#e.l. konigsburg

[e-b-reads]

@therefugeofbooks tagged me forever ago to make a poll with my five favorite books for others to vote on, and it's taken until now because choosing five favorites is so hard!

seen several of these lately so I'm not sure who has and hasn't done this! Non-obligatory tags (and of course you all may also have already done this): @beardedbookdragon, @gardenforsparrows, @tinynavajoreads

Plus as always, if I didn't tag you and you want to do it, make a poll anyway and tag me so I see it!

[specificpollsaboutbooks]

Famous Authors, Lesser Known Works

Round 1

Persuasion :

Jane Austen is better known for Pride and Prejudice

Almost a decade ago she broke their engagement out of caution. Now his sister is renting her house. They’re both pretending they’re totally over the other, but one slip up makes that impossible.

The View from Saturday :

E.L. Konigsburg is better known for From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler

This is my favorite of E.L. Konigsburg's books. I love all of the characters and the way their individual stories come together to form something greater than the sum of their parts. Real found family vibes.

[unrealcities]

your tags!! another el kongisberg fan in the house!! did you also daydream of running away to the met museum

I wanted to run away to the Met and also had a smart-mouthed younger brother who was careless with everything except money! But my heart belongs to the clock towers and aging uncles of 19 Schuyler Place, to the Souls and their quiz bowls, and to Salai and Beatrice d'Este and the vastly underrated The Second Mrs. Gioconda.

[agmagazinescans]

Who's That Girl? E.L. Konigsburg

American Girl Magazine, July/August 1998

[Ko-Fi Donations]

[lostography]

I wanted something to happen, but I wanted it to be...oh, I don't know...I wanted it to be something that just happened, not something I made happen.

E.L. Konigsburg, Silent to the Bone

[kingsbridgelibraryteens]

A Few Fun Facts About 'From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler' & Its Author

We weren't surprised that the children's classic The Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler came out on top in the 2023 edition of NYPL's #LiteraryMarchMadness. Written by E.L. Konigsburg and published in 1967, it has been beloved by generations of children (and adults) and has never been out of print. 

[newberyandchai]

The View From Saturday (1997)

This was a short book, so I’ll (hopefully) keep this a short review. I enjoyed it a lot (much, much more than the author’s previous book, From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler) but you’ll have to skip to the end for my rating. (Fun fact: E. L. Konigsburg is one of only a handful of authors to win the Newbery Medal twice.)

What I especially liked about this book was that it did a good job communicating that the decisions you might think are relatively unimportant can be very nuanced and meaningful to others in the smallest ways. The story begins with a pretty long explanation of how a teacher came to choose four particular sixth graders to be on the school’s academic team. It then explores the backgrounds of the students in question and how they’re all connected to one another while they’re participating in an important Academic Bowl.

It’s a Breakfast Club-type story in that kids who wouldn’t normally be close are brought together and maintain a bond that extends beyond their social lives at school:

The fact was that Mrs. Olinski did not know how she had chosen her team, and the further fact was that she didn’t know that she didn’t know until she did know. Of course, that is true of most things: you do not know up to and including the very last second before you do. … They called themselves The Souls. They told Mrs. Olinski that they were The Souls long before they were a team, but she told them that they were a team as soon as they became The Souls.

It also had a bit of a Slumdog Millionaire-esque feel because as each question is asked at the competition, the book breaks into personal stories told in first person that explain why each character knows the answer to the question — Noah answers a question about calligraphy, Nadia answers a question about seaweed, and so on. One of the stories introduces the new (weird) kid at school, Julian, who is responsible for starting The Souls: he slips secret notes to the three other kids and invites them to a tea party at his new house, where his father is starting a bed and breakfast. They begin to meet regularly:

Something in Sillington House gave me permission to do things I had never done before. Never even thought of doing. Something there triggered the unfolding of those parts that had been incubating. … I told jokes I had never told before. I asked questions I had never asked before.

Outside of the tea parties, no one speaks to or acts like they’re friends with one another. However, the only part of the book I didn’t like involved them coming together at the end to prevent Nadia’s dog, Ginger, from being drugged during a school stage production of Annie so some other kid’s dog could take her place. It was pretty gross: “…laxatives and tranquilizers and those four little legs will buckle, and those little bowels won’t hold…”

… Did they really need the laxatives? On top of the sedatives? (Really?)

But I’ll end on a bit of a less gross, more bittersweet note: I resonated with this small passage after rereading it for this blog post in ways I didn’t when encountering it for the first time just a few months ago. The team has [spoiler, as you may have guessed] just won the Academic Bowl:

Mrs. Olinski felt a strange sense of loss. … She drove for miles worrying about it. Finally, almost involuntarily, she said out loud, “Win some, lose some.” She glanced at Mr. Singh and laughed. “Why did I say that?” Mr. Singh replied, “Because it is how you feel at this moment, Mrs. Olinski.” “I am happy that we won, Mr. Singh, But I don’t understand why I feel a sense of loss. This is not like my accident when my loss was overwhelming. Why, after this wonderful victory, do I feel that something is missing?” “Because something is.” Miles hummed past before his voice floated back to her. “For many months now, you have been in a state of perpetual preparation and excitement. Each victory was a preparation for the next. You are missing future victories. … Now you must put down anchor, look around, enjoy this port of call. Your stay will be brief. You must do it, Mrs. Olinski.”

Something-something about aging, the ephemeral nature of existence, the danger of losing yourself to the past, recognizing the present as always transient, each moment is fleeting, something-something… I already have too many gray hairs for this.

“Victories” isn’t exactly the word I would use when talking about this scene in a wider context, but comparing different points of your life to a ship coming in, staying a while, and inevitably setting sail once again for a different destination is a lovely, tranquil thought. The focus isn’t on the end of the stay, but always on each new beginning — on that first step off the gangplank, onto the sands of an unfamiliar shore...

This feels like a true 7, but because that number is still banned, I’ll go with 8/10, Recommendable.

[everythingiread]

The postman hardly looked puzzled. People working at the Grand Central Post Office grow used to strange remarks. They hear so many. They never stop hearing them; they simply stop sending the messages to their brains. Like talking into a telephone with no one on the receiver end.

From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, E.L. Konigsburg

[novelsforhungrypeople]

Claudia read the paper while they ate breakfast at Horn and Hardart's. That morning she didn't eat breakfast food for breakfast. Crackers and roasted chestnuts in bed at night satisfied only a small corner of her hunger. Being hungry was the most inconvenient part of running away. She meant to eat heartily for every cent Jami gave her. She bought macaroni and cheese casserole, baked beans, and coffee that morning. Jamie got the same.

From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, E.L. Konigsburg

[bookcoversonly]

Title: A Proud Taste for Scarlet and Miniver | Author: E.L. Konigsburg | Publisher: Yearling (1985)

[e-b-reads]

Books I purchased at various used bookstores during my little vacation last week! (Took a week off, stayed at a B and B and then with some friends, didn't go super far but explored a neighboring state.) I think these cost around $16 total, half of which was the $8 for the hardcover. Titles and brief sentences about each below the cut.

from top to bottom:

Murder in the Limelight - murder mystery that I just thought looked neat! Could be terrible, I haven't read it yet, but if it's good then I can look for more in the series.

The Ladies of Mandrigyn - funky 80s fantasy. I already know I like Barbara Hambly, I haven't ever succeeded at starting this particular series of hers when checking out library ebooks, but maybe owning a paperback will make it easier to read! I think I'll like it if I give it a chance.

My Father's Daughter - also published as Father's Arcane Daughter, which was the title on whatever library version of this I read years and years ago. I love E.L. Konigsburg, I think she's an underrated children's author. Just finished rereading and it's very good.

The Mystery of the Cape Cod Players - another mystery that looked neat! This one I read while still on vacation, and it was a romp! In the Asey Mayo series (what a name!), aka the Cape Cod Sherlock Holmes. Of an era with other Golden Mystery series, except these are set in the rural US (in Cape Cod, if you haven't guessed). I immediately searched my library catalog for any others in the series.

Wet Grave - Another book I have already read, in the Benjamin January mystery series. I don't plan to own all 20 of them, but this is one of my personal favorites, so I'm glad to have a copy.

[thatwritererinoriordan]

Updated: https://ko-fi.com/Post/February-10-Eira-M4M81AOJ3C

[lightgaswaterelectricityrent]

when I was a kid I read this book several times where a girl is supposed to dogsit and also sit a sourdough starter and she forgets to sit the starter and it explodes and the dog licks up all the goop and also the glass and the image of the dog being all bloated and pathetic from the starter is something I never ever got over and I do have to think about it any time I do anything remotely like baking bread

[haveyoureadthispoll]

When Claudia decided to run away, she planned very carefully. She would be gone just long enough to teach her parents a lesson in Claudia appreciation. And she would go in comfort - she would live at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She saved her money, and she invited her brother Jamie to go, mostly because he was a miser and would have money. Claudia was a good organizer and Jamie had some ideas, too; so the two took up residence at the museum right on schedule. But once the fun of settling in was over, Claudia had two unexpected problems: She felt just the same, and she wanted to feel different; and she found a statue at the Museum so beautiful she could not go home until she had discovered its maker, a question that baffled the experts, too. The former owner of the statue was Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. Without her - well, without her, Claudia might never have found a way to go home.

[deathcupcake]

TL; DR: Seriously, please read Tanith Lee's Tales From The Flat Earth series. Or her retellings of fairy tales (while you're at it, Angela Carter's retellings, too), Red As Blood. Not all of her works were amazing, but she was so good.

This additional revelation about Gaiman plagiarizing Lee (and others) adds another layer of *insert grr face* to the whole thing because of my love for Lee's storytelling. I accept the fact that authors borrow heavily from others all the time (Piers Anthony's Incarnations of Immortality is another series personifying deities/ideas that comes to mind). Nothing is truly novel, it's always been done by someone, just (usually) not in the same way. I also didn't read that much of the Sandman series, so I didn't know there was so much heavy borrowing/plagiarism going on.

But this reminds me of why I was less than enthused when Harry Potter first published. I just couldn't get into it.

It wasn't the ideas - those were fine. It was because the books seemed to be pale comparisons to books I treasured as a pre-teen/young teen. Not that HP really reminded me of these (except for Charmed Life, which is exactly what I thought about when reading that first HP book), but I didn't want a rehash of the type of worlds I'd already known.

If I didn't have to go to work, I'd give this more thought. But off the top of my head, and 45+ years after I read most of these, I'd recommend these books for young readers (or older ones that don't mind reading books meant for young people):

Charmed Life (the entire series) and Dogsbody by Diana Wynne Jones

Witches of Worm and The Egypt Game by Zilpha Keatly Snyder

Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, William McKinley, and Me, Elizabeth and From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E.L. Konigsburg

The Dark is Rising series by Susan Cooper

The Chronicles of Prydain series by Lloyd Alexander

Time Quintet series by Madeline L'Engle

The Earthsea Cycle series by Ursula K. LeGuin

So much in those worlds for a young person to think about. They certainly helped to make me who I am now.

Last thought: the Four-BEE duology by Tanith Lee is still one of my very favorites ever. If you have an affinity for neo-futuristic philosophical young adult angst in a world where death is just a temporary phase, please read. Both books are very short.

[dettiot]

Oh, man, what a perfect reference, though!

I was talking to my husband about the Trump documents case and how many places they found document: boxes, storage rooms, his literal desk.

Me: “It’s like some Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E Frankweiler shit.”

Hubs: “…”

Me: “Maybe that’s an EL Konigsburg deep cut.”

Hubs: “…Okay.”

🤣