nocowardsoul

Fandom snowflake-challenge #5

Wed, 14 Jan 2026 16:54:50 GMT

Challenge #5

In your own space, create a list of at least three things you'd love to receive, a wishlist of sorts. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it and include a link to your wishlist if you feel comfortable doing so.

1. For people to post to historicalyafen, which is for vintage children's and ya fiction and historical children's and ya fiction.

2. A link to a detailed description of how to record a podcast for a complete n00b.

3. For everyone to have a good 2026!

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Recap: Avalanche Patrol by Montgomery M. Atwater (1951)

Mon, 24 Nov 2025 17:18:15 GMT

[Originally posted on Tumblr, edited a little bit]

Out of several park and forest themed books I decided Avalanche Patrol (1951) by Montgomery Atwater sounded potentially interesting. Atwater (1904-1976) wrote 11 outdoor juvenile novels, and like many authors he worked in the field he wrote about. He was known as the father of avalanche research in North America.

Chapter 1: Paid Ski Vacation
Brad Davis gets yanked out of class because his Uncle Bob, “Chief of Wildlife in Region One of the U. S. Forest Service,” received an urgent message. Whitecaps National Forest wants a man for emergency duty. Brad is a skier, but Uncle Bob and his other Uncle Lane started their careers “before the time of the ski craze” so they primarily use snowshoes.

Is Brad an orphan? Orphan aren’t very common in career fiction; most protagonists have good parents.
( Read more... )

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Recent reading - career fiction

Wed, 24 Sep 2025 22:12:55 GMT

Cherry Ames, Mountaineer Nurse by Julie Tatham (aka Julie Campbell) (1951)
People comment on the fact that Cherry changes jobs so often. I think one of the reasons is that the series is meant to be educational. In this volume, the reader learns how to provide nursing to rural families with little formal educational. How do you convince them to get vaccines, or to not dip a child in a pool at midnight?

Of course the Kentucky mountains mean feuding families, and a feud means a pair of forbidden lovers, and Cherry plays a part in their happy ending. She also tells the grannies that the man buying their hooked hugs is underpaying them and writes her friend Mai who finds a NYC store that pays them fairly.

Davey Logan, Interne by Henry Gregor Felsen (1950)
This begins with young farmboy Davey galloping a horse into town to fetch a doctor, but the doctor won't come and Davey's mother dies, so he decides to go to med school instead of veterinary school. He gets looked down on for being a hick, sees various patients, makes $75 a month, romances fellow interne Janet, and clashes with a reporter. It's less inane than many career books I've read. Its existence is a bit curious - Felson wasn't a doctor and most of his fiction was about hot rod racing.

Davey gets a residency at the Mayo clinic, but he turns it down to start a practice in his village. In the '50s you could start practice after interne year without doing a residency. In fact the characters mention that in some states you can start practice after med school without doing an internship, but I don't know if that's true.

A funny moment is when a surgeon tells Davey it's the right choice to go into Internal Medicine because, "It's the frontier. It's the only branch of our profession with a real future. Look at us surgeons. We've reached our limit. We can cut anything out of the human body that it is possible to cut out. But our field is narrowing, not expanding. Every new discovery these fellows in Medicine make, the surgeon becomes less essential. Yesterday we cut all the time, because Medicine could not cure. Today the so-called miracle drugs cure thousands that once would have needed surgery." That's not happened to surgery in the 1950s!

Beth Donnis, Speech Therapist by Kathlyn Gay (1968)
The first book I've read from the Messner Career Romance for Young Moderns line. Beth (short for Bethesda, not Elizabeth) just graduated and takes a job at the local school. She's an orphan raised by her aunt, a realtor, and there's a subplot about her aunt selling to the father of one of Beth's students, which makes the book a little more interesting than if it were entirely speech therapy. Of course she falls in love with an English teacher named Hal. (Jobs of parents and love interests are an interesting topic to me.)

At one point Beth goes to a teacher's classroom to see why her kids haven't arrived, and the teacher says they're viewing a history film in "the film room." Beth says what about the kids sitting at the desks, and the teacher says they're too noisy and being disciplined. Beth says "that's hardly consistent" but I'm on the teacher's side. You shouldn't have to miss any part of class to do speech therapy or anything similar.

A detail I noted in the author's bio: She was PhT (Putting husband through). "Kathlyn Gay was born in a small town north of Chicago, Illinois, and attended Northern Illinois University at DeKalb for two years. She planned to become a teacher, but met and married a fellow student, leaving school to help out financially while her husband got started in his profession as an elementary school teacher. She began writing the day her nine-year-old daughter was born and sold her first article. Mrs. Gay has been writing professionally ever since and was writer/ editor for a national organization which solicits funds for overseas relief. She is now a full-time free-lance writer publishing both fiction and non-fiction in national magazines."

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Aforementioned MAS*H fanfic

Thu, 14 Aug 2025 16:12:19 GMT

Mail Call Once Again (1717 words) by nocowardsoul
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: MASH (TV)
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Benjamin Franklin "Hawkeye" Pierce & Charles Emerson Winchester III, B. J. Hunnicutt & Sherman Potter
Characters: B. J. Hunnicutt, Sherman Potter, Benjamin Franklin "Hawkeye" Pierce, Charles Emerson Winchester III
Summary:

BJ gets an upsetting letter from home and rebuffs Hawkeye's attempt at comfort, so Hawkeye takes an interest in Charles' reading material.

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Seeking beta for MASH fic

Sat, 19 Jul 2025 20:10:06 GMT

Is anyone willing to beta a MASH fanfic, not quite 2000 words? It's written like an episode so half is BJ and Potter and half is about Hawkeye and Charles (and Hornblower). I can't return the favor because I can never think of things to say about fic.

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Another update on career novels

Sun, 15 Jun 2025 22:21:17 GMT

There are now 1000 pages on the wiki. I have tagged 522 pages with FMC and 461 with MMC. A few books, of course, have both. 6 pages are tagged unsure, and yet that only adds up to only 989. *shrug*

784 standalones, 188 series, 5 short story collections, and the Kay Collins, Secretary short stories from the Cherry Ames Girls Annuals.

The girls have Kay Collins, 1 collection, 82 series, and 438 standalones. The boys have 3 collections, 114 series, and 344 standalones.

The earliest book I have a page for is Katie Robertson: A Girl's Story of Factory Life by Margaret E. Winslow (1885), but I'm sure earlier books exist. (I don't want to read Horatio Alger!) The first series is Ward Hill, teacher (1897-1909). Ruth Fielding is the first series about a girl.

Military - 130 - 29 girls, 16 of them nurses. 59 series, 1 collection.
Air force - 17
Army - 42
Coast Guard - 6
Marines - 3 (1 girl, 2 boys)
Merchant Marine - 7
Navy - 43

It doesn't add up because for some books the description doesn't specify what branch the protagonist is in. There are various positions, from pilot to radar trouble-shooter to dietitian to nurse. Notably there is no military doctor protagonist. Many of these are WWI or WWII propaganda, but there are several from before, between, or after. But there's an unsurprising drop-off in the 1960s once the Vietnam War starts, and the only MCs who serve in that war are nurses. ( Read more... )

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Fic Commentary: Prayers to Saint Nicholas (Beyond the Western Sea)

Wed, 22 Jan 2025 19:18:51 GMT

I wanted to post something for the day the book - well, the main plot - starts, but I didn't have fic to finish or graphics to make. So commentary it is.

I first started this fic in 2009. It was inspired by the fanfic100 prompt of either "parents" or "children." I don't remember when I came up with the title, but I love it as a reference both to the patron saint of children and to the book's use of saint names for almost every significant character. ( Read more... )

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Numbers on children's/YA career fiction through 1979

Fri, 25 Oct 2024 18:00:55 GMT

Months ago I posted a list on Tumblr
https://www.tumblr.com/caddyxjellyby/754276286076272640/preliminary-numbers-on-childrensya-career-novels?source=share

But I have added pages for many more books or series since then. In fact there are 146 books with at least one sequel, 580 standalone books, 1 short story collection about diving, and 1 series of short stories about Kay Collins, Secretary which appeared in the Cherry Ames Girls Annual. You can see that the number of nurse protagonists has more than doubled, but it is no longer the most common job. The most common is ( Read more... )

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(no subject)

Tue, 23 Jul 2024 22:44:14 GMT

It's delightful to type up a fic and realize that it's longer than you realized. And it will get longer because that's what happens when I edit.

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Reading Wednesday 8/23/23

Wed, 23 Aug 2023 23:10:21 GMT

What I finished this week

Any Which Wall by Laurel Snyder (2009). A pastiche of Edward Eager - two brother-sister pairs in Iowa find a wall that magically transports them to wherever they wish. Pretty much as good as the source material.

Little Women Abroad: The Alcott Sisters' Letters from Europe, 1870-1871, edited by Daniel Shealy. Read it via Archive.org. I made an account there a few months ago and they have so many things! Probably the funniest part is LMA's description of avoiding a pig.

"We went to a ruin one day, and were about to explore the castle, when a sow with her family of twelve charged through the gateway at us so fiercely that we fled in dismay, for pigs are not nice when they attack, as we don't know where to bone ‘em, and I saw a woman one day whose nose had been bitten off by an angry pig. I flew over a hedge; May tried to follow but stuck and lay with her long legs up and her head in a ditch howling for me to save her, as the sow was charging in the rear, and a dog, two cows, and a boy looking on. I pulled her over head first, and we tumbled into the tower, like a routed garrison. It was’nt a nice ruin, but we were bound to see it, having suffered so much. And we did see it in spite of the pigs, who waylaid us on all sides, and squealed in triumph when we left, dusty, torn and tired. The ugly things wander at their own sweet will, and are tall, round-backed, thin wretches who run like race horses and are no respecters of persons."

And there were many sketches by May Alcott that even I hadn't seen before.

What I'm reading now

April Lady by Georgette Heyer because it's almost the only paper book I own that I haven't reread in the past few years.

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Reading Wednesday 3/29/23

Wed, 29 Mar 2023 22:05:42 GMT

What I finished this week

Affinity by Sarah Waters. I've been meaning to read Waters for a long time. Affinity is about a spinster gentlewoman who volunteers to visit women in prison. She falls for one of the inmates, a spiritual medium.

What I'm reading now

A Restless Truth by Freya Marske, the middle book of a fantasy trilogy and also a f/f romance. It's all right so far.

What I'm reading next

I don't know but I'm tempted to see how long I can make the queer heroine streak last!

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Lyrics to Better Than You by Nathan Rogers

Wed, 15 Mar 2023 17:48:18 GMT

( Read more... )

I'm not 100% certain about "dedicate a chicken" but I think all the rest is correct.

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Polls on Tumblr

Mon, 13 Feb 2023 21:01:21 GMT

After years of people mentioning how great it would be if Tumblr had polls, they have been added!

So far I've posted two. Whether or not Margaret is leaving the army in the MASH finale, because I've seen people interpret it either way
https://caddyxjellyby.tumblr.com/post/708835898916225024/is-margaret-leaving-the-army-in-gfa-yes-no

And least favorite school subject ("social sciences" was supposed to be "social studies," an error I could have avoided if I had just put history)
https://caddyxjellyby.tumblr.com/post/708918608465657856/class-you-disliked-the-most-not-necessarily-the

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More complicated

Sun, 15 Jan 2023 01:24:58 GMT

Can people stop acting like social media is the only thing having an impact on teenagers' mental health?

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Versions of The Leaving of Liverpool

Wed, 14 Dec 2022 01:31:35 GMT

They are all on YouTube.

Really good( Read more... )

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Reading Wednesday 10/5

Wed, 05 Oct 2022 15:44:02 GMT

What I finished this week:

I found out on Friday that I can now use my library card to access the Overdrives of two partner libraries. There are several books I have my eyes on, and the first one I read was Meg, Jo, Beth, Amy: The Story of Little Women and Why It Still Matters by Anne Boyd Rioux (2018). It discusses the book, the initial reaction to it, the various adaptations including some I didn't know existed. Florence Henderson was in a TV musical in 1958. Katharine Hepburn played Jo on radio in addition to on screen. Then the author discusses men who have read LW, whether kids still read it today, and books and movies influenced by it. Some of those are a bit of a stretch – LW sure played a role in popularizing the Four Girl Ensemble, but that doesn't mean every Four Girl Ensemble is based on it.

The one thing that annoyed me is that Rioux lists a number of women who said they loved the book and idolized or loved Jo, or saw her as a role model. But there is no mention of anyone who found Meg, Beth, or Amy more relatable or likable or enviable.

The sequels are mentioned although not in detail.

What I'm reading now:

Bleak House, which I first read back in 2009. There are a few characters I forgot about entirely. Also I didn't realize before that it's set earlier than its publication date. The introduction by Michael Slater says “Dickens sets the action of the novel in the prerailway England of the days shortly before the great Refrom Bill of 1832.” I'm on Chapter 20, where Young Smallweed first appears.

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Mad as hell

Fri, 16 Sep 2022 20:33:29 GMT

For reasons that don't need explaining I was looking at my high school's website and I saw that they now require a year of art or a year of a language, and I let out one of the biggest "FUCK YOU"s of my life.

When I was there they required a year of art and two years of a language. I hated art.

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Reading Wednesday 6/1

Wed, 01 Jun 2022 17:11:31 GMT

What I finished reading:

Yesterday: A Memoir of a Russian Jewish Family by Miriam Shomer Zunser with an afterword by Emily Wortis Leider, her granddaughter. It begins in Pinsk, Russia with Zunser's grandfather Reb Michel Bercinsky, a lawyer. Due to a false rumor that married men would not be conscripted into the army, he was married at 14 to 12 year old Yentel in 1834. They had 24 kids but only 9 lived to adulthood. Each of those 9 gets a chapter in the book. The author's mother was Dinneh, who "all the days of her long life bitterly resented the meagerness of her youthful education." She married Nochim-Mayer Shaikevitsch, the writer known as Shomer.

Miriam and her husband Charles Zunser are the grandparents of children's novelist Avi, Emily being his twin. That's how I heard of the book - I went down a rabbit hole that started when I saw that someone had made his father, a psychiatrist, a Wikipedia page. There is a family picture with them and their brother in the book.

What I'm reading next:

Cuckoo's Egg by C. J. Cherryh.

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Quick Update

Thu, 28 Apr 2022 18:14:37 GMT

Am having Internet problems at my house. I'm at the library right now - I hate doing things on my phone.

But I did post a Beyond the Western Sea fic for St. George's Day.

Read Lieutenant Hornblower, which was delightful, and Cherryh's Rusalka once again, which I still love.

I also finished rewatching MASH on the 15th and I'm working on two posts about that.

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Reading Wednesday 2/16

Wed, 16 Feb 2022 20:18:34 GMT

What I finished reading

Lord Hornblower, in which C. S. Forester was not playing around. ( Read more... )

I bought TV’s M*A*S*H: The Ultimate Guide Book by Ed Solomonson and Mark O’Neill. I don't remember how it started but I went down a rabbit hole of looking up the show's stuntmen and stuntwomen. In those days stunt people were not listed in a show or a movie's credits, a fact that my grandpa liked to complain about. The book's description mentioned commentary from a stuntman so I bought it. His name is Michael Rodgers and he had lines so he was credited as an actor.

Lots of fun facts and interviews in the book. I knew Tumblr would love and hate Larry Gelbart's (I assume tongue-in-cheek) idea of what happened to the characters. “Hawkeye would have become a right wing conservative. BJ would be on this third marriage. Trapper John and his wife would be celebrating their 40th. Houlihan would be living with a woman partner. Radar would be a taxidermist. Klinger would be a Congressman. Potter would be deceased. So would I.”

What I'm reading now

Doomsday Morning by C. L. Moore, a standalone sci-fi novel from 1957.

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Reading Wednesday 12/1

Wed, 01 Dec 2021 21:05:00 GMT

What I've just finished

The Lindbergh Case by Jim Fisher, a long and detailed account of the kidnapping that I read because I was writing something where it made sense for the characters to reference it.

Holes by Louis Sachar, which I think holds up very well.

What I'm reading now

After being aware of its existence since 2005, possibly 2004, what gets me to read Horatio Hornblower? A brief reference on M*A*S*H. Yeah, funny how things work out. I started with Beat to Quarters and I am enjoying it.

(And reading it confirms that the show was referencing Forester, not the real Hornblower family of Massachusetts or the phrase blowing one's horn, because Charles calls BJ Captain Hornblower during a bridge game and Horatio plays whist.)

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every mention of reading or writing in Beyond the Western Sea

Fri, 08 Oct 2021 18:30:25 GMT

[Previously posted on Tumblr]

Chapter 2. Gregory O'Connell dictates his letter to Nathaniel. The priest reads it aloud. Annie O'Connell has never received a letter before. Unlike their parents, Maura and Patrick (and presumably Timothy) can read and write thanks to Father Mahoney. I wonder what he taught them from – Bibles or just writing words himself?

7. Maura and Patrick read the ship company sign.

9. “On two walls, bookcases were filled with leather-bound, gilt-edged tomes.” Laurence reads the motto carved into the mantel.

11. Laurence peeks at Lord Kirkle’s business reports. Mentions buying books.( Read more... )

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Take notice! Rosemary Sutcliff

Thu, 23 Sep 2021 15:40:47 GMT

The next discussion post on historicalyafen will be for Rosemary Sutcliff. I will post it on October 1 or 2.

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It's Reading Wednesday!

Wed, 28 Jul 2021 23:08:29 GMT

What I've just finished

The Birds' Christmas Carol by Kate Douglas Wiggin, about which I won't say anything because it's for historicalyafen. Wait for August 1.

What I'm reading now

I'm on Chapter 55 of Vanity Fair. Rawdon Crawley has just learned he's the governor of Coventry Island. Becky is a glorious character and I did feel for Amelia when she sent her son to live with his grandfather.

Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm by Wiggin. See above.

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Beverly Cleary and PBS

Tue, 15 Jun 2021 17:04:13 GMT

A post is up on historicalyafen for talking about Beverly Cleary.
https://historicalyafen.dreamwidth.org/11593.html

For a few weeks I've been trying to find a short cartoon I saw on TV in the 90s or 00s. I don't know if it was part of a show or one of those segments PBS Kids and Nick Jr had between shows. The library books open up and the kid jumps inside them. I think one is a forest or jungle and one is underwater and one is outer space but I might be wrong. The illustrations are drawn like a pop up book. The kid isn't a character I know - not any of the Sesame Street regulars or Arthur the aardvark or from Richard Scarry's Busytown. I didn't think it would be hard to find but there are lots of library songs from kid shows.

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