Ruth comments on reader questions or observations . . .

Sequel Reader

November 25, 2008

In a letter to me about THE HUSBAND BENCH, Dee Beaumont referred to herself as a “sequel reader.” I realized that although I am also one, I’d never run across this term before. It delighted me and seemed to sum up a lifetime of reading sequels.

In my third novel, ONE MINUS ONE, the heroine buoys herself up during an unsettling situation by remembering a perfect moment: “a winter day; I was warm in the big chair in the living room, and I had a new Nancy Drew book and a deviled ham sandwich (with mayonnaise, on squishy white bread).” There have been many perfect moments involving series, sequels.

The various first series I remember, after Raggedy Ann and Pooh and such that were read to me by my parents, were at the outset also read to me by them, but as each series continued I became able to read the books on my own, growing up along with the characters. Indeed, the subtitle of the first Five Little Peppers book was And How They Grew, which they continued to do throughout the sequels. My books in this series were old, from my mother’s childhood and her parents’ attic in their house in Lexington, Masachusetts, as were many others. Of all these, the Five Little Peppers series was a definite favorite. Ever since, whenever I put leftover cooked potatoes into the fridge I still think of how the poverty-stricken Pepper family always seemed to have only cold potatoes to eat, at least in my memory. Another series from my grandparents’ attic was The Little Colonel, and after I read one of the sequels, The Little Colonel’s House Party, I adopted the motto that played a part in it, a quote from Tennyson’s Idylls of the King: “Live pure, speak true, right wrong, follow the King—/Else, wherefore born?”

Also from that attic came Anne of Green Gables, but I think the Anne sequels were bought for me by my grandparents, because I can remember the perfect moment of opening a brand-new book, Anne of Avonlea. And of course from the attic came those classics of classics, Little Women, Little Men, and Jo’s Boys, and the other Louisa May Alcott books in matching bindings. After a time, instead of the Little Women series, the Louisa May Alcott books I began to read over and over were Eight Cousins and its sequel, Rose in Bloom. Did the Scottish themes in these two books influence me when I fell in love with a boy whose background happened to be Scottish and eventually married him for a happy ending? (Actually, hormones did the influencing.)

Whenever The Wizard of Oz is on TV, what I remember is my father’s mother’s house in Orford, New Hampshire. The memory is very faint, very young. We were spending the night there for the first and only time that I recall; we lived just an hour and a half away in Laconia, so we usually returned home after a visit. For some reason we did stay the night, and Penny (my sister) and I weren’t put in the same room or the same bed, as we were when we stayed overnight often at my grandparents’ in Lexington.  Was Penny in need of comfort and put into the bed where my parents would sleep?  I can’t remember; in any case, I was alone in a strange bedroom and scared. Then my father came in with a falling-apart copy of The Patchwork Girl of Oz that must have belonged to one or all of his three sisters. Somewhere in the house he or my mother or grandmother had managed to unearth it, the first Oz book I’d ever seen. He read me to sleep, and the next day I was given the book to take home. And thus began my collection of Oz books.

Libraries at the time ignored the many series turned out in factory-fashion by the Stratemeyer Syndicate, such as the Honey Bunch books and Nancy Drew books. So they had to be bought. At Christmas and on our birthdays, our grandparents gave Penny and me our favorites of these series. Around our neighborhood, the borrowing and swapping back and forth of the most popular got them circulated. From the girl across the street I borrowed Bobbsey Twins sequels and from her brother I borrowed The Hardy Boys.

Amongst the other books our grandparents bought for us, Penny’s favorite was the Uncle Wiggily series, and its influence remains; whenever we’ve taken a trip together, she has urged me on with Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy’s exhortation, “It’ll be an adventure, Wiggy!” I loved the Maida series that began with Maida’s Little Shop, and I longed to be Rosie with her olive skin and black curls and daring courage, while I recognized that my own coloring and shyness were more like Maida’s.

There were even series in newspapers. We could read Mother West Wind in the Boston Globe as well as in books.

But of course we were also going to the library, and from the library came an abundance of perfect moments. I wasn’t a horse-loving girl, but I did enjoy the Windy Foot series, and when I attend our Sandwich Fair every year I think of Windy Foot at the Country Fair, in which I learned “Hey, rube!” and what it meant. I met Beany Malone at the library as well, and other girls in other YA series, all the Rosamund du Jardin books, all the young heroines who were coping with growing up.

My mother was an Agatha Christie fan, and around our house there were always paperbacks starring Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple, so these were the first adult series I read in my youth. They, along with Nancy Drew, led to a lifetime love of murder mysteries. Nowadays most of the series I read seem to be mysteries. I look forward eagerly to each sequel in Cynthia Harrod-Eagles’s Bill Slider series and Margaret Maron’s Deborah Knott series. A recent discovery is Brendan DuBois’s Lewis Cole series set on the New Hampshire seacoast that has found its way into my own novels. The latest sequel I’ve read is William G. Tapply’s Hell Bent, and I first came across Tapply when he collaborated with another series writer, Philip R. Craig, whose Martha’s Vineyard series has now ended with his last, Vineyard Chill. Philip Craig put recipes at the ends of his mysteries, and when I read that he had died, I went out and bought some scallops and made his Scallops in Sherry-Mustard Sauce from Vineyard Prey.

Thanks to audio books, I’m listening to se quels nowadays as well as reading them. The latest one I’ve listened to is one I’ve read a million times,  Agatha Christie’s Mysterious Affair at Styles. Having it read to me, by David Suchet, took me back to opening my mother’s copy of it for a perfect moment, then further back to listening to Raggedy Ann being read to me at bedtime.

I’m grateful to Dee Beaumont for her letter reminding me of the pleasure that comes from being a sequel reader, and I hope it has reminded you too of favorites old and new.