A Turn of Phrase ...

I wrote this in April of 2020 for the Word Wranglers blog. I had absolutely no idea I'd be feeling the same way over five years later! I'm sorry I do, to tell the truth, but I still like a good turn of phrase, and the stories I talked about here. - Liz

Because I want comfort right now, and things to laugh at, and no surprises, I've been reading books I've read before, usually a long time ago. I love them. It's not that I think writers then were necessarily better than they are now or even that the stories were better, but there was something about the way those writers spun the language that I don’t see in modern prose.

I read Betty MacDonald’s Onions in the Stew this week. She referred to Vashon Island as “plump and curvy” and to Mt. Rainier as a “magnificent, unbelievably shy mountain who parts her clouds and shows her exquisite face…” She writes that a “tiny white church up to its knees in non-ecclesiastical currant bushes holds a bony arm bearing a small cross high up toward the pale sky.” Yet another church, “large hipped…glares disapprovingly” at a movie theater. I can see those things, can’t you? I think I can feel them, too.

Do you remember when the needle grew “too heavy” for Beth March? I was nine years old when I first read it. All these shockingly many years later, my heart breaks yet again.

“I’m so glad,” said Anne of Green Gables, “I live in a world where there are Octobers.” Remember her of the new days with no mistakes in them yet? It became a mantra for me when it seemed as if I couldn’t go even a few hours without something going wrong.

Although I haven't yet, I have no doubt I will delve into some old Betty Neels books before this crisis ends. They are the mashed potatoes and gravy of comfort reads, and I can't wait. I know what's going to happen in each of her over 100 books, and I don't care--I'll read 'em again. Same with Rosamund Pilcher's The Shell Seekers. There's just something about the way they talk to me. 

I blogged once that something I always looked for and cherished in books I read (and wrote) was tenderness. (SPOILER ALERT) LaVyrle Spencer is one of my favorite writers, and Forgiving is possibly my favorite of her books. Much of the reason for this is that tenderness threads through the entire story like fingers unbraiding hair. The last line of the book was, “And they slept. Delivered.”

I love being a writer. I talk about retiring from it, but probably never will. I love being a reader, too, because of the richness reading gives to my life. Because of turns of phrase and just the right word in just the right place. Because of a breaking heart, a borrowed mantra, and the soft, sweet sigh of “Delivered.”

Share with us. What are some of your favorite place settings of words or your favorite writers who set those places?