it was their “restraint” that made the Lakashi care for her, cater to her, tolerate her and her researchers, and take part in her experiments. Another nearby tribe “rains arrows” directly on the characters come to find Dr. Swenson and rescue Marina, and the raining arrows could have been shot directly from the pages of Heart of Darkness. This tribe is known to practice cannibalism, and is not as tolerant or enamored of Dr. Swenson and her entourage. They are hostile, in part, because she has taken something that belongs to them, something that Marina must give to them later to save another character.

The novel’s plot, too, twists like the tropical plants that can ensnare innocent bystanders, if there are any innocent bystanders in this book. The tension among the characters is palpable, enough to form a giant spiders’ web of lies and deceit based against the endeavors of a corporate drug company, accused at least by cliché, of, well, lies and deceit.

In one of the surrealistic scenes that are typical to the plot, Marina, who keeps having her Western clothes and cell phones stolen from her, dresses in Lakashi smocks, wears Native jewelry, and chews the bark as they do in ritualistic style each morning.

Throughout the book, chapter by chapter, the characters’ individual horrors come to claim them, sometimes without reason. Marina’s horror is the ambivalence of her own life, the fear that Dr. Swenson will remember she was her student who failed in an operation and maimed a baby, or that she will not remember her. Marina also fears for the future of the romance she is having with her employer Mr. Fox. When he arrives by boat at Dr. Swenson’s jungle compound, Marina is not sure if he is there to rescue her, or to check on the progress of the expensive research his company has been funding. The reader keeps waiting for someone to pass the grape Kool-Aid.

There also shades of Cry the Beloved Country, since several characters follow each other into the Amazon to find Dr. Swenson, then Marina, then Eckman, only to disappear, and have someone else go into the jungle to try to find them.

In one memorable scene, one almost expects one of the characters to paraphrase something on the order of, “Dr. Livingstone, I presume!”

Yet, I still have to say this is a good novel. My criteria for calling a book a good novel is that I can’t predict the ending. Poetic language coupled with riddles that are not easy to solve are irresistible to me. The combination of genres, Sci-Fi, mystery, suspense, poetry, horror, scientific nonfiction, medical discourse, and classic hero’s quest are as varied as the plants, animals, and people that live in the jungle. This book is not for literary tourists, just as the heart of the jungle, the heart of darkness itself, is not for casual folks on vacation.


Jodi Picoult
The Pact [a love story]
New York: Quill-William Morrow, 1998

Don’t be fooled by the title; this so-called love story should require “saying your sorry” about a million times.

Picoult often takes on subjects that other writers shy away from, and then has her characters live them in such a way that her readers respond to them the way they might respond to the prince and princess who live happily ever after in a fairy tale.

In The Pact, one of the most important personalities in the book is dead. Death notwithstanding, she is also one of the most controlling, and the cruelest character.

As far as the plot itself, it does not appear at first to be that unusual. Two affluent families, once close, are driven apart and thrown together in bizarre ways after the apparent murder/suicide involving their children, who have been together since infancy.
As babies sharing a bassinet, Emily Gold falls asleep clutching Christopher Harte’s tiny hand. But, don’t be deceived by this almost saccharine sentimental imagery. Picoult uses it not as a portent of good things to come for these child sweethearts, but as a harbinger of the choking hold Emily will have on Christopher, a hold so tight, that he cannot refuse her anything, even if her desire is deadly and destructive.

As with Salem Falls and House Rules, the law and courtrooms become characters in themselves. Picoult has an admirable command of the criminal justice system, from arrest to trial and judgment. I’m not sure she likes lawyers and law enforcement officials; they seem to be terribly obtuse and single-minded in her books. Yet, I went to law school, and I have to say I sometimes share the same opinion. Real people defy legal profiling, and motives are simply not that easy to understand. If they were, we might not have crime at all, at least not the way it is defined in our statute books.

No horrible stone is left unturned in these pages; pedophilia, murder, teen suicide, brutality behind bars, prisoners’ rights violations, and family tragedy are all fodder for her pen. Yet, what keeps The Pact from descending into a cheap 21st century retelling of Romeo and Juliet or soap opera melodrama is that none of her characters end up acting the way we might predict. The best TV shrink would be stumped and left speechless by the turn of events, and the pact itself, the other silent character in this complicated plot, is not necessarily between the “star-crossed” teen lovers.

Reading Edmund de Waal, The Hare with Amber Eyes about a family dynasty and its history told through a Netsuke collection. Reading lots of Jodi Picoult and Harlen Coben for fun, and excited about the new Lizbeth Salander novel. My pile of reading is ever growing, and much has to do with research for my column on about.com, Doll Collecting at About.com. collectdolls.about.com.

I seem to have found my blog again! Reading widely and doing research for new books. Yesterday was the joy of experiencing weather as it's never been. First, there was fog, and blowing snow. I ran one errand, then there was biting cold and bitter north wind. Back to the grocery store, but on the way out, sunny and cool, but not nasty cold. The ground sort of dried up, and then, as the Canada geese flew over my car, more snow today. It is a good day to write.

Link to my post on textbook speed reading. A Bibliography of Doll and Toy Sources: Print, Mixed Media, Electronic, Musical, and Artistic by Ellen Tsagaris

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


This is a textbook,and here is a brief article on how to read textbooks quickly!
How to Read a Textbook—Fast

With schools and colleges across the country opening their doors once again to welcome eager students, thoughts turn to student success. One important tip for student success concerns how to read a textbook. It seems obvious, but many students simply do not read their materials. They rely on notes, or friends’ notes, to get them through a class. Such a technique might get a persistent pedagogue through high school or the first year of an AAS degree, but the higher the student goes in her studies, the less it works.

Other students find themselves confronted with E-books and simply give up. They shouldn’t. There is no need to despair over reading assignments and textbooks. There are keys to assessing and reading them. Below are a few of the most important.

• Read the title, no kidding! Make sure the edition is the correct one for the class. Review the author’s credentials, degrees, experience. Review the acknowledgements, early on in the book, usually. They may alert the student to other experts in the field.
• Read the forward, preface, or introduction, if any.
• Find the Table of Contents and Scan it. Then, read the detailed Table of Contents. If a student needs to learn how to write an outline, these are built in examples. Compare the syllabus for the course to the Table of Contents. The entire textbook is not often assigned. Also, the text might be a good source for research papers later on. Tables of Contents are a quick way to determine if a book is a good resource.
• Scan each chapter to see if there is an introduction, chapter summary, or both. These are helpful reviews before class, or as part of an exam study session. Don’t be afraid to highlight important material here and elsewhere, electronically or with a good, old fashioned highlighter.
• Flip through the chapters to see if there are sidebars, charts or other helpful visuals. Use tiny post-it flags or post-it notes. Annotate them, if you need to. If it is a library textbook, post-its are a must. Save them later in a notebook with your annotations written on them for a quick reference notebook on the topic.
• Scan the footnotes and endnotes. There is valuable material there to help with reading comprehension and other projects. Most people don’t read them. More’s the pity for them. Legal cases have been won and lost because one side read the other side’s footnotes.
• Check for a glossary.
• See what the references are; sometimes, they will be included at the end of each chapter.
• Check out the copyright notices and observe them carefully. Conversely, there are some texts that allow fair use copying of their materials.
• Look for other works by the same author. If the book was effective, there will be other books like it. See if the publisher has a website for the author, or student materials free to use.
• Set aside time to read and organize your textbook, bookmarks, and notes. If you are given links to follow in an E-book or assigned web page, follow them.
Good luck to all who are beginning school, and remember, don’t forget to read the book!




View all my reviews

Here is my blog, yet again, found via my book marks online, not Good Reads. Mainly, reading sporadically here and there, working on the doll museum, which is finally happening, and coping with other professional disappointments. October is my favorite month, but also the saddest. It reminds us that indeed, all paths of glory lead but to the grave.

Travel Celebrate Vets Love our Dolls


Harriet Brinker’s
Dolls Etc. brings us
VETS and DOLLS Together!

Two terrific programs to honor and benefit our veterans as we indulge in our favorite hobby, doll collecting! Here is the schedule:

VETS
“Walk Across America” March 17
Mr. William Shuttle worth, The Walking Vet, will present “3300 Miles Across America”

DOLL ENTHUSIASTS
Doll Show March 18 and 19
Dr. Ellen Tsagaris, Doll Expert and author of With Love from Tin Lizzie, A History of Metal Dolls . . . will present “Love Tin Lizzie - Metal Dolls”

For Registration and Travel Reservations please contact
Harriet Brinker • (954) 292-7758
hnatalan@gmail.com


OVERNIGHT GUESTS
Register
10 November to 10 December 2019 Contact Harriet Brinker

DOLL SHOW EXHIBITORS
Register
10 December 2019 to 10 January 2020 Exhibitor Information Sheet and Registration
Contact Harriet Brinker

Dolls Etc. supports Marion County Veterans
Veterans Helping Veterans USA, Inc.

DAY VISITORS
Doll Show and/or Walking Vet
Advance Ticket Sales Only
10 December to 1 March 2020
no tickets sold at the door

Ticket Purchase available via Travel Bug Florida
With Love from Tin Lizzie

Briefly, in fiction, poetry, drama, for a book to be a success the reader has to care about the characters. Some beautifully written books leave us cold because we don't like or care about the people in them. I've read, and enjoyed, badly written books, some romances, some sci fi, some mystery, because I cared about the character, even if they were two dimensionally drawn and shallow. Something made me care.






I like reading when I was young, Jackie and Joan Collins books; I didn't think they were going into the literary canon, but there characters in them I worried over. Same with Judith Krantz. Barbara Pym has made a career of birthing memorable characters, and Jane Eyre, Ann Karenina, and Jo March have transcended the pages of their own novel homes. So has Nora from A Dolls House, so have any number of Shakespeare heroes and heroines. Comic heroes do the same to us, hence passionate discussions over who is better, Superman or Batman. Ahab, Ishmael, Lord Jim, Billly Budd, Tess, we lvoe and care for them. Even our animal protagonists get to us, Bambi, Dumbo, Beautiful Joe, Black Beauty, Lassie, Stellaluna, on and on.






Plots are nice, nonfiction passions make those books go round, but in the world of fiction, we have to care, and the character needn't be the most moral, law abiding creature in the book. Like the real people in our lives, fictional folk have to spark an emotion; we don't care how they've been created via pen and paper, but we care about them and what happens to them. That is what drives the story.

Another comment on April 11, 2020, Holy Saturday. Be safe, everyone. In times of great trouble, I turn to my books, those I write, and those I read. It's my only recommendation for keeping one's sanity during insane times. I am reading books on dolls and doll history for my research, and books on law to brush up my skills. I catalog books for Vintage Rose antiques and for Etsy, so I review books on how to value other books. Reading lots on antiques and collectibles because I can't go out to do it. Checked out BBC language school; I want to learn some Japanese and Arabic, and I want to brush up on other languages I've studied. Also writing my own journal of my plague year through short stories and poems. We'll make this; read DeFoe's Journal of the Plague Year and The Dress Lodger for inspiration. Happy Easter and God Bless.

Musings on Museum Movings

Yesterday finished cleaning and emptying the old museum. I will miss that space, cozy and in the hub of our College Hill, nee Hilltop neighborhood. My friends Michelle, Diane and their shop Vintage Rose made it all possible, along with Mr. Joe K, the best landlord in the world. Jorje, our friend and colleague, did our graphics, and our friend and colleague Loey brought visitors and lots of moral support.

We had an amazing ribbon cutting on Lincoln’s birthday, also my grandparents’ 92d wedding anniversary. Two dolls from my grandma’s collection started mine when I was age 3. They married in Paris, and maybe that’s why I have a thing for all kinds of French dolls. I remembered the city well from when I was nine, and the awesome dolls lining the walls of one airport shop after another, and the great food. To a nine year old, that meant hot dogs stuffed with gruyere cheese. Awesome!

We now are moving into our new building, with dolls, toys, books, models, miniatures, vintage clothing, paper dolls, trains, paper airplanes, and other childhood memorabilia emerging from the wood work of their various secure, secret locations. Except, of course, for those that were moving from the old museum to the new.

We’ve had more than our share of challenges as a non-profit in the Covid 19 era, but so have so many of the rest of us, we soldier on. My husband and my cousins Steve and Lisa moved our cabinets and cases to our new facility, and did it in just under 3.5 hours! Our friends Frankie and Marylou have been awesome in helping us to get the building ready, and my friend Kathy helped me pack up dolls to take.

My only regret is that Aunt Connie and my Mom aren’t here to see this, and my Dad and uncles who provided so many of the dolls and other things. My Uncle Tom was an artist who quickly learned doll repair. He brought me at least one doll every weekend from Peoria, where he worked in a studio. He also gave me the dolls he brought back from Korea and Japan when he served in the Korean War. My Uncle Jim drove me around to all sorts of doll shows, and kept my secrets re what I paid for what. My grandfather would drop into Woolworth’s where I looked for doll clothes, pay my bill, and leave to continue his walks. My grandmother who was a seamstress by trade made doll clothes in all sizes; she hated naked dolls lying around neglected. Her father died when she was very young, and she didn’t have dolls of her own. As an adult, she loved them very much and had a collection my family brought from all over the world.

My Dad brought dolls from all his travels, and drove us to antique malls, yard sales, and dolls shows. He built doll houses and doll shelves, and showed great tolerance when a Barbie case would open in the middle of O’Hare airport, spilling it’s contents, or when a doll hat blew out the window and certain six year old cried all the way to Albuquerque.

My mother was my “doll buddy” and partner in crime. She went to look for dolls when I was in school and couldn’t go, and she dressed them and fixed them, and knitted for them. Every Christmas a doll would go missing till Christmas Even when she/he would emerge with a new outfit.

She and I decorated our red doll house mansion that Dad created, called Plantagenet House. We made all kinds of accessories, and Mom made curtains, rugs, and bedspreads. She crocheted miniature rugs that emulated the larger one’s her grandmother used to make, and knitted tiny pillows and comforters.

My parents made it possible for me to buy this building, our former branch library. They let me keep dolls at their house, and encouraged me all the years I planned this project. I miss them very much, and never dreamed I would launch this project as an orphan, but here I am. But for my cousins and one aunt by marriage, I have no other family, my husband and our son notwithstanding.

The library itself was one of our favorite places. My husband and I often rode bikes there to check out books and to grab a bottle of pop from the old machine that was once outside. I bought many books as gifts at the used book store there, and I lectured about dolls to The Friends of the Library. I used to dream the library housed dolls as well as books, and well, dreams to come true.

We hope to be open Halloween, but barring that, Small Business Saturday. We have a lot of work to do, including enclosing shelves in glass and setting up our gift shop. I’ve spent nearly every day since August 7 moving carloads and cartloads of times, packing, setting up triage for things that need repair, doing paperwork, and drinking a lot of water and Gatorade. It’s exhausting, and I keep getting hurt or tripping over something. I’m deep cleaning at home after I move dolls from there, and try to keep living in general against current restrictions and a Derecho storm that nearly finished our trees.

Losing my aunt unexpectedly mid June, just after both our birthdays was unbearable. I miss her; she lived with us and planned to work in the museum setting up doll houses. She loved the old museum and was in the ribbon cutting, too. She often chose a doll or two to take home for awhile, so she could do their hair. Her death devastated us, but I try to move forward.

You have to keep going.

Our collection represents prehistory to the present, from every corner of the globe and beyond. We have dolls that were in other museums, rare antiques, and contemporary trends. We feature paper airplanes from the collection of Dr. Roald Tweet, Augustana College and a doll that belonged to Shirley Temple, whom I met in person. There are robots, Tonka trucks, trains, collectibles and many holiday items.

We will have a complete library of doll and doll related books, including some I have written, as well as other classic books and the former county law library. For our modest admission, you can come and spend the day reading and enjoying the dolls. There will be some interactive activities for kids as well.

We appreciate monetary donations made out to the museum, but will charge a modest admission to help keep us going: $3 adults, $2 seniors and veterans, $1 children under 12. We will have special days for donations only admission, or free days in honor of certain events.

Our new address will be 3059 30th Street, Rock Island, IL 61201, and our number is 309-721-9882. Our mailing address is 4 Hillcrest Court, Rock Island, IL 61201. We have a Pinterest Board, and a Blog, both American Doll and Toy Museum. We’re still on Twitter as Antique Doll and Dr. E’s Doll Museum.

We still have our Dr. E’s Doll Museum Blog and our Facebook page by that name, but we have a Facebook page American Doll and Toy Museum. On Instagram, we are under ellen_tsagaris. We’re also on Flickr under my name as well as Tumblr.

Via social media or live, I look forward to meeting everyone. We’ll observe Covid 19 precautions and will require masks when we do open.

Please be patient, good things are following.

I have to say that I have a new addiction, the Stephanie Plum novels by Janet Evanovich. Plum is as fun and down to earth a heroine as they come. She handles every situation with humor, even when a sinister character like Mama Macaroni is done in by a car bomb. Plum is torn between to men, the mysterious luscious ranger, a real superhero/vigilante type, and her law and order, former bad boy, now good cop boyfriend, Morelli. There is lunatic Lula, her staunch friend and sister bounty hunter, literally her cousin Vinnie, Mama Mazur, and her long suffering parents. Of course, my favorite is Rex the Hamster, who has the greatest longevity of any hamster born. More as I continue my literary adventures with Stephanie. Sorry, Dog; she's got you beat at your own game.