Birthday Books!

Sunday was my birthday, and (as always) I got books! I've been using the library so much this year that I didn't ask for as many books as I used to ask for, but what I got was quality:

• Sigrid Undset's Kristin Lavransdatter trilogy in the Tiina Nunnally translation -- I can read the language of Charles Archer's older translation, but it tends to feel like Archer is trying too hard. His archaisms are grammatically correct, so I can stand to read them, but they still feel strained to me, as if he's trying just a little too hard. I've read that Nunnally's translation is also more faithful to the tone of Undset's own words, but I don't read Norwegian, so I can neither confirm nor deny.
  
• From my brother: Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brian, The Other Boleyn Girl by Phillipa Gregory, and Guilty Pleasures by Laurell K. Hamilton. My brother just started working at Borders, so he was looking for books to buy me, and I picked a few from my old Amazon wishlist and a few from Diana Gabaldon's "Methadone List". Armed with the list, he actually walked into the store where he works and bought a Phillipa Gregory and a Laurell K. Hamilton! Coming from an almost-21-year-old, that's real brotherly love. (I mean, Master and Commander is love too, but without such potential for young-manly embarrassment.)
  

Adam may very well have gotten me books, too; we haven't had our celebration together yet.

Girl In a Cage -- Jane Yolen and Robert J. Harris, 2002 (read 27-30 June 2007)

I read this more than a month ago now, but it's stuck with me, as any good book does. Yolen and Harris do a marvelous job of pacing Marjorie Bruce's tale and of making it feel viscerally real. Marjorie's story is Scotland's story, and the story of Scotland's people; politics and daily life are woven together, and Marjorie learns that both require her considerable personal courage. Marjorie's narration moves back and forth between the long days of her captivity and the breakneck months leading up to it, allowing us to see not only her acts of valor and intelligence, but the ways she has learned to refine and govern these powers.

Girl in a Cage is apparently the second book in a planned quartet of Scottish history. Its story and characters stand alone, but I'd like to read the other books in the series; this one conveys so well the legendary victories and crushing defeats of Scottish wars against England. I'm reading other books now, about much later Scottish history, but my mental images are still very much affected by Yolen and Harris's images of rebellion, perilous flight, and noble pride.