One of my favourite books when I was a child was Vasilisa the Beautiful: Russian Fairy Tales. I enjoyed most of the stories in it but I still remain fond of Emelya and the Pike. Please read it quickly so that I can go on to tell you why I like it so much.
Аткинсон, Джон Огастес Public Domain
What most captured my fancy in the story was the stove on which Emelya lies all day long. At that point in time I had not even seen an oven nor even a tandoor. And it's not only that Emelya spends his days dozing on the stove, he also uses it to go hither and thither!
Emelya falls into the famous anti-hero category found in many tales from around the world. For the Russians it is normally Ivan the fool. There's even a Tolstoy Ivan the Fool story - one that I like.
Michael Sevier (illustrator) [Public domain]
Emelya's story also falls into the wish granting fish category. Of course, you can see that Emelya's pike is a much better wish granting fish than the one the fisherman found. The lack of 'moral of the story' only serves to make Emelya and the Pike a much more enjoyable story. Sometimes, it's only by resorting to extreme absurdity that we can fight limiting superstitions.
In the fisherman's tale, he is granted three wishes and, with the last wish, he's back where he was. The story is bitter and pointless given we're never going to find magic things which grant us our wishes. When we're anyway going into the realm of fantasy, why not just go with the flow?
Ivan Yakovlevich Bilibin, 1876-1942 [Public domain]
And that is what Emelya does. He goes with the flow in letting his sisters-in-law send him fishing. Note that he also does agree only when promised bribes of new clothes and such. In that sense, there might be a moral to the story: passive and reluctant obedience can bring rewards. Here's a movie version. It's in black and white and has no subtitles but it's still very enchanting!
Perhaps it was natural for me to read the Richard Gordon Doctor novels. After all, my father was a doctor and I spent a great deal of my younger years being exposed to the world of hospitals and doctors. The books are mostly quite hilarious in a bawdy sort of way but also satisfy the same desires that now lead us to watch a Doctor House or some other Hospital show. The films and TV dramas based on the Doctor series were fairly funny and you can find samples on You Tube.
Doctor In the House
The books will tickle your funny bone and take you on an amusing tour of the world of medicine and the private lives of doctors. While the medical fraternity will find familiar scenes, we can all enjoy the stories as all of us get to visit hospitals for one reason or another.
Dr. Gordon was professionally adrift, working as a surgeon on a cargo ship in the South Pacific, when he began writing his first book in 1950. “I had nothing to do except drink gin with the chief engineer,” he later told the Daily Mail. “To save myself from developing cirrhosis of the liver, I wrote about my experiences as a medical student.”The result was “Doctor in the House,” a ribald comedy about a callow, rugby-playing medical student who chases women, spends nearly as much time at the bar as at the hospital and is eventually “transformed from an unearning and potentially dishonest ragamuffin to a respectable and solvent member of a learned profession.” The protagonist, like the pseudonymous author, was named Richard Gordon.The novel sold more than 3 million copies and was reportedly used to teach conversational English in Japan.
In those days there were quite a few authors who were doctors and whose writings were set in their professional world: A J Cronin, for example. I wonder why that is not the case these days ...
I came across Lee Child by chance. Having developed the convenient habit of travel reading, I make it a point to carry a book or two on trips. For that particular journey I had a book left by someone: Make Me and it made me reach for another Lee - Bad Luck and Trouble. The trouble is Jack Reachers are addictive if you're into that sort of thing - good fight scenes, in particular. Tripwire offers giant doses of romance and a truly evil villain.
The story begins with Reacher digging swimming pools in a part of the US that the author had visited during a vacation in the nineties. Someone is looking for Reacher. And that person is found dead. Two goons have also been inquiring about him. Are they killers? Our hulk, Reacher, sets off to find out the who, what, why, when and where of it all. Which leads him to a very attractive young lady lawyer who happens to be the daughter of Gerber, an officer Reacher respects. Together the couple traverse many hair raising adventures to solve the mystery. In the meanwhile, we get to enjoy the villain and his dastardly accomplices in action. The romance might be a bit icky to some as there's the age thing. Jodie was a teenager when they first met. The fact that Gerber was a father figure to Reacher and that Reacher met Jodie when she was a young girl and had the hots for her bring in a touch of the forbidden. The grotesque villain also comes in the way of full enjoyment - he's almost like Captain Hook! Nevertheless, Lee Child is always a satisfying read. He brings geography and technical things alive and we also get some historical perspectives. In this case, it's the ill-fated Vietnam war. What happened to prisoners? How were the injured cared for? In all the confusion of those times, all kinds of mess ups and cover ups became possible. Even though Tripwire will not be among my top Reacher books, I'm busy devouring two more. And I leave you with a wonderful chance to eavesdrop on two great contemporary writers:
