Breathing Space

A Great Quote

2011-10-20T21:25:00.001-05:00

I love this quote from Jack Kerouac: “The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars... ” I saw it when I escorted young adult author Rosemary Clement-Moore to visit a classroom at my school today after a whole school assembly. She was great! She talked to the students about Gothic novels and about writing. Her visit was a big success. I recommend her most recent book Texas Gothic to anyone who likes ghost stories and a little teen romance.

Back to the quote, I really do love it--so much that I put it in my right sidebar. (This quote reminds me of Dylan Thomas's "Do not go gentle into that good night," one of my favorite poems.) I want to be one of the mad people even though I'm not sure about the "mad to be saved" meaning. Really, though, I'm too self-conscious to be one of the mad ones. I wish it weren't true, but I know that it is. Don't get me wrong. I love life and try to live it to the fullest in my own little ways, but I do spend a great deal of time worrying about what other people think and second guessing myself. Sometimes I do talk madly, but I often end up saying something that doesn't make sense or worrying that I've said something to offend someone listening.

Okay, I thought I was going to write more, but then I updated my iPhone to OS5 and got to caught up in Criminal Minds. Now, I've lost all motivation to write. The show is just about over. Guess it's time to go to bed and read for a while. Later.

An Off Task Discovery

2011-10-10T09:32:00.006-05:00

So, I'm sitting in a staff development session about research tips, which should have been a good choice for me to make. HOWEVER, this session was originally created for 4th grade teachers doing a certain project in their classes. The session's description was very general with no mention of grade levels. The district tech person teaching this session was very upset when she realized last night/this morning that the participants are two first grade teachers, one middle school GT teacher, and one junior high librarian (me). I feel sorry for her, and she's trying very hard to fit her presentation to our needs, but I'm really having a hard time staying on task--honestly, though, I generally have a hard time staying on task anyway.

So here's one thing that I've been doing: I checked out this article from School Library Journal that I saw a tweet about this morning: Cool Tools: Visual presentations make it easier for students to tackle data and difficult text. One of the sites mentioned in the article was Tagul.com, which is a word cloud creator. It's cool! I might like it better than Wordle.net. Each word in the cloud becomes a search term when you click the word, and you can filter common words, which I did. Click here to what I made using the URL from this blog. I tried to place the cloud here, but I couldn't figure out how to make it fit the space.

The Grapes of Wrath

2011-08-26T06:22:00.003-05:00

My Grapes of Wrath post must be delayed. I'm not quite finished with the book yet. I have just over 100 pages left to read. I'll finish it tonight or in the morning and have my post up tomorrow afternoon or Sunday morning. Sorry for the delay.

Good Food, Books, and Art - My Perfect Summer Day

2011-07-07T18:05:00.006-05:00

Today was an absolutely lovely example of what summer vacation should be.

First, a quick overview then I'll fill in some details. I slept until almost 7:15, had a couple of cups of good coffee and a quick breakfast while checking Facebook & Twitter and reading part of a short story. I walked for an hour while listening to Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater (Thanks to Audiobook Community for the free download). I had a leisurely lunch from H-town StrEATs at Inversion Coffee House, reading Victor LaValle's Big Machine while I ate. Then I went to The Menil Collection. I haven't been there in a while and wanted to see the Civil Rights era photographs on display. Of course, I can't go there without strolling through the surrealist and modern art rooms, even though I've seen most of the work in those rooms before. Since Cy Twombly died earlier this week, I thought I should finally visit the Cy Twombly gallery while I was at the Menil. Afterward, I stopped briefly at Half Priced Books, looking for a small, cheap volume of Rilke poems, which I didn't find but found something else very interesting. Then I needed to get a prescription filled and decided not to sit around and wait for it to be filled. Instead, I used the wait time as an excuse to check out Sweet Tea Cafe & Tea Bar, where I had a delicious piece of red velvet cake and some iced tea and did a bit more reading of Big Machine. After that, I picked up the prescription and came home to spend the evening blogging, reading or maybe watching a Midsomer Murders episode since I have the house to myself tonight.

Now for some details. About Shiver, it's a werewolf story, and I really don't do fantasy/horror novels, but since the audiobook was available as a free download and the book was fairly popular with some of my students last school year, I decided to give it a try. Each of the 9 parts is just over an hour long, the perfect amount of time for me to walk my three plus miles around the neighborhood. The writing is pretty good; the story is interesting, and, most importantly, the readers are not annoying to listen to. I'm no audiobook connoisseur, but I've had some bad experiences with audiobooks before. Shiver is basically a teen romance, and it's not bad, even the sometimes cheesy lyrics that Sam creates in his head seem appropriate to his character.

The World was Watching, the Civil Rights photographs exhibit, are part of a program that includes a lecture and the screening of films and television footage from the era and more photographs on display at The Gregory Schoo l. (I haven't seen those photos yet, but I plan to go very soon.) Some of the photos at The Menil actually were so powerful that they brought tears to my eyes. I made a few notes about some of the people and places in the photos. Even though I feel pretty well-educated about the Civil Rights movement, there were some people and places in the photos that I don't think I've ever heard of. I'll do some research later to learn more about them.

The Cy Twombly Gallery contains a permanent exhibition of his works. I really like much abstract and modern art, but some of his scribbling really just looks like a child's scribbling. There were a couple of series of paintings that I found rather interesting though. One had something to do with roses, but it was like the roses were bleeding or disintegrating. I should've made a note of the words on the painting, but I didn't and can't find them online right now. Another series related to lines from a Rilke poem. I think it's called A Painting in 9 Parts, and these are, I think, Rilke's lines: and in the pond/broken off from the sky/my feeling sinks/as if standing on fishes--I can't decide if these lines are hopelessly sad or not. The paintings have lots of dark greens and black in them. I've never read any Rilke, unless I read some in a long ago literature class, but after leaving the Menil, I stopped at Half Priced today looking for some. More about that later. As I was leaving the gallery, I noticed a small room off the entryway that had a few sculptures in it. One of them is called Epitaph. The epitaph on the sculpture is very chilling: "In the HOSPITALITY of WAR We LEFT THEM THEIR DEAD AS a giFT TO REMEMBER US BY ARCHILOCHOS" [sic]. Archilochus was a 7th century Greek poet. These words are just so perfectly horrifying to me, especially in light of the world I live in now. Even now, sitting here in my living room, I just feel bereft from reading them. They just kind of take my breath away. I wish I could write lines that had that much power. But I can't sit here and be depressed, not after having such a wonderful day. On to a lighter topic.

Because the main boy character in Shiver and Cy Twombly have a thing for Rilke, I decided to see if Half Priced had a volume of his poems. I could've bought one, but it cost more than I wanted to pay today. While I was looking, I noticed a copy of Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet, and I wasn't sure if it was really letters or poems, so I pulled it off the shelf--it's all letters--and it fell open to an inscription from Boston to Bean. It's Half Priced books so I wasn't surprised by the presence of the inscription. I was surprised that the book contained both a card and the envelope it was mailed in. I took photos of the inscription and the card. Was that wrong? I was going to post them here, but I'm not sure now if I should. I felt like I had found a PostSecret. Anyway, I left Half Priced empty-handed, which is not easy for me to do. I decided that I probably have some Rilke poems in one of the many anthologies at home.

Now, as soon as I publish this post, I'm going to finish reading that short story that I started this morning and, hopefully, finish reading Big Machine. I have lots to say about it, but I'll wait to post something about until after book club meets on Sunday.

I'll leave you with some Ice Cube: I gotta say it was a good day.

Bloomsday 2011

2011-06-15T21:13:00.000-05:00

I saw a tweet earlier today and thought that I had missed Bloomsday, but I googled it and found that it's tomorrow, June 16. Yea! I will celebrate it by starting my reading of Ulysses by James Joyce. I still have a ways to go with Drood, which I wanted to finish this week, but I will interrupt it for a day. If I didn't have to work tomorrow, I might spend the whole day reading, and I could start the day with my a story from Dubliners for my daily short story.

Speaking of those short stories, yesterday I read George Saunders' "Home." It is in the New Yorker's summer fiction issue. I saw Saunders read once, and I thought I would like his work. I bought a copy of his CivilWarLand in Bad Decline. If I remember correctly, they were okay stories, but I felt like either they or I was missing something. I felt the same way about "Home." Today, I read another Murakami story (I've read several of his this summer) from The Elephant Vanishes, and I found it funny and thought provoking, but I'm still not sure that I'm seeing the greatness that his fans proclaim. I definitely think I would like to read one of his novels some time soon.

I know it's early but it's time for bed now. I have to teach a blogging workshop tomorrow morning. Later.

Biking and Books

2011-06-09T13:52:00.000-05:00

This is my 3rd post in a week! Can't remember the last time that happened, if it ever did.

I just returned from my second bike ride of the week. I'm not doing a very good job of biking more than driving, but I'm glad that I didn't give in to my laziness this morning. I rode farther than I did on Monday, but I still didn't make it to the library. Road construction caused me to rethink that destination.

Honestly, it wasn't just road construction. Most of my time on the bike, so far, I feel old and awkward and even more self-conscious than normal. I'm really worried about embarrassing myself by looking like I don't know how to ride a bike, and I'm not young enough or old enough for that to be cute. I can't imagine learning to ride a bike for the first time as an adult. Luckily, children don't worry as much about embarrassing themselves with a fall. They might be afraid they'll hurt themselves, but they know those kinds of hurts heal. They can't wait for the training wheels to come off and mommy or daddy to step away and let them be free.

There are moments, though, when I've felt good riding the bike. There really is something freeing in it, something like flying would feel, I think, something like driving very fast does feel. I have a friend who likes to jump out of planes, maybe the feeling of freedom is the draw for him. I thought I might segue to books from this feeling of freedom, but now, I see how cheesy that would have been. I'll just start a new paragraph and a new subject instead.

I started my third Summer of Short Stories (or #shortstorydaily as I'm calling it on Twitter). I've read two stories from Haruki Murakami's The Elephant Vanishes and one from A.S. Byatt's Little Black Book of Stories. So far, my favorite is Murakami's "The Second Bakery Attack." It's about a newlywed couple who wake up starving one night and have nothing at home to eat. While they are drinking beer to try to quash their hunger, the husband tells the wife about the time he and a college chum held up a bakery for bread (the eating kind not the spending kind). They got bread but not in the way they had planned. The wife decides that the botched hold up has cursed her husband and caused their extreme hunger pangs. The only way to break the curse is to attack a second bakery. The story is quite funny with some truly unexpected details.

In addition to the short stories, I'm reading A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan, my book club's current selection. I've never read any of her writing before, but I know she is much loved by literary critics, and I can see why. I'm responsible for this selection, and I'm so happy to be enjoying it. My last selection, Sag Harbor by Colson Whithead, fell flat. Most liked moments in the book but thought the book didn't hold together as a novel very well. I think Sunday's discussion of A Visit from the Goon Squad will be much different, if more than one or two of us has read the book, which seems to be a problem lately. I actually think that her novel is very similar to Sag Harbor in structure, but I'm finding hers more successful in creating a whole. I have more to say on this, but I'm going to save it for book club discussion and a later blog post.

Now, I need to do some housekeeping. Later!

Poetry Writing Workshop Blues

2011-06-08T14:22:00.000-05:00

Today was the first meeting of the Teachers as Writers Poetry Workshop that I'm attending this summer at Inprint. I've done several of these since 2004, including a short story one last summer which I really enjoyed. The class was full--15 participants, three of whom were also in the short story with me. Some of them are kind of scary. One has an MFA in poetry and has published a chapbook. One just graduated from undergrad with an emphasis in creative writing before teaching this past school year. One is using the class as a way to get back into writing before applying to an MFA program. Even some of the others who are "just" teachers seemed especially talented when they read their bad poems, which we wrote as a writing exercise. I'm not sure that I ever felt this intimidated on day 1 of a workshop.

As part of a writing exercise, we had to brainstorm some first lines of poems, and then we had to share the most interesting one and tell why we selected that one to share. Once we had our say, others could say where they would go with that first line, and then we had to give the first line to one of the others to write the poem. I was first to give, but I ended up getting the last person's poem, and not for lack of trying either. So here's the first line of my poem:

You with the teeth that balloon like porcelain scrotums--this poetry is not for you

What the hell am I supposed to do with that line? The person who created this line said that he was thinking about the two conflicting approaches (not sure if that's the right word or not) to poetry, one that poetry should be rather academic and not easy to understand by just anyone and the other that poetry should be written so that anyone can enjoy it and find meaning in it (Billy Collins is often cited as taking this approach to poetry). Even knowing what he was thinking, I still don't have a clue where this line will take me. At least I don't have to have the poem that comes from this line workshopped. I can choose to submit another poem for that next week, but I am expected to write this poem.

I should probably get to work on one of those poems now, but first, I need to do some work-ish type things. Later.

Summer Vacation Plans: Reading & Not Reading

2011-06-06T09:47:00.001-05:00

Summer vacation is here! And I'm going to be doing this all summer. I got a bike for my birthday in December, and I have a goal to ride it more than I drive my car this summer. Despite the predictions of record heat and little rain for most of the summer, I'm very excited about riding around the neighborhood. (For those of you who recognize Jessica Fletcher, I am not hoping to run across any dead bodies on my rides.)

I have lots of other ideas for filling all my free time too. Maybe too many plans. I've been feeling very stressed lately. The end of the school year can do that to me. But I don't want my summer vacation to stress me out, so I'm not making many promises. I'm definitely taking a poetry writing workshop this summer through Inprint. I've taken several of Inprint's workshops, including a short story writing workshop last summer. I was hoping that short story would be offered again, but poetry and memoir were my choices. I chose poetry. I've done them both before and enjoyed the poetry writing more than memoir.

It won't surprise anyone who knows me to know that I have reading ideas/plans for the summer. I want to read the following:

Ulysses by James Joyce - I like to read a big book in the summer, and I recently decided Ulysses would be it. I probably won't start it for a week or so, but I will get to it this summer.
A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan - This is our current book club selection, my choice, and I have less than a week to read it. I read the first chapter right after we picked it in May, but I let Valerie have it first because I was reading a young adult book that I wanted to finish first. We usually can get one copy from a library, so we don't have to buy two copies, but this book is popular right now. We couldn't find it at Half Priced Books, and our library holds never came in. Our second copy should be delivered tomorrow. I'll put other books aside so I can read it by Sunday.
Summer of Short Stories 3 - For the third summer in a row, I plan to read one short story each day. I think I need a better name for this personal reading challenge; I've decided to call it Short Story Daily. I try to blog about them but don't always get around to it, but I'm pretty good about tweeting about the stories as I finish them. I'm going to start today with a Murakami story from The Elephant Vanishes, which was loaned to me by my new-ish friend Eddy. I've never read any Murakami but feel like I should. Hopefully, these stories are a good place to start.
I need to finish the previous book club selection Fortune Cookie Chronicles & Drood, which I've been reading non-stop for the last week. It's a big book, 700+ pages, but a fast read.
I want to read some young adult books this summer too. I usually bring a bunch home and only read one or two. We'll see how it goes.

In addition to reading, I do have some other ideas for filling my summer vacation hours. I want to catalog all our books into librarything. We have lots of books! I also want to make Valerie a Christmas stocking like my grandmother used to make. I'll use mine as a pattern/model. I think this was on my last summer project list, but I was lazy and didn't do it. I hope to not be as lazy this summer.

Well, I guess I better decide where I'm riding my bike to this morning if I'm going to go for a bike ride. I have a book on hold at the neighborhood branch of the public library. Maybe I'll go get it. Later!

Recent reading & a book giveaway goal

2011-05-02T20:59:00.000-05:00

I finally finished The Finkler Question last night. I should have finished it by April 10, but like everyone else in book club, I didn't. Four of the seven of us met that night. Only three of us had started the book. I'm really not sure what I think about the book. I think I took too long to read it. If I had finished it on time, I think I would have had a lot to say about it. I generally like satire and thought the book was very funny in places, but for me it kind of fizzled in the end.

The book is only about 300 pages. So what took me so long? Lots of things got in the way, especially my reading of The Beautiful and Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald, which I read for The Classics Circuit's Lost Generation Tour. I'm still thinking about that book often. The portrait of these two people who at first glance seem to be determined to make their own way, Gloria especially, but then just float along waiting for Anthony's inheritance to give them the impetus to act. I wouldn't even say they are treading water. Treading water indicates action and these two are reactors not actors. All the money in the world wouldn't save them from themselves either. I'm not sure that I'm making sense, but I found this book very affecting.

April was very busy at work with implementing a new library automation system, going to state library association annual conference, and teaching students how to make book trailers. May looks to be just as busy. Last year, I gave away over 200 books to students to take home for summer reading. This year, I hope to give away over 300 books, and I would love to give all 575 students at my school a book for summer reading, but I think that goal might be out of reach for this year. To reach my immediate goal of 300+ books, I have decided that I must have one more book fair. Next week, I'll be giving my summer reading presentations to all the reading classes over a period of 4 days. Then the week after that is book fair plus I have to do my end of year inventory. May is going to be jam-packed, but it will fly by and bring me to summer vacation faster.

Before I sign off, I can't forget to mention what young adult titles I've been reading lately. I'm almost finished with an advanced copy of Texas Gothic by Rosemary Clement-Moore. I usually don't like ghost stories, but I'm enjoying this one set in the Texas Hill Country. It hits bookstores in July. I've also started two other books, an advanced copy of Libba Bray's Beauty Queens (it'll be out later this month)--I love the cover!--which I've found very funny so far, and Cathy Ostlere's Karma, a historical fiction verse novel about a Canadian Indian teenage girl who returns to India with her father at the time of the assassination of Indira Ghandi. I've always been fascinated with Indira Ghandi and her legacy. I haven't read much of the book so far, and I'm not a big fan of verse novels, but so far, I am enjoying this one.

Now it's time to go to bed and read for a while. Later.

The Beautiful and Damned - post in progress

2011-04-03T21:41:00.001-05:00

If you came here looking for this post yesterday, I apologize for the delay. I finished reading The Beautiful and Damned Friday night, but I have not had a moment to write up my response until now. I went to East Texas yesterday to celebrate the 30th wedding anniversary of my older brother and his wife. It's hard to believe that they have been married for 30 years; it makes me feel really old and really good.

The Beautful and Damned is not a story about a happy marriage. Anthony Patch is the grandson of the very wealthy Adam Patch, an industrialist who becomes a rabid reformer in his old age. Anthony is beyond reform, a proud member of the idle rich. While he is a graduate of Harvard, he has no ambition for anything except the wait for a hefty inheritance. Gloria is a great dancer who is beautiful and fun from a rather wealthy family. Gloria's only goal in life is to enjoy it--carpe diem. Once they are married, living on Anthony's yearly allowance left to him by his parents, Anthony and Gloria set about the business of partying all the time. Even when times are bad and money is tight, they party. Eventually, Adam dies and doesn't leave them anything, and Anthony contests the will, which seems to be a neverending process and puts them in dire financial straits.

I'm not sure that I can say that I enjoyed this book, but I was completely captivated by the telling of the story despite unlikeable characters. I wanted to like Gloria especially. At first, I thought she was a spunky, free-spirited woman who was not content to behave as society expected. Then I realized that she is just a selfish beauty queen who always has to be the center of attention. Anthony is no better, talk about feckless. He only cared about being rich so that he didn't have to do anything except appear to be the kind of person he wanted to be. At times, I wondered why one or both of them didn't commit suicide and/or kill the other one.

I can't quite decide what Fitzgerald was trying to show with this story. On the one hand, I would say that he was making a case against the idle rich, but Anthony wins in the end, even though he can't enjoy his winnings. I definitely think he's trying to say something about the idea that living without a purpose is a hollow way to live, but the examples of people living with a purpose, the rabid reformer Adam Patch, Anthony's friend Richard Campbell (Gloria's cousin) and eventually his other friend Maury Noble, are just as unlikeable as Anthony and Gloria.

I have more to say, but I have to go to bed now. I'll try to update this tomorrow evening before I go to the NCAA championship game or Tuesday evening. Later.

Decisions, Decisions

2011-03-14T10:18:00.000-05:00

I started to type this post yesterday afternoon, but I quickly decided that I would rather be reading than writing, so I stopped writing and read until time to get ready for last night's book club reading.

The decision in the post's title refers to choosing between Fitzgerald's The Beautiful and Damned and Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms. I signed on to do a post for another Classics Circuit tour: The Lost Generation Tour. I've always been a fan of both Fitzgerald and Hemingway (a bigger one of Fitzgerald), but I've not read all of their work. When I signed up to be part of this tour, I said I would read one of these works, thinking I would end up choosing whichever one wasn't being done by another blogger. Yesterday, I looked at the tour schedule and saw that someone else is doing both of the books. No help!

So I started to type a blog post, thinking that I would write myself into a decision. As you already know, I went to read instead. The plan was to read a chapter or two of each to see which one drew me in the fastest. One problem with this plan: the first chapter of Fitzgerald's book is about 30 pages long whereas Hemingway's is 2 pages. Before I finished the first chapter of the Fitzgerald book, I decided that it will be my Classics Circuit read, but I might read and post about both books if I can find the time. After all, I am on Spring Break this week and have no plans for anything other than reading, writing, and riding my birthday bike.

Another decision.
Previously, I posted about trying to decide what big book to read next. I decided to read Drood, mainly because I was reminded that it had been a birthday present from Valerie. (I think I should read the books she gives me within at least two years of the giving.) Unfortunately, I haven't read much so far, just over 100 pages, but I have enjoyed the voice of Wilkie Collins as the narrator. I have no idea how factual the character of Collins or Charles Dickens is in thoughts, actions or mannerisms. I have listened to part of Collins' The Woman in White and read and enjoyed a few Dickens books, but I'm not an obsessive fan of either, so historical accuracy won't play into my enjoyment of the book. The book is all about plot, or so it seems, and I was thinking that I might stop reading it and pick another of the big books because I desired something more than a plot-based book. However, now that I've started The Beautiful and Damned, I think I'll keep reading Drood. As a matter of fact, today looks to be a rainy, gloomy day, a day that befits the reading of a book like Drood. I think I'll go read for a while now. Later.

What should I read next?

2011-02-13T21:30:00.003-06:00

I spent most of this beautiful day, sitting in the backyard finishing my reading of The Privileges by Jonathan Dee. I really didn't like the book. I kept thinking that maybe I just couldn't like a book about wealthy people who, for the most part, had no real struggles, and when the did have struggles, they bought their way out of them. But I know that's not true, I've read and enjoyed books about ultra-wealthy people before, but Dee's depiction of the Moreys never engaged me enough to become sympathetic to any of the characters. Even when I finally thought something exciting/interesting would happen, I would be disappointed with a too easy, too fast resolution to the conflict--money really does buy everything for these people. Although I thought the writing was good, it wasn't so good that I wanted to keep reading. I finished the book because I have a difficult time not finishing books and because it was a book club selection. We met tonight to discuss the book, and I wasn't the only one who didn't like it. Only a couple of members liked the book, but neither of them loved it.

After we finished discussing The Privileges, we picked out our next read from a list of four books, one of which was immediately eliminated because a member had already read it. We settled on a The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. I'm not very excited about the choice; I would've preferred The Lotus Eaters. The other choice was The Glass Castle, which every other book club in the world as probably already read. I really dislike memoirs even though I recently read and loved Just Kids, so I was just glad that everyone else didn't want to read it. Surprisingly, no one even named it as one of their top two choices.

Before I start the The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, I am going to start a new big book. To me a big book is any book with more than 500 pages. I've narrowed my choices down to these six books, all of which I have owned for some time now:

2666 by Roberto Bolano, 912 pages
Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace, 1104 pages
Light in August by William Faulkner, 512 pages
Native Son by Richard Wright, 544 pages
Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson, 720 pages
Drood by Dan Simmons, 976 pages

Which one should I read next?

My Bookprint

2011-02-02T21:23:00.000-06:00

In the course of preparing for my upcoming book fair, I came across Scholastic's You Are What You Read site today. One of the things you can do on this site is share your bookprint, the five books that most influenced you. I always have a problem with these kinds of lists. Just the other day, a student asked me to name my favorite book of all time, and I really couldn't answer the question quickly or easily. I have read and loved so many books, and I have difficulty articulating how the books that I've loved have influenced me.

But I do like the idea of identifying my bookprint, so I'm going to try to pick the 5 books that influenced me the most. Here is my initial list, in no particular order.

The Autobiography of Malcolm X - I feel like I learned much American history from this book, history that I was never taught in school. This book changed my way of thinking about mainstream perceptions and depictions of people who live outside the mainstream. (Does that even make sense?)
Beloved by Toni Morrison - I have read this book so many times, first as a reader then as a grad student and then as a teacher. I love the use of language and the way Morrison starts in the middle and fills in the blanks as the story progresses.
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood - Another book that I've read multiple times. This is my all-time favorite dystopia. I love how Atwood depicts the possible outcomes of extreme religious right ideals. Every time I read a YA dystopia, I see the influence of The Handmaid's Tale in it, even if the book has nothing to do with religion or abortion.
Superior Women by Alice Adams - I keep telling myself that I should reread this book to see if it's as great as I remember it. I think this was probably the first novel that I read that I would classify as feminist. As I recall, the women in this book, one of them in particular (can't remember which one right now), were determined to be more than just wives and mothers.
The Women of Brewster Place by Gloria Naylor - I've read this book two or three times. I love Naylor's story of these women who are from different generations and different socioeconomic status but who all have to deal with not just racial prejudice but also gender bias and bias among themselves.

For now, I'm going to let this list simmer. Because even as I was making the list, I was thinking of other books that I might include. Notice there are no children's books on the list. I can't really remember ever not being a reader, but I never had a favorite kids book, a book that I read multiple times like I see so many kids doing.

What is your bookprint? Can you name the five books that influenced you the most?

Lysistrata - Better late than never, I hope.

2011-01-31T20:51:00.000-06:00

Dang it! I just realized that my Classics Circuit Ancient Greek Classics post was supposed to be posted on Sunday. All this time, I thought that I had been assigned to post on January 31. Well, I hope this post is worth the wait, if anyone comes back to read it a day later.

For this tour, I wanted to read something new, so I chose Lysistrata by Aristophanes. I was a high school English teacher for fifteen years, and I taught some of the tragedies several times. I was familiar with the premise of Lysistrata, but I had never read it or seen it acted on the stage (and I'm not sure that I'd want to now).

I thought that I had the play in an old Norton Anthology or other literature textbook, but I couldn't find it. Rather than purchase a copy or check one out from the library, I decided to read the book on my computer and iPhone for free. I got the book from Project Gutenberg, which means there were few footnotes and only a brief but interesting introduction/commentary.

One of the things that I like about Shakespeare's comedies (and even some of his tragedies) is his use of sexual innuendo and bawdy jokes. Yes, sometimes the puns are groan inducing, but they are generally so well-placed that I can't help but laugh a little. I don't know if some of Aristophanes' skill with humor is lost in this translation or not, but the phallic humor wore on me.

The play's premise is that the men of Greece spend too much time away from home, at war with one another. Lysistrata hatches a plan to bring about peace. She convinces all the women to refrain from having sex until the men agree to sign a peace treaty. Of course, the women resist her arguments at first but eventually agree. The women take control of the citadel and threaten to take over the treasury before the men begin to rebel. Lysistrata's plan works but not before some of the women threaten to give up and the men threaten to beat and even burn the women out of the building.

As I've already said the play is full of phallic jokes, obvious and sophomoric, jokes that only the prudest wouldn't see coming. For example, the men take a stand, a naked stand, against the women: "Let each one wag / As youthfully as he can, / And if he has the cause at heart / Rise at least a span." And later, when the Spartan and Athenian men are about to agree to a peace treaty, the Chorus chimes in with "The situation swells to greater tension / Something will explode soon." Ha! Ha! (To be completely honest, I did laugh at some of the dirty jokes in the first few pages of the play, but after a while, I just got tired of them.)

As a feminist, I feel like I should like this play. I'm sure it has a lot to say about gender and power, but I thought it was so obvious and simplistic that I couldn't really get engaged in the story or the characters. If I were teaching this play, I would research the status of women in ancient Greece, and I would probably find my way to liking it. I didn't do any research before or after I read it, and I didn't read the other Classics Circuit Ancient Greeks post on the play because I didn't want to have other people's ideas in my head when I read the play for the first time. Maybe I'll come back and update this post after reading the other post on this play. For now, though, I'm done. Later.

Lysistrata post coming later today

2011-01-31T06:43:00.004-06:00

Today is my turn for The Classics Circuit's Ancient Greek Classics tour. Instead of finishing reading and typing up my post yesterday, I finished reading Patti Smith's Just Kids, a great book which I will post about after I post about Lysistrata. I will make time to finish reading and type up the post at work today, but I won't be able to upload the post until I get home from work.

Have a good Monday!

My Year of Reading - A List

2010-12-27T21:57:00.000-06:00

Oh, how the time does fly! I can't believe it's been almost three months since my last blog post. It's not like I haven't been reading interesting books or haven't had interesting ideas for blog posts. I just haven't been making the time for writing, and I have no excuses for it except laziness and procrastination. Reading is about the only thing that I don't procrastinate in doing.

I read 46 books this year plus half of two others. I could only bear half of American Gods, and I'm halfway finished with Middlemarch, which I will finish in the next week or so. My list is below.

Book club selections

Loving Frank by Nancy Horan
Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem
Monster of Florence by Douglas Preston and Mario Spezi
The Hour Between by Sebastian Stuart
Less Than Zero by Bret Easton Ellis
The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
Sag Harbor by Colson Whitehead
Where Men Win Glory by Jon Krakauer

A Beautiful Day! (and a few words about reading)

2010-10-03T21:32:00.000-05:00

Geez! The time really does get away from me. I can't believe that it's been almost a month since I've posted anything here. I've been doing lots of reading but not much writing about it.

Before I start going on about the books that I've read recently, I have to share what a beautiful day it was here in Houston. Check out these photos from the day. Valerie and I went to the final Astros game of the season, something that has become a kind of tradition for us. Before the game, we decided to eat at Market Square, a recently re-opened park in downtown. It was a perfect day to eat outside and a perfect day for the roof to be open at Minute Maid. To top it off, the Astros ended the season with a win against the Cubs. Yea!!

After the game, I cooked vegetable soup (well, Valerie did add some seasonings, but I did all the peeling and chopping) and baked cornbread. Both were delicious! And we have leftovers for lunch tomorrow and there was enough to freeze too. A satisfying ending to another good weekend in my good life. :-)

Now for those few words about reading. I think that after having read so much this summer that I kind of lost momentum once I started back to work. I have actually read more YA books in the past two months than adult books. But one reason for that was that my book club picked Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese, a very long book, to read for our September meeting. I had to put almost everything else on the back burner for a few weeks to get it read, and I still didn't have it quite finished in time for our meeting. I have finished it since then, however.

The novel is narrated by Marion, a twin whose mother died in childbirth. His mother was a nun from India and his father a doctor from England, both of whom were working in a hospital in Ethiopia at the time of the birth. I really enjoyed most of the book, and I thought the book had enough great characters for several books. BUT I was a bit annoyed by the first person omniscient point of view. At times, I read the book as if Marion was relating what had been told to him and could accept that the teller(s) were able to remember their exact thoughts as well as feelings, but other times, especially late in the story when Marion is in a coma, I just couldn't accept his omniscience. In the end, though, I really did like the story that Verghese told.

After their father abandons them and the hospital, Marion and his twin brother Shiva are adopted by two other Indian doctors and have a rather idyllic childhood despite the poverty and political struggles that occur in their adopted country of Ethiopia. Both of the twins become doctors.

Reading this book, I started thinking about other books that I have read about doctors. I really couldn't come up with a very long list. Then I came across a post about five books of doctors novels on A Commonplace Blog. I had only read one of them, Waiting by Ha Jin, but the post included a link to Literature, Arts, and Medicine Database, which contains a very extensive, annotated list of books. Thanks to this list, I was able to add a few more.

Here's my list of doctor novels:

Of Human Bondage by Somerset Maugham.
Coma by Robin Cook. I know this is not great literature, but I think this might be one of the non-classic adult book that I read. My mom loved popular fiction thrillers, and I'm fairly certain that I got this book from her when I was a freshman or sophomore in high school.
Cider House Rules by John Irving.
Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood.
Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
Middlemarch by George Eliot. I haven't finished this yet and don't see it as a doctor novel, but according to the blog post that I mentioned above, a Dr. Lydgate ends up being a very important character in the novel.

If you can recommend or remind me of others, please do. Now, I think I'll go to bed and read some of Middlemarch. Later.

Who am I kidding?

2010-09-08T21:16:00.000-05:00

In the past several years, I've started four writing workshops and finished three, poetry, personal essay, and short story. The short story one, I took this summer. I mostly thought my story sucked, but I didn't think it was the worst one of the group, and I did think that it held promise. Despite that feeling, I haven't even tried to revise it or really tried to write another one since. I have had some ideas about possible plot elements and characters that I've jotted down here and there, but I just haven't made the time to really do anything about any of them.

Things I know
I have to decide that I'm going to be a writer and make time to write. I used to stay up late and blog a lot, but now that I try to go to bed early, I don't blog nearly as much.

I waste way too much time on the computer playing card games while I half watch TV.

I can make all the plans that I want to, but the chances of me carrying them out are very slim.

Of course, I know a lot more about a lot of other things, but I won't bore you with more.

(I started this post early this morning, and I'm finishing it after dinner while I get caught up on Project Runway.)

How can I make my writing work? ;-)
I think I have to create a schedule to make myself find time to write. Last May, when I first started getting up at thirty minutes earlier, at 5:00 every morning , I thought I might have time to write each morning. I don't know what I was thinking because I'm not a morning person, never really have been. I don't really have a regular lunch time or conference period time at work, so writing at work on a regular basis. So the only time left is at night. Thanks to Valerie, I now go to bed much earlier than I used to. I sleep better and more and really feel better most mornings even though I do miss staying up late sometimes. So where does that leave me? I could write from 7:00-8:00 or 8:00-9:00 or 7:00-9:00. Should I start with an hour and add a second hour after a while?

It's funny how I can find all kinds of time to read, but I can't find time to write. I have to make a decision and establish a schedule and make it a habit or give up on the idea all together. For now, though, it's time for bed. Later.

"Every individual existence revolves around mystery..."

2010-07-12T09:24:00.001-05:00

I've been very lax about my daily reading of short stories this summer, but I'm going to try to be better during the second half of my summer vacation. I can't believe it's already half over! I'm feeling the need to get things done for the next four weeks, things that I had planned to do this summer. One of those things was to read a short story every day and tweet/blog about it.

This morning I read Anton Chekhov's "The Lady with the Dog." I'm not sure if I've ever read any of Chekhov's stories or plays before. In addition to being a constant reader, I majored in English as an undergrad and almost completed a masters in literature, so you would think that I had read something of his, but I can't remember ever doing so. My point is I've never studied Chekhov. I have read other Russian writers, and I thought this story pretty typical of nineteenth century Russian literature. (Please, correct me if I'm wrong.)

I enjoyed reading this story, but I wasn't surprised by its outcome. I did, however, find a statement in it that I really liked. Gurov, the main character, is a philanderer, and at one point he thinks "every individual existence revolves around mystery..." I think that a lot of people might disagree with this statement, or at least might be upset by the thought of it as a reality. However, I'm not sure if anyone can ever really know everything about another individual. We all have secrets of some kind, right? Some people like to claim that what you see is what you get, but I'm not sure that is even possible. Don't we all live a persona that we've created whether consciously or unconsciously? What do you think?

I'm going to ponder on this for a while and maybe I'll write more about it later. For now, I need to get some other things done. Later.

Giving up on American Gods (#1b1t)

2010-07-10T10:59:00.000-05:00

I really don't like to give up on books, but I think I have to give up on this one. I'm not a fantasy fan per se, but I'm not sure that's the problem. I feel like the book is not that well written and it's all pretty obvious. I only chose this book because I wanted to participate in One Book One Twitter. However, ss soon as I saw many of the tweets about the book, I was reminded of why I don't read popular fiction very much. I am an admitted book snob and have no time for obvious questions/comments, but I'm not so horrid a snob as to post snarky comments, at least. Although that might have made my reading of this book more fun. ;-)

I have given American Gods a real chance. I have read seven chapters, so I'm not giving up without a fight. I liked the first chapter and was completely surprised by the grotesque ending of that chapter, so I thought that this book was going to be very interesting and fast paced, but I think the book went down from there. Despite it being a fantasy, there's nothing really new here. Sure, I'm not familiar with all the gods presented, but I am too familiar with some of the motifs and symbols. (Are symbols and motifs the same things? I can't remember right now.) Black birds, gangster type men in black limos with tinted windows, light vs. dark, ambiguously good guys vs. bad guys, etc. Even most of the commentary about American society seems tired.

I think the last straw was the scene where Shadow is grabbed by some men in a black truck in a restaurant parking lot and then he's in what seems like an interrogation room being questioned about the gods. The two men, Mr. Wood and Mr. Stone, doing the questioning are wearing dark suits and have dark hair and shiny shoes. This scene just seemed and felt a little too Men in Black to me, and I've never even seen the whole movie. I did finish that chapter and read one more, but now I think that might be as far as I care to go with this book.

I'm kind of sad about giving up on this book because so many people, including friends of mine, really admire Gaiman's work, and I want to share in that admiration. So, I'm not giving up on the author completely. I'll try at least one of his other books before I give up on him altogether. And maybe I'll read another chapter of American Gods here and there and eventually finish it. I haven't removed the book to the bookshelf yet or even removed the bookmark from it, but I haven't picked it up to read in several days. I have read other things this week instead. I started three different books Footnotes in Gaza, Never Let Me Go, and Middlemarch. I'll probably finish at least two of those next week. So for now, I'll say goodbye to American Gods and One Book One Twitter. Later.

Toni Morrison made me cry

2010-07-01T22:29:00.000-05:00

When I finished reading A Mercy this morning, all I could think was "WOW!" I got up from the dining room table and walked into the living room to get my phone so I could tweet that "WOW!" As I was typing out the tweet, I just started sobbing. I mean crying really hard. I cried for at least five minutes before I could get myself under control. I haven't had that kind of visceral reaction to a book in a very long time.

I love Morrison's work. She is one of my two favorite authors, but I was still stunned by the beauty and sadness of this short novel. How could she say so much in less than 200 pages? I'm a relatively slow reader, but I read this book very fast, starting it yesterday afternoon. It's a real page turner. She interweaves several stories in this novel about a small group of slaves and their owners in seventeenth century America. There is one central thread that holds the stories together, but I never felt impatient when it was interrupted to tell one of the other story lines.

This novel is on its surface a story about slavery, but its also an indictment of religiosity. Both the Papists and the Protestants are shown to perpetuate not just the use of slaves but the racism that allowed it to exist. In addition, the novel is about identity, jealousy, and cruelty, which is too/most often the result of jealousy, I think.

I just kept wondering how people could be so cruel to other people. How does a group of people ever come to believe that they are automatically superior to another group of people and that the proof of their superiority is in the color of their skin? Even the benevolent wife of the benevolent slave owner becomes cruel in the end, which reminded me of Frederick Douglass's Narrative and his descriptions of the dehumanizing effect of slavery on the slave owner. Morrison touches on this idea in Beloved also.

At one point in the novel, someone says or thinks something like "we don't shape the world; the world shapes us." If that's true, then what kind of sad, cruel world do we live in? I'm not trying to be a Pollyanna here. Are humans inherently cruel? I don't understand why someone would ever be cruel to another human being, and I know that I've been guilty of cruelty at some point, probably more than one, in my life. Whether my cruelty was consciously intended or not doesn't change the fact that it happened. Whether I felt my actions provoked or reasonable doesn't change anything either. Maybe that knowledge is one reason this book affected me so.

I've read most of Morrison's works more than once, and I feel like I should read this one again very soon. I wish that I was still teaching AP Literature because my students would be reading this book in the upcoming school year. Now, I'm going to go to bed and read, but I'm not sure what I'll read because I think that no matter what I read tonight, it'll be a disappointing after having just read A Mercy. Later.

Summer of Short Stories 2

2010-06-18T11:22:00.000-05:00

I started this repeat project kind of late, but I'm planning to read one short story each day for the rest of my summer vacation and tweet and/or blog about the stories. I will at least tweetthe author and title of each one. Last summer, I read several whole books of short stories and some other random ones, which is my plan for this summer too. I started reading Anita Desai's Diamond Dust last week, but I wasn't sure then if I was going to repeat the daily reading and didn't keep it up all week. This week, I decided that I had enjoyed the reading and the structure of doing it last summer and should do it again.

I've never read any of Desai's work before this book. I have read her daughter's Booker Prize winning, The Inheritance of Loss, and I bought Diamond Dust when I attended a reading by both authors a couple of years ago. Today, I read the fifth of the nine stories in this book, "The Man Who Saw Himself Drown." I'm not sure I completely understood the story. The story started out with a third person narrator, detailing the movements of an older man on a business trip. After dinner one evening, he goes for a walk and eventually sees a drowned man being pulled out of the river. It's him. Most of the rest of the story is told from the drowned man's spirit's(?) point of view. At first the man doesn't believe he has really died. I can't decide if this story is just a bittersweet story about death or if it's a story about the connection or disconnection between body and spirit. I'm not a very spiritual person, and I think that might be hindering my perception of this story. I guess I'll just have to keep thinking about it for a while.

I am enjoying Desai's writing. In this story I was really struck by a couple of passages, one of which I think might hold the key to the story. But first, this one from the beginning of the story when the man enters his hotel room: "He tossed his briefcase into the armchair--there, now the room knew someone had entered it and made it his own--went into the bathroom to wash." I love the idea that a hotel room is always waiting for life--it only lives when it's inhabited. Kind of makes me feel sad for hotel rooms. :-) And I guess in a sense hotel rooms are kind of sad, temporary dwellings. Maybe Desai is comparing the hotel room to a body inhabited by a spirit. Hmmm.

The key passage in the story, I think, is this one from the end of the story after the man has accepted his death:

It seemed to me that by dying my double had not gifted me with possibility, only robbed me of all desire for one: by arriving at death, life had been closed to me. At his cremation, that was also reduced to ash.

Maybe the story is about the death of the spirit and how once it dies a body can't go on living. At the beginning of the story, the man was exhausted with his life, his work life at least, but maybe that was the beginning of the death of his spirit. I don't know. Maybe I'm trying to hard. Maybe I should just enjoy the story and let it's meaning percolate in my brain whether I ever come back to it or not. I'm going to go read something else now. Later.

Summer reading plans

2010-06-16T19:37:00.000-05:00

Not surprisingly, I've missed at least a month of Monday missives. I could give some excuses about moving, end-of-school-year stress, and even having a bad sinus infection this week, but they would just be excuses. I've thought about blogging lots of times, but I've just been lazy about doing it. Once again, I'll make a vow to try to post more regularly. I don't work in the summer, so I should have plenty of time for blogging.

So even though I'm half way through the second week of my summer vacation, I thought I would lay out my reading plans. I finished Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson today. If I hadn't been sick for the past few days, I probably would've finished it faster. I'll write more about it later, but I need to let my thoughts gel for a while.

I am currently reading Innocent Blood, one of P.D. James's older books, and Diamond Dust, a book of short stories by Anita Desai. Before the summer started, I intended to have a second Summer of Short Stories, and I even read one on each of the first two days of my summer vacation, but I didn't tweet or blog about them. Maybe I'll kickstart that project tomorrow. In addition to these books, I started a few books at work before the school year ended:

Paradise Lost, which I was trying to read along with Rebecca Reads' Milton in May;
American Gods by Neil Gaimann, the One Book One Twitter selection;
Will Grayson, Will Grayson, a young adult book by John Greene and David Levithan.

I plan to finish all three of these, and read many more, including some/all of the following:

Alice Munro's most recent book of short stories Too Much Happiness
Chimimanda Ngozie Adichie's The Thing Around Your Neck
Bret Easton Ellis's Less Than Zero, which I'll be re-reading for my book club, having read it a very long time ago when I was young
Joe Sacco's Footnotes in Gaza, a graphic nonfiction book
Kazuo's Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go, which I've had for a long time
At least one big book: Drood by Dan Simmons, 2666 by Roberto Bolano, or Middlemarch by George Eliot

I also brought home several young adult books to read this summer, but I won't list them now. All this writing about books makes me want to go read. Later.

Breaking the Fast - The Monday Missive

2010-05-03T22:05:00.001-05:00

The plan was to not buy books, except for book club books, before May 25, the release date for The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest. Aside from the book club exceptions, I've actually kept my fast very well until tonight. But the fast breaking is really not my fault. Rebecca Reads is doing a Milton in May read along featuring Paradise Lost. I've never read Paradise Lost, despite having a BA in English and almost having a MA in Literature (I did all the course work but never wrote the thesis), and I've always felt like I should have read it. So I couldn't resist the temptation to join the read along. Plus I thought that surely either Valerie or I had an old copy of Paradise Lost on our bookshelves, but all I could find were some excerpts in a couple of anthologies. Not to be deterred in my quest for enlightenment, I decided that buying a copy, especially one from Half Price Books, was a valid exception to the book buying fast. A read along selection is almost like a book selection, right?

If I had stopped with one book, I wouldn't have felt as bad, but I decided to buy another book, American Gods by Neil Gaiman. This book wasn't just a splurge though. I discovered One Book, One Twitter on Friday or Saturday, and I decided to join in when I saw what book had been selected. I have a reader friend in real life who loves Gaiman's work. Last year, when it was my turn to make the book club selection list, I asked her to recommend a Gaiman book for me to include. Guess what book she suggested--American Gods! How could I resist taking part in One Book, One Twitter? Besides it's almost like being in a book club, so it's not like I just blatantly violated my fast, right?

It's a good thing that I have all summer for the Gaiman book because I still need to finish The Year of the Flood and read the next book club selection, The Hour Between by June 13. I also want to read at least one more YA book before school is out for summer vacation--only 22 days left! And, oh yeah, Valerie and I are moving into our house on the 15th. In the meantime, we have to paint the master bedroom, give the entire house a good cleaning, and hang some window treatments. Whew! I think I have to go to bed now and read myself to sleep. Later!

A Missed Missive & Some Reading/Book Notes

2010-04-27T21:25:00.000-05:00

This house is the reason that I failed to post my Monday Missive last night. Valerie and I closed on this house late yesterday afternoon, the first home purchase for both of us. It needs a bit of work, mostly cosmetic, thank goodness. Still, I'm very excited if a bit daunted by the reality of owning a home. It's going to be quite a change. I've lived in apartments for the past eighteen years, and I hope that I can handle being responsible for maintenance and upkeep. Plus I'm not much of a DIY-er. I never even painted a wall in any of the apartments that I've lived in, but I'm going to have to learn how to paint soon, very soon.

After the closing, we spent some time at the house making plans and noticing things like the weird placement of light switches that we hadn't paid attention to previously. Then we went to toast our purchase on the rooftop patio of our friend's Midtown townhouse. The weather has been so perfect lately, last night included, that I'm not sure what I enjoyed more, the satisfaction of being a co-homeowner, the champagne, the company, or the location and the view. It's not a rooftop patio with a view of downtown, but our house does have a good sized backyard and a small patio that Valerie and I are going to improve and enjoy as often as possible.

Enough about the house, let's talk about books. I'm still reading The Year of the Flood, but my reading time has been too sporadic lately. I don't feel like I've been able to focus on the story enough to become really engaged with it. I'm hoping that I can find some quality reading time later this week and this weekend. Of course, I have other books waiting to be read. Killing time before our closing appointment, we picked up copies of our book club's next selection, The Hour Between by Sebastian Stuart. I don't think I had ever heard of this book before seeing it on the list for book club. Blurbs on the cover compare it to A Separate Peace, Breakfast at Tiffany's, and Catcher in the Rye, all of which I like, so I'm looking forward to reading it.

At work today, I started reading All the Broken Pieces, a novel in verse by Ann E. Burg. I'm not sure why I picked it up; it wasn't one of the ten books that I have stacked on my desk to read. Maybe I'm trying to make amends for not celebrating National Poetry Month like I have in the past. Maybe I just wanted something that I could read fast. I spent most of the day giving teachers twenty-minute breaks from TAKS administration, but for two consecutive twenty-minute periods, I got to be the bathroom monitor, which gave me some reading time. I got about half way through the book. The poems tell the story of teenager Matt Pin, the son of a Vietnamese woman and an American soldier, who was airlifted out of Vietnam during the war and adopted by an American couple. I'm not a big fan of novels in verse, but I am finding some of Burg's poetry to be quite beautiful. I wish I hadn't left the book at work so that I could quote some of it here. I'll post more about this book when I'm finished, and I'll include quotes in that post.

Okay, I think that I'll go to bed now and read The Year of the Flood for a while. Later.

It's Monday! Time for another missive.

2010-04-19T21:44:00.000-05:00

Posting two Mondays in a row! I'm off to a good start in my effort to blog more regularly. Too bad for my reader(s), I don't really have much to blog about tonight. I spent most of last week in San Antonio, attending the Texas Library Association. It was a very busy 3.5 days, giving me little time for reading. I did finish Ruined, a YA book by Paula Morris that I had started the week before. It is a ghost story set in post-Katrina New Orleans. I thought the book was really good until the overly convoluted twist at the end. The ending didn't completely ruin (no pun intended) the book for me, but it made me feel less enthusiastic about it.

I about 100 pages into Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher, another work read. It's the story of a boy listening to cassette tapes recorded by a high school classmate just before she committed suicide. The protagonist is one of thirteen people who did something that contributed to her deciding to kill herself. The narration alternates between the girl and the boy. I know that some of my students have read it, and all agree that it is so sad. If it's really that sad, one or more of my students will probably catch me in tears at the circulation desk later this week.

As for adult books, I did start Margaret Atwood's The Year of the Flood. Finally! I'm only about fifty pages in--so far, so good. On Friday, I saw Suzanne Collins, author of the Hunger Games trilogy. Several times during her presentation and during the Q&A, I was reminded of the how much I really liked The Handmaid's Tale and Oryx and Crake. Collins never mentioned Atwood's works, but I can't help but think that she has probably read at least The Handmaid's Tale, which I think I need to re-read sometime soon.

This week is pledge week for the local NPR station, and I can only listen to so much of the begging. (Just so you know, I'm a sustaining member.) I decided to listen to Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White, which I downloaded for free a while ago. My commute is only about thirty minutes, so it will take me a while to listen to the whole book. Even though I've only listened to the first track, I'm already curious to know more and to see what happens.

Okay, I'm going to bed and read for a while. I'll try to blog something more interesting next Monday. Have a good week!

Back to Blogging - Monday's Missive

2010-04-12T15:48:00.000-05:00

Damn! Where does the time go?I have no excuse for not blogging; I have just been lazy about it. Of course, I have been reading, quite a bit actually but mostly YA books. However, since my last post, there are a couple of adult books that I've read that I realy want to write about, Motherless Brooklyn and The Girl who Kicked the Hornet's Nest. I'm going to attempt to start a regular schedule of posts. For now, I'm going to plan to post a Monday's Missive every week. I figure if I can make that a habit for a while then I'll be ready to add some other regular features. I'll count this as my first Monday Missive, but I might post something later about the poetry reading I'm attending tonight. Later!

Computer problems & Classics Circuit

2010-02-09T05:42:00.001-06:00

Posting from iPhone.

I think my hard drive is going out. I spent a long time last night just trying to get Windows to load. By the time I got it to load and backed up in case problem recurred, it was rather late. I thought I would finish up and post before going to work. Well, guess what? My computer won' t load Windows this morning. Argh!!!

So I'll have to post from work, which means my post on Alain Locke's The New Negro wil not be here until later in the morning. Luckily, today should not be too busy in my school library. Sorry for the delay. Please come back for my post.

The First Book for 2010 & Some Plans

2010-01-12T21:24:00.000-06:00

I finished On Beauty by Zadie Smith on Sunday. Actually, I read all day trying to finish for that night's book club meeting, but I had to read the last twenty or so pages after the meeting. If I had read on Saturday instead of running errands and watching the Cowboys win, I would have finished with no problem. I do sometimes put other things before books and reading, especially the Cowboys at this time of the NFL season. :-)

Since I was reading the book for the second time, I wasn't too concerned with not finishing. This month's host lives only a few blocks from us, so Valerie and I were able to walk to the meeting, and she reminded me of the final events as we walked. It's been a long time since I have re-read a book that I wasn't teaching. I usually won't vote yes for a book club selection that I've already read, but I loved White Teeth, Smith's first novel, and On Beauty the first time so I wanted to see what other members thought about her writing.

I blogged about On Beauty the first time I read it. It was just as good on a second reading, and I refuse to think that I'm swayed by how friendly she was when I saw her read here three years ago. I love Smith's use of language. In my previous post, I talked about some of the passages from the book, but this time, I'll limit myself to just one, one that I can't seem to forget for its precise and perfect imagery:

"From here she could see the strangely melancholic format of Jerome's text, italics and ellipses everywhere. Slanted sails blowing on perforated seas."

What a great image!

Everyone at book club enjoyed the book, and we had a really good discussion, but I forgot to bring up one point. When I read the book the first time, I didn't like the Levi character very much. Levi is the bi-racial teenage son of the main character, a rather hapless professor Howard Belsey. When I first read the book, I thought that Levi was perhaps the one misstep in the novel. I thought his use of street lingo wasn't authentic. This time, I thought he was one of my favorite characters, and I see that his street lingo isn't supposed to be authentic. He is trying very hard to be real, to be black. His attempts make him a very funny yet endearing character. I think he might be my favorite character in the whole book. Despite his pretensions, he is in many ways the most honest and least political character in the book and that makes him very likable to me.

I can't wait for Smith's next novel, and I'm going to put her recent essay collection Changing My Mind on my to read list. Speaking of my to read list, I do have some reading plans for 2010, but part of my plan involves not buying any books, except for book club selections, until May 25. So, it'll probably be a long time before I read Changing My Mind.

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Next, the final installment in Stieg Larsson's trilogy, will be released on May 25, and I'm going to try very hard not to buy any books until then. Instead of buying new books to read, I'm going to read books that I already own. Some of them I've owned for a very long time. Some that are definitely in line to be read, but not necessarily in this order include:

Loving Frank by Nancy Horan - the current book club selection
The New Negro by Alain Locke - my assignment for The Classics Circuit's Harlem Renaissance Tour
The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood
A Mercy by Toni Morrison
2666 by Roberto Bolano
Mudbound by Hillary Jordan
Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson
Middlemarch by George Eliot
Too Much Happiness by Alice Munro
The Thing Around Your Neck by Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche

And who knows how many more. I read 38 books last year, 10 of which were young adult books. Man, all this talk of books just makes me want to go read. Later.

Books & Things - What I got for Christmas & Birthday

2009-12-29T10:20:00.002-06:00

I'm including my birthday gifts here because I was too lazy to blog about them before Christmas. My birthday is December 22. I won't spend time whining about how over the years I have received lots of Christmas/birthday presents. It happened sometimes, but not enough to scar me for life. Plus, Valerie never combines gifts, and her gifts are always just what I wanted even when she surprises me with something that I hadn't put on my Christmas wish list. :-)

Birthday Gifts
Drood by Dan Simmons - I've been wanting this book all since it was released in February. I've been rather obsessed with it. Searching the New Releases shelf during each visit to Half Price Books since its release. The kind of funny thing is that I've never read any Wilkie Collins books or Dickens's The Mystery of Edwin Drood. However, I did purchase a copy of Dickens's book and Collins's The Woman in White at Half Price Books during the spring or summer, but I haven't found the time to read either yet. I even downloaded a free audiobook of Collins's book. It's funny how I can sometimes read about a book and can't stop thinking about it. I think I'll have to read Drood very soon, even though it's 784 pages makes it a daunting read for this slow reader.

CueCat Barcode Scanner from LibraryThing - Yes, I'm a nerd. I've been wanting one of these as long as I've known about them, but I wouldn't purchase myself one because I thought it was silly. However, Valerie and I really need to weed some books and organize what we have. I'm not happy about the thought of getting rid of books, but I'm excited about organizing them in a joint library. We downsized our living space in April and weeded several boxes of books then, but, sadly, we still need to weed more, especially since we can't seem to stop accumulating them.

Smart Glass Necklace - A couple of years ago, Valerie gave me some cool cobalt blue earrings made of recycled glass, and this year, she gave me a matching necklace. I was totally surprised by the necklace, but it was a perfect gift. :-)

(Some) Christmas Gifts
Because Valerie and I bought a new TV for ourselves right after Thanksgiving, we only gave each other stocking stuffers on Christmas day. Once again, she made great surprising choices: a nifty Scrabble tile necklace that she purchased from someone on Etsy.com, some superb sterling silver earrings that I can wear all the time, and a box of Red Hots. I love Red Hots!

I got lots of other good things from Valerie's family and from one of my nephews-in-law--my extended family is too big, so we draw names--but I won't bore you with all the details. I'll limit myself to the two books I received.

Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson - I've been wanting to read this book for a long time. Robinson and Joseph O'Neill did an Inprint reading here in September, and I had to miss it because my school Meet Your Teacher Night was the same night. Since I was having a book fair that week, I had to be there to sell books that night, and I'm still upset about the timing. Anyway, every time I hear someone talk about this book, it makes me think that I have missed out on a masterpiece. This book is rather short, so it should be easy to work into my reading schedule very soon.

Too Much Happiness by Alice Munro - I've read two other books of Munro's stories, Runaway and The View from Castle Rock, which I read this summer as part of my Short Story Reading Project. I've completely fallen in love with her writing, and I would now list her as one of my favorite writers. I can't wait to find the time to read this volume of stories.

Like I said above, I got lots of good gifts that I'm very grateful for, and I feel like the gifts that I gave were well received. As far as I'm concerned, Birthday and Christmas 2009 were GREAT!

I need some footnotes

2009-12-09T22:07:00.000-06:00

While I should have been reading Water for Elephants last night, I started T.S. Eliot's Murder in the Cathedral. The mere mention of this play's fourth tempter in an Engines of Our Ingenuity episode during yesterday's commute to work reminded me that I had never read this play and made me obsess about reading it. I kept thinking about it off and on all day. (Eliot's "The Waste Land" is one of my favorite poems, and I like "The Preludes," and some of his other poems too.) I knew that I had a copy of the play at home, a copy that I bought over three years ago when I was still teaching AP English.

So last night before going to bed, I found the book, thinking that I might read the whole playbefore going to sleep--it's very short and even a slow reader like me can read a play in one sitting sometimes. However, I should have known that I'm too old to stay awake that long. When I woke up this morning, I remembered a line from what I had read: "I have seen these things in a shaft of light." This line immediately brought to mind Emily Dickinson's poem that begins "There's a certain slant of light." Later, while I was waiting on the hair straightener to heat up, I found the poem in a book and reread it. Both the poem and the play have religious themes. Is Eliot's line an allusion to Dickinson's? That question is one of the reason's I need some footnotes.

Murder in the Cathedral is a short play, mostly in verse. It tells the story of Thomas Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury, returning to England after years of exile/banishment. He is assassinated very soon after he returns, and he had prophesied his impending death. Despite being written mostly in verse, the basic plot of the play isn't difficult to follow. What I need footnotes for is the British history, which provides the basis for the play. I just don't know or remember enough.

I really enjoyed the Chorus, which functions in much the same way as the Chorus does in the plays like Oedipus Rex. One of my favorite Chorus parts is in Part II after the four knights have stated the evidence of Thomas's treason and hinted that he must die for it. The Chorus says:

I have smelt them, the death-bringers, senses are quickened
By subtile forebodings; I have heard
Fluting in the night-time, fluting and owls, have seen at noon
Scaly wings slanting over, huge and ridiculous. I have tasted
The savour of putrid flesh in the spoon. I have felt
The heaving of earth at nightfall, restless, absurd. I have heard
Laughter in the noises of beasts that make strange noises: jackal, jackass, jackdaw; the scurrying noises of mouse and jerboa; the laugh of the loon, the lunatic bird. I have seen
Grey necks twisting, rat tails twining, in the thick light of dawn...

And this great poetry goes on for another page and a half in my book. Eliot piles on the dark imagery as the Chorus intones an incantation of death. (This passage makes me wish I still taught AP English.)

I think this play is intended as a tragedy, which would explain Eliot's use of a chorus. I need to reread the play with some footnotes and/or read some literary criticism before I say anything else about it. Hopefully, I'll have time tomorrow at work to do a little research. One of the perks of being a librarian is that I can do personal research and reading and look like I'm working hard, but let's keep that little secret between us. ;-)

Now, I need to go to bed and read more of Water for Elephants. Book club meets on Sunday, and I don't want to spend my whole weekend trying to finish it.

Post-Holiday Week Reading Report

2009-11-30T22:00:00.000-06:00

I had planned to do a lot of reading during the holiday, and I did, but I only finished one book.

I'm not a big fan of non-fiction, but I finished The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher Saturday. And I loved it! I thought Kate Summerscale did an excellent job narrating the details of the murder and its ensuing investigation. I had never really thought about how the profession of a detective, whether policeman or private, might have developed nor how the public might have felt about the creation of this new profession. I was fascinated with this aspect of the book. Being a literature lover, I also really enjoyed Summerscale's use of the investigation of the murder as a parallel to the development of detective fiction. I was a bit surprised that Summerscale was able to weave all these informative and narrative threads into such an enthralling book that kept me reading not only to find out who did it but also see how it affected the public psyche and literature.

It's funny that I've never considered myself a mystery connoisseur, because I have always liked mysteries, even as a young reader. I loved Trixie Belden, Nancy Drew, and the Hardy Boys. As an adult, I've enjoyed Lawrence Sanders, especially his McNally series, and P.D. James. I have always liked movie mysteries too, especially those based on British mystery stories, such as Agatha Christie's, and Conan Doyle's. Some of my favorite TV shows are police dramas, which are often mystery-like in plot, such as the Law & Order franchise, the CSI franchise, Cold Case, and Criminal Intent. In addition, I love British mystery series like Inspector Morse, Inspector Lewis, and Midsommer Murders. I like mysteries, I think, because I like solving puzzles and trying figure out the answer before it is revealed, and something about knowing the answer in the end is comforting.

Because I think of mysteries as my "easy" reading, I've never thought about mystery sub-genres, such as the country house murder mystery even though I'm sure that I've read and seen some. The murder that is the focus of the book is a real-life country house murder. A child is brutally murdered and someone in the house did it. Because this is a real life murder, it's a bit more difficult, actually damn near impossible for the detective to prove his case. Even years later, when the accused confesses, there's some question as to whether she could have done it alone. I really hate it when TV mystery/police dramas don't tie up all the loose ends at the end of an episode, but I don't mind when a book leaves me wondering.

In the Afterword, Summerscale comments:

"Perhaps this is the purpose of detective investigations, real and fictional--to transform sensation, horror and grief into a puzzle, and then to solve the puzzle, to make it go away. 'The detective story,' observed Raymond Chandler in 1949, 'is a tragedy with a happy ending.' A storybook detective starts by confronting us with a murder and ends by absolving us of it. He clears us of guilt. He relieves us of uncertainty. He removes us from the presences of death."

So in the end, we are comforted and cleansed and feel better about the (fictional) world. Is it any surprise that there is more than one book where the detective is/was/almost was a priest/rabbi? (Okay, I can only think of one that I've read, Friday the Rabbi Slept Late by Harry Kemelman, but I'm sure there are more.)

Other Reading
I read some more of both of the two motherhood books that I named in the previous post, and I might blog about them later this week. I also started Water for Elephants. I've only read about 50 pages, but I think I'm going to really like it. (Is it just me or does the opening narration by the 90- or 93-year-old narrator remind you of Little Big Man? I've never read that book, but I've seen the movie a couple of times.)

I did not read any of the YA books that I brought home with me from work. Today at work, I finished the first chapter of Tender Morsels, and I decided it wasn't the YA book for me right now. I read the first chapter of Marked, the first book in the House of Night Series, and thought I might give it a chance. I also read two or three chapters in The Missing Girl, and the opening chapter was kind of creepy, so I think I'm going to give it a try too. Tomorrow, we are doing some testing at my campus, and I have to sit in the hallway all morning and relieve teachers when they need a bathroom break, and I plan to use that time to read more of one of these two books.

Now it's time to go to bed and read for a while. Later.

Big Plans for a Week of Reading & Writing

2009-11-23T09:01:00.003-06:00

If you look at the left sidebar of my blog, you will see that it says I'm reading The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher (true - I'm completely enthralled with this book & will definitely write about it later), Water for Elephants (false - not started; planning to begin today), and Moby Dick (false - read about thirty pages at work but that was several weeks ago; planning to restart soon). In addition to those three books, I brought home three work reads: Tender Morsels, which I started a few weeks ago but can't decide if I'll finish or not; Marked, the first book in the House of Night series, and The Missing Girl, the last book by the recently deceased YA author Norma Fox Mazer (brand new book; only one student read so far & her comment: "This is a very creepy book" made me want to read it). Add to this list two books about motherhood: The New Essential Guide to Lesbian Conception, Pregnancy, & Birth and Confessions of the Other Mother--I should have already finished the first one (I'm afraid that Valerie is getting frustrated with me for not having finished it or read the one that she read).

Whew! That's a lot of reading for a slow reader to do in only one week. I know that I won't finish all of these this week, but I should be able to make a pretty big dent in most of them.

As for writing this week, I am usually such a procrastinator when it comes to writing, but I've been feeling the need to get some out lately. I spent the summer reading short stories, and I have been thinking a lot about trying to write some since the summer ended. Last week, I decided that I would try to write one this week. I have a couple of ideas for it but unfortunately nothing definite. I'm going to get off the computer and do some housework for a while then come back and work on that story.

Enjoy your Monday!

My To-Read List Just Keeps Getting Longer

2009-11-11T22:02:00.000-06:00

I went to the Texas Book Festival in Austin two weekends ago. The weather was gorgeous and the authors were interesting and entertaining, even the ones that I wasn't that excited about seeing. The problem with the weekend, though, is that now I have a bunch of books added to my already impossibly long list of books that I want to read. When I picked the sessions for Sunday, I seriously thought about cutting out early and even not going at all, but I ended up staying all afternoon, and I am so glad that I did. What follows is a list of the authors that I saw and the books that I now want to read. (I started this post over a week ago, so excuse the lack of details for the Sunday sessions. I suck when it comes to posting regularly.)

Saturday

Jane Smiley and Lucy Silag: I thought that I had read something of Smiley's, but after checking out her list of works, I'm fairly certain that I was mistaken. After hearing her talk about her writing, I definitely want to read something of hers, especially A Thousand Acres and maybe her new YA book, The Georges and the Jewels, which is what she is promoting right now. I already wanted to read her daughter's book Beautiful American, but I didn't know Silag was Smiley's daughter. I picked up an ARC of the book at last year's Texas Library Association's conference, but I haven't made time to read it yet. When I get to work tomorrow, I'm going to move it to the top of the to-read pile that I have there.

Colson Whitehead and ZZ Packer: The title of this session was About Race: Identity and American Fiction. Whitehead began by reading a very funny satirical piece about post-racial America then he read an excerpt from his most recent novel Sag Harbor. I have read and really enjoyed his earlier novel The Institutionist, and I think I started his novel John Henry Days several years ago after I saw him read here in Houston. After hearing the excerpt from Sag Harbor, I really want to read this book. ZZ Packer read from an article that she wrote about Reconstruction. The she read part of a short story from her book Drinking Coffee Elsewhere, which I have read already and highly recommend. She is currently working on a novel about the Buffalo Soldiers and Reconstruction--can't wait to read it now. After they read, there was a discussion about race and American fiction, which was very interesting.

Jim Crace, Johnathan Lethem, Robert Olen Butler, and David Eagleman: This panel was very interesting, but, unfortunately, I had to leave early to get to the location where Margaret Atwood was speaking. I was there long enough to hear each of the authors talk about their most recent books: Being Dead (Crace), Chronic City (Lethem), Hell (Butler), and Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlife (Eagleman). It was very funny when Eagleman talked about people coming to his appearances, thinking that he was going to talk about the afterlife from a neuroscientist's point of view and being surprised that the book is fiction. I have to admit that I was one of those people. :-) I have never read any of their works, but I think now that I will definitely try to read some of them.

Margaret Atwood: She is the main reason I wanted to go to the festival. I have seen her once before. I think she was the first author that I ever went to a reading by and Alias Grace was definitely my first signed book. I LOVE Atwood's writing, and I think she is such a smart, funny woman that I don't think I would ever be disappointed by her or miss any opportunity to see her in person. I already have The Year of the Flood, and I will probably read it as soon as I finish Howard's End, the current selection of my book club.

Sunday

Michael H. Marvins: Texas' Big Bend: A Photographic Adventure from the Pecos to the Rio Grande is about a place that I LOVE. I've been there twice and look forward to going back some day. I liked the photos that Marvins showed during his talk, so I bought this book--Surprise! Surprise! But it was the only book that I bought all weekend, which is really good for me.

PC Cast and Kristen Cast: This mother-daughter team are the creators of the House of Night series, a young adult vampire series. There are currently six novels available in this series: Marked, Betrayed, Chosen, Untamed, Hunted, and Tempted. I really don't like vampire stories, not even Twilight, but I went to this session anyway because some of my students have read the series and have asked if I will get it for the library. Last year, one of my co-workers read the books and said she felt like they were too mature for 7th and 8th graders. One of my 8th grade students who has read the books said she thought they would be inappropriate in our library. Still, I thought I would check out the authors, and I'm glad that I did. They were very entertaining women, who are very concerned about empowering young women. Plus the mother used to be a high school English teacher. She doesn't know it, but we bonded over both those points. According to PC, the vampirism in these books is based in biology, something about junk DNA, something that I know nothing about but it made the books sound more interesting to me than the usual vampire books. I'm going to read Marked, the first book in the series, and see if it really is too mature for my school's library.

Jonathan Safran Foer, Novella Carpenter, James Sheehan, James E. McWilliams: This panel was hosted by an Atlantic Monthly writer, Corby Kummer, and I think it was the best panel of the weekend. Each person briefly described the genesis of their most recent books: Eating Animals (Foer), Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer (Carpenter), Cooking Dirty: A Story of Life, Sex, Love and Death in the Kitchen (Sheehan), and Just Food: Where Locavores Get It Wrong and How We Can Truly Eat Responsibly (McWilliams). Kummer had obviously read all three books and asked pertinent questions, and the panelists were not afraid to voice differing opinions on how we should eat, where we should eat, and where we should shop for food. (I wish I had made notes or posted this a week ago). There was talk of factory farming and the ridiculousness of farm bills and how the farm lobby does nothing to help change the status quo. I try my best to shop locally and by free range/grass fed meat, sometimes organic and sometimes not, but I learned that all those terms don't always mean what they connote. I'm a meateater, and I can't really see myself ever giving it up completely, but this panel gave me a lot to think about, and I'm putting two of these books on my to-read list, Eating Animals and Locavores. As my regular reader(s) knows, I'm not big on non-fiction, but I think I might have to start reading more of it.

Jessica Lee Anderson, Libba Bray, and Sara Zarr: These are all young adult authors. I've read one book by Bray and one by Zarr, but I've not read their most recent works. This panel was very entertaining, thanks mostly to the antics of Bray, who definitely wanted to be the star of the panel, and the rather dry humor of Zarr, who didn't seem like she wanted to play second fiddle to bray. I was especially interested in hearing/seeing Zarr because she is a self-professed (former?) struggling reader and an admitted slow reader (me too!) who writes realistic fiction, which is much more to my taste than all the vampire/fantasy novels that everyone and their dog is writing these days. After hearing these authors, I think I would like to read all of their most recent works: Border Crossing (Anderson), Going Bovine (Bray)--is that a great title or what!--and Once Was Lost (Zarr). This was the last panel of the weekend for me.

I had a really great time at the Texas Book Festival, and I was pretty geeky impressed by the fact that I was sitting in the Senate chamber and House chamber for some of theses panels. My final assessment of the weekend's events: I'm never going to get my to-read list down to a manageable number.

A Review and Something about Mysteries

2009-10-07T20:39:00.004-05:00

I finished reading The Weight of Silence by Heather Gudenkauf a couple of nights ago. (It is my book club's current selection.) This novel is about what happens when two young girls, best friends, go missing at the same time. One of the girls, Callie, hasn't spoken for four years, not since the night her mom had a late term miscarriage after falling down the stairs with some help from her drunk dad. Early on, the reader knows that only one of the girls, Petra, is truly missing in the kidnapped sense. Although a certain person thinks the opposite is true, I tried very hard to like this book, but in the end, I just didn't like it very much.

The story is told from points of view alternating among the participants in the story: Callie; Petra, the other missing girl (only one or two times though); Callie's older brother Ben; Antonia, Ben and Callie's mother; Martin, Petra's father; and Deputy Sheriff Louis, who just happens to be Antonia's first love. I usually like stories with alternating points of view, but I think that Gudenkauf's choice to make all of them first person narratives except Callie's was a mistake because I don't think any of them except Ben really had a distinct narrative voice, although a case might be made for the very stilted and unbelievable first couple of chapters from Louis's point of view. Also, the chapters were so short that I never felt like I got to know the characters well enough to really sympathize with them. (I do not buy James Patterson's theory that short chapters make reading a book feel addictive, and I have to wonder if that's what Gudenkauf was going for.)

One big problem that I had with this book is that in the chapters written from Callie's point of view there were descriptions that were obviously not the way a child would view things or describe things. Although these chapters were not written in first person, in Callie's voice, I still felt like the adult word choices were a misstep. For example, at one point, Callie recalls a fun afternoon at Petra's that included the marriage of a dog and a stuffed animal. The dog belonged to one of Petra's father's students, Lucky. Callie recalls Lucky "pretending to cry with happiness..and drawing [Petra] close to him." I"m sorry but an eight-year-old would not recall that event using those words to herself. Another example occurs late in the story. Callie is thinking about what she witnessed, about what happened to Petra. She remembers, "He carefully moved to set Petra down, resting his hand behind her head as he laid her on the altarlike rock. Once again he stood, shaking his arms free from the residual weight of Petra." Now Callie might be a very smart eight-year-old, but this description is not believable as hers at all.

Depite this problem and others, I didn't hate this book, and I thought it had some good writing in it, but overall, I just didn't think it was better than okay. The characters are not very original, but the writing is not bad and even occasionally very good. I really like this passage, Ben is describing his father, but I'm not sure it's a teenager's description:

"For once in my life, I think my dad looks old. Not ancient old, like an eighty-year-old man, but just tired old. Like a middle-aged man who spent too much time drinking and being mean to others, time sits on his face like some Halloween mask."

Then later in the same chapter, Ben describes some pajamas that he used to wear:

"I remember they were white and had these grinning little clowns holding balloons all over them. I wouldn't tell all my friends this, but I loved those pajamas. It was like sliding into something happy when I put those on after a bath." :-)

Like I said earlier, I did try to like this book. It's basically a mystery--who and what happened to Petra?--and I like mysteries. I don't think many readers would have a difficult time figuring out who did it before it's revealed, but I don't think they would figure it out too early in the story. Sometimes when I'm reading mysteries, I want to look ahead and see if my suppositions are correct, but I enjoy the getting to the solutions so much that I resist the temptation. With this book, I just didn't enjoy the getting there enough to resist. This book didn't make me want to keep reading or to read faster to get to the end; it just made me want to skip to the end. Not a good sign.

One thing this book did do for me, though, is make me want to read a good mystery, so I picked up an old P.D. James book, Unnatural Causes, to read before I read my next book club selection, which will be picked on Sunday. It also made me wonder what makes a good mystery and made me want to do some research about the conventions of mysteries, which made me think that I need to read The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher very soon. Maybe I'll do some research and post about what I find.

For now, though, I need to go to bed, so I can get up early and do some work that I should have been doing instead of blogging. Later.

No cooking equals book buying

2009-09-28T22:12:00.004-05:00

What happens when you don't put the chicken strips in the refrigerator to defrost and don't put the peas in the crockpot to cook while you're at work and the only other option for dinner is spaghetti with jarred sauce? Well, in my home, you end up talking yourselves into going out to pickup some Chinese food. Of course, you also decide to go to the one Chinese food place that is in the same strip as a Half Price Books. No one wants to just sit in the restaurant and wait on the food to be prepared, right? After all, the time will pass much faster in the bookstore than in the restaurant, especially when you find books that you have to have.

I only bought one book tonight: The Thing Around Your Neck by Chimimanda Ngozie Adiche. There was no way that I could leave it sitting on the shelf unbought. It just came out in June! I absolutely fell in love with Adiche's writing when I read her novel Half of a Yellow Sun. I still need to read her first novel Purple Hibiscus too. This new book is a collection of short stories, so it might get read sooner than later. I can read one here and there and not have to worry about remembering where I left off.

Well, the Cowboys have won, and I can go to bed and read now. Later!

A Really Good Weekend & Some Reading

2009-09-27T21:37:00.001-05:00

Even though the Astros lost badly when I saw them last night for the last time this season, I still had a really good weekend. I enjoyed a yummy Mexican food dinner and margaritas with Valerie and a good friend of ours on Friday night. Afterward we went to a bar for a couple of more drinks.

Yesterday, Valerie and I went to a members preview of a new exhibit at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston. The Moon is an interesting exhibit that combines art with science. My favorite item in the exhibit was a painting by one of my favorite painters: Blue Luna by Kenneth Noland--I wanted to include a photo of it, but I can't find one online. I will definitely go back and see the exhibit again. I want to see A Trip to the Moon, a silent film, the first science fiction film. It's based on two novels, one by Jules Verne and one by H.G. Wells. We watched about five minutes of it, but I want to go back and watch the whole thing. (I have one big complaint about this exhibit. It is organized around the phases of the moon, but it is not laid out in a way to easily follow the phases.)

After the museum, we went to the sorry Astros games. :-( But after the game, we had a nice dinner with another friend and did a bit of people watching in downtown Houston.

Today, I mostly spent the afternoon finishing The Little Stranger. I thought the book was very good. I see why this book is a Booker prize finalist. Waters is doing so much more with this novel than simply creating an entertaining haunted house story. Because one of the main characters is named Roderick, I really feel like I should re-read Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher." Also, I need to think about The Little Stranger for a day or two before I write at length about it.

Now, what's next to read? I have to read The Weight of Silence by Heather Gudenkauf for my book club, but I'm going to start at least one other book too. I really want to read 2666, but it's so long that I think I will wait a bit to read it. Besides I'm already reading a very long book at work, Moby Dick. I also have been thinking about reading another P.D. James mystery, but Valerie's great pleasure in reading Sarah Vowell has made me really want to read something by her. So, I think I will start The Wordy Shipmates soon.

BBAW Day 5 - The Present and the Future of Breathing Space

2009-09-18T20:49:00.000-05:00

For this final day of BBAW, I have two assignments:

In 50 words or less, tell what I love best about my blog.
In 50 words or less, identify goals/changes that I foresee for my blog.

What I love best
I love that this blog gives me a chance to write about the books I read. I can write reviews of whole books or simply write about a what a passage/book makes me think about. And I love that my posts are archived, so that if I want to refer to them again, I can do it.

Goals/Changes
Well, I now own my own domain name (Thanks, Valerie!), and I would like to migrate my blog to that space and try to create a multi-faceted site. I'm not sure what other facets I will add, but I would definitely like to personalize the look of my blog, even if I simply change the banner. I would also like to blog more regularly and maybe create some recurring blog features.

I've really enjoyed being a part of Book Blogger Appreciation Week, and I look forward to reading the blogs that I have discovered this week.

BBAW Day 4 - A Memorable Book Recommendation

2009-09-17T08:00:00.000-05:00

Today's assignment is to write about a book that I read about on a book blog and that after reading it, I fell in love with it. I have to admit that I couldn't immediately think of a book. Thank goodness for LibraryThing! I went to my library and went through the titles there and as soon as I saw Mutual Life and Casualty, I knew I had to write about it.

In the fall of 2005, I discovered this book on The LitBlog Co-op, which was a site that highlighted contemporary fiction from unknown authors and smaller presses. Unfortunately, this site is no longer active, but some of the bloggers who participated in this site are still active on their own blogs.

Mutual Life and Casualty by Elizabeth Poliner is a novel in short stories that tells of the lives of the Kahn sisters and their mother during the late 70s. Before I go any further, I have to admit that I loved the title of the book and the cover. But once I read The Happy Booker's recommendation of the book, I had to have it. I think I even ordered it from Amazon because I couldn't find it in a store here. I didn't write a long post about it then, but the book really resonated with me, and I still think about it on occasion. I think that I connected with these stories because I grew up at that time and witnessed the changing lives of women as they fought for equality. However, I think the stories would be interesting even to people who don't have the same background as I do. Because this is a book of short stories, I don't find myself recommending it very much, but I should. As a matter of fact, I think I might have to re-read this book soon. :-)

Happy Thursday!

A Meme for BBAW

2009-09-16T20:08:00.000-05:00

Do you snack while you read? If so, favorite reading snack?
I love snack food, but I'm really not a big snacker while I read.

Do you tend to mark your books as you read, or does the idea of writing in books horrify you?
I used to mark books up all the time, and I'm not sure when/why I stopped doing it. I've tried folding page corners to remind myself of the location of sentences/images/events that I want to remember, but I don't feel as satisfied with that method as I was when I marked up books. I think I will have to start reading with a pencil handy again.

How do you keep your place while reading a book? Bookmark? Dog-ears? Laying the book flat open?
I LOVE bookmarks! In 2002, I went on my second tour of Europe, and I decided that I would buy bookmarks as souvenirs. I'm not usually a big souvenir buyer, but I liked the idea of bookmarks because they are rather inexpensive, easily portable, and useful. So I became a bookmark collector. Often when I start a new book, I will try to find an appropriate bookmark to use. Very silly, I know, but I can't help myself.

Fiction, Non-fiction, or both?
I am a fiction reader who only occasionally reads non-fiction.

Hard copy or audiobooks?
Hard copy! However, I used to commute for an hour one-way, and I did listen to some audiobooks. It's hard for me to call listening to audiobooks reading. I just don't get the same pleasure or satisfaction out of listening to books as I do reading a hard copy.

Are you a person who tends to read to the end of chapters, or are you able to put a book down at any point?
It depends. During the week, my main time for reading is when I go to bed. I always try to read to the ends of chapters, but sometimes I just can't stay awake to finish. If I'm close, I might nod off a few times before I give up and put my book down for the night. Most of the time, I can put a book down at any point, but I like to at least finish the last paragraph on a page even if it's continued on the next page or get to a break on the page, if there is one.

If you come across an unfamiliar word, do you stop to look it up right away?
If I can get a good idea of meaning using the context of the word, I won't bother looking it up. Otherwise, it depends on when/where I'm reading. Lying in bed, I would not look up a word. Sitting some place with a computer/cell phone handy/dictionary handy, I would be more likely to look it up immediately.

What are you currently reading?
At home, I'm reading The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters. At work, I'm reading Moby Dick.

What is the last book you bought?
The Weight of Silence by Heather Gudenkauf. I just bought this on Sunday after my book club met and selected this book for our next read.

Are you the type of person that only reads one book at a time or can you read more than one at a time?
I used to be a one-book-at-a-time person unless I was re-reading something that I was teaching. Now that I'm a librarian, I do often have more than one book going at a time. Sometimes it's an adult book and a young adult book, but for the past couple of years, I've found myself often reading two adult books, one for me and one for book club, and one young adult book for work. Sometimes I might even have a short story book or, rarely, a non-fiction book going.

Do you have a favorite time of day and/or place to read?
My favorite time to read is first thing in the morning, sitting in the chair by the living room window and drinking a cup or two or three of coffee.

Do you prefer series books or stand alone books?
I really have never been a series book reader, not even when I was a kid. I don't really like sequels/series movies either. Over the years, as a high school English teacher and now a librarian, I have tried some childrens/young adult series that my students were reading and loving. I read and loved the first Harry Potter, but I've never felt compelled to read the others in the series, although I do sometimes think that I should. I read Twilight and did not fall in love with it, and I know that I will never read any of the other books in the series. Last spring, I read Hunger Games and fell in love with Katniss, the protagonist, and I couldn't wait for September 1 to get Catching Fire, the second book in the series, which I liked just as much as the first one, and now I am anxiously awaiting the next book.

Is there a specific book or author that you find yourself recommending over and over?
A couple of books that I know that I've recommended to lots of people are Middlesex by Jeffery Eugenides and Possession by A.S. Byatt. My favorite authors are Margaret Atwood and Toni Morrison, and I often recommend them. After reading a second book of stories by Alice Munro this summer, I have become a real fan of her work and will start recommending her. For people who like mysteries, I recommend P.D. James and lately, the Stieg Larsson books.

How do you organize your books? (By genre, title, author’s last name, etc.?)
I wish my books were organized, but I just haven't gone to the trouble of doing it yet. I do have all my signed books grouped together. Maybe next summer, I'll spend some time organizing, but I'm not making any promises.

Introducing Valerie from Life is a Patchwork Quilt

2009-09-15T05:58:00.000-05:00

Participants in Book Blogger Appreciation Week were paired up to interview each other. My interview partner is Valerie, a blogger in Colorado who also quilts. Her blog Life is a Patchwork Quilt includes posts about quilting and her life but mostly she posts about books. When I was notified that we would be interview partners, I checked out her blog and was happy to see that we had a lot of books in common. As a liberal Texan, I love that when she posted about Steinbeck's Travels with Charley that she pointed out a comment he made about Texans and secession threats--such an embarrassing truth about some Texans, including our current governor, even today.

Her blog has an extra feature that I never even thought about creating, but I wish I had. She has a Books page, which is essentially an alphabetical index of the books that she has reviewed or mentioned in reviews. The titles in the list are linked to her posts. What a great feature! Her list includes a good mix of fiction and nonfiction books. Her reviews are always interesting and helpful to readers. I definitely want to read Vikram Seth's A Suitable Boy after reading what she thinks about it.

Here's my interview with her:

Why/when did you start blogging?
I started blogging In January 2008, and at that time it was a general blog that covered family events, my art quilt projects, some recipes I'd try out, and about books I read. Eventually I blogged less about family (I found facebook to be a better place for updates). I tried to do a seperate blog about food and recipes, but it was too much work. Quilt-related posts enced up being too far apart. So it seems like I ended up mostly blogging about books!

What are your favorite books/authors?
Oh, there are so many I like! It's hard for me to say whether I have favorite authors, because I tend not to read authors that churn out several books. I have several books by Edith Wharton but it's been a long time since I last read one of her works. I also have, and enjoyed, several by T.C. Boyle. I love "A Suitable Boy" by Vikram Seth, and I wish more people would read it, but I think the size scares most people off!

Do you do reading challenges?
Only a couple at a time. I know some people love doing them, but enforced deadlines are hard for me!

Do you read more than one book at a time?
Oh, yes. Usually 3-4, but they are different types: one book might be a short story collection, one might be on poetry, one would be a novel, and one non-fiction book.

Is there any kind of book that you won't read?
I say "never say never", but generally I don't read romance, science fiction, fantasy, or true crime.

Do you review books for publishers? Library Thing?
I'm a member of Library Thing, but in the year or so that I've been a member, have only received five books to review. I'm very picky about which books I request; I do not want to have an endless list of ARCs I need to read. As for books from publishers, so far it has been just a couple; and again, I'd be very choosy about which books I accept. I've also recently had a lucky streak recently and have won a few books through blog give-aways, but again I only enter the ones where I have a real interest in the book.

Do you participate in any kind of rewards program like Amazon's? (I'm not sure what it's called.)
I do have an Amazon Associates account, and I try to remember to link titles to amazon, but it's really more for the reader's conveinence because I've made zero profit from it :-)!

Do you mostly borrow books from the library, or are they purchased (and of those purchased, are they primarily new or used?)
I purchase my books--many are used--because I have a hard time trying to meet library due date deadlines (even with renewals).

Are your TBRs mostly on a list, or collected and waiting to be read?
I have both a list, and an ever-growing pile of TBR books. One reason why it's been growing is because our local library has had a lot of good books for sale-- paperbacks 25 cents, hardbacks 50 cents. This is currently a half-price sale; soon it will go back to 50 cents for paperbacks and a dollar for hardbacks. I found a pristine hard-cover copy of "What is the What" by Dave Eggers there for only 50 cents. Still waiting to be read!

What are your earliest memories of reading, and do you remember what book(s)?
I've been reading since I was about two years old, but my earliest memories are the "Little House" books by Laura Ingalls Wilder; I don't remember myself reading picture books (if I ever really did).

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I hope you will go to Life is a Patchwork Quilt and look around. If you're a Texan, make sure that you check out her post about Steinbeck's Travels with Charley. While you're there, you can read her interview with me too. :-)

It's Book Blogger Appreciation Week

2009-09-14T19:44:00.002-05:00

Welcome to Book Blogger Appreciation Week. This is my first time to participate, and I am very excited. Tomorrow, I will post my interview with Valerie of Life is a Patchwork Quilt, and she will post her interview with me on her blog.

Here is our assignment for today:

What book blogs mean something to you? Who are your most trusted sources for recommendations, your greatest help, the blogger you turn to for a laugh or to vent? Whose writing do you admire or who introduced you to a whole new genre you didn’t know about?

Some of favorites book blogs are:

A Work in Progress - Danielle is a great blogger. She posts regularly about the multiple books that she is always reading. She reads a lot of British mysteries and both American and British classics. When she reads nonfiction, it seems like her choices are related to the fiction that she reads. Her posts are always interesting.
Classical Bookworm - Sylvia's blog is about the arts and humanities rather than simply books. I share her love of classics. Many of her posts are accompanied with interesting and relevant images. There's always something interesting on her site.
So Many Books - Like me, Stefanie works in a library. Mostly, she blogs about literature, but she also has been blogging about her readings in her library science courses. I really enjoy reading her posts.
Stainless Steel Droppings - Carl's blog has the best art/images on it of all the blogs that I read. He mostly blogs about fantasy and science fiction books, which I don't read very much, but I love reading his posts and seeing the art and images.

Check out all of these book blogs. Also, be sure to come back tomorrow and read my interview with Valerie of Life is a Patchwork Quilt.

Happy Book Blogger Appreciation Week!

A Weekend of Reading

2009-09-05T11:29:00.001-05:00

Valerie will be in class all weekend, so I will have the days to myself. Since it is Labor Day weekend, I'm going to try to do as little labor as possible even though I do have a short list of household chores to do. I plan to spend the weekend reading as much as possible and squeezing in a couple of episodes of Masterpiece Mystery that I have DVR'd recently.

I finished reading The Professor and the Madman this morning with my first cup and a half of coffee. I'm not a big nonfiction fan, but I was glad when it was chosen for our book club. While I was reading it, I complained about it being kind of slow. It definitely moved faster toward the end. In the end, I found it interesting but not very exciting to read. I marked a few passages and might post about them later. I need to start posting about books as I read them rather than waiting until I finish. Too often, once I've finished a book, I don't want to go back and relive it in order to write a proper book review post. Usually, I'm more interested in looking forward than looking back, which is what I'm about to do.

Books on my weekend reading list

The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters - One night last week I gave in to my book lust and read almost twenty pages of this, and I was hooked. I'm quite proud of myself for resisting the temptation to give up on The Professor and the Madman and move on completely. A couple of years ago, I read Waters' The Night Watch, and I've wanted to read something else of hers ever since. I bought this book very soon after it was released, but I kept putting other books in front of it. Hopefully, it will live up to all the good reviews that I have read about it. I think it probably should since it has been longlisted for this year's Man Booker Prize. This book is over 400 pages, so I won't be able to finish it this weekend, but I do plan to get deep into it.
Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins - This is a young adult book, the second in a trilogy which began with the much-lauded Hunger Games. I loved Hunger Games and am very excited to see how Collins continues the story of Katniss, one of the best girl characters that I have ever seen. This book came out on September 1, and I picked up three copies for my library, which isn't open to students for check out until after this holiday weekend. It's a good think too because I wanted to read it and so did my principal and her secretary. Hopefully, we will all finish it this weekend because I know students are anxiously awaiting this book's availability.
Baby Be-Bop by Francesca Lia Block - Another YA book. When I scanned all my books this week for inventory, I came across this short novel. I didn't even realize that it was part of my school library's collection. The book is about a young man who is trying to come to terms with being gay. I really only heard paid attention to this book because a Christian group has sued to be allowed to burn the copy that is available in the West Bend, Wisconsin library. I decided that I should read it. Since it's just over 100 pages, I shouldn't have any trouble getting it read this weekend.
Moby Dick by Herman Melville - I'm a slow reader and know that I would never be able to read this 500-page book in a long weekend, but I do intend to use a 40% off coupon from Borders to purchase a copy so that I can start feeding my obsession about reading it. Valerie said the other night that it was like I was Captain Ahab. Yeah, I had thought about that already.

So, now it's just after noon and I need to pick a book to take with me to read while I have a pedicure and get out of the house for a while. Later. :-)

Tomorrow is a big day for YA books

2009-08-31T20:54:00.000-05:00

Even though I am a junior high librarian, I usually don't write much here about young adult books. I really don't like books written for teens very much, but I do have to read some books so that I can feel conscientious. After two years in a junior high library, I still haven't acquired a real taste for young adult books. However, I am very excited about two YA books that are being released tomorrow. First, Catching Fire, the second book of the Hunger Games series by Suzanne Collins. I read the first book, Hunger Games, in the spring, and I LOVED it! I think Katniss, the main character, is a great girl character, one who is not focused on a boy or the need for a boy. There are two major minor boy characters, but Katniss has much more important things to worry about, things like surviving a fight to the death. I can't wait to see how Collins continues Katniss's story. A former co-worker got an advanced copy of Catching Fire and says it's even better than Hunger Games. I'm going to pick up three copies of the book tomorrow and plan to start reading as soon as possible, like tomorrow night or maybe even during the PTA meeting that I have to attend after work.

The other book is Ash by Malinda Lo. I read an advanced copy of this book in the spring. Ash is a lesbian retelling of Cinderella, but it's not overly Cinderella-ish. I liked it a lot, and I think that it will be exciting to see how Lo develops as an author. I had intended to blog about the book when I read the ARC, but I procrastinated, so I will try to post something about it after I have read the final copy.

In other reading news, I am still reading The Professor and the Madman, but I am itching to start something else. It's very nerdy but interesting. I'm not a big fan of nonfiction; it really is different from reading fiction. Maybe if I read more nonfiction, I would get used to the difference, but I have so many fiction books waiting in the wings that I don't think I will be able to squeeze in very many nonfiction choices. I do have one that I intend to read soon, The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher, but it will have to wait a little while. I know that I will read Sarah Waters' The Little Stranger next, then I will probably read Moby Dick or Middlemarch. I will probably go with Moby Dick because I can't seem to stop thinking about reading it. I'm not sure why I'm so obsessed with the idea of reading it, but I get weird like that about books sometimes. Or maybe I'm just weird. Now, I think I'll go to bed and read for a while. Later.

Blogging again with a reading update

2009-08-23T21:53:00.000-05:00

I've been blogging since March 4, 2005. Looking at my archives, I see that I have blogged less and less as the years have passed. For 1.5 of those years, I can blame grad school while being an English teacher work for keeping me from being a regular blogger. Since the fall of 2007, I've been a junior high librarian, so I really have no excuse for not blogging more. I do have a work blog too, but I don't really post much there since my students are not allowed to access it at school. (Yeah, I just love Internet filters and adult paranoia. Don't you?)

Recently Valerie said that she had reviewed some of my old posts and that I should get back to it. She said that I write good/interesting posts. I know that she's biased, but I also know that she doesn't lie. In telling me this, she reminded me of how much I enjoyed blogging in the past. Well, I've decided that I'm going to blog more regularly. Starting with this post.

I finished reading The Girl Who Played with Fire by Stieg Larsson yesterday morning. I love Lisbeth Salander! She is a unique character, but I find her very believable. I really enjoyed Larsson's first novel, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. I thought all the information about Sweden's economy and financial sector was interesting, probably because it reflected well real life events in America and the world. Then the mysteries that make up the main plot were also interesting. I felt like Larsson was using his first book to say something about out of control greed on a grand scale. The Girl Who Played with Fire is a more straightforward mystery/thriller. Although some of the revelations of Lisbeth's secrets do cross the line into social commentary. When it's revealed that Lisbeth's father was a Russian hit man who had defected to Sweden and been allowed to break laws and be a monster for the sake of national security, I can hear Larsson sneering at that rationalization. But in this book, those moments are few and far between. This book is a page-turner! It has real excitement and quite a lot of violence, but I never felt the violence was gratuitous. I was able to figure out much of the mysteries before they were revealed in the narrative, but I still enjoyed the reading. After being left with Lisbeth's life hanging in the balance, I can't wait for the trilogy's finale The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, which comes out October 31, 2009. It should be interesting to see how Larsson ends the series.

In other reading news, my book club's current selection is The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary. Yes, my book club is made up of a bunch of nerds. Actually, this is the nerdiest book that we have chosen in our over two years of existing. I'm not much of a nonfiction fan, but I do like words, and this book has a definition at the beginning of each chapter. Woohoo! ;-)

Okay, I think that's enough ~~blabbing~~ blogging for now. Later.

And the winner is...

2009-08-17T21:05:00.003-05:00

Jane is the winner of The Girl Who Played with Fire! Jane, email me your address, and I'll get the book in the mail as soon as possible. I hope you read it soon and enjoy it as much as I am.

I am over half finished with the book, and I think it's more enjoyable than Larsson's previous book. It kept me up until almost 1:00 a.m. last night, and I might have read longer if I hadn't glanced at the clock when I came to the end of Part 3. I had to go to work today, so I decided to go to sleep instead of reading further. I will probably finish it in the next couple of days.

Book Giveaway!

2009-08-09T22:33:00.000-05:00

The Girl Who Played with Fire by Stieg Larsson hit bookstores on July 28. It is the follow up to Larsson's The Girl with The Dragon Tattoo, which I read in the spring and blogged about here. (The earlier book is now out in paperback.) The publisher sent me a copy of The Girl Who Played with Fire to give away. I'm also supposed to have some temporary tattoos to give away also, but I have not received them yet.

If you haven't read the first book, I do recommend it, but don't let that keep you from entering the contest. I've read almost 100 pages of The Girl Who Played with Fire, and I think you could read the second book without having read the first book first. Larsson does a good job of filling in the pertinent background information

To be entered into the drawing for the book, all you have to do is leave a comment below with your name. This giveaway is open to those in the U.S. and Canada only, and the deadline for entry is midnight Central time, Friday, August 14, 2009. I will pick use a random integer generator to pick the winner and announce the winner on Monday, August 17.

Watching Golf, Thinking about Reading

2009-07-19T13:08:00.000-05:00

The Open Championship is concluding today, and I have been enthralled watching Tom Watson try to win his 6th championship at 59 years old. My dad would've loved this! As an adult, I LOVE watching the major golf tournaments, especially when they have exciting endings like this one. Growing up, I'm not sure I really enjoyed the golf that much. Mostly, I think I endured the TV viewing because my dad loved it. I was a daddy's girl.

While watching today, I've been thinking about reading, mainly because I have a 50% off coupon to use today at Half Price Books. I've been thinking about what book I would buy. I would love to find a copy of Drood there, but I looked for it at two different locations earlier this week, when I had a 40% off coupon to use, and had no luck. I will probably look for it again today, but I'm only going to one location. If I don't find it, I have to have a second choice. I can't waste a 50% off coupon for a book--that would be a sacrilege.

I have wanted to read a novel by James Baldwin for a long time. I have read one of his short stories, "Sonny's Blues," but nothing else that I recall. I remember liking the short story very much and thinking that I should read more of his work. I did a little research about his works, hoping to discover what is considered his masterpiece. According to information on PBS' American Masters site, "Go Tell It on the Mountain has long been considered an American classic." Classic is close enough to masterpiece for me. So, I am going to look for a copy of it.

In other reading news, I will finish reading The House of Seven Gables today. Hopefully, I will not be lazy and will post about it soon. Last week as part of my short story reading project, I finished reading Nine Stories by J.D. Salinger. This week, I am going to finish reading Alice Munro's The View from Castle Rock. There are 6 stories in the second part of the book plus an epilogue. If I finish the book, I think I will have made up for missing days when I was on vacation and a couple of other days since then when I was busy or reading something else. This book of stories based on her family's history has reinforced my admiration for Munro's writing. If I can't find a copy of Go Tell It on the Mountain, maybe I will look for an older Munro book because I definitely want to read more of her work.

Well, the 4-hole playoff is half over, and Watson is one shot behind Cink. I should probably get dressed now, so that Valerie and I can go eat lunch and maybe do grocery shopping as soon as it's over. Enjoy your Sunday!

Short Story Project Update

2009-06-29T11:59:00.001-05:00

Last week, I finished reading Jhumpa Lahiri's Unaccustomed Earth. The final three stories are linked, alternately focusing on Hema and Kaushik, a girl and a boy who are thrown together as children when Kaushik's family returns to the U.S. and stay with Hema's family for a while. Although they are not friends and their parents do not remain close friends, thier short time together leaves a lasting impression on them both. In the final story, their reunion and subsequent coupling is not unexpected, but Hema's ultimate decision about their relationship, while probably not the desired ending for many readers, is completely fitting with her character. I really enjoyed these three stories. With this book, Lahiri has further cemented her place in my list of authors I love, authors whose books I will buy as soon as they are released.

Other short stories that I have read since my last post:

The opening story in J. D. Salinger's Nine Stories: "A Perfect Day for Bananafish." This story concerns Seymour Glass, a World War II combat veteran, who is not coping very well with the return to civilian life. He is probably suffering from a post-traumatic stress disorder, but I don't think it was being called that in the late 40s/early 50s.
Another story from Nine Stories, "For Esme--with Love and Squalor." I think this story has appeared in many anthologies. I recognize the title, but I don't think I ever read it. It is another post-World War II story. I found it funny and sad. In this story, Clay relives a meeting he had in England during the war with a young girl and her brother and the lasting impression that the meeting had on him.
On a much lighter note, "The Macbeth Murder Mystery" by James Thurber. Have you ever read any Thurber? I think I have only read two of his stories before this one, "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" and "The Catbird Seat"--both read a very long time ago, but if I remember correctly they are silly on the surface, but the silliness reveals a deeper, more serious problem lurking under the surface. Well, "The Macbeth Murder Mystery" is just silly to me. Still, I wish I had used it when I taught Macbeth all those years.
Another silly story, "Carry on Jeeves" by PG Wodehouse. A very funny story that I found in book at a bed and breakfast that Valerie and I stayed in on our recent trip to the Hill Country (I need to blog about our trip soon too). I had never read any Wodehouse but have intended to for a while.
Two short stories Alice Munro, but I'm saving them for another post.
Another by Salinger's Nine Stories, "Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut." This story is about two former college roommates who get together for lunch and end up spending the afternoon getting drunk while catching up and reminiscing. I'm not sure what I think about this story. I just read it this morning and haven't had time to fully process my thoughts. Maybe I will post more thoughts about it later.

Okay, that's enough for now. I need to do something else for a while today. Later.

My Short Story Theory

2009-06-15T20:28:00.000-05:00

From the first sentence, a good short story makes you feel like something important is about to happen. By its very nature, you know that the climax will occur relatively quickly, but you still enjoy the path to the climax. I've noticed this week that I tend to approach the reading of short stories like I approach the reading of mystery novels. I find myself mentally predicting where the story is headed. Of course, it's easy to predict the trite turns that a story about human relationships might take, but the best short stories do not go to those trite places or they go there in an unexpected way.

Most of the time, Lahiri, like a great writer should, takes the story someplace else. When she does take the story to an expected place, she focuses the story in such a way that the climax isn't merely the expected outcome but some other aspect of that outcome. For example, in "Nobody's Business," Sang, a young Bengali American woman, is being duped by her Egyptian boyfriend. To me it was apparent from the beginning of the story that Farouk was hiding something and most likely being unfaithful to her. He wouldn't let her spend the night with him, wouldn't spend the night with her, and didn't introduce her to his family. Sang's housemate Paul discover's Farouk's secret, but he keeps it from Sang for a while. In the end the story is more about how and why Paul discovers, keeps, and finally reveals the secret than it is about Sang and Farouk's relationship.

The previous story, "Only Goodness," is a story about family relationships, but this one focuses on the siblings in a family, Sudha and her younger brother Rahul. While this story is about a Bengali American family, I would label this a universal family story. I think that anyone with at least one sibling could find something to connect with in this story. For example, when Sudha thinks of the stories of her birth and early childhood in London, she thinks of them "like an episode out of a Greek myth or the Bible." I can think of a number of my family's stories that might, to us, be thought of on the same level. Those are the best family stories.

Despite having been raised essentially the same, Sudha and Rahul end up in very different places. Sudha is a successful academic while Rahul, the smarter of the two siblings, is a floundering alcoholic. Rahul is kicked out of college and living at home with his parents. He has no car and only a part-time job. During a visit home, Sudha becomes "aware of a horrible imbalance between them. She felt accused, simply because her life wasn't broken in the same way." I sometimes feel really bad when I talk to my younger sister, who is constantly having money problems. I know her problems are not my fault and not my responsibility, but I still feel bad that I can't make her life better, can't solve her problems.

(FYI - I typed up most of this post a couple of days ago. Then I added the following paragraphs tonight.)

I think this story can be summed up in one simple sentence from the story: "Life went on." Of course, we know that it must, but, like Sudha, we still feel guilty when we realize that we are moving on. We can sit still; our lives must be lived. Sudha can't wait on her brother to get his shit together before she takes the next step in her life. And no one would really expect her to.

I'm really enjoying this book of stories. The final three stories are related to one another. I took a break from Lahiri today to read "Goldrush Girl," a short story by Jeanette Winterson. You can read the story online here. I'm still trying to decide what I think about it. Maybe I'll post something about it later.

The Short Story Project Continues

2009-06-11T09:25:00.000-05:00

Today, I will read my fourth short story, another one from Lahiri's Unaccustomed Earth. Concentrating on short stories in this way has reminded me of Poe's rules for the short story that I used to teach my Junior English students.

From what I recall, Poe said that a short story should

be able to be read in one sitting.
create a unified effect - every sentence should contribute to the effect.
complete in itself.

I'm sure there's more but I'm too lazy to try to find any old teaching notes that I might have saved. It seems like there was a specialized vocabulary word that I taught my students with these rules, but I can't remember it.

I'm sure that lots of great short stories break Poe's rules, but I have been thinking about them as I read the first three stories in Lahiri's book, pondering what the one effect might be of each story. However, I haven't been so focused on the effect that I'm not enjoying the whole of the stories.

The second story "Hell-Heaven," like the first story, focuses on generational differences. This time, though, the focus is on a daughter's changing views of her mother and her mother's feelings for a male family friend. I really like how Lahiri doesn't create the cliched love triangle; she doesn't take the easy way out of the story. Although the traditional Indian rules of behavior haunt this story, much like they do many of Lahiri's stories, I don't feel like it constrains the characters in an artificial way. (I really should write something about each story as soon as I finish reading. If I did, I think I would have more interesting things to say.)

The third story "Choice of Accommodations" concerns a marital differences rather than generational. Amit and Megan have been married long enough to have two young daughters. Amit is a former doctor-to-be turned medical journal editor, and Megan is in the last year of her residency. The story takes place on a weekend trip to the wedding of one of Amit's old friends. The daughter of the headmaster of the prep school he attended, a woman that he has always been in love with but never really pursued. They have been friends for a long time now. The night of the wedding, which takes place at the prep school, Amit does a lot of thinking about his past and his present.

Thinking about this project has made me think about short stories that I have read through the years and chosen to teach because I enjoyed them so much. Here are some of my favorite short stories:

Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery"
Kate Chopin's "The Story of an Hour"
Katherine Anne Porter's "The Jilting of Granny Weatherall"
Ambrose Bierce's "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge"
Alice Walker's "Everyday Use"
James Baldwin's "Sonny's Blues" - I read this story several years ago now, and since then I am often reminded that it made me want to read one of Baldwin's novels, which I have yet to do. I wonder which one I should read. If you read one, please make a recommendation.
William Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily"
John Updike's "The A & P"

That's all I can think of for now. It's time to read now. Later.

The Short Story Project Begins

2009-06-08T00:13:00.000-05:00

To review, my Summer of Short Stories involves reading one story each weekday of my summer vacation, a total of 45 short stories. I'm not sure what form my blog posts about the stories will take or how faithful I will be at posting about them, but I'm going to attempt to post each day soon after I read the story for that day.

I decided to begin with Jhumpa Lahiri's Unaccustomed Earth. The first story is the title story. It is a lovely story about the way family members, especially fathers and daughters, understand and misunderstand one another. When I read Lahiri's Interpreter of Maladies, I was completely drawn into each of the stories from the first word to the last, and "Unaccustomed Earth" was no different. Lahiri is able to make me feel much for her characters even though I will only know them for a short while. Ruma and her father share more than they will ever realize. It's quite poignant how Lahiri captures the way they misunderstand one another on the surface yet come to understand each other on a deeper level in the end. (I'm not sure that I'm making sense here, but if you read the story, maybe you will see what I mean.) They each want to protect the other from the one thing that humans can't be protected from, life as it happens: "He wanted to shield her from the deterioration that inevitably took place in the course of a marriage, and from the conclusion he sometimes feared was true: that the entire enterprise of having a family, of putting children on this earth as gratifying as it sometimes felt, was flawed from he start." Although we know that life lessons are learned best through experience, we still want to protect those that we love from having to learn the hard lessons through their own experience.

I enjoyed this story so much that I immediately wanted to read the next story, but I resisted the temptation. I have other books to read today. I want to finish Unwind and make some good progress with Shadow Country, which I must be finished with by July 12--it's 875 pages; I've not read 200 pages yet. Plus I do have some errands to run and things to do around the apartment.

Later!

A Summer of Short Stories

2009-06-04T21:29:00.000-05:00

I know that I will read several novels this summer, both adult and young adult ones. Still, for a couple of weeks, I've been thinking that I need a plan for the summer, a plan for reading and/or writing something everyday. I have considered walking to the park every morning and doing some writing, like maybe planning to write one poem a day, and I might still try to do that on some days. But tonight, while I was doing my five-mile walk, I had the idea that I could read one short story per week day, and I could only read them from books that I or Valerie already own but I haven't read.

Here are the short story books that we own that I have not read:

Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri
Diamond Dust by Anita Desai
The View from Castle Rock by Alice Munro
The Stories of John Cheever - I have had this book for a very long time, but I have only read a few stories in it.
The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter
Go Down, Moses by William Faulkner - As far as I can remember, I have only read one story from this book when I was an undergrad. Do you know how long ago that was?
The Early Stories: 1953-1975 by John Updike - I have read a few of the stories in this book, but it's a big book with lots of stories that I haven't read.
Collected Stories by Carol Shields
Nine Stories by J.D. Salinger
The book of Ten Nights and a Night by John Barth

We also own several short story anthologies and some literature anthologies that include some short stories. I will have plenty to read. My plan is to get up every morning and read a story before I do anything else that day. I have nine weeks of summer vacation, which equals enough days for 45 short stories. I will try to post/tweet about each of the stories, but I'm not making any promises that I will stick to that part of the plan or to the plan itself. It will be fun to try though.

I wish I had said that

2009-05-12T22:09:00.000-05:00

Sunday night at book club, we realized that only 2 or 3 of us would be able to attend our June meeting. So, we decided to skip a month and read a longer book: Shadow Country by Peter Mathiessen, 892 pages.

I don't know about you, but I have to read all the blurbs on a book before I can begin reading a book. I knew that Shadow Country won the National Book Award last year; and, I wasn't surprised that the blurbs were all raves. However, I was surprised by the sheer number of them and by the high level of the praise. If this book lives up to its blurbs, I will be in book club heaven--two great books in a row!

My favorite blurb:

"The book took my sleeve and like the ancient mariner would not let go."--Los Angeles Times

Man, I really wish I could think of things like that to say about the books that I read. Actually, I wish more books that I read enthralled me like the mariner's story does the wedding guest. Here's hoping Shadow Country does not disappoint.

Since I last blogged

2009-05-10T08:56:00.002-05:00

Geez, I can't believe how long it has been since I posted here. It's not like I haven't had anything to post about. Valerie and I moved to a new apartment--much smaller but much, much nicer. I requested a transfer to a high school library--still angry that someone who didn't want the transfer is being forced to take the position instead of giving it to one of the two of us who did want it. I started Twitter-ing. I have read some really good YA books and one really great book club book.

First the book club book: The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga - I really loved this book. It is obviously reminiscent of Camus' The Stranger in that Balram, the main character, is confessing to and rationalizing a murder that he has gotten away with committing. However, I don't remember The Stranger as being the least bit funny. Adiga's book, on the other hand, made me laugh out loud more than once. Here are two of my favorite passages:

"These are the three main diseases of this country, sir: typhoid, cholera, and election fever. This last one is the worst; it makes people talk and talk about things they have no say in." - Isn't that the perfect description for our election years, perhaps for any country's election years?
Balram asks a bookseller, "So how do you sell books without knowing English?" To which the bookseller replies, "I know which book is what from the cover...I know this one is Harry Potter...I know this one is James Hadley Chase...This is Kahlil Gibran--this is Adolf Hitler--Desmond Bagley--The Joy of Sex. One time the publishers changed the Hitler cover so it looked like Harry Potter, and life was for a week after that." - I'm sure that someone who bought what they thought was Harry Potter would be outraged to have recieved a Hitler book instead, but I thought this idea was terrifically funny.

The effects of rampant illiteracy is one of the big ideas in this book, so I wasn't surprised to find some good book quotes. I'm always on the lookout for those. Balram tells the bookseller, "I just want to stand around the books. I had a book once. When I was a boy." I know some people do not have books and some do not want books, but the thought of someone wanting books and not having them is one of the saddest things I can think of. Another book quote that I liked is this one: "Strange thoughts brew in your heart when you spend too much time with old books." This quote makes me think of Frankenstein's reading of his father's outdated science books and deciding to build a human, and we all know (even those of us who never read the book) the horrible outcome of that reading. For one more book quote, check out my right sidebar.

The three great YA books that I read recently are Ash by Malinda Lo, which doesn't come out until September, Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson, and The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. I will post reviews of these at my work blog as soon as possible and will either link to them from here or post them here too.

Now, I need to get off here and get moving. Valerie and I want to finish hanging things today and do our grocery shopping before going to book club tonight. Enjoy your Sunday!

Spring Break Reading

2009-03-23T22:14:00.001-05:00

I finished reading The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larrson on Saturday. It's not a perfect mystery/thriller, but I found it to be very engaging. I'm a slow reader, but if I had been able to just sit and read without interruptions, I could probably have read the book in just a few days, maybe even one or two. There were a few places where I thought the story dragged, but most of those places consisted of background information about the Vanger family or the Swedish financial markets/economy. The mystery involves the niece of an elderly Swedish industrialist, retired from heading his family's business. Harriet Vanger went missing when she was sixteen, and her uncle Henrik convinces a convicted libelist to make one last ditch effort to find out what happened to her before Henrik dies. Eventually, the journalist Mikael Blomqvist hooks up (in more ways than one) with Lisbeth Salander, a hacker who had done a background check on him for Henrik Vanger. She ends up helping him solve the mystery and saving his life along the way.

In addition to being a mystery, this novel is also trying to make a statement about the number of women who are violently abused in Sweden. Each section of the book is introduced with a statistic about the subject. In the end, I'm not sure the novel does anything more than make the reader aware of how horribly women can and are abused in Sweden.

The novel was written before the author passed away in 2004, but Larsson seems to have predicted some of the current economic events that we have been witnessing for the last couple of years. Late in the novel, after a major financial player has been exposed as a fraud, Blomqvist discusses the Swedish economy, but he could be discussing the American economy or any other economy that is market driven:

"You have to distinguish between two things--the Swedish economy and the Swedish stock market. The Swedish economy is the sum of all the goods and services that are produced in this country every day. There are telephones from Ericsson, cars from Volvo, chickens from Scan, and shipments from Kiruna to Skovde. That's the Swedish economy, and it's just as strong or weak today as it was a week ago...The Swedish Exchange is something very different. There is no economy and no production of goods and services. There are only fantasies in which people from one hour to the next decide that this or that company is worth so many billions, more or less. It doesn't have a thing to do with reality or with the Swedish economy."

If only the latter didn't affect the former so much these days, we would all probably be much better off.

Something about this book made me think of the Sidney Sheldon books that I read, and thoroughly enjoyed, as a teenager and young adult. It's been too long for me to remember enough details to make a real comparison, but I recall that there was some kind of mystery/crime to be solved. If I remember correctly, though, the main female characters usually ended up happier than the Salander does in this novel. Still, I really enjoyed this book and would recommend it to anyone who likes crime novels.

More Spring Break Reading

On Sunday, I read Mary Oliver's introduction to The House of Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne. (I like the Modern Library Classics editions.) I don't know if I read something about this book recently, but I have been wanting to read it ever since I finished War & Peace. Before I purchased the book and read the introduction, I had forgotten that one of my favorite Advanced Placement essays required an analysis of a passage from this novel. Maybe I will post about the passage when I get to it in the novel.
I started The Madonnas of Leningrad by Debra Dean yesterday and read a bit more early this morning. It's my book club's current selection, and I think it will be a quick read. So far, it's interesting, but I'm not completely hooked. The story is about a Russian emigre with Alzheimer's. She clearly remembers evacuating the art from the Hermitage in Leningrad during World War II, but she can't remember much present information from one moment to the next.
This morning, after I read more of The Madonnas of Leningrad, I read the introduction to George Eliot's Middlemarch, another Modern Library Classics edition. The introduction was written by A.S. Byatt. I have wanted to read Middlemarch for a long time, but I am such a slow reader that I often postpone starting such long books, 799 pages in this copy. However, after reading Byatt's introduction, I don't think I can put it off much longer.
Finally, this morning, I read "The Sisters," the first story in James Joyce's Dubliners, which I have never read. I have read the story "Araby" and maybe "The Dead" before, but I don't think I have read any of the other stories before today. I have a Vintage International edition, which doesn't have an introduction, so I just jumped right in to the first story.
This afternoon, UPS delivered my latest LibraryThing Early Reviewers book, Easter Parade by Richard Yates, which brings to three the number of books that I have from this program waiting to be read and reviewed. I still need to read Etta by Gerald Kolpan, which just came out today, and Rocket Man by William Elliot Hazelgrove.

I had actually thought that April would be my read and review month, but now, I'm all excited about reading some classics and Valerie and I are moving to a new apartment in a few weeks. Oh well, I'm sure I will figure something out. Now, I'm going to read for a while before I go to bed.

Sunday Morning Reader Reading

2009-03-08T11:41:00.002-05:00

I am enjoying this Sunday morning, sitting on the patio (which I will probably not have much longer but that's a story for another post), getting caught up on my Google Reader reading. In a post from March 2 (I really am behind on my Reader reading), Malinda Lo wrote about Daily Routines, a blog that she recently discovered. According to it's tagline, the blog is about "How writers, artists, and other interesting people organize their days." I haven't read through much of the blog yet, but Lo's post included a her favorite description, which is from Toni Morrison, my favorite author:

“Recently I was talking to a writer who described something she did whenever she moved to her writing table. I don’t remember exactly what the gesture was–there is something on her desk that she touches before she hits the computer keyboard–but we began to talk about little rituals that one goes through before beginning to write. I, at first, thought I didn’t have a ritual, but then I remembered that I always get up and make a cup of coffee and watch the light come. And she said, Well, that’s a ritual. And I realized that for me this ritual comprises my preparation to enter a space I can only call nonsecular… Writers all devise ways to approach that place where they expect to make the contact, where they become the conduit, or where they engage in this mysterious process. For me, light is the signal in the transaction. It’s not being in the light, it’s being there before it arrives. It enables me, in some sense."

Beautifully said! Morrison never ceases to impress me. I just had to share that very quickly. Now, back to my Reader reading.

Quick Early Morning Post

2009-03-04T06:57:00.002-06:00

I finished War & Peace on Sunday, and I have things to say about it but no time now. I will probably post something later this week or this weekend. Yesterday, I finished my book club's current selection, Towelhead, but I will wait to post about it until after our meeting on Sunday. I'm really curious to see how other members reacted to this book. At work yesterday, I started reading a YA book called Boy Minus Girl. I actually checked this on out at the public library to see if it's appropriate for junior high students.

Last night, I started The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, but I was tired and didn't read very much, the prologue and part of the first chapter. Valerie will be out of town Thursday and Friday, so I will probably do a bunch of reading then. I will read unless I get sucked into watching Olberman and Maddow and/or playing mindless computer games, which I have a tendency to do sometimes even when she is here.

Now, it's time to go to work.

Reading Now

2009-02-18T20:51:00.003-06:00

If you look at my right sidebar, you will see that three books are tagged as "Currently Reading" in my LibraryThing catalog, but I am really only reading one book right now. I have set February 28 as my deadline for finishing (finally!) War and Peace. I am currently just past page 800, which means that I have just over 400 pages left to go. I will meet this deadline!

The past two days and tomorrow at work students are taking TAKS practice tests, and my duty in the mornings is relief hall monitor--I have to relieve the hall monitors who make sure only one student goes into the bathroom at a time. In the afternoon, my duty is to monitor testers who did not finish the test in the morning. Both duties lend themselves to getting a bit of reading done, and I have taken advantage of the opportunity. I will meet this deadline!

Another factor: Valerie is going out of town next Wednesday and won't return until Sunday, so I will be able to concentrate on reading for the last four days of the month. She is such a distraction when she is here. ;-)

I will meet the deadline! And then I will immediately begin Towelhead, the current book club selection. I read the first few pages after I bought the book, and I think it will be a fast read. I hope so, since I am leaving myself just two week to get that read. After that, I have decided that I am going to read The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. I am in the mood for a mystery.

And about that other "currently reading" book, The Warrior Queens, I will work it in here and there and will eventually finish it.

Hemingway is finshed

2009-02-08T20:47:00.004-06:00

My boredom with For Whom the Bell Tolls didn't last long. I read for a long time yesterday and finished this morning. I'm still not sure if I "liked" the book, but I do feel like I read something important, something very good. The last 50-100 pages were surprisingly very intense too. I definitely think this is a much better book than Garden of Eden, which I read last summer and didn't like very much. Reading For Whom the Bell Tolls made me want to read A Farewell to Arms or read (actually I have listened to it on tape) The Sun Also Rises, so that I could make some kind of comparison.

Classics are supposed to be works that remain relevant, and this book is no exceptions. Passages like this one speak to today's world as much as it speaks about the Spanish Civil War: "To kill them teaches nothing...You cannot exterminate them because from their seed comes more with greater hatred. Prison is nothing. Prison only makes hatred." -- This statement explains why I am not the least bit surprised that so many ex-cons end up back in jail or that someone released from a place like Guantanamo would return to fight against America.

I don't generally read biographies, but I think I might like to read about Hemingway, especially his attitude toward war. I feel like this book shows that he was rather cynical about war. Of course, he was part of the "lost generation" so his disillusionment shouldn't come as a surprise to me. Still, I might like to read some of his letters or a good biography.

Okay, that's enough for tonight. I'm going to watch some TV now. Later.

The Hemingway excitement wanes

2009-02-01T12:35:00.002-06:00

Last month, when we chose For Whom the Bell Tolls for our next book club read, I was very excited because I like classics and this was one that I had never read but always meant to. Plus, despite occasional classic options, our book club hadn't selected one in its year and a half of existence. Most of the members who were present at the meeting seemed genuinely excited about reading a classic.

For the first 50-100 pages of the novel, I was still excited to read this book. I was drawn into the story and anxious to see what would happen next. Now, however, I have become bored with the story. Hopefully, it's just a short slump--I'm only on page 137--I'm going to spend some concentrated time reading today, and I plan to not watch very much TV this week. The book is almost 500 pages and with my slow reading, I will need all week to finish unless the pace picks back up and stays on a fast-moving course.

In other reading news, I still need to read the last half of War & Peace and can't wait to find time to read The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and 2666, which are both chunky books. I'm going to start one of them as soon as I finish Hemingway, regardless of what the next book club selections is.

Now, though, I am going to read for at least an hour, until time to head out to a Super Bowl party.

A Great Day for America

2009-01-20T21:00:00.001-06:00

I think that I have smiled almost non-stop today. It was a very exciting day at work. As soon as I got there, I started trying to get our school TV system set up to show live coverage of the inauguration. I was absolutely elated when I finally made it work with less than an hour to go before the oath and speech. I really felt like all students should be able to see this historic event as it happened. I know this may sound corny, but I felt like it was my duty to try to make it happen for the students at my school. And I loved all the talk from teachers and students about it.

I watched the speech live and again this afternoon on a special report from Channel One. Actually, I also heard some of it two more times while I did a little library work this afternoon--yes, today was not a very productive day for me. Tonight, Valerie and I are watching the coverage on MSNBC and plan to watch The Daily Show later, and I plan to watch Colbert Report too. It's like election night and the night after all over again. :-)

Speaking of Obama's speech, I thought it was awesome!!! Here are a few of my favorite passages:

On this day, we gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord.
The time has come to reaffirm our enduring spirit; to choose our better history; to carry forward that precious gift, that noble idea, passed on from generation to generation: the God-given promise that all are equal, all are free, and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness.
At a moment when the outcome of our revolution was most in doubt, the father of our nation ordered these words be read to the people: "Let it be told to the future world...that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive ... that the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet [it]."

I also enjoyed Elizabeth Alexander's poem and Joseph Lowery's benediction. Maybe I'll write about them later. All in all, I feel like I don't have to be so cynical and pessimistic about our government anymore. I truly feel more hopeful!

Books vs. Music

2008-12-31T18:25:00.001-06:00

I have very specific and sophisticated taste in books. I can easily spend a $25.00 bookstore gift card. My biggest problem in a book store is deciding what not to buy as opposed to what to buy. I would never feel insecure about talking about the books I read. Actually, I can be rather superior about my taste in books, and it is sometimes difficult for me to refrain from showing my scorn about books that I feel are trash.

Music is another story completely. I have never felt that I had good taste in music. I spent my teenage years and early twenties listening to New Wave, pop, and rock--MTV years--and my thirties listening to hip hop and R&B. Now, I listen to a lot of the music from those earlier decades of my life and a few newer people that I have discovered from various sources, such as from Valerie, from the Houston Women's Festival music lineup, from iTunes commercials, and from TV/movie soundtracks.

Before my birthday, I had an old iPod 1G Nano that holds just over 200 songs as long as nothing else is on it. I had to make tough choices about what to put on it and take off of it when I got bored with my playlist or bought new music. I no longer have that problem.

For my birthday, Valerie gave me a new 8G iPod Nano, a bright orange one. It was a great surprise! I never expected her to give me an iPod for my birthday. And now, I can put so much more music on it and put things other than music on it. As a matter of fact, I put all the music from my iTunes library on it, and it isn't even half full--obviously, I have a very small library. I haven't had time yet to add much to my library to see how much it will hold either.

For Christmas, my older sister gave me a $25.00 iTunes gift card, and I had a lot of trouble today deciding what to buy with it. Well, actually, I had an easy time deciding on one album. I have been wanting a Nina Simone album for a while now, so I knew I was going to get one. The second album presented a much harder decision. I wanted to buy something "good." After looking at some best of 2008 lists and listening to some snippets of some songs, I settled on Coldplay's Vida La Vida. I already had the one song that had been on the iTunes commericial. Hopefully, I will like both of these albums.

Now, I need to get ready for New Year's Eve festivities. Later.

Healthier Thoughts

2008-12-30T13:00:00.001-06:00

Last Monday, I turned 45. For a couple of months leading up to my birthday, I had been thinking about how unhealthy I am and how I would like to be much healthier when I turn 50. Yes, I know that's five years away, which gives me time to procrastinate, something I am very accomplished at doing, but I wasn't thinking about putting it off. I was thinking that I need to make changes now to be healthier in the near future as well as five years from now. And, I'm not just talking about losing weight, which I definitely need to do. I generally don't do new year's resolutions, and I'm not making this a resolution. I'm not sure why I have suddenly decided that I can't put my health needs off any longer, but I kind of feel desperate about it.

I've also been thinking a lot about menopause, which I feel very ignorant about, but I resist becoming intelligent about because it is an undeniable indicator of aging. I have a real problem with the idea of myself becoming an old woman. Also, I don't have any close friends near my age that I feel like I can talk to about it. Today, Allison Bechdel blogged about The Wisdom of Menopause, a book that she is reading. She's about three years older than me, so I was very interested in what she had to say about the book. She gave high praises to the book, so I looked at the reviews on Amazon. However, I can't decide if I would/should read this book or not. I'm not at all into New Age-y kinds of things and several reviewers complained about that aspect of the book. I do feel like I need to be more informed though, so maybe I will check it out from the library.

For now, I should be get my lazy butt up off the couch and do something active today. Later.

Bad Baking

2008-11-18T22:29:00.001-06:00

I have been talking about baking pumpkin muffins for a couple of weeks. I decided last night that tonight was the night. I made sure that I had all the necessary ingredients, or so I thought. After adding the dry ingredients to the batter, I noticed that it was more watery than usual. I have made these muffins many times before, so I knew something wasn't quite right. The batter tasted okay, but it didn't thicken like it should have. I went back over the recipe to see if I missed something or if I had put in too much of something, but I didn't. I thought I would cook them for the required amount of time and see what happened, but I wasn't optimistic.

When the timer went off, I pulled the pan out of the oven. What a mess! It looked like the batter had merely boiled in the pan. I think Valerie thought that I must have put too much water in the batter, but I reviewed the recipe and knew that I had measured all ingredients correctly. The only difference I could point out is that I now use eggs from cage-free hens but different eggs shouldn't affect the thickness of a batter. Then I had another thought: the only ingredient that I wasn't mine or bought recently was the flour . It was some that Valerie had in a plastic canister--needless to say, we don't do a lot of baking--at her old apartment, and we've been here for a year. Still, I doubted that the kind of flour could make a difference, but if it wasn't flour in the canister, it would make a big difference. I opened the flour and stuck my finger in it. It was sweet. I tasted it again, and I knew: it was powdered sugar! DAMN!

Of course, we didn't have any other flour either. Valerie offered to go to the store tonight, but I told her that I would bake the muffins tomorrow or Thursday night. I really wanted a muffin tonight, too. (Funny side note: I didn't get angry, which is surprising because I would have been a total bitch about the mix-up in my previous relationship. Valerie really does bring out the best in me.) The worst thing, though, is that now I have to clean up the kitchen, and I didn't even get a yummy muffin out of the work that created the mess.

What an amazing moment!

2008-11-04T00:17:00.001-06:00

I am so happy with my fellow Americans tonight. Valerie, our CGF (closeted gay friend), and I watched the results at a GLBT watch party at a local. It was very exciting and a lot of fun.

I'm not sure that I ever believed that I would see anyone other than a white male be president in my lifetime. However, once the primaries were over, I did start to believe that America was on the brink of a historic moment of our own making. Even as late as this morning, I still resisted believing the polls were correct. I just didn't want to be disappointed this time.

Well, tonight, I was exhilarated by Obama's win. I texted some friends when CNN called it for him, and I was brought to tears by my African American friend Lois's text: "I can hardly believe it! I cried! Then I danced! A black man will be president! I never thought in my lifetime!" Then she texted this a few minutes ago, which made me laugh ruefully: "They didn't want to give us 40 acres and a mule so dammit we will take 50 states and a White House."

My African American friend Charles, whom I have known since junior high, only had this to say to my "OMG! We have a black president!": "Yes we do." I was very touched by Charles's reaction to Obama's acceptance speech at the Democratic convention. To think that at 44, you can finally believe that someone like you could actuall be president. How sad that it took so long, but how great that it finally happened. Almost all of my nieces and nephews are biracial, and now they can all know that someone like themselves is going to be president. This is truly a great day for America.

The negative for tonight/today is that all the same-sex marriage measures appear to be passing. I just don't understand why Americans are so stupid about same-sex marriage. Tonight, though, I can not dwell on the negative.

OBAMA!!!!!!

New addition

2008-11-03T20:15:00.004-06:00

I have a very large extended family, and this is the newest member, my niece's daughter. Isn't she beautiful!

It's kind of funny that before she was born I really wasn't happy about this niece having a baby, but as soon as I saw her, I forgot about those feelings. I actually felt hopeful about my niece and her seemingly bad choice of a boyfriend. He was taking care of the baby at the hospital, changing diapers and feeding her, as much as my niece. I hope it's a good omen for their future.

A New Toni Morrison Novel!

2008-10-30T23:12:00.000-05:00

Toni Morrison is one of my favorite authors (Margaret Atwood is my other fav). I love Morrison's novels, especially The Bluest Eye, Song of Solomon, and Beloved. Tonight, I was cleaning out my NPR Books feeds, and I was completely surprised to learn that Morrison has a new book coming out on November 11. I should have already known this since I listen to NPR almost every day on my way to work and back, but this week is the second week of the local NPR stations fundraising drive. I am a sustaining member, so I do believe in NPR and don't mind contributing, but the necessary fundraising talk during Morning Edition and All Things Considered is still annoying. So I have been listening to my iPod and, of course, talking when I carpool.

Back to Morrison's new work, it's called A Mercy, a slave narrative set in the late 17th century. It's too late now to expound on the things that Morrison says she was trying to do in this novel, but I am completed intrigued by the story that she presents. Listening to her read an excerpt, I was reminded of what a good reader she is. As a teacher, I used a small portion of an audio of her reading of Beloved so that students could hear how the book should sound in their brains, and I always enjoyed listening to her read even that small portion. I have downloaded the 4 excerpts available on NPR and will definitely spend some time tomorrow listening to it at work.

Links to an audio interview, a video interview, and the four excerpts can be found here.

I never thought that I would say this but...

2008-10-23T20:50:00.001-05:00

I might want to read a Stephen King novel. And not just any King novel, The Stand, an apocalyptic novel of over 1000 pages. What's the big deal? Well, I am truly not a horror fiction or horror movie fan. I don't do scary! However, after reading a Salon interview with King today, I decided that this is a book that I might like. It is an apocalyptic novel that the interviewer believes will resonate as much with today's readers as it did with it's original audience. I do like apocalyptic novels and movies, and if this novel has "Fundamentalist religion, biological weapons, monster viruses, nuclear destruction, ecological havoc, mistrust of government, the breakdown of democracy" and is well-written, I think I might like it. Plus I still haven't read The Road but plan to very soon, and interviewer seems to think The Road was influenced by The Stand.

The interview celebrates the 30th anniversary of the publication of The Stand. I read it at work between book fair customers and made some notes about some of the specific interview points, but I forgot to bring the notes home, so I can't say more now. Well, I could say more if I wasn't so tired and lazy. I could reread the interview online and remind myself of things that I wanted to say, but I am tired and lazy. Now, I think I'll get even lazier now and watch some DVR'd shows before I go to bed. Later.

Book club book and cake - Updated

2008-10-12T13:24:00.005-05:00

A while back, I read about a blogger (can't remember the blog and am too lazy just now to search for it) who bakes an appropriate cake for each of the books read by her book club. I decided that since the next meeting for my book club was scheduled to meet at a member's home, which we don't do much, that I would offer to bring dessert instead of the easier option of a bottle of wine. So today I will bake a Coconut Cream Cake to go with our most recent book, Babylon Rolling. One of the characters makes a coconut cream cake early in the novel. I didn't enjoy the book much at all, so I hope the cake is good. I have never made this cake and found the recipe on the Internet. There were several variations on AllRecipes.com, and I found one by Emeril on the Food Network. I started to choose the one by Emeril because the book is set in New Orleans and that is where he is, right? However, I decided to go with one of the variations on AllRecipes.com because they weren't completely from scratch and seemed a bit less work intensive. I decided that, although I normally like to bake things from scratch, today I want to have some time to read and watch the Cowboys for a while this afternoon.

Okay, I'm off to the store now. When I get the cake made, I will snap a photo and post it. Hopefully, I will also be able to report that it was a success with the other book club members.

UPDATE - Here's a photo that I took with my phone. The cake doesn't look special, but it tastes so good.

A new fortune

2008-10-02T20:33:00.002-05:00

I got this fortune a couple of nights ago: Character cannot be purchased, bargained for, inherited, rented or imported from afar.

This may be true, but I'm not sure character is very important to most people any more. In theory, I think most people would agree with this fortune. In reality, people without character get ahead all the time, and we accept it.

Book buying and an idea for the new year

2008-09-28T14:36:00.003-05:00

This morning, Valerie and I went to one of our fave breakfast spots. She read the paper while I flipped through the latest issue of VOYA. As I perused the book reviews, I commented on some of them. At some point, Valerie said that I was making her want to go to the bookstore. I said that I had been thinking about going to Half-Priced Books to look for a book that I had not been able to find at Bookstop last week. The decision was made immediately; we would stop at Half-Priced on the way home. Being book addicted, we both purchased more than one book.

I bought three books:

A $3.00 copy of Infinite Jest in paperback. I've never read any Wallace, but I have read much about his writing since his recent suicide, and I think that I will enjoy his work. For $3.00 I just couldn't pass this up.
A like-new hardback of Rushdie's The Enchantress of Florence. I really enjoyed Midnight's Children and Fury.
A like-new Modern Library paperback of Middlemarch. After I finish W&P, I think this will be my next big read.

Valerie bought two biographies, John Adams and Einstein: His Life and Universe, which she has been lusting after for a long time now. She was so excited, and so cute in her excitement, when she found the Einstein book in hardback for only $8.00, showing barely any use. I'm excited too because I will learn so much when she reads these books. She loves to share, and I like it when she shares with me!

Now for the idea: I have a reading plan/resolution idea for the new year, but I will write about it later. Now, I think I will get off the computer and watch a show or two that we DVR'd this week. Enjoy the rest of your weekend.

My Fortune

2008-09-25T21:02:00.002-05:00

A while back I thought that I should blog my fortune cookie fortunes. I thought it would be fun to pontificate on their meaning or, most likely, lack of meaning.

I got this one tonight: You[r] critical insights can provide the stimulus for change.

I don't know about you, but I think that's a damn good fortune. It sounds like I should be something more powerful than a junior high school librarian. Any suggestions?

Ike-Induced Vacation Day 9 (The last one!)

2008-09-24T11:00:00.001-05:00

I didn't hear until 8:00 last night that I wouldn't be going back to work today, but I am going back tomorrow--no students tomorrow and no definite word that students will be there on Friday. As I said yesterday, I am ready to get back to normal life, which means working.

I'm also ready for the local TV stations to stop the all-Ike, all the time news broadcasting. There are only so many ways that you can tell a story, and now they are just fueling controversy so they can advertise later that they were the station to ask the toughest questions and refute the most myths. They spend less than 5 minutes on a round-up of the national and world news at the end of each hour-long night-time broadcast--it's disgusting!

Really, our economy is failing and our so-called leaders want us to hand over $700 billion to save the greedy bastards who have run our economy into the ground. People need to hear about this news more than about how bad CenterPoint is doing in restoring electricity. Pre-Ike, they said it could take 2-3 weeks to get power fully restored, and it has been less than two weeks. Yes, I'm sure if I was one of the unlucky ones who still didn't have power I might feel differently, but the mostly media created controversy still wouldn't help me get my power back or make me feel less frustrated.

Now, to the $700 billion bailout: I say NO! I don't buy the fear being sold with this story. I do believe that times could get hard, but I don't believe it would be another great depression. (Damn, I had something really pithy to say here, and I totally lost my train of thought. I hate it when that happens!)

Well, I should get up and do something to commemorate my last day of my Ike-induced vacation. Valerie didn't leave me a to-do list or send me a reminder email this morning, but I'm sure there is something I can do today besides sit and read. Of course, sitting and reading is very enticing. :-)

Happy Wednesday! (Btw, I just realized that I said "Happy Monday!" yesterday--see what happens when you don't go to work for 8 days.)

Ike-Induced Vacation Day 8

2008-09-23T10:53:00.000-05:00

I am so ready to go back to work! My school district still has 7 of its 22 schools without power. Yesterday, 8 schools were still without power. I just hope they get more than one school up and running today because, if not, I might be off work for another week. I don't need to be off work after only about 4 weeks back to work (wait a minute, librarians start back a week before teachers who start a week before students so I had been back to work almost 5 weeks--still not enough time to need a vacation especially not one of this duration). I enjoyed my summer vacation, but I was ready to return to work last month.

I do have a short to-do list today and will have lunch with Valerie later, but I'm still basically just reading and watching TV most of the day. Today, though, I will be reading more because I have decided that today is War & Peace day. I will finish this book by the end of the year, but I want to be 200 pages in by the end of the day. I'm stopped on page 143 before I got on the computer. Now after killing some time reading emails, news, and blogs, it's almost time to get ready for lunch. After lunch, I will complete the items on the to-do list and settle in to read some more W&P. Too bad it warmed up again this week. I would love to sit on the patio and read all afternoon, but I will have to settle for sitting by our wall of windows that faces the patio with the a/c keeping me cool. :-)

Happy Monday!

Some post-Ike rambling

2008-09-19T15:00:00.003-05:00

I am a lucky person. I have experienced no significant adverse effects from Hurrican Ike or its aftermath. I realize that it will be a long time before normality returns for many people, but I'm ready for my life to return to normal. As I was at the end of summer vacation, I'm ready to go back to work. I love free days just as much as the next person, but a week of free days this time of year is too much. Hopefully, faculty and staff in my district will be allowed to go back on Monday with students returning on Tuesday. I'm so glad that I am a librarian now instead of a teacher. If I were still a teacher, I know I would be very stressed about instructional time missed.

I have started and stopped several posts since the storm hit almost a week ago. Here are some of the things I started to post:

From Monday evening, 9/15: Some thoughts triggered by the constant local news coverage: 1) ABC 13's Art Rascon saying 50 times how he covered the tsunami. Why does he keep reminding us of that? 2) Also on ABC 13, Melanie Lawson is being downright bitchy to the FEMA guy. (I know FEMA is not perfect, but FEMA-bashing should not commence until it has, once again, failed to do well.) 3) On ABC 13's website, included with the photos of storm damage is still clips of their reporters out in the storm. I hate it when reporters try to be the news instead of just reporting it. It's bad enough that we have to watch them constantly trying to make drama out of nothing on the TV but to post photos of your reporters with photos of the very REAL results of the storm is the kind of disgusting self-promotion that makes television news almost too difficult to watch these days. 4) Why do people need gas on Monday? If hardly anyone is working and if people had gassed up before the storm, I can't imagine that many people really needing gas today. 5) Speaking of excessive FEMA bashing - I heard this on the news today: a man called FEMA to report that his house in Galveston was destroyed. He couldn't understand why FEMA hung up on him, but I might have hung up on him too since he had not see the house yet--he evacuated--and didn't own the house but rented it.
From Tuesday, 9/16: Although I have lived in a coastal community since the fall of 1992, I have really never been here during a hurricane or even a strong tropical storm. I was in Europe for TS Allison and Rita ended up coming in well to the east of here. I did evacuate in advance of Rita, something I swore that I would never do again. My post-Ike experience has not been so bad that I would change my mind except, perhaps, in the case of a Category 4 or 5. Ike was the strongest Category 2, and it was very widespread, so it might as well have been a Category 3. I could brave a Category 3, but I might have to get in the hallway or a closet instead of sleeping through much of it in my own bed, which is how I rode out most of Ike's worst. :-)

We got electricity back yesterday morning. We had gone out to look for coffee and a hot breakfast. Instead we stumbled onto a line forming at Whole Foods. The sign said they would open in 1 hour and would sell 2 bags of ice to each customer. The cool temperature and the relatively short line made standing in line much more palatable. By the time the store opened, the line had wrapped around the back of the store. To our delight, the store not only sold us ice but gave us free coffee too. Getting free coffee and our power back was like waking up to the best Christmas morning ever! Ahhh!

I have spent my free days mostly reading and being lazy. I did go volunteer for one afternoon, and I am ashamed to admit that it depressed me so much that I couldn't make myself go back for more. I don't know what I expected, and maybe I'm just too selfish/self-involved to help people.

I finished two books this week, Babylon Rolling, which I might post about later, and Twilight, which I will definitely post a review of on my school library site. For me, neither book was a great read, but I have decided that bad books serve a good purpose for me. They make me want to read something really good and make me appreciate good writing even more.

I guess that's enough rambling for now. I'm going to read while I wait for working people to get off work and meet for Mexican food and margaritas. Hooray for normal Friday evening fun!

Some Sunday Stuff

2008-09-07T15:45:00.000-05:00

Don't you just love alliteration! :-)

Wonderful Weekend Weather (More alliteration!)
The weather has been particularly nice this weekend in Houston. Last night, Valerie and I walked with a couple of friends to the park to watch a free modern ballet performance of Sleeping Beauty. I can't remember who said it, but someone said the pleasant temperatures and low humidity did not signify the beginning of fall but the beginning of the end of summer. A perfect description for this time of year in southeast Texas--unfortunately, it could take summer two or three months to end.

The ballet in the park was nice except for the young children who were behind us playing loudly and the drunk women behind us who couldn't control their children or their little dog or their own laughter. I'm not sure why they were there. They certainly were not watching the ballet. All things one must contend with if one wants to take advantage of a free performance on such a nice night. Our friend made a really nice, simple picnic: yummy egg sandwiches, grapes and cantaloupe, cheese, and homemade brownies.

One more thing about the ballet, as I said, it was Sleeping Beauty. Before we arrived at the park, I was trying to recall the story, and I realized that I sometimes confuse it with Snow White. Knowing that Snow White is the beauty who befriends the dwarfs helps me to keep them straight, but I really don't know the story of Sleeping Beauty very well. During the performance, I told Valerie of my lack of knowledge and she said she had the same problem. Later, our friend's husband leaned over and jokingly asked when the dwarfs were coming on. I told him that I didn't know this story that well either. During intermission, it became apparent from our conversations as well as others that I eavesdropped on. Using my phone, I looked up the story on Wikipedia and all of our inferences from the action on stage were accurate to the original story despite it being a modern retelling. Once the second act got underway, Valerie's earlier prediction that an overdose would put her in a coma proved to be right on. We are a very smart group of people indeed. ;-)

I can't emphasize enough how nice the weather has been here this weekend. This morning, Valerie and I sat on our patio and read the paper and books while we drank a pot of coffee. Then we went out for brunch and actually sat outside, two things we haven't done for several months. We really love our patio!

Speaking of Reading
War & Peace is really growing on me. I have finished only Part 1 of Volume 1. I want to read it all the time, but it is just too big to read when I go to bed or to take places with me. It is difficult to remember who all the characters are and what their relationships are, but I have decided that it is only necessary to understand the present of what's happening for now. I trust that eventually I will know enough the characters and their relationships so that I don't have this problem anymore.

I have read almost 200 pages of Twilight, which is essentially a work-read for me. I don't usually read the most popular books because I am an admitted literature snob and tend to find bestsellers to be lacking in depth and good writing. But I decided that as a junior high librarian I should read at least the first book of this series. Before I started reading it, I had read some really negative criticism, especially from the feminist perspective. I decided to read the book anyway and so far, I don't see the things that most of those feminist critics pointed out, but I do see how the main character could become what those critics decried. Still, I am enjoying the book and can definitely see how some readers, especially young girls and women, would be drawn to this book.

Then there's the book club book: Babylon Rolling. All I can say about this book is that it is okay. One thing that I am very confused by is the author's choice of using a first person narrator to tell one character's story while all the other characters' stories are told with a third-person narrator. The choice doesn't make sense to me yet, and I'm beginning to feel like it won't. I feel like the white, female author was attempting to show off her ability or her willingness to write in the voice of an African American drug-dealing teenager. I don't find the voice to be effective or necessary to the story. When I'm finished, I might do some review reading and see what critics think about it. Maybe I'm missing something, but I mostly find the change to be distracting, and I'm not usually bothered by narrator changes. Some of my favorite books utilize this very postmodern convention.

Well, the Astros and the Cowboys are on--both winning at the moment, and I need to do some work, so I guess that's enough stuff for this Sunday. Later.

Hillary and I Move On

2008-08-27T08:17:00.003-05:00

I didn't watch Hillary's speech last night, the second speech this week that I wish I had watched. My brain and body were too tired last night--brain from a busy second day of school and body from walking 4.9 miles. Also, I think that I got kind of burned out on politics during the primaries and haven't completely re-engaged, but I am getting there.

Sitting here this morning watching the CBS morning show, I have seen a former FBI agent criticize Hillary's body language, which according to him didn't show enough emotion about Obama, and some Hillary supporters who were there last night and had reactions from still on the fence to gung-ho Obama supporter now. None of the coverage really spoke to what I think about the whole situation, and I don't have time to write what I think this morning. Luckily, I looked at my feeds on Google Reader and saw that Dorothy Surrenders had a new post. I think that the second paragraph of her post speaks to my feelings about Hillary and why I have to support Obama now.

Now, I am officially moving on and will be contributing some funds to the Obama-Biden campaign when I get paid this week. (Valerie, don't let me forget.)

Obama - Biden '08!!!!!!

BBC 100

2008-08-25T20:53:00.003-05:00

I don't usually do memes, but I really like best books lists. It makes me feel good to see how many I have read. If I haven't read many, the list will give me titles of books that I want to read. I got this from Danielle at A Work in Progress.

The instructions:

Look at the list and bold those you have read.
Italicize those you intend to read.
Underline the books you love.
Strike out the books you have no intention of ever reading, or were forced to read at school and hated.
Reprint this list in your own blog.

1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4. The Harry Potter Series - JK Rowling (I have read the first book in the series.)
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6. The Bible
7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12. Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare (I have read many of the plays and not just the popular ones, but I have not read them all. I will read Comedy of Errors soon.)
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19. The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger (Valerie is very impatient for me to read this; she has been waiting for me to read it for a long time now.)
20. Middlemarch - George Eliot
21. ~~Gone With The Wind~~ - Margaret Mitchell
22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy (I started this during the summer, but I haven't made much progress yet.)
25. The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30. ~~The Wind in the Willows~~ - Kenneth Grahame
31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33. ~~Chronicles of Narnia~~ - CS Lewis
34. Emma- Jane Austen
35. Persuasion - Jane Austen
36. ~~The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe~~ - CS Lewis
37. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40. Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41. Animal Farm - George Orwell
42. ~~The Da Vinci Code~~ - Dan Brown (Really?!? Who put this book on the list?)
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48. The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49. Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50. Atonement - Ian McEwan
51. Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52. ~~Dune~~ - Frank Herbert
53. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck (I might have read this in school, but I'm not sure. I do know the story very well, but my knowledge could be from lit crit and curriculum materials that I have read over the years.)
62. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63. The Secret History - Donna Tartt (Another book that Valerie recommends to me.)
64. ~~The Lovely Bones~~ - Alice Sebold
65. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66. On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68. Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69. Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72. Dracula - Bram Stoker
73. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75. Ulysses - James Joyce (I really do intend to read this, but I will probably take Edward Albee's advice and read along with an audiobook.)
76. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78. Germinal - Emile Zola
79. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80. Possession - AS Byatt
81. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83. The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87. Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88. ~~The Five People You Meet In Heaven~~ - Mitch Albom (I just can't help but think of this book as touchy-feely dribble, and I just can't believe it belongs on a list like this.)
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94. Watership Down - Richard Adams
95. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98. Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100. Les Miserables– Victor Hugo

Reading Interrupted

2008-08-19T20:56:00.005-05:00

I started back to work last week, and I have been watching too much Olympics at night to get much reading done. Twilight, my bedside table read right now, is good but not good enough to keep me awake into the wee hours, and I have wanted to keep reading more than once.

Even though I didn't make much progress in War & Peace, I felt pretty good about reading 13 books this summer. Then I read that Danielle at A Work in Progress has almost completed 1000 pages of Les Miserables, and I realized that I have a lot of reading to do if I am going to complete the Russian Reading Challenge by the end of the year. The problem with War & Peace is that it is too big to read when I'm lying in bed and too big to tote places with me. I wish that I was awake enough when I first come down stairs in the morning, then maybe I could make it a habit to read for a certain amount of time each morning. Reading would be more productive than lying on the couch watching the Weather Channel and dozing while my first cup of coffee cools and I get ready to get ready for work. And yes, I do realize that I could just come down stairs, get my coffee, go back up stairs immediately, and get ready earlier, thus giving myself some time to read before I leave for work. Yeah, I don't see myself making that a habit because I'm not enough of a morning person (read: I'm too lazy). I think my best bet will be to try to make it a habit to read some each afternoon when I get home from work. Of course, I'll to wait on that plan until Valerie's work schedule switches back to the one where she gets off work at 5:00. If she's home when I get here, I won't be able to concentrate on reading. ;-)

Now I'm going to get off the computer. I promised myself that I would not play any games tonight while I watched the Olympics. Maybe I can read some during the commericials, right?

Back to work

2008-08-11T11:15:00.000-05:00

I start back to work today, and I am surprisingly ready to go. I would already be there except I have to go to pinkie therapy first. Even though I am not going in to work until late, I got up early this morning and did a bit of Internet surfing and discovered that what I already thought was going to be a great season of Inprint readings is going to be even better. I am so excited!!! I can't wait for the readings to begin. I am going to try very hard to post about each reading here. Actually, I have enough free time now that I could/should be posting regularly here, but for some reason, I haven't been. I'm going to try to post here more regularly.

Over the weekend, I finished The Wednesday Wars by Gary Schmidt, number thirteen for my summer reading, and started Twilight, finally. I have been putting off reading Twilight for over a year now. I just am not the kind of person who wants to read what everyone else is reading. Yes, I'm snobby like that. I'm the same way with movies. I figure that if a broad spectrum of people like something that it's probably too mainstream for me. I have been this way since I was a teenager--a very long time ago. I distinctly remember when Kramer vs. Kramer hit the theaters. All my friends told me that I had to see; it was the best movie ever. I saw it and didn't like it at all. When I went to college and grad school as an English major, I developed into a literature snob--sad but true. Of course, I am sometimes surprised by mainstream hits, both books and movies, and I hope to be surprised by Twilight. I've only read about 50 pages so far.

Wow, look at the time. I have to go to pinkie therapy now. Later.

Something quick and fun

2008-08-09T11:21:00.001-05:00




Hat tip to Valerie.

The end of my summer

2008-08-05T21:00:00.001-05:00

This is my last week of summer vacation. Next week, I go back for my second year as a junior high librarian. I had planned to read a bunch of YA books this summer, but I only read a couple so far. I might read one or two more before students return to school two weeks from Monday. I have read several books this summer. I need to blog about them and post reviews of the two that are Early Reviewer books at LibraryThing. For now, though, I will just list what I've read this summer.

Hero by Perry Moore
Eleven Minutes by Paul Coehlo
Among Other Things, I've Taken Up Smoking by Aiobhean Sweeney
Christine Falls by Benjamin Black
Skim by Mariko Tamiki and Jillian Tamiki
Love Marriage by V.V. Ganeshananthan
The Secret Life of Sparrow Delaney by Suzanne Harper
Drown by Junot Diaz
Rubyfruit Jungle by Rita Mae Brown
The Murder Room by P.D. James

Wow! Ten books in just over two months. Pretty good for a slow reader like me. I will finish at least one more this week, Have You Found Her by Janice Erlbaum. Plus, I have read about 100 pages of War & Peace. I need to set aside 30 minutes to an hour each day to read some of it because I want to finish it before the end of the year.

Now, I need to go beat Valerie at Rummikub. :-)

Summer is going too fast!

2008-07-14T00:34:00.000-05:00

I can't believe July is almost half over already! I haven't done many of the things that I intended to do this summer. I have read several books but not as many as I had hoped. The office is still not done. I haven't done any writing except for a couple of journal entries and a few short blog posts. I haven't walked for exercise since returning from vacation. I haven't been in the swimming pool once this summer.

So what have I been doing to waste my summer? I have spent way too much time playing computer games while I half-watch television. So I have decided to re-instate my game-playing fast that served me very well during Lent. I will not play games for the rest of this month. Instead, I will spend my time reading and writing and even working a little, and I will walk every day and work on the office. Hell, I might even do the housework that I had intended to do once a week. (But that's not a promise, Valerie.)

Tomorrow I will try to post about some of the reading that I have done this summer. Until then, I'll say good night.

Happy 4th!

2008-07-04T12:03:00.003-05:00

Since I have the whole summer off, today really seems like just another day of summer to me. However, tonight I will watch the biggest fireworks show in the country (or at least that's how it's billed) from a friend's rooftop patio. Until then, I will probably just be lazy and read some. As a matter of fact, I think I will go some place and read while I have lunch, some place cool. Too bad, it's so damn hot and humid here. I would love to just stay here and move to the patio for a while this afternoon. I could just sit inside and be cool and lazy and save money, but the past couple of days, I have felt the need to get out of the house. Not sure why.

Unfortunately, deciding where to go is a problem. My favorite sit and read place has been closed down for a while now. :-( I need to find a new go-to spot for days like today. But first, I have to get off the computer and get dressed. If I don't do it now, I will still be sitting here when Valerie returns and then I won't go anywhere. So, enjoy your 4th. Later.

I'm bored :-(

2008-07-03T10:48:00.002-05:00

and i'm lazy. Yesterday, I told myself that I would do some housekeeping today, but today, I just don't feel like it--LAZY! I feel like I need to get out of the house and see what's happening in Houston. So, I think I will go to a couple of independent bookstores, Brazos Bookstore and Domy, unless I find what I want, Junot Diaz's Drown at Borders where I have a coupon for 25% off. Actually, I will probably go to at least one of the other bookstores whether I find the book at Borders or not. Sorry, I'm too poor to be a good supporter of independents.

Then maybe I will go to a museum. I have been feeling very art needy since I returned from vacation. Valerie and I went to the Georgia O'Keefe museum and the art museum as well as a couple of galleries in Santa Fe. In Albuquerque, we went to a gallery exhibit for Trappings, which asks women to identify clothing that makes them feel powerful. All interesting and enjoyable. But I still feel like I need more art and I feel like I need to be artistic, but I haven't been feeling very artistic of late. Maybe a museum visit will inspire me, but I won't hold my breath.

Later.

Ouch! and two books

2008-07-02T10:58:00.003-05:00

Yesterday, I stayed on the computer so long that it got too hot and actually burned my leg. I knew that I was staying on the computer too long, but I just kept getting sucked in by things on the Internet. Today, I got my chill pad out, but I don't plan to stay on the computer all day--notice that I said plan. ;-)

After I realized that my leg was really burned, I got off the computer with the intention to be productive around the house. Instead, I finished reading Garden of Eden and started reading Skim, a graphic novel, which I finished last night before I went to bed. Before I went to sleep, after doing three NYT crosswords, one with Valerie's help, I read the intro to Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse, thinking that I might read it today, but I have yet to do any reading.

Garden of Eden
I bought this book a while back because I saw something on AfterEllen.com about a movie version being in the works, and it is a Hemingway novel that I have never read. Actually, I had only read a one of his novels and some of his short stories. I taught Old Man and the Sea for several years, and I read his short stories as a student and as a teacher.

In the beginning, I liked the two main characters Catherine and David Bourne, even though I felt the dialogue was mostly inane and completely unbelievable. As the story progressed, though, I just got tired of them and wished that Hemingway would have written explicitly about all the sex they were having with each other and eventually with another woman, with whom both of them had fallen in love. Of course, it's Hemingway, so the latter part of the book focuses on the heterosexual and merely alludes to the homosexual. Plus, of course, Catherine is tormented by her desire for another woman and by her adultery with the other woman while David feels only love toward the other woman--no adulterous guilt at all. Not surprising for Heminway, I don't think. At least Catherine didn't off herself after committing adultery or a perhaps even more despicable farewell act.

I am going to do some research and see what others thought/think about this novel and maybe I will write more about it later.

Skim
I am learning to like graphic novels. They make me feel like I can read faster. :-) This one is about typical teenage angst. While the dialogue leaves much to be desired and the plot is not very original, the graphics are wonderful.

Now, I'm going to get off the computer, have some lunch, and do something besides sit on the couch and surf the Internet. Maybe I'll work on organizing my stuff in the office or maybe I will go some place. Later.

Dad Memories

2008-06-16T00:06:00.000-05:00

Today was Father's Day, and I miss my dad. He's been dead for over two years now--damn! time really does fly.

Tonight, I was catching up on some of my online reading and came across this episode of You Must Read This. It is about father-daughter bonding that begins with a shared movie experience. It reminded me of all the times that I spent watching movies with my dad and how those movies often led me to books. (My dad and I never really shared books: he wasn't a reader.) I figured out at a very young age that one way to get my dad all to myself, away from my mom and my four siblings, was to stay up late and watch movies with him. I love that I grew up in a large family, but sometimes, it was hard to have one-on-one time with my parents. Movie watching gave me that time with my dad.

In addition to movies, I also like to watch professional golf, especially the major tournaments, because my dad LOVED golf! When he wasn't playing golf on the weekends, he was watching golf. The US Open was supposed to be decided today. As I watched Tiger Woods make a birdie putt on the 18th hole this evening, I thought about how excited my dad would have been to see the US Open end in an 18-hole playoff, especially with the way Tiger played the whole tournament--he was a Tiger fan. Dad would have arranged his work on Monday to accommodate watching the playoff. He would have gone to work early and come for lunch and stayed until it was over or it was obvious who would win, then he would have either gone back to work for a while or gone and played golf himself. No doubt.

Fond memories of my dad make missing him a little easier to take. Happy Father's Day!

It's so quiet this morning!

2008-06-15T08:11:00.003-05:00

I love to get up early on a Sunday morning and bask in the quiet. Usually, on morning's like this, I read, but I finished Christine Falls rather late last night, and I am not in the mood this morning for either of the other books I am reading or ready to start the next book club selection. I should be doing something in preparation for a vacation road trip, but I'm not ready to do that yet either. Instead I am enjoying a cup of fair trade coffee, scoring 54 points! in Scrabulous on Facebook, and surfing the Internet.

Speaking of vacation, Valerie & I are leaving Tuesday on a road trip to Santa Fe and Albuquerque, NM, and Mesa Verde, CO. I have never traveled west of Texas, so I am excited about this trip. I told Valerie yesterday that it was kind of weird to be going some places where I really have no preconceived ideas about what to do/see. I think the only other place that I have been like that is Big Bend, which is my favorite nature place to go now. I know that Santa Fe is popular with artists and art lovers but nothing else really. Valerie went to grad school in Albuquerque, so she knows much about it. I can't remember now how we found out about Mesa Verde, but the idea of seeing cliff dwellings appeals to me.

Now I have to figure what books to take. I will not take War & Peace. It is just too big. I thought that I would be finished with Hero, and still might be, but I probably won't take it if I'm not because it is signed by the author. I should take the current book club selection, Eleven Minutes, which I am not looking forward to reading. Hmmm, how many should I take? I know that I won't read all that I take, but I like to be prepared for reading emergencies. ;-) I think that I will take three books, preferably paperbacks because they are lighter and easier to fit into a purse/backpack. I think I'll get a second cup of coffee now and browse our bookshelves now.

Enjoy your Sunday! Later.

My summer of leisure

2008-06-11T22:46:00.003-05:00

In May, I finished my master's degree. I am free this summer--no work and no school. What am I going to do with all my free time?

Read as many books as possible. Right now, I'm reading three--see the sidebar.
Blog more than once per month.
Write something other than a boring blog post, maybe some poems or an essay.
Walk for at least one hour at least five days per week. So far, I have walked three days, but today was the first one that I walked for an hour.
Clean house one day a week. I did laundry today. Does that count as cleaning house?
Swim.
Get my stuff in the office weeded, recycled, and organized.
Add books to my LibraryThing library.
Try out the watercolors that I bought about two years ago.
Find a new quote for my blog.

I'm sure there are other things that I could do. Any suggestions?

Where did poetry month go?

2008-05-12T07:58:00.002-05:00

Geez, I'm a very bad poetry pusher. I can't believe that I just stopped posting poems on April 11, and that was a month ago now.

In the mean time, I graduated from the University of North Texas with a masters in library and information sciences. Woohoo! I am so glad to be finished and proud that I didn't give up and quit before I finished this degree like I did the masters in literature that I pursued in the 90s.

Since I will have more free time, I should be able to post more often--notice that I said should. :-) If I want to post more, I need to figure out what to write about. I tend to jot down blog ideas in my Moleskine, but I also tend to forget about the jottings until the moment has passed to write about the topic. Maybe my new phone, a Palm Centro, will help me post more.

I used to have a Palm Pilot that I loved and used all the time. Then it died, perhaps from overuse, and I never replaced it. I kept hesitating because I thought I might get a Palm phone or a Blackberry, but I never did. I just kept replacing my cell phone with a newer cell phone, nothing cutting edge or cool. Now, I have a Palm again. (Thanks, Valerie!)

If you are one of the two readers who hasn't given up on this blog yet, I will try to post something interesting on a regular basis, or at least, post links to someone else's interesting posts/articles.

Until then, have a good Monday.

Friday's poem

2008-04-11T07:25:00.001-05:00

I have had Break, Blow, Burn for a while (a gift from Valerie, I think). In this book, Camille Paglia analyzes 43 "of the world's best poems" (book jacket). When I first received the book, I started reading it straight through, but I stopped at some point and put the book aside for other books and never went back. I chose today's poem because it is the next one, where I left off reading. It just happens to be by Emily Dickinson, one of my favorite poets. I hope you enjoy the poem and your Friday.

Safe in their alabaster chambers--
Untouched by Morning--
And untouched by Noon--
Lie the meek members of the Resurrection--
Rafter of Satin--and Roof of Stone!

Grand go the Years--in the Crescent--above them--
Worlds scoop their Arcs--
And Firmaments--row--
Diadems--drop--and Doges--surrender--
Soundless as dots--on a Disc of Snow--