I love old books. And not-so-old books. I think you can have a few nice ones as part of the furniture (instead of coffee table books, books as coffee table). Maybe even a whole bookshelf as erm, a bookshelf (but a better-looking one). Like when I wrapped a big bunch of pre-Kindle-era impulse purchases in white, black or duck-egg blue paper and marker-ed the titles down the spines just so I would have a book case of matching books <blissful sigh at memory of wrapping books on floor next to dog> Cue pretentious violin music playing.
- New edition on left, my childhood copy on right. I’ve had it since I was a little girl so it’s about 30 years old and has a special place on my bookshelf; the one on the left looks exactly like it, I saw it on the forms for ordering books via Rockstar’s school and jumped to get him a copy
And then the Hot Husband has to go buy wayyy more books with seriously ugly covers about the internet and China and startups bla de bla and completely overwhelm my book case and book-wrapping powers. Cue jarring halt to said pretentious violin music-playing. Fortunately for him he is Hot Husband. (In the geeky derivatives-savvy way I define hot that no one else can understand. Oh, my mother has wondered at my taste from Wayy Back When, but this is her own fault for sending me down the path to a career in Finance.)
Anyway. The Story Of Ferdinand is one I loved as a child, but would you believe, it was a story I went back to in adulthood when I worked in banking. One of the things that inspired me at work <sheepish – whatever works right?> Last time I remember telling the story was to my immediate team head in my last position. (If you want to know the story, here‘s one I found online.)
Why?
1) Ferdinand was born a bull, in a meadow where all the other little boy bulls dreamed of growing into fierce bull-fighting bulls. Bearing in mind neither being a bull-fighting bull nor a flower-smelling bull as a career is differentiated by the size of their paychecks, Ferdinand liked to smell flowers, so he smelled flowers, regardless of the fact everyone else he was growing up with liked banging their heads together. It did not stop Ferdinand from being true to himself.
2) His mother might have been a cow, but … She let him be flowers-smelling bull instead of bull-fighting bull. You can be the best mother even if you were born a cow. Even when people expect you to be a cow. People can still respect cows.
3) The Banderilleros and Picadores and Matador went about being idiots with capes when they were actually freaking scared of Ferdinand… The least substantial cowardly idiots are going to be the ones waving capes about and making a lotta noise. A thing about empty vessels comes to mind.
4) Nothing the idiots with the capes did could make Ferdinand mad – and that drove them more nuts than anything. Not to mention he then gave them no reason to kill him (in this story la). Pride, ego, inability to control emotion, particularly anger, will set you up for humiliation or get you killed and sold in the butchers’.
New Rockstar on the left, old rockstar on the right (that's me btw, when I was about his age now - but super tanned, I was a waterbaby and swam a lot under the sun)
5) So anyway Ferdinand was carted off back to his home and flower-smelling ways. Who cares about the people who don’t like flower-smelling bulls. The most pissy people about this were the ones whose opinions shouldn’t matter anyway since they were trying to turn him into hamburger.
“He is very happy.” – The story of Ferdinand, by Munro Leaf.
Turns out Ferdinand was quite an achiever after all. There are people out there with serious careers and stuff who still haven’t figured how to be happy.
TGIF, dears.
ps: I’m aware this is fictitious because of the gruesome-ness of real-life bullfighting (and the fact said gruesome act is done before an audience for entertainment), but I love the book still…
And … back to my earlier rant about ugly book covers. I cannot understand how there isn’t already a campaign to limit the number of fugly books husbands are allowed to bring home in giant shoppers. It’s like, seriously important so families stay together. Don’t you just hate the people who don’t give two hoots about the attractiveness of their book covers when they publish?
This is what is wrong with the world today.
Wow and wow! What other books do you have that are 30 years old? How come in the photo, there are 3 Ferdinand books? One for your husband too? You looked so happy in the photo – is it due to the swimming?
Yeah I loved water as a small child… That picture has been in my mum’s wallet til now, I took a cellphone pic of it when she visited… We used to be inseparable when I was very little…
It’s two books, the “book” furthest left is the box cover for Rockstar’s edition with the 75yr anniversary “star”… That’s how old roughly the story is…
Have many, many old children’s story books like that (though that’s the only one I actually display as a “work of art” because of the illustrations which I find as special as the story), my mum brought a bunch over to read to Rockstar – I have to go take another look at what exactly she brought, but I did notice a lot of the regular ones – Enormous Turnip, Little Red Hen (which his school also did), Sly Fox And Little Red Hen, Rumpelstiltskin etc etc…
Sure something wrong out there.
Thank you (for stopping by) and hello dere, Mr… (Munro) Leaf? 🙂
You were a cute little girl & now a very pretty mummy! I can see the family resemblance much clearer now. I like the sound of this book. Did you buy the new copy in HK? [cheeky angel]
Thanks CA, I bought Rockstar’s copy via his school summer book program, but I think I saw it at the recent HK Book Fair too so I think you should be able to get it at one of the larger book stores here… The illustrations, by the author’s friend, apparently accurately depict some of the streets in Spain back in the 1930s..