Two Things . . .

I thought about after I finished my reading: All through the telling of the story, the writer took great pains to point out what was the way a properly brought up boy should behave. And how similar this was to my own upbringing in the care of my southern aunt and uncle. I recognize now though that though I've always known how to act, it has always concerned me that it does indeed sometimes feel like an act. Like I am an observer standing outside of myself and thinking of all the things I could have done instead.

I am so surprised

Well, imagine my surprise to find that this book, The Burnished Blade, still can take my imagination back in time. I'm at chapter 18 already, and Pierre, the young man who lost his parents at the story's beginning ten years earlier is about to start a voyage to Constantinople. I had forgotten how much knowledge I gained about the time from this reading. The fact that blood letting was the most common cure for all illnesses has been a fact that stuck in my mind for years. And I think this book I remember reading that actually made me see that there were differences in cultures.

Now as I reread the story and especially after researching several historical fiction sites, I realize that this book definitely fits into the romantic fiction category. But when I first read it, it was the story of the boy's adventures that I followed and they were not romantic.

The Burnished Blade

It's the oldest book in my personal collection. Stolen from a library on board a converted troop ship when my family was on our way back from Guam in the Marianna's. As I look at the book now I still remember the wonder I felt as I read the first sentences. "To travelers destined to die at the hands of bandits, death came silently in fifteenth century France. The weapons of the period did not make a sound."

Well actually that's not true. What I felt then and what I feel now as I begin to reread this wonderful book is probably still the same. I read like I eat - fast, devouring each page almost without chewing the images created there. But this writer, Lawrence Schnoonover, knew what he was about. For there in the first page and a half are the elements to drag any young boy's attention into the moment. Bandits arrows fly, a nobleman and his lady die, and scared young boy like the reader is truly left to wonder why?

As a boy, I loved two kinds of stories, historical adventures and sports. And like most readers, liked best to use what I read to escape into my imagination.

Well, if this works . . .

I've wanted to write about the books I've read for a long time. It seems that something meaningful is possible if I can do this for myself.