tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-88614862024-03-13T06:03:35.712-04:00pages turnedSFPhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17439972994357205049noreply@blogger.comBlogger1822125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8861486.post-21793985859842131732023-07-08T12:48:00.000-04:002023-07-08T12:48:19.395-04:00A bang, not a whimper<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgaYphmRhW4fQwH6XaPUfaqZNh_OSCbUjQnsX9Z2gQVa4iIaTdsBQ28erSBeMd0Y3Aaq7C17fucM_KrcTO68cyveKdM-d-7-PZMKSb3DK_fDLyF4Owt5ulBQD90f2A6kE1zoF9rCF9SWTOb4zWdH-DgiBCds8P26qcXBhbKIhIco0jrbTZNFAZq/s4000/IMG_20230708_093644.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3000" data-original-width="4000" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgaYphmRhW4fQwH6XaPUfaqZNh_OSCbUjQnsX9Z2gQVa4iIaTdsBQ28erSBeMd0Y3Aaq7C17fucM_KrcTO68cyveKdM-d-7-PZMKSb3DK_fDLyF4Owt5ulBQD90f2A6kE1zoF9rCF9SWTOb4zWdH-DgiBCds8P26qcXBhbKIhIco0jrbTZNFAZq/w400-h300/IMG_20230708_093644.jpg" width="400" /></a></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwSgz741lUEuxkOltlsVVe4ZxnyEDeFn2ruXX7u2ZDG8YkAQNYCyv8HHI7AorQIc7QIGEpYz8ulFBvU9LJz-PY9HP_7F5HiaJefbdzzvuWTZa8Ez_Lhd5w7RC-zK0-521M3buZVm3i1Juat4nhbEEQUW0tnyJY4-gjwe0F9oeRkh4jjFcRudR-/s4000/IMG_20230403_100837~2.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2075" data-original-width="4000" height="208" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwSgz741lUEuxkOltlsVVe4ZxnyEDeFn2ruXX7u2ZDG8YkAQNYCyv8HHI7AorQIc7QIGEpYz8ulFBvU9LJz-PY9HP_7F5HiaJefbdzzvuWTZa8Ez_Lhd5w7RC-zK0-521M3buZVm3i1Juat4nhbEEQUW0tnyJY4-gjwe0F9oeRkh4jjFcRudR-/w400-h208/IMG_20230403_100837~2.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p></p><p>
Two months into L.'s retirement, and I'm finished with the stockpiling of books. No more book purchases! Or at least, no purchases until I am ready to start the book instead of having it on hand for the future. </p><p>The books that I succumbed to before transitioning totally into this new stage:</p><p>The Novel: A Biography by Michael Schmidt. A 700-year history of the novel, this tome concerns itself with "the creative dialogues between authors and between books, and suggests how these dialogues have shaped the development of the novel in English." </p><p>The Way the Day Breaks by David Roberts. Mental illness in 1980s Yorkshire.</p><p>One Afternoon by Sian James. This first novel won the Yorkshire Post Book Award in 1975 and has been reissued by Persephone Books. <br /></p><p>Space Crone by Ursula K. Le Guin. Somehow I've allowed Le Guin to be a gap in my reading. Must remedy that.</p><p>The Love of Singular Men by Victor Heringer. The latest title from my Peirene Press subscription by a Brazilian author who died in 2018 at the age of 30.</p><p>I am Homeless if This is Not My Home by Lorrie Moore. Moore's a favorite, an automatic buy. Between the subject matter and some of the reviews, I'm almost afraid to read it.<br /></p><p>To Battersea Park by Philip Hensher. A novel set in London during the pandemic.</p><p>Cousins by Aurora Venturini. An Argentine novel published when the author was 85 and had already published more than 30 books; it's her first translated into English.</p><p>Still Life at Eighty : The Next Interesting Thing by Abigail Thomas. These days I'm interested in books with elderly narrators/protagonists, so when Stephen King himself raved about this memoir on Twitter, I was quick to both order and read it.<br /></p><p>The Lie of the Land and The Three Graces by Amanda Craig. I'm currently reading The Three Graces, the story of three women in their 80s living in Tuscany, and The Lie of the Land, an earlier Craig, features some of the same characters.</p><p>Windmill Hill by Lucy Atkins. Elderly main characters who live in a windmill. I've already read it and it was delightful.</p><p>Who's Your Founding Father? by David Fleming. An exploration of how Thomas Jefferson plagiarized the Declaration of Independence from the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence. Local history!<br /></p><p>The Blazing World : A New History of Revolutionary England 1603-1689 by Jonathan Healey. Heavy sigh. I have so many history books stockpiled I should really try to schedule a year when I read nothing but.</p><p>The World : A Family History of Humanity by Simon Sebag Montefiore. I read the sections on Oliver Cromwell in conjunction with Robert Harris's Act of Oblivion last month. </p><p>Oblivion : An After Autobiography by Robin Hemley. Hemley's memoir about his sister, Nola, is one of my favorites. The only reason this joined the stockpile instead of being read immediately is I don't want to subject it to my usual a-bit-here-a-bit-there reading approach. I want time to read it without interruption and it's hard to manage that.</p><p>The Lola Quartet and The Singer's Gun by Emily St. John Mandel. I started reading Mandel with Station Eleven and need to loop back to her earlier novels.</p><p>Mischief Acts by Zoe Gilbert. English folklore.</p><p>Reynard the Fox by Anne Louise Avery. French folklore. </p><p>The Year of the Cat by Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett. Yet another pandemic novel set in London.</p><p>Under the Henfluence : Inside the World of Backyard Chickens and the People Who Love Them by Tove Danovich. There's a country store within walking distance of the house we're renovating that sells baby chicks; I can't wait until we can put together our flock.</p><p>Beaver Land : How One Weird Rodent Made America by Leila Philip. There are beavers in the creek on L.'s mom's farm and I think they're awesome.<br /></p><p>At the Table by Claire Powell. I think this is supposed to be in the vein of Meg Mason's Sorrow and Bliss.</p><p>In Ascension by Martin Macinnes. I love literary science fiction and I am very much looking forward to this.</p><p>Big Swiss by Jen Beagin. I read this one right after purchasing. I enjoyed it, but should probably have waited to get it from the library.</p><p>The Woman Who Climbed Trees by Smriti Ravindra. An impulse buy from an actual trip to an actual bookstore instead of my usual online method. The author went to NC State.</p><p>Forbidden Notebook by Alba De Cespedes. I help select popular reading titles at the university library and I put this one down to order in January. It is still yet to be purchased and that's why I obtained by own. I hope to have it read before Her Side of the Story comes out in October.</p><p>Humanly Possible : Seven Hundred Years of Humanist Freethinking, Inquiry, and Hope by Sarah Bakewell. This will join How to Live and At the Existentialist Cafe on the shelf and perhaps they can work it out among themselves which one I should read first.</p><p>The Stone World by Joel Agee. The first novel by James Agee's son. For when I'm tired of reading about old folk.<br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> <br /></p>SFPhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17439972994357205049noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8861486.post-1303572459278062023-03-19T11:39:00.004-04:002023-03-19T11:42:59.877-04:00The penultimate stack post<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgWulOd4VIGwC149eBdF_OIF4sCQUsN045DwRBp5mTmwBWsO5rAt4Lt8JkLgu2woyFyIxpYzAjpBog_mz-u9TW5_xLh6Qnfk5DGna9zSw2KML5re9eLdk0uaMOGKx4wdNHI7udDx249VU8wGPzsMpEWddRwmNBrOgDf8EWUb-N0rCTKHotCA/s4000/pentultimate%20stack.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3000" data-original-width="4000" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgWulOd4VIGwC149eBdF_OIF4sCQUsN045DwRBp5mTmwBWsO5rAt4Lt8JkLgu2woyFyIxpYzAjpBog_mz-u9TW5_xLh6Qnfk5DGna9zSw2KML5re9eLdk0uaMOGKx4wdNHI7udDx249VU8wGPzsMpEWddRwmNBrOgDf8EWUb-N0rCTKHotCA/s320/pentultimate%20stack.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>Let's be dramatic about it: we are entering the dark wood of a transitional stage of our lives. L. is retiring in six weeks! (Unfortunately, I am still close to four years out from my own.) He's been on the verge of retiring for at least a couple years now, but the ability to work from home and the bear market kept him going. His employers now insist on half time in the office and between that absurdity (everyone sits at their office desk to zoom into meetings with people) and his age (68 this summer), he's said enough, and we will just have to hope for the best when it comes to the sequence of returns risk. Perhaps deferring social security until 70 will help offset any financial chaos enough for us not to run out of funds in our later years. I will admit to being quite paranoid about money and the state of the world, now and in the future, and did a bit of lobbying for him to postpone the loss of his reliable paycheck until after we knew if the Republicans would default on the debt, but he's eager to work on home projects, not computer code, and I can't blame him even if I am awfully worried about our 401(k)s.<br /><p></p><p>Anyway, the plan is to completely renovate my parents' 1958 ranch house between now and when I retire. I was adamant that I would never even consider moving back to my home town until we became caregivers for my sister after she was diagnosed with ALS and I had to face some hard facts. We live in a two-story house, on a hill, and even if we put in a stair lift, and added a downstairs bedroom suite onto the back of the house, continuing to live here would be complicated. And there's the change to the traffic flow on the highway our neighborhood feeds out of which stresses me to no end! There are days I drive miles out of my way to avoid it altogether. Let's move where we can hear donkeys and cattle and see the mountains when we look out the windows. Let's raise chickens and have a garden. Let's finally have a basement.<br /></p><p>Another thing I've been adamant about: I'd quit stockpiling books when L. retired. Most of my reading consists of library books and Netgalley fare anyway; yet the fact that I've been freewheeling through the 21st century buying books whenever I found something the library didn't have, or couldn't get to me soon enough (usually to sit unread on my shelves long past when it did become readily available), makes this change one that's apt to prove difficult. The books above were supposed to be the last purchases of the year except for a couple automatic buy items being published later in the year and yet I already have another even taller stack with three books still en route. </p><p>I am returning to blogging to bring some accountability to my reading life. Read what's at hand. Plan some projects to counter the urge to buy something new.</p><p>Now for the books above:</p><p>The Lioness by Mark Powell. Eco-terrorism in the Appalachians. I want to pair this with Eleanor Catton's Birnam Woods.<br /></p><p>The Guest Lecture by Martin Riker. I intend to read this along with Sigrun Palsdottir's History. A Mess. and Lucy Ives's Life is Everywhere for an academic life project.<br /></p><p>The Bethrothed by Alessandro Manzoni. Reading this now with A Public Space. Somehow I'd never heard of this classic before. It's good!<br /></p><p>A Good Horse Has No Color and Song of the Vikings by Nancy Marie Brown. Because I love Iceland and Icelandic horses and horses in general. I probably won't read these until after I retire.<br /></p><p>The Deluge by Stephen Markley. I am considering devoting my summer to reading nothing but science fiction and dystopian fare. This would be one of the first I'd tackle.<br /></p><p>Collected Works by Lydia Sandgren. A Swedish addition to my Scandinavian shelf. I'm reading A System So Magnificent It is Blinding now, so maybe this one should be next?<br /></p><p><br /></p>SFPhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17439972994357205049noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8861486.post-75067692803797251182023-01-01T10:20:00.006-05:002023-07-10T11:12:47.658-04:00Reading by Year, 2023<p dir="ltr" id="docs-internal-guid-31db9c81-7fff-c904-3ad2-46cf60d6a9c6" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Keeping a Reading Record</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Books Read in 2023</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">(in backwards order)</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">To The Lighthouse. Virginia Woolf</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">The Three Graces. Amanda Craig</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">The Forbidden Territory of Terrifying Women. Molly Lynch</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Commitment. Mona Simpson</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">A Very Easy Death. Simone de Beauvoir</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">A Novel Called Heritage. Margaret Mitchell Dukore</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Act of Oblivion. Robert Harris </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">The Parrot and the Igloo. David Lipsky</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Still Life at Eighty : the Next Interesting Thing. Abigail Thomas </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">My Stupid Intentions. Bernardo Zannoni </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Windmill Hill. Lucy Atkins</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Uncommon Kitchens. Sophie Donelson </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">The Years. Virginia Woolf</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">The Future. Naomi Alderman</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Big Swiss. Jen Beagin</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Beyond the Burn Line. Paul McCauley</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">The Dog of the North. Elizabeth McKenzie</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Delta Wedding. Eudora Welty</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">The Last Animal. Ramona Ausubel</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Birnam Wood. Eleanor Catton</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Let Us Descend. Jesmyn Ward</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Games and Rituals. Katherine Heiny</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Welcome Home, Stranger. Kate Christensen</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">The Terraformers. Annalee Newitz</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">The Vulnerables. Sigrid Nunez</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Biography of X. Catherine Lacey</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">The Betrothed. Alessandro Manzoni</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">All of Us Together in the End. Matthew Vollmer</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Strong Female Character. Fern Brady</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War. Jeff Sharlet</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Decent People. De’Shawn Charles Winslow</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">A System So Magnificent It Is Blinding. Amanda Svensson</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Call It Horses. Jessie van Eerden</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida. Shehan Karunatilaka</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Barbara Isn’t Dying. Alina Bronsky</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Diary of a Void. Emi Yagi</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Reproduction. Louisa Hall</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">What You are Getting Wrong About Appalachia. Elizabeth Catte</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Take What You Need. Idra Novey</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">The Latecomer. Jean Hanff Korelitz</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Generations. Lucille Clfton</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Mouth to Mouth. Antoine Wilson</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow. Gabrielle Zevin</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Psalms for the End of the World. Cole Haddon</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Summer Light, and Then Comes the Night. Jon Kalman Stefansson</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Babel, or the Necessity of Violence. R.F. Kuang</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Looking for the Hidden Folk: How Iceland’s Elves Can Save the Earth. Nancy Marie Brown</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Singer Distance. Ethan Chatagnier</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">My Volcano. John Elizabeth Stintzi</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Delphi. Clare Pollard</span></p><br /><br />SFPhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17439972994357205049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8861486.post-48082359020388684542020-04-05T18:02:00.002-04:002020-04-06T10:03:02.433-04:00Coronavirus Chronicles, Entry 1I've spent a bit of time today trying to piece together when we began
to take Covid-19 seriously. L. ordered elderberries to make into syrup
to boost our immune systems as early as late January. Tornadoes touched
down near us in early February and as warnings continued to pop up on
all campus screens and sirens screamed the library dean ordered staff
back onto the public desk contra university policy to seek shelter in
the basement away from windows. Essential personnel equals expendable
personnel, I began to think then, and have had no reason since to modify
my opinion.<br />
<br />
Not that it was anything I particularly
brooded over that month (the dean is now aware of and in line with
university policy where tornadoes are concerned); I was busy. I went on
an otherwise lovely writers retreat mid-month with WMK where I was
attacked by an escaped ram while on a walk down a country road and came
home bruised, achy and swollen; friends' parents were ill and required
much discussion; Millay's vet saw fit to prescribe her an Albuterol
inhaler and I had that to fret over. It was late February, the week of
an extended family gathering and an Old Crow show with a friend (we took
light rail uptown, something I cannot imagine doing again in 2020),
that L. finally pushed me into paying attention to the spread of the
virus.<br />
<br />
I resisted at first; we'd stockpiled canned food
against a coming apocalypse once before and I had no desire to repeat
that particular bout of nonsense. Then L. said he had no problem with us
starving but he didn't want to live in a house full of starving cats.
That was a point I could concede. By Feb. 23 I was placing large orders
for food and litter on Amazon instead of purchasing it all locally. I
spent $300 at CVS on March 1, although most of that was spent on
Millay's inhaler meds. That same day I did the same at Food Lion.<br />
<br />
Already too late to buy hand sanitizer, though.<br />
<br />
And
I was reading more about it. I made my first Facebook post about
coronavirus--a link to the Atlantic's "You're Likely to Get the
Coronavirus"-- on February 24 and a high school classmate (the one with
the inactive medical degree) commented by saying Corona beer was an
"affective" vaccine.<br />
<br />
I'd concluded that North Carolina
would have its first case by the end of the first week in March. I
glanced at my phone while working at the polling station Tuesday, March
3, and saw that a case had been identified in Raleigh. That was the
point when it felt real, not a mere hypothetical to run through in my
mind.<br />
<br />
L. worked from home that Friday and had a week of
vacation carried over from 2019 scheduled for the following week. His
boss told him by the time he'd be ready to come back to work, he
wouldn't be coming. (He's still home, working out of our upstairs
study.)<br />
<br />
Still halfway in denial, I sent a link touting
low airfare to London to WMK Friday evening. We closed on a home equity
loan before work on Monday, March 9, and by then I was astounded that
the closing officer offered his hand to shake. I took it, though. I
scrubbed my hands thoroughly once I reached the library.<br />
<br />
Oh,
the library. The library with its book dust and the students who make
me sneeze. I'd stockpiled tissues since I knew I couldn't stop touching
my face. We had one container of Clorox wipes out at the desk and we'd
been told to make them last since the next shipment was backordered to
July. I knew that everyone in admin probably had an unopened container
in their office, but it took another week, after admin was sent home to
work remotely, for a full box of them to make their way downstairs to
the front desk.<br />
<br />
Wednesday, March 11, the university
community was told we'd be moving to online instruction "wherever
possible," beginning March 16 and continuing until the end of the month.
Public services had been asked the previous day who'd volunteer to come
in if we moved to online classes. The old essential/expendable
situation, when everyone else got to stay home. One of my co-workers
cried frequently; she didn't have leave to take if she refused to
volunteer and wanted to stay home. Another, of the age and with the
health problems that indicated she ought to stay home, hated to use her
leave when she needed it to visit family over the summer. Our supervisor
put together a schedule where no one would have to come in more than
twice a week; we'd work from home the rest of the time.<br />
<br />
I'd
requested Monday off so that I could take my sister, who lives back in
our hometown, to a doctor's appointment. Spent the weekend questioning
whether we should go out to lunch prior to the appointment with our
cousin and a couple of friends. In the end my sister and I met my best
friend from high school at 11 am to limit any possible contact with
other people. We didn't hug.<br />
<br />
My daughter had phoned
over the weekend to say she was coming home. Then I talked to her again
and she'd said she was staying in NY. By Monday night she'd gotten
spooked and had decided she would leave her apartment, but would stay
with friends at a lake house outside the city. She's still at the lake
house. <br />
<br />
Monday night the dean sent an email saying
we would no longer process physical items for ILL. When I got to the
library Tuesday morning and saw that circ desk was still accepting
returns, I got a co-worker to help me move a return bin out in front of
the desk so that we wouldn't have to touch them.<br />
<br />
That
Tuesday would be my last day at work. The number of employees going in
constricted, as did the library's hours. Gov. Cooper issued an executive
order to close sit-down service in restaurants. The next day the public
libraries in Mecklenburg closed at 5 pm.<br />
<br />
Our small
crew was still expected to provide services for the students who
remained on campus. When Mecklenburg issued its stay at home
announcement on March 24, the provost said at first it didn't apply to
us and that the students on campus and those who lived in the surrounded
community <i>needed a place to go</i>. Our dean didn't send the letter saying
we would indeed close until 10 pm.<br />
<br />
The state stay-at-home order went into effect on March 30.<br />
<br />
Learned
in an online meeting last week that all instructors are being told to
plan to teach their classes online again in the fall. On April 2 we were
told that six dorms on campus are to be used as a pandemic field
hospital.<br />
<br />
I think we're going to be home for quite some time.<br />
<br />
<br />SFPhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17439972994357205049noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8861486.post-71550254628471519722020-01-05T09:51:00.001-05:002020-01-05T09:51:56.421-05:00***blows off the dust***Oh, dear. I'd forgotten all about my attempt to return to blogging last January. Let's hope I'm more successful this time!<br />
<br />
Reading plans for the year, I have a few. I completed my <a href="http://sfpreading.blogspot.com/2015/01/60-by-60.html" target="_blank">60 by 60 challenge</a>
last week. Yeah, I'd wanted to complete that five-year challenge by my
60th back in October, but I procrastinate and I get distracted. I'll
continue drawing from the list for suggestions over the next five years
instead of coming up with an entirely different pool of books and
authors because my real challenge will be to read all 11 volumes of Will
and Ariel Durant's <b><i>The Story of Civilization</i></b> before I
retire. I read the introductory chapters in the introduction on "the
nature and foundations of civilization" in December and am ready to
devote the next nine weeks or so to the Near East.<br />
<br />
I
would like to read more non-fiction, particularly history, and more
science fiction over the next year. I need to branch out beyond the time
travel/parallel universe and the post-apocalyptic fare that I reach for
when I do read sf.<br />
<br />
Late last January I decided to embark on another long-term reading project, one I'm calling the <i><b>Decades Reading Challenge</b></i>.
My intention was to read ten previously unread classics published
within a particular decade within a calendar year and I started with the
1850s since that would give me a century of books to draw from before
my birth at the tail-end of 1959. I was on track until I hit <b><i>Little Dorrit</i></b>
over the summer, and my dithering on whether to force myself to finish
the book or to move on to another brought me to a standstill where the
1850s were concerned. (I do not understand my difficulties with
Dickens.) I'm now sporadically reading Trollope's <b><i>The Three Clerks</i></b>,
published in 1858, but I only finished eight books from the 1850s last
year. Henceforth I will consider the Decades Challenge a success if I
finish a mere seven books and I will also allow myself a couple of
rereads.<br />
<br />
I've completed two books since January 1: Hope Jahren's <b><i>Lab Girl</i></b> (now anxiously awaiting the release of <i><b>The Story of More</b></i> in March) and Elizabeth Gaskell's <i><b>Lois the Witch</b></i>, an 1861 novella about the Salem witch trials. I am totally absorbed in Lucy Ellmann's <i><b>Ducks, Newburyport</b></i> and I'm a few pages into Dominic Brownlow's <i><b>The Naseby Horses</b></i>. I've also just started Katherine Mansfield's <i><b>Selected</b></i> <i><b>Stories</b></i>. I have a slew of books on hand that I'm champing on the bit to start, but I can save those for another post. SFPhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17439972994357205049noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8861486.post-44107937098837654002019-01-06T09:21:00.000-05:002019-01-06T09:21:24.080-05:00<span style="background-color: white; color: #121212; font-family: 'Guardian Text Egyptian Web', Georgia, serif; font-size: 17px;">As a reader I cherish the fantasy of one day stopping acquiring books, of subsisting only on what is already stashed away in the crammed larder that I call a study. Buying books and not reading them – or waiting to read them – is a form of hoarding, similar to picking up and hanging on to something because it might one day come in handy, but a book is always both more and less than handy: potentially life-changing and, at the same time, quite useless. In a quasi-Borgesian way, I would ideally draw my last breath just as I turned the final page of the only unread book left in my collection. At that moment my library – my life – would be complete.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #121212; font-family: 'Guardian Text Egyptian Web', Georgia, serif; font-size: 17px;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #121212; font-family: 'Guardian Text Egyptian Web', Georgia, serif; font-size: 17px;">--Geoff Dyer, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/dec/31/better-read-than-dead-how-geoff-dyer-got-to-know-bookshelves-better" target="_blank">"Better read than dead"</a></span>SFPhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17439972994357205049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8861486.post-52510047950693275972019-01-01T16:17:00.001-05:002019-01-01T16:17:22.800-05:00I'm back againBefore I discovered book blogs, but after I had realized the internet could be used to place holds on library books and to find other readers in like-minded communities, I enjoyed perusing the comprehensive reading lists that others were putting online. If only I had kept a list of every book I'd ever read--or had maintained consistent lists for my kids that lasted for more than a random school year here and there!<br />
<br />
I went to work creating as comprehensive a list of my own could be, sans children's books, using the lists I found as a way of jumpstarting my memory. I made the list I constructed the center of my auxiliary blog once I started this one, and updated it fairly regularly, even after I'd stopped blogging here. It was just so useful to have a list close at hand whenever I needed to make a recommendation but could remember only a partial title or that the author's name had started with an S.<br />
<br />
In late November I saw a link to <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/9zpmxq/my_grandfather_has_kept_a_detailed_list_of_every/" target="_blank">a journalist's lifetime list</a> that dated all the way back to 1949. I loved perusing the years, seeing what had stood the test of time and what had not. It sent me back to my own yearly lists, where I was dismayed to note that for way too many books, I had retained nothing. Clearly, I needed to either return to blogging my reading or begin annotating my lists from here on out.<br />
<br />
And because bookish camaraderie is what I need more than the fretting over politics that's made up the largest portion of my social media diet of the past few years, here I am.<br />
<br />
I've long intended to reread my Margaret Drabbles in the the order that they were written, interspersing them with my Anne Tylers. These two may seem an odd coupling for most, but my instructor assigned <i><b>The Realms of Gold</b></i> and <i><b>Searching for Caleb </b></i>in a lit class my freshman year of college and I've counted Drabble and Tyler as favorites ever since. I reread <i><b>A Summer's Bird-cage</b></i> and <b><i>The Garrick Year</i></b> in December. I'm now reading Tyler's first, <i><b>If Morning Ever Comes</b></i>. Chances are I won't work my way through all their books this year, but I'm hoping to get through the ones written in the 60s and 70s at least.<br />
<br />
Otherwise I want to spend the year reading from my 60 by 60 list, a five-year reading plan that ends on my birthday in October, and from which I still need to read 18 books. I've been overly focused on just-published books the last few years.<br />
<br />
Happy New Year and happy reading!SFPhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17439972994357205049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8861486.post-4660563677451068092017-07-15T10:38:00.004-04:002017-07-15T10:38:45.494-04:00"I don't believe in ghosts, but I see them all the time."Sherman Alexie <a href="http://kuow.org/post/sherman-alexie-s-heartbreaking-reason-pausing-his-book-tour" target="_blank">cancels book tour</a> for memoir about his mother.SFPhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17439972994357205049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8861486.post-91015937516382172642017-07-12T17:14:00.001-04:002017-07-12T17:14:07.974-04:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSC_KuMmGloUQ9Csl_5Z9PS452tUH-FJotTpnbKdKCQ0FhP0YEMMhPFl29hoEQ_dGK6Kfr_K_rsPp3SriLQRw29M6Y7W0HCCnMswi6NLwzFmjGxSKTwFaChDHZQNKJAKBJBlF9/s1600/long+view.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="475" data-original-width="312" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSC_KuMmGloUQ9Csl_5Z9PS452tUH-FJotTpnbKdKCQ0FhP0YEMMhPFl29hoEQ_dGK6Kfr_K_rsPp3SriLQRw29M6Y7W0HCCnMswi6NLwzFmjGxSKTwFaChDHZQNKJAKBJBlF9/s320/long+view.jpg" width="210" /></a></div>
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She had never felt so vulgar in her life.<br />
<br />
Later, he said: 'I doesn't make you happy, though, does it?'<br />
<br />
'It doesn't make me anything.' Then she added with a rush: 'I'm sorry. I don't feel real. Everything seems a long way ahead or a long way behind, and I seem in the very middle of a vast vacuous interim. Do you understand that?'<br />
<br />
He shook his head. 'Never mind. What do you do in London?'<br />
<br />
'Why?'<br />
<br />
'I just wondered what you did.'<br />
<br />
She took a deep breath. 'I run one house in London and another in the country.'<br />
<br />
'What country?'<br />
<br />
'Kent.'<br />
<br />
There was a pause while she waited for him to say something about Kent; but he said nothing, and she continued faster and more defensively: 'I look after my children. Julian's at his prep school and Deirdre goes to a day school near London. I--'<br />
<br />
'So they are away or out all day,' he interrupted.<br />
<br />
'Yes. That's what all childen do at that age. Many children,' she corrected herself--obviously he had not done it. 'Then we entertain a good deal. Conrad likes streams of people.'<br />
<br />
'So you have a lot of cooking.'<br />
<br />
'I don't do the<i> cooking</i>. I couldn't possibly cook well enough for Conrad. I do the arranging of it. There<i> is</i> a lot of arranging, you know. I read, and look at pictures, and garden, and listen to music - and Conrad minds awfully about clothes so I spend a certain amount of time on them--' She stopped: she knew dimly how it all sounded to him and knew dimly what it was all like - equally and differently unsatisfactory and incomprehensible to them both, and her talking only made it more irreconcilable.<br />
<br />
'I suppose I'm a sort of scene shifter for Conrad,' she finished. 'He likes an elaborate setting, and he likes it to vary. I try to do that for him.'<br />
<br />
'I'm sure you're very good at whatever you try to do,' he said; and they surveyed one another worlds apart across the small table. Anyway, I can leave him, she thought; it will not be difficult at all, and years hence it will simply be a surprising and friendly thing to remember. We have nothing in common, she thought, and if we go on now, I shall be back before the children are asleep.<br />
<br />
--Elizabeth Jane Howard, <i>The Long View</i><br />
<br />SFPhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17439972994357205049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8861486.post-22130046695073549912016-10-22T18:39:00.000-04:002016-10-24T20:25:05.266-04:00Have You Seen My Trumpet? by Michaël Escoffier<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaVEIB8U3Ynrh2E_vMW_69Rs1EjF-i8kVf0hX_mZXsBQHhJOjgs5qz9t-zQDCJgJ4bF1GjK_ybGtdHOo6bwD4wTzf-gymzFYfdzzYLZ9l34MAYuM_P1_BlrXyWvPH0hnDEDyMLgw/s1600/20161022_181227.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaVEIB8U3Ynrh2E_vMW_69Rs1EjF-i8kVf0hX_mZXsBQHhJOjgs5qz9t-zQDCJgJ4bF1GjK_ybGtdHOo6bwD4wTzf-gymzFYfdzzYLZ9l34MAYuM_P1_BlrXyWvPH0hnDEDyMLgw/s320/20161022_181227.jpg" width="191" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">This
interactive book consists of a series of questions, the answers to which are
found in the final word in the questions. For example, the final word of one
question is “dandelion;” the answer to the question is “lion.” Interspersed
among the questions is a recurring query from a little girl who is looking for
her trumpet. Yes, she does eventually find her (you guessed it) pet. How
delightful to read a book that makes words fun! How nice that this title is
preceded by two others of the same ilk. A minor complaint is that some of the
answers are spelled the same as a part of the final word in the question, but
they do not sound the same, which could be confusing to emerging readers. For
example, the last word in one of the questions is “fishbowl.” The answer to the
question is “owl.” The silver lining is the opportunity for teachers, parents,
and caregivers to instruct readers in the wonderful world of the phonetic
vagaries of the English language. The illustrators are a feast of earth tones,
texture, personality, and humor. In addition, the manner in which Di Giacomo
rendered the eyes of the characters enables the reader to know instantly the
emotional construct of these characters. As for the humor, what child will not
delight in seeing a bat sitting on a toilet?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Note: On the first page, Frisbee is not capitalized. It should be, for
it is a trademarked brand name. In addition, a line of text on the final page
is missing a comma.</span>
WMKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07922228645620558000noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8861486.post-5606296803397461652016-10-22T18:38:00.000-04:002016-10-24T20:30:26.428-04:00Swallow the Leader: A Counting Book by Danna Smith<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">In
this amusing spin on the universal childhood game of “Follow the Leader,” one little
fish, the leader, leads one, two, three, then ultimately nine other small fish
through a winding course in the ocean. Along the way, they follow the leader as
it splashes, hides, floats, and imitates other sea creatures. And when the
leader instructs the other fish to eat a snack, they follow suit, eventually
eating each other one by one. The last fish just happens to be a shark that
gleefully swallows fish number nine, which, like the Russian nesting dolls,
contains all of the other fish. However, all is not lost, for the shark emits a
huge burp, expelling the nine little fish. Told in a singsong rhyme, the tale
is part poetry, part marine biology, part addition and subtraction, and part happily
ever after. The illustrations of the little fish and shark remind this reviewer
of Muppets: bright colors, simple bodies, big mouths, and bulging eyes. The
watery environment and its residents of rays, blowfish, turtles, crabs, and a
whale have a softer feel—<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>as if they
were created with tissue paper and watercolor. Whatever the method, the book is
a visual joy. </span></div>
WMKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07922228645620558000noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8861486.post-3427762420038025042016-10-22T18:36:00.000-04:002016-10-24T20:31:03.964-04:00Shapes, Reshape! by Silvia Borando<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<![endif]--><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"></span>This new spin on a counting book
invites children to rely on key words, shapes, and colors to identify different
animals. Each two-page spread consists of text on one page and a collection of
shapes in different sizes and colors on the other. The text is simple and
follows a pattern: The first sentence gives a hint as to what the shapes will
make once they are reassembled. Each answer is brief and includes a few
alliterative descriptive words to describe each of the eleven different animals
featured in the book. The illustrations look like bright pieces of cut paper
that are stacked on one page and then reassembled as lions and crabs and
hedgehogs and other animals on another. The design choice of lots of white
space around the text and illustrations allows the simplicity to shine. Children
who enjoy this book will also enjoy Borando’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Shapes at Play</i>. Note: Activities related to this book can be found
at http://minibombo.com/en/games-activities/shapes-reshapes.php.</span>
WMKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07922228645620558000noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8861486.post-61002759762338190512016-10-22T18:35:00.001-04:002016-10-24T20:34:44.795-04:00Bunny Dreams by Peter McCarty<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<![endif]--><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"></span>During the day, bunnies know to eat
vegetables, stay away from dogs, and seek safety in underground tunnels. During
the night, though, it’s another story. In the night, bunnies dream: they dream
of flying, of knowing the alphabet and numbers, of writing their names. And
when they emerge from their dream state to wakefulness, they gather outside to
admire a very special moon. This bedtime story is certainly unique, but what
makes the book so charming is the artwork. The bunnies, dogs, and lone chicken
(don’t question, just accept) look like elongated balloons with appendages and
ears. (They’re so darn cute that this reviewer wishes the publisher would
package the book with a plush toy.) This fantasia really takes flight with the
dream sequence, for the bunnies are by turns striped and numbered, then clad in
form-fitting purple unitards—all the while flying about with lettered wings. This
book is by no means conventional; instead, it’s charmingly weird and captures
the unmoored imagination found in children.</span>WMKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07922228645620558000noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8861486.post-50479514654000678402016-10-22T18:33:00.001-04:002016-10-24T20:34:59.241-04:00Curious George by H. A. Rey and Margaret Rey<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9Zb-EOgCRsXmKGCCunCtnyH308oAsLPio0leQPPsgp5v2k2ktWKQTZI5099CHp3ckMi-qouveO9nrVfL4haveDZPh2wZKf85TcUG8kW5I2LBaMf-82CY9BKHw6UOYzJ_sQQvvlQ/s1600/20161022_181120.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9Zb-EOgCRsXmKGCCunCtnyH308oAsLPio0leQPPsgp5v2k2ktWKQTZI5099CHp3ckMi-qouveO9nrVfL4haveDZPh2wZKf85TcUG8kW5I2LBaMf-82CY9BKHw6UOYzJ_sQQvvlQ/s320/20161022_181120.jpg" width="275" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The 75<sup>th</sup> anniversary
re-release of this classic tale is updated to include a free audio download. The
story and illustrations are unchanged, and George is as much a stand-in for
curious children today as he was when the book was originally published. For
those unfamiliar to the story, it’s a tale of a little monkey named George who
is captured in Africa by the man with the big yellow hat in order to be delivered
to a zoo in an unnamed city overseas. Along the way, George’s curiosity impels
him to try to fly, to call the firehouse, and to send him on a skyward journey
via balloons. The delightful illustrations capture the personality and energy
of George, as well as the colorful chaos and mayhem that he instigates. Although
the first book ends with George’s safe delivery to the zoo, his friendship with
the man with the big yellow hat is cemented and the two star in six more books
by the original author. Actually, that would be authors, for H.A. Rey’s wife,
Margaret, is acknowledged to be an equal partner in the creation of all of the
original Curious George books. (For more information on their collaboration,
see the publisher’s website, </span><a href="http://www.houghtonmifflinbooks.com/features/cgsite/history.shtml#authors"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">http://www.houghtonmifflinbooks.com/features/cgsite/history.shtml#authors</span></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">). Although the
first edition was published under H.A. Rey’s name only, the reason is no longer
relevant, so it’s a mystery and a shame that the publisher decided not to
credit Margaret in this 75<sup>th</sup> anniversary publication. The very least
the publisher could have done in this anniversary re-release was to<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>add her biography to that of her husband’s
and John Krasinski’s, the narrator for the audio download, on the book’s jacket
flap. Note: Resources for teachers and librarians, as well as games and
activities for children, can be found at http://www.houghtonmifflinbooks.com/features/cgsite/.</span></div>
WMKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07922228645620558000noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8861486.post-78582429279977654522015-04-08T10:27:00.000-04:002015-04-08T10:27:05.198-04:00Alexander HamiltonBack in the very early days of this blog, I spent several months slowly making my way through Ron Chernow's superb biography <b><i>Alexander Hamilton</i></b>. I recommended it to Wendy, and she also became a fan of both the book and its subject.<br />
<br />
In December I learned of the upcoming off-Broadway musical <b><i>Hamilton</i></b> and sent Wendy a link to Lin-Manuel Miranda's 2009 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Jz1VRfdbmY" target="_blank">Hamilton Mixtape performance</a> at the White House.<br />
<br />
In January we ordered tickets for a late March performance. It turned out to be a Javier Munoz, or #Javilton show, and after three months of obsession over <a href="https://twitter.com/Lin_Manuel" target="_blank">all things</a> <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/02/09/hamiltons" target="_blank">Miranda</a>, it took a bit of mental adjustment over the course of one musical number to accept someone else in Miranda's role, but then I was caught up in the overall awesomeness of the show and in Munoz's own performance.<br />
<br />
The show moves to Broadway this summer. The cast album comes out this summer. I'll be buying the cd immediately and I'm hoping I can manage to get to NY to see the show again.<br />
<br />
And I need to reread Chernow.<br />
<br />
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<br />SFPhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17439972994357205049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8861486.post-8774458620719289612015-04-06T17:56:00.000-04:002015-04-07T10:16:34.468-04:00The Way We Live Now by Anthony TrollopeAnthony Trollope's 200th birthday takes place on April 24, and Karen at<a href="http://karensbooksandchocolate.blogspot.com/" target="_blank"> Books and Chocolate</a> is hosting an <a href="http://karensbooksandchocolate.blogspot.com/2015/04/anthony-trollope-in-april.html#comment-form" target="_blank">Anthony Trollope Bicenntennial Celebration</a> all this month in his honor.<br />
<br />
Due to my reading slump, who knows if I'll get a Trollope novel completed by the end of the month, so I thought I'd repost a review from 2010. I read <b><i>The Way We Live Now</i></b> then as part of the<a href="http://classics.rebeccareid.com/2010/12/06/anthony-trollope-tour/" target="_blank"> Classic Circuit's Trollope Tour.</a><br />
<strong><em><br /></em></strong>
<strong><em>The Way We Live Now</em></strong>, a satirical attack on the "commercial profligacy"of early 1870s England, is regarded as one of Anthony Trollope's finest novels, if not his masterpiece. In the summer of 2009,<strong><em> Newsweek</em></strong> put it at the top of its list of works that "open a window on the times we live in," explaining "[t]he title says it all. Trollope's satire of financial (and moral) crisis in Victorian England even has a Madoff-before-Madoff, a tragic swindler named Augustus Melmotte."<br />
<br />
The audience of Trollope's day was less appreciative of its portrayal. Reviewers took issue with and resented the title itself; they argued that Trollope had not created a novel that was an honest characterization of their world. According to Marion Dodd, who wrote the introduction the 1950 edition, Trollope had peaked in the 1860s: "Mercenary marriages, abuse of the wealthy and their ill-gotten gains, satirical treatment of the nobility bereft of money, morals, and stamina, were so different from the material in Trollope's other books that the result was first shock, and then indifference and weariness."<br />
<br />
<strong><span style="font-size: x-small;">(illustrations: Lionel G. Fawkes)</span></strong><br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkfL6-V2E0EZouDx_SJxKP-ohY9YjbZMOMAMOBP4uYU1xU1wCw9GtwEsUVCrwRA7I_QvOKB-77Z2oK-CGp6DC_L-cF8jog1C93Hl4F84yg0zI8kfDT7s22wYinVBOyKbBeu4kU/s1600/DSCN5921.JPG"><img alt="" border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkfL6-V2E0EZouDx_SJxKP-ohY9YjbZMOMAMOBP4uYU1xU1wCw9GtwEsUVCrwRA7I_QvOKB-77Z2oK-CGp6DC_L-cF8jog1C93Hl4F84yg0zI8kfDT7s22wYinVBOyKbBeu4kU/s320/DSCN5921.JPG" style="clear: both; float: left; margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px;" /></a>Trollope had intended to focus the novel on Lady Matilda Carbury, his notes show:<br />
<br />
<em>Living in Welbeck with son and daughter, spoiling the son and helping to pay his debts -- clever and impetuous. Thoroughly unprincipled from want of knowledge of honesty -- an authoress, very handsome, 43 --trying all schemes with editors, etc. to get puffed. Infinitely energetic --bad to her daughter from want of sympathy. Flirts as a matter of taste, but never goes wrong. Capable of great sacrifice for her son. The chief character.</em><br />
<br />
The book opens with Lady Carbury dashing off letters to the editors of the London papers with the intention of securing the necessary reviews for her just-published <em><strong>Criminal Queens</strong></em>, a book in which she's spread "all she knew very thin, so that it might cover a vast surface. She had no ambition to write a good book but was painfully anxious to write book that the critics should say was good." Lady Carbury, the narrator tells us, "was false from head to foot, but there was much of good in her, false though she was."<br />
<br />
Lady Carbury's greatest desire is to marry her handsome son off to an heiress. Sir Felix Carbury at 25 has already run through all the money left him by his late father and has no compunction against demanding and wasting the little that his mother and sister have to live on keeping horses in the country and gambling at the Beargarden, the club where all the young wastrels spend their time passing IOUs back and forth (living within one's means is not the way anyone lives now). Mother and son set their sights on Miss Marie Melmotte, only daughter of financier Augustus Melmotte, recently established in London and growing in prominence among the upper-crust despite a cloud of rumors.<br />
<br />
<em>It was at any rate an established fact that Mr Melmotte had made his wealth in France. He no doubt had had enormous dealing in other countries, as to which stories were told which must surely have been exaggerated. It was said that he had made a railway across Russia, that he provisioned the Southern army in the American civil war, that he had supplied Austria with arms, and had at one time bought up all the iron in England. He could make or mar any company by buying or selling stock, and could make money dear or cheap as he pleased. All this was said of him in his praise, -- but it was also said that he was regarded in Paris as the most gigantic swindler that had ever lived; that he had made that city too hot to hold him; that he had endeavoured to establish himself in Vienna, but had been warned away by the police; and that he had at length found that British freedom would alone allow him to enjoy, without persecution, the fruits of his industry."</em><br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzPUNjLC_Dh-5UQwDQYTsnuGVVJ3uWqveJN15a42D06VvbRRkDaLJlGeuyJWIKhoZigXRIwxDSUBiFEo21-27SwKmdNStcZB9JpxN_wXp5QgAdjPDUbKZHc1fvl7ccmddHG-rd/s1600/DSCN5923.JPG"><img alt="" border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzPUNjLC_Dh-5UQwDQYTsnuGVVJ3uWqveJN15a42D06VvbRRkDaLJlGeuyJWIKhoZigXRIwxDSUBiFEo21-27SwKmdNStcZB9JpxN_wXp5QgAdjPDUbKZHc1fvl7ccmddHG-rd/s320/DSCN5923.JPG" style="clear: both; float: left; margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px;" /></a>Melmotte desires that his daughter marry well, in the upper rungs of society; Lord Nidderdale is willing "to take the girl and make her Marchioness in the process of time for half a million down." While the men are arguing terms, Marie, who's been developing a mind and opinions of her own, falls for the undeserving Felix, who at least is paying attention to her.<br />
<br />
Melmotte refuses to consent to the match, telling his daughter that Felix is destitute and wants her only for her money. Undeterred, realizing that all men want her for is her money, Marie contrives to elope to New York with Felix, stealing money from her father and giving it to Felix to finance the trip. Felix, however, fearing that Melmotte will cut them off without a penny despite Marie's assurances that she has a fortune already signed over in her name, is too much of a coward to meet Marie in Liverpool as they've planned. He instead loses the money given to him gambling at the Beargarden while Marie is prevented from getting on the ship by men her father has sent to bring her back. Much to Lady Carbury's dismay, Felix gives up on the schemes to marry Marie. Melmotte and Lord Nidderdale, however, continue their negotiations for a mutually beneficial marriage; Marie is but chattel to them and nothing she says or does really signifies.<br />
<br />
There are several other affairs of the heart that thread through <strong><em>The Way We Live Now</em></strong>--Felix's sister Hetta is loved by both her much-older cousin Squire Roger Carbury, who Lady Carbury wishes her to marry, although not because he's the most moral man around, and Roger's close friend Paul Montague, who Lady Carbury disdains. Hetta loves Paul, but more difficulties arise when Paul's former fiance, the American Mrs. Hurtle, follows him to London and demands he keep his promises to her. Ruby Ruggles, whose farmer grandfather is one of Roger's tenants in Suffolk, doesn't want to marry the slow-witted but loving John Crumb, who's always covered in meal, when Sir Felix Carbury is willing to see her on the sly, especially when she runs off to London to stay with her aunt. And Georgiana Longestaffe, whose father can no longer maintain a lavish lifestyle, is so desperate that she condescends to engage herself to an elderly Jewish banker (anti-Semitism abounds in <strong><em>TWWLN</em></strong>, unfortunately).<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEja80d0Lzd4YjQrf35s955UuJDi31bnR7HR1oasfOM3tb78zF9zfxJIToDIXmpe62MKLEmXKLQBQUFPqdX8viw949loa7nxARd6TN2seu7BdmsStB4AXQ2cY9xeeMs5hrCwHybT/s1600/DSCN5920.JPG"><img alt="" border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEja80d0Lzd4YjQrf35s955UuJDi31bnR7HR1oasfOM3tb78zF9zfxJIToDIXmpe62MKLEmXKLQBQUFPqdX8viw949loa7nxARd6TN2seu7BdmsStB4AXQ2cY9xeeMs5hrCwHybT/s320/DSCN5920.JPG" style="clear: both; float: left; margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px;" /></a>But the engine at the center of the novel is definitely Melmotte's maneuverings through the artistocratic society that doesn't approve of his kind yet cannot resist associating with him due to his incredible ostentation and power. And, of course, his shady investments and financial skulduggery--buying property without paying a dime to the too-afraid-ask-for-it Longestaffe, for example--keep the reader attentive. Melmotte chairs the London board of directors for the Great South Central Pacific and Mexican Railway, a railway proposed to run from Salt Lake City down to the port of Vera Cruz. There are no plans to actually build the railway; it is just a reason to float a company and engage in stock speculation.<br />
<br />
Melmotte entertains the Emperor of China and is elected a conservative member to Parliament before it becomes impossible for society to continue to condone his fraudulence. Those who'd attached themselves to him earlier begin to break away and Melmotte is left alone -- his wife and daughter don't count -- to face a fast approaching arrest. Trollope provides a psychologically gripping portrayal of Melmotte's attempts to bully and bluff his way through, including a scene where he mortifies himself after showing up drunk in the House of Parliament.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjw4lK-cP-gTiGGM1QFibNkwfNEE8jpYBIQCd3s4AugDY-oLtZnZkji2z_NYVcInAiDWJhp2wmw0JutieNU4XeKV4NIiz_xFDEHQZAQrAkzKaqgiUOk0x1WPA-4de_SQ0PodpOF/s1600/DSCN5918.JPG"><img alt="" border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjw4lK-cP-gTiGGM1QFibNkwfNEE8jpYBIQCd3s4AugDY-oLtZnZkji2z_NYVcInAiDWJhp2wmw0JutieNU4XeKV4NIiz_xFDEHQZAQrAkzKaqgiUOk0x1WPA-4de_SQ0PodpOF/s320/DSCN5918.JPG" style="clear: both; float: left; margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px;" /></a>What I found most disturbing in Trollope's depiction of Victorian England is its routine disregard for and mistreatment of women:<br />
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<em>Henrietta had been taught by the conduct of both father and mother that every vice might be forgiven in a man and in a son, though every virtue was expected from a woman, and especially from a daughter. The lesson had come to her so early in life that she had learned it without the feeling of any grievance. She lamented her brother's evil conduct as it affected him, but she pardoned it altogether as if affected herself. That all her interests in life should be made subservient to him was natural to her; and when she found that her little comforts were discontinued, and her moderate expenses curtailed because he, having eaten up all that was his own, was now eating up also all that was his mother's, she never complained. Henrietta had been taught to think that men in that rank of life in which she had been born always did eat up everything.</em><br />
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A daughter or wife who refused to accept this natural order, or was unlucky in who her care depended, could expect and did receive violent treatment. Lady Carbury's backstory contains a history of physical abuse which she as a matter of course attempted to hide from the world; she bore the brunt of the scandal when she separated from him for awhile. Likewise, the independence of the American Mrs. Hurtle, who dared pull a gun on her ex-husband to keep him from sexually assaulting her, is presented as the grounds that justify Paul Montague's preference for the meek and innocent Hetta Carbury: Mrs. Hurtle is "a wild-cat" and just won't do in polite society.<br />
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Marie Melmotte is horribly beaten by her father during the course of <strong><em>TWWLN</em></strong> and accepts such treatment: <em>Melmotte had certainly been often cruel to her, but he had also been very indulgent. And as she had never been specially grateful for the one, so neither had she ever specially resented the other. . . she. . .had come to regard the unevenness of her life, facillating between knocks and knick-knacks, with a blow one day and a jewel the next, as the condition of things which was natural to her.</em><br />
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Beaten by her grandfather, Ruby Ruggles is on the verge of being raped by Felix Carbury when John Crumb shows up to save her. Small wonder Mrs. Hurtle and Ruby's aunt do their best to ensure Ruby marries John despite her belief that the man is beneath her: he'll keep her well-fed and won't beat her. Isn't that all a Victorian woman could want?<br />
<br />SFPhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17439972994357205049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8861486.post-52124878397292523572015-03-25T12:59:00.002-04:002015-03-25T12:59:28.759-04:00Ye gods, is there anything worse than a reading slump?SFPhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17439972994357205049noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8861486.post-31776105150115009332015-03-08T11:40:00.000-04:002015-03-08T12:00:28.904-04:00"One last story left to tell. . ."Inspiration up and left you? Writer's block getting you down? Burnout aggrieving your soul? Singer/songwriter Radney Foster's been there and put it to song.<br />
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L. and had a great time at Radney's show at the Double Door Inn here in Charlotte Friday night and his "Whose Heart You Wreck (Ode to the Muse)" was one of the highlights for us--I was thrilled that my video of this one turned out. And I got an autograph and a picture taken with Radney afterwards!<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmi58zNdfbVaA2NAy5W_eoDCBNayd6dOHS87Q6sSsbpVYAg_byEdEqH7dTXRQIPCKQSo2kmNND7aiBWe-hlXdYUfwHbgLM_enoWz8X95XXTHMq80RPrrNg7ha3-BnuAXOhvAvF/s1600/20150307_001021.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmi58zNdfbVaA2NAy5W_eoDCBNayd6dOHS87Q6sSsbpVYAg_byEdEqH7dTXRQIPCKQSo2kmNND7aiBWe-hlXdYUfwHbgLM_enoWz8X95XXTHMq80RPrrNg7ha3-BnuAXOhvAvF/s320/20150307_001021.jpg" /></a>
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But alas and alack, while I was able to upload the video to Facebook, Blogger say the file is too large to upload here. (Really? Not enough space for a single song?) Sigh. So here's Radney Foster singing <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYZLYZTq_oA" target="_blank">"Ode to a Muse"</a> somewhere else back in 2013.<br />
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(Mine was better grumble grumble.)SFPhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17439972994357205049noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8861486.post-76307812608010235782015-01-16T13:18:00.000-05:002015-01-16T13:18:15.445-05:00Thoughts on The Vet's Daughter by Barbara Comyns"She can't do that, can she?" I asked myself when I reached the last page of Barbara Comyns' 1959 novel <b><i>The Vet's Daughter</i></b>. "She can't have a first person past tense narration and then kill off the narrator on the last page! I mean, obviously, she <i>can</i>, but isn't it stooping kind of low?"<br />
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Then I looked back a few pages, spotted a one-sentence flashforward whose significance I'd failed to note previously, and all was forgiven. I love dead narrators. Alice Rowland has been playing this card--that she's talking to us from beyond the grave--close to the vest.<br />
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Many things are played close to the vest in <b><i>The Vet's Daughter</i></b>, leaving the reader at the end not quite sure how we're supposed to interpret certain events, or even certain characters. For example, the novel opens with a description of a "man with small eyes and a ginger moustache" who walks along the street with Alice while she "was thinking of something else. . . . He told me his wife belonged to the Plymouth Brethren, and I said I was sorry because that is what he seemed to need me to say and I saw he was a poor broken-down sort of creature. If he had been a horse, he would have most likely worn knee-caps." This man is not seen or mentioned again until the final pages of the book. Clearly Comyns intends the ginger man to serve more purpose than arouse Alice's pity--but what? I can't worry it out.<br />
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But I'm getting ahead of myself. This is the story of Alice Rowland, 17-year-old daughter of an abusive London veterinarian who is more apt to send an unwanted puppy to the vivisectionist for a pound than to put it down humanely as he is supposed to. He's broken Alice's mother's front teeth with a kick in the face, and even worse, her spirit. He mostly ignores Alice since she disappointed him by being born a girl, but she's still frightened of him. Their house is grotesque--dark, smelly, decorated with the rug of a Great Dane's skin and a monkey's jaw, filled with animals in cages that Alice is required to take care of.<br />
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One night shortly before Alice's mother, who is dying of cancer, is euthanized against her will by Alice's father, Alice listens to her mother reminisce once again of growing up on a farm in the mountains of Wales: "Dark brown moss grew in the mere by the farm; and once I saw a little child floating on the surface. She was dead, but I wasn't afraid because she looked so pure floating there, with her eyes open and her blue pinafore gently moving. It was Flora, a little girl who had been missing for three days. . . "<br />
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The morning that Alice is told her mother has died, she sees a Jacob's ladder that the sun has made across the floor of her mother's bedroom.<br />
<br />
After the funeral, Alice's father goes missing for three weeks. He returns with a barmaid --the strumpet from the Trumpet-- Rosa Fisher (a fisher of men?), who he euphemistically tells Alice will be their housekeeper. Rosa quickly assumes an evil stepmother-like role in Alice's life. One afternoon while fixing their lunch in a steamy hot kitchen Alice imagines--or so she thinks at first--that she is floating above water in the mountains. "This wonderful water world didn't last long because a mist came, and gradually it wasn't there, and something was hurting my head. Somehow I'd managed to fall on the kitchen floor, and knocked my head on a coal scuttle. Coal had got in my hair, but otherwise everything was as it had been before I'd seen the water garden--just boiling beef and steam, and heard Rosa's and Father's voices coming through the wall."<br />
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Alice hasn't realized it, but her mother's reflections and death have inspired her to begin levitating. For most of the book, I was prone to read these instances metaphorically, as they happen after times of great psychological distress for Alice. Yet Comyns has Alice read ghost stories and Alice mentions how happy her mother's ghost must be when she leaves home to be a companion on an island for Henry Peebles' mother (Peebles is a kind man who cares for Alice, although she does not particularly want to marry him). There's no denying that there's something supernatural going on here, especially once you accept the story's being told from beyond the grave.<br />
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And after Alice's father decides to exploit her talent, once she has returned home following Mrs. Peebles' suicide, to have her "rise up before all the people on the Common" it becomes clear that Comyns is turning Alice into a Christ figure, parodying the Christ story, since, as a character explains, the beauty in Alice's case is she isn't religious: Alice is given wine to drink and thinks it must be blood; she smells sour bread and cockroaches; she is kept prisoner; she exclaims, "Please God, don't let that happen to me. Father don't make me do this thing. I don't want to be peculiar and different. I want to be an ordinary person. I'll marry Henry Peebles and go away and you needn't see me any more--but don't make me do this terrible thing."<br />
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Alice's ordeal is not removed. Alice, in despair and humiliation, is brought in a bride's white dress, in a hearse-like carriage, to rise up and then come "down amongst the people." Trampled by a frightened crowd milling about in circles, she dies. Unlike the man with the ginger mustache, who dies with a terrified expression on his face, at the moment Alice's life is finished, she states, "[F]or the first time in my life I was not afraid."<br />
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And now I'm left with the thought: is the man with the small eyes and the ginger mustache a stand-in for the reader? A small-eyed someone Comyns and her characters briefly walk beside while thinking of something else?<br />
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<br />SFPhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17439972994357205049noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8861486.post-42507139945105863022015-01-01T11:25:00.001-05:002015-01-01T11:31:58.211-05:002015: A dare and a new long-term project<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I am horrified to look back and discover that last January I didn't even manage to recycle my usual Eschew the New! resolution, that my first post of the year (and sparse they were) didn't come until February 1. I am extremely grateful that Wendy was willing to share her thoughts on books over the course of 2014 and hope she will continue to do so forever and ever. I just need to get my groove back, so prepare for a lot of inane posts while I redevelop the blogging muscle, all right? Mixed metaphors will abound!<br />
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I finished the Fill in the Gaps Project very quietly in April. A five-year plan, the objective had been to read 100 books, but we were to count ourselves successful if we read 75. I read 86, then completed another six from the list by the end of 2014. Over the course of the project, I realized I liked long-term projects with large pools of books.<br />
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And that brings me to my new project, one I'm calling <a href="http://sfpreading.blogspot.com/2015/01/60-by-60.html" target="_blank">60 by 60</a>, although I certainly hope I manage to read more than 60 books on the list. It's heavy on the classics--Gissing, Trollope, Stendhal--and other authors I really ought to have read, or read in more depth, by now.<br />
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So that's the five year plan. Perhaps I can get a head start on it, since between today and April 1, I'm participating in James' <a href="http://jamesreadsbooks.com/tbr-dare/" target="_blank">TBR Double Dog Dare. </a> (I am so glad James didn't retire the dare!) I have a book on back order and of course I will buy the new Anne Tyler the moment it comes available in February, but other than that, I can think of no books that will break my determination to read from the books I already have stockpiled here and on my desk at the library. Of course, one reason my will seems so strong is that I have ten books from the <a href="http://www.themorningnews.org/post/the-long-long-list-for-the-2015-tournament-of-books" target="_blank">Tournament of Books long list</a> either on hand or on hold!<br />
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Happy 2015, everyone. Happy reading.SFPhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17439972994357205049noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8861486.post-81336626063190237892014-12-31T15:20:00.002-05:002014-12-31T15:23:03.331-05:00Reading stats, favorites and Claudius, the chemo cat<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
This year has been all about Claudius.<br />
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In February we noticed he had a ruptured anal gland. I took him to the vet, who wouldn't even fake concern over this injury; she'd felt a mass near his bladder during his exam. After a quick flurry of tests over the next few days, Claudie was diagnosed with large cell lymphoma, and his vet referred us to an oncologist.<br />
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In all honesty, I wasn't enthused at the thought of Claudius undergoing chemo. I've charitably called him "the startle puss" on the blog before, but closer to home I refer to him as "the family paranoid schizophrenic." He's had on-and-off liver issues all his life. He's been a terror to medicate. He'll ruin your shirt and try to scratch your innards out, is what I've always told anyone crazy enough to want to pick him up. Wasn't quality of life, not quantity, all that mattered to a cat?<br />
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Try chemo for a month and see how he does, Claudia, the oncologist, advised.<br />
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He came out of his muzzle during his first session of chemo and sent two vet techs to the ER. I had to deal with the required-by-law visits from Animal Control and Claudius was sedated before treatment from then on. But he handled the chemo itself well and we never thought about stopping. He didn't quit biting the blood out of me when I gave him his meds until sometime in August. He and I have been through a lot of stressful times this year, but I'd say his quality of life has been much improved.<br />
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We're all glad he's still around. I think he is, too. He's been sitting beside me on the couch, watching me blog this afternoon. He spent Christmas holidays playing with my daughter's kitten as if he were a kitten himself. (Very strange: remember when he was afraid of Ellie when she was a kitten? He didn't play then, He hid under the couch for 36 days.)<br />
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I'm sure sitting around waiting for him during his chemo sessions is part of the reason I managed to <a href="http://pagesturned.blogspot.com/2004/10/keeping-reading-record.html" target="_blank">read 115 books</a> this year--the highest number I've ever read, although I remain more impressed with the 112 I read in 2000 since that list included several lengthy classics. While I counted 12 books as classics this year, the two that were pre-20th century were definitely short.<br />
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And paying for chemo also helped me further rein in my spending on books, an expenditure that was already on the decline.<br />
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My reading stats for the last ten years (this year's in bold):<br />
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Books Total <b>115</b> / 74 / 100 / 82 / 101 / 101 / 78 / 81 / 74 / 77<br />
Nonfiction <b>14</b> /13 / 5 / 12 / 16 / 15 / 13 / 8 / 14 / 13<br />
Novels <b>84</b> / 57 / 80 / 66 / 78 / 79 / 62 / 62 / 50 / 47<br />
Short Story Collections <b> 15 /</b> 3 / 4 / 2 / 7 / 7 / 3 / 4 / 1 / 8<br />
Library Books <b>53</b> /36 / 29 / 39 /26 / 48 / 27 / 14 / 31<br />
Newly Acquired/Read <b>17</b> / 14 / 21 / 12 / 23 / 32 / 32 / 31 / 24<br />
Newly Acquired/Stockpiled <b>26</b> / 58 / 78 / 120+ / 113 / 140 / 88 / 141+ / 75+<br />
E-texts Read <b>11</b> / 12 / 20 / 12 / 17 / 10 / 12<br />
Free E-texts Read <b>3</b> / 4 / 10 / 6 / 9 / 5 / 7<br />
Just-published books <b>35</b> / 35 / 30 / 21 / 36 / 55 / 41 / 34 / 33<br />
Classics <b>12</b> / 7 / 22 / 23 / 21 / 10 / 8 / 23 / 12<br />
Pre-20th Century <b>2</b> /1 / 8 / 10 / 9 / 7 / 4 / 12 / 11<br />
Written by women <b>87</b> / 49 / 38 / 46 / 55 / 42 / 33 / 28<br />
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Ten authors with multiple books: Alice Munro (5); Jane Gardam (3); Joan Didion (2); Linda Grant (2); Tessa Hadley (2); David Mitchell (2); Lorrie Moore (2); Anthony Powell (2); Elizabeth Taylor (2); Rebecca West (2).<br />
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Three rereads: <b><i>Anagrams</i></b> by Lorrie Moore; <b><i>A Lemon and a Star</i></b> by E.C. Spykman; and <b><i>Play It As It Lays</i></b> by Joan Didion.<br />
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It was a very enjoyable reading year for me, but an unusual one in that I feel more favorably disposed to authors than to particular books. I don't know if it's a sign of my age, that I'm not finishing nearly as many books thinking that I'd like to read them again some day, but without that feeling, I don't regard that book as a favorite, no matter its quality.<br />
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What did I finish in 2014 that I can imagine rereading? Jane Gardam's <b><i>Old Filth</i></b> and its sequels? David Mitchell's <b><i>The Bone Clocks,</i></b> despite its flaws, just for the fun of it? Emily St. John Mandel's <b><i>Station Eleven</i></b>?<br />
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I want to read more Elizabeth Taylor and Dorothy Whipple. I want to read everything Alice Munro and Penelope Fitzgerald have written.<br />
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Reading resolutions tomorrow.<br />
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Happy New Year.<br />
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<br />SFPhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17439972994357205049noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8861486.post-90096750728501214782014-11-20T17:33:00.002-05:002014-11-20T17:33:55.170-05:00Books, you know, they're not just commodities. The profit motive often is in conflict with the aims of art. We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art--the art of words.<br />
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--Ursula LeGuin, <a href="http://parkerhiggins.net/2014/11/will-need-writers-can-remember-freedom-ursula-k-le-guin-national-book-awards/" target="_blank">"We will need writers who can remember freedom"</a>SFPhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17439972994357205049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8861486.post-9768147772517997572014-10-18T21:30:00.000-04:002014-10-18T21:30:20.509-04:00Reading vacation / readathon, with updates<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I convinced my husband to take me on a reading vacation way back in the mountains the first weekend in October; unfortunately it was right before the leaves began to change and there was enough rain that most of the reading had to take place indoors instead of under the 400-year-old trees in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joyce_Kilmer_Memorial_Forest" target="_blank">Joyce Kilmer Memorial Forest</a> as I'd planned.<br />
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I read Tana French's latest and L. read Lorrie Moore short stories.<br />
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Perhaps I can get him to read a couple more today so that he can say he participated in the readathon.<br />
<br />
I am quite blown away realizing that Dewey's 24-Hour Readathon, which started most humbly back in fall of fall of 2007 with just 37 participants, has 959 people signed up as of 7:23 am today.<br />
<br />
Back in 2007, I began the very first readathon by reading Henry James' "The Turn of the Screw." Today I am starting things off with Caroline Gordon's <b><i>The Women on the Porch</i></b>. Gordon is an author I've been meaning to read for years and one I included in the last readathon I participated in, although I had so many books in my stack of possibilities that year that I never got around to her volume of collected stories.<br />
<br />
I intend to do updates here, but not frequent ones. I haven't signed up for cheerleaders, so there really isn't a need.
<br />
<br />
And now I'm off to make some tea and give my cat his meds before the reading commences.<br />
<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSnjxtQhqqFu5oeA4_fXncq_T519R4SHoWL5yS_dtRSxyB-lUSvMEwPuUrMA25mgwWzF7ONbsD-bSyv52QLZ4McfYNTbtZahUOni1VMhHlNExbRksJjOlkHpfiVarnuFJd6vhf/s1600/Readathon.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSnjxtQhqqFu5oeA4_fXncq_T519R4SHoWL5yS_dtRSxyB-lUSvMEwPuUrMA25mgwWzF7ONbsD-bSyv52QLZ4McfYNTbtZahUOni1VMhHlNExbRksJjOlkHpfiVarnuFJd6vhf/s1600/Readathon.jpg" height="200" width="200" /></a>
<br />
<br />
It's taken six and a half hours, but I've finished my first book, Caroline Gordon's <i><b>The Women on the Porch</b></i>. Published in 1944 and regarded as one of her best, it is exceedingly <i>Southern</i>. There are no dead mules in it, but let me just be cagey for a moment and say if there had been, Gordon's capacity for creatively killing them would rank up there with Truman Capote's. I will give away no more than that. But if you can tolerate casual racism and homophobia in your Southern lit along with its peacocks and Tennessee Walkers and moonlight trysts between cousins, do give her a try sometime. Her civil war novel, <b><i>None Shall Look Back</i></b>, is said by some to be a better novel than <b><i>Gone With the Wind</i></b>.<br />
<br />
As for me, I've had enough Southern lit for the day and I'm turning by attention across the pond: hello, Hilary Mantel and <b><i>The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher</i></b>.<br />
<br />
2nd Update<br />
A belated midway report here, since I've been sidetracked by dinner and the <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/oct/18/am-i-being-catfished-an-author-confronts-her-number-one-online-critic?commentpage=2" target="_blank">"Am I being catfished?"</a> article at the Guardian. . .<br />
<br />
I have now completed my second book of the readathon, Hilary Mantel's <b><i>The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher</i></b>. I've now read a total of 558 pages since 8 this morning.<br />
<br />
I really don't have a clue what I'm in the mood for next, so I think I'm going to pull books from the shelves and read first sentences until something grabs me.<br />
<br />
<br />SFPhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17439972994357205049noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8861486.post-52291612651738140342014-10-16T11:22:00.000-04:002014-10-16T11:22:25.461-04:00Together again<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSnjxtQhqqFu5oeA4_fXncq_T519R4SHoWL5yS_dtRSxyB-lUSvMEwPuUrMA25mgwWzF7ONbsD-bSyv52QLZ4McfYNTbtZahUOni1VMhHlNExbRksJjOlkHpfiVarnuFJd6vhf/s1600/Readathon.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSnjxtQhqqFu5oeA4_fXncq_T519R4SHoWL5yS_dtRSxyB-lUSvMEwPuUrMA25mgwWzF7ONbsD-bSyv52QLZ4McfYNTbtZahUOni1VMhHlNExbRksJjOlkHpfiVarnuFJd6vhf/s1600/Readathon.jpg" height="320" width="320" /></a></div>
I knew that it had been a good while since I'd been able to participate in a read-a-thon, but I had no idea that "good while" translated into five whole years. I was number 707 when I linked up yesterday and see that at least 800 readers are expected this time around. That's incredible.<br />
<br />
My plans?<br />
<br />
I intend to finish Penelope Fitzgerald's <b><i>At Freddie's</i></b>, currently in progress on my ipad.<br />
<br />
First sentence: "It must have been 1963, because the musical of <i>Dombey & Son </i>was running at the Alexandra, and it must have been the autumn, because it was surely some time in October that a performance was seriously delayed because two of the cast had slipped and hurt themselves in B dressing-room corridor, and the reason for that was that the floor appeared to be flooded with something sticky and glutinous."<br />
<br />
After that, my stack consists of Rufi Thorpe's <b><i>The Girls from Corona del Mar</i></b>, Hilary Mantel's <b><i>The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher</i></b>, and two Caroline Gordon's, <b><i>The Strange Children</i></b> and <b><i>The Women on the Porch</i></b>.<br />
<br />
First sentences:<br />
<br />
"'You're going to have to break one of my toes,' I explained." (<b><i>The Girls from Corona del Mar</i></b>)<br />
<br />
"In those days, the doorbell didn't ring often, and if it did I would draw back into the body of the house." (<b><i>The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher</i></b>)<br />
<br />
"At three o'clock in the afternoon the house became so quiet that you imagined that you could hear the river lapping softly at the foot of the green hill." (<b><i>The Strange Children</i></b>)<br />
<br />
"The sugar tree's round shadow was moving past the store." (<b><i>The Women on the Porch</i></b>)<br />
<br />
I feel most in the mood for trying Caroline Gordon. She was on my read-a-thon list five years ago and I didn't pick her up then, and haven't in the meantime. This oversight must be rectified.SFPhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17439972994357205049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8861486.post-39156541047394544612014-10-01T14:37:00.000-04:002014-10-01T14:43:19.704-04:00You Are Not Special . . . and Other Encouragements by David McCullough, Jr.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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by Wendy<br />
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Although the book is full of truths both timely and
necessary, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">You Are Not Special . . . and
Other Encouragements </i>by David McCullough, Jr. violates one cardinal rule
for writers: know your audience. An expansion of his 12-minute high school
commencement speech (view it at </span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lfxYhtf8o4"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lfxYhtf8o4</span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">),
McCullough’s book, as stated in the foreword, “[is] for teenagers and anyone
with an interest in them.” Aside from eating fast food and sleeping in, I can’t
think of too many things that appeal to both teens and adults, much less reading
the same book—even if it is a guide to living a life of engagement and
experience in a society that only recognizes accolades and achievements.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The author addresses the reader as “you.” Early on,
sentences like “You watch television, flip through magazines, explore the web,
hear what your parents and siblings and aunts and uncles and grandparents and
teachers and coaches have to say” make it clear he is talking exclusively to
teens. And I understand why: it feels more personal, and it is fitting in a
book that is an extension of McCullough’s speech to his audience of young
graduates at Wellesley High School, his audience that he addressed as “you.”</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">But his diction tells us otherwise. Using words like
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ovine</i>, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">vituperative</i>, and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">lissome, </i>which
are hardly in the hip pockets of the post-Millennials’ lexicon, makes this
otherwise instructive and worthwhile work a stumbling block to his intended
readers. In addition, McCullough uses long- ago cultural figures (i.e., Wolfman
Jack), politicians (i.e., Herman Mann), literature (“Richard Cory”), and other references
and allusions familiar only to some middle-aged and older adults and, most
especially, to English teachers. Which of course, McCullough is. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></i>But
his intended audience is not. (Although hats off to McCullough as a teacher if
his students have as rich a vocabulary and knowledge of literature necessary to
fully understand this book.)</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Anyway, I’m not advocating that the book be dumbed
down. With the decline of reading and comprehension, writers and educators need
to work together to increase not decrease reading levels. I am all for
elevating our collective intellect; however, the book could have easily been
divided into three sections: one for teens, one for parents, and one for
educators and those who have the power/influence to improve/reform standardized
education. McCullough could still have used “you,” but tailored each section to
his intended audience, using appropriate words and references. After all, it’s
the message that matters. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">And McCullough does have many good messages. He
writes on the hazards of overprotective parenting, the need for teens to know
who they are and to choose friends wisely, the joy of learning, and the
slippery slope of ” [confusing] net worth with self-worth” among other topics. For
example, he writes:</span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">On parenting – “Any intercession, even
the feathery light, can come at a cost to the child’s emerging sense of
autonomy and the myriad benefits of fending for himself or herself.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">On teaching – “[A teacher’s] job is to
help [his or her] students recognize and value what’s best in themselves, then
to learn to build on it.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">On living – “Love everything.”</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">So if you’re
a teenager, watch the speech on YouTube. If you’re a parent, educator,
education administrator or politician, read the book. McCullough, drawing on
his years of teaching and parenting, has a lot to say that is worth not only
reading, but putting into practice and sharing with those positioned to enact change
in our schools, our communities, and our nation.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Just be sure to have a dictionary handy.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
WMKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07922228645620558000noreply@blogger.com0