Always Improving for Your Reading Pleasure

I have been inspired by Teresa, and I'm making my "Recent Reads" sidebar more up-to-date and more informative. First of all, I've cleared off the books that no longer qualify as "recent," so there went the whole bottom of the list. Second, I've decided to add more information so that all of you kindred spirit book-lovers out there can actually use this feature as a helpful tool. Because some of the books on there aren't even very good, I would hate to have you waste your time on them because you thought I was recommending them.

Next to the title I would like to place stars like a real critic, but I don't know how to work pictures into this template, so you will have to settle for a boring 0-5 rating. I may or may not provide further explanation, depending on whether or not I have anything to say. I figure that amazon.com is a great place that you can go on your own if all you want is a plot summary.

Ratings are as follows:
0- This book should count itself lucky if I use it to stabilize a wobbly table.
1- I read it. I am pretty sure it had a plot and some characters.
2- Not a bad choice if you're stranded in an airport and the only other choice is a car magazine.
3- A good story, but nothing overly memorable...this is the literary version of "wait for it to come out on video."
4- Pretty dang good. Worth reading at least 3 times, but not consecutively.
5- You'll laugh, you'll cry...you'll start back at the beginning as soon as you finish it just so that you don't have to say goodbye.

Mice and Men

One of my favorite poems is Robert Burns' "To a Mouse." It's a really sympathetic poem about a mouse who has planned for winter by building a snug little house. The speaker is a farmer who has plowed through the mouse's nest, destroying it, and it's too late in the year for the mouse to build another one. So, despite the mouse's careful preparation, he is still left out in the cold for the winter. The poem is timeless and classic, not because it's a sad animal tale, but because Burns connects himself with the mouse in the last couple of stanzas with his famous summary, "The greatest plans of mice and men often go awry/and leave us not but grief and pain for promised joy."

As my careful planning for the future is often thwarted by circumstances beyond my control, I really bonded with this poem. The poet doesn't offer any sort of solution, but he is very sympathetic to both mice and people who are left wanting despite their best efforts.

Now this post is not as sad as it could be, but I've been thinking about Burns' little mouse for the past couple of days as we've gone back to school for our work days. I vowed at the beginning of the summer to use my time off productively so that I would be organized and prepared for the new year. And I did work, pretty steadily, all summer.

Yet, here I am, one week and counting from the first day of school, in panic mode. My room is not ready, my lesson plans are not finalized, I need to choose reading lists and order books, and I have school supplies strewn across my floor. There are parent letters to write, a classroom webpage to build, worksheets to create, and meetings to attend.

This is the time of year that I love to hate. Right now there seems to be more to do than I can possibly accomplish, and the hours of the day race by. But I know that somehow it will all be finished on time, and that when my room fills up with hopeful little faces, I will know what to do with them. And even if I don't, I know they can't tell when I'm bluffing.

Mmm, facts

I love knowing stuff. I'm not determined enough to accumulate knowledge that is actually complicated, like quantum physics or microbiology or fourth-dimensional mathematics, but I do love to stuff my mind with simple, fluffy facts. I am pretty good at Jeopardy (depending on the category), I am almost always smarter than a fifth grader, I can get the pies in Trivial Pursuit, and I could hold my own in a discussion with a member of the paparazzi regarding celebrity comings and goings. (This last wealth of knowledge is because I've recently become hooked on a celebrity gossip blog that is often trashier than my old standby, People magazine, and almost always funnier.) Oh, and I always know the right answers on "Jaywalking."

I've recently been challenged to employ myself in more scholarly fact-gathering than what I happen to glean from quiz shows or late night television. Here are my three inspirations:

1. We are living in a house with an incredible study. It is a room with a big window on one wall that lets in natural light. The other three walls are filled with built-in bookshelves, which are full of heady books, some of which do not interest me (The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Yugoslavia as History), some of which I wish had a movie version or Cliff's Notes (The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire: Vols. 1-3, A Manual of the Writings of Middle English), and some of which I like to pretend will interest me some day (all the works of T.S. Eliot, Chaucer, Shakespeare, and most other authors of note).

The pile of things that I brought to read while we were living here includes In Her Shoes, Harry Potter, and my Real Simple magazine. It's a little humbling for a person who imagines that she is smart.

2. We just spent a weekend with my friends John and KarenD. John is the type who reads Wikipedia and listens to NPR for fun, and we could always count on him to revive a lagging conversation with his favorite words, "You know what I just read/heard?" This question was always followed by some sort of trivia usually concerning fractals, technology, or what small percentage of the brain is utilized by the average human. As if I needed mathematical proof of how mentally lazy I actually am.

3. I am totally digging my latest book, as I've listed in my "Recent Reads." The Know-It-All is a surprisingly hilarious memoir of a guy who decides to read the Encyclopaedia Brittanica from A-Z. The first chapter is titled "A," the last chapter is titled "Z," and it's a witty commentary on the funniest, most random, or most interesting facts that he stumbles across along the way.

The story begins when the author, who is wanting to become a parent, pictures himself being asked a question like "Why is the sky blue?" by his child, and he realizes that he doesn't know. Now for a man who imagined himself to be smart and well-informed, it is sad and shocking to realize that that he could have told his child the names of Julia Roberts' children, but that he could not satisfy little Junior's first query about the world around him.

This story really hit home for me, and when I have not been waking Stephen up in the middle of the night by laughing out loud at this book, I've actually been contemplating delving into the EB myself. So if you call me and I don't pick up, or you notice that I'm a little slow to blog, it's probably because I'm engrossed in a scholarly article about the use of symbolism and irony in eighteenth century French literature. Unless I'm reading up on which celebrities attended the Beckhams' "Welcome to America" party. It would be a tough call.

Bibliophiles, Unite!

I've been gratified by a decent number of comments on my previous post, and so I'm feeling like indulging myself in a little nerdy online wallowing in my favorite topic: books. My friend the Crazy Squirrel has invited his readers to make up the first sentence of a debut novel. I couldn't think of my own brilliant sentence, but the idea got me thinking about some of my favorite first lines from books that I have loved. I've decided to share them with you here. Bon appetit!

"Dr. Iannis had enjoyed a satisfactory day in which none of his patients had died or gotten any worse."

"For the first fifteen years of our lives, Danny and I lived within five blocks of each other and neither of us knew of the other's existence."

"I went back to the Devon School not long ago, and found it looking oddly newer than when I was a student there fifteen years before."

"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife."

"Last night I dreamt I went to Manderly again."

"No one in Shiloh saw it coming."

"James Gould's eyes stung from the heat of the fire he had tended through two days and nights in the strange house at Petersham; his blistered hands stung too, and for the first time in almost twenty years, he didn't know what to do."

"The Opera Ghost really existed."

"There was once a boy named Milo who didn't know what to do with himself--not just sometimes, but always."

"The book was thick and black and covered with dust."

"An author ought to consider himself, not as a gentleman who gives a private or eleemosynary treat, but rather as one who keeps a public ordinary, at which all persons are welcome for their money."

"My mother did not tell me they were coming."

"Ugh. The last thing I feel physically, emotionally, or mentally equipped to do is drive to Una and Geoffrey Alconbury's New Year's Day Turkey Curry Buffet in Grafton Underwood."

"Of Mans First Disobedience, and the Fruit
Of that Forbidden Tree, whose mortal tast
Brought Death into the World, and all our woe,
With loss of Eden, till one greater Man
Restore us, and regain the blissful Seat,
Sing Heav'nly Muse, that on the secret top
Of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire
That Shepherd, who first taught the chosen Seed,
In the Beginning how the Heav'ns and Earth
Rose of out Chaos."

Gluttony

My love of reading has been a defining characteristic of my life (and, consequently, my home decor) since I was a little girl. I have always been transfixed by the power of a good story. I always want to own the books that I read and love, because just glancing at the spine of a book on a shelf can remind me of the world contained within its pages.

I go through certain times in my life, however, that reading becomes even more to me than a hobby or a mental escape. I find myself reading books urgently, gulping in the words on a page as if they are air and I am coming up out of deep water. Non-readers will probably think that I'm nuts, but it's as if I am reading because my soul is hungry. The last time this happened to me was my last semester of college. I was overwhelmed with the crossroads that were approaching in my life, and I plunged myself into literature. That semester, I read Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, Les Miserables, White Oleander, and poetry by Byron, Keats, Shelley, Burns, and Donne.

I am feeling myself moving into this stage again. I went to a Friends of the Library book sale (book accumulators like myself know that these yearly events are Mecca for book bargains) last week, and since I arrived back at home with my bag of treasures, I have finished two books and begun a third. I take my books with me to work, I listen to them on tape when I drive, and I plop down on the couch with them as soon as I come home from school. I'm indulging in book gluttony.

I am reading through my stack of library sale finds, which means that my reading list is much less classic and more random than that of my previous book binge. Here is my list so far:
-The Sun Also Rises (on tape)- meandering story about bitter Americans in Europe after WWI
-Memoirs of a Geisha (on tape)- very interesting story of a little Japanese girl who is basically sold into slavery, where she is trained for the life of a geisha
-The Kitchen Boy- a fictional account of the last days of Tsar Nicholas and his family as they were kept under house arrest by the Bolsheviks, told from the perspective of the young boy who worked in the kitchen. Very interesting twist at the end.
-High Tide in Tuscon- nonfiction essays (which are not typically my style) by Barbara Kingsolver. We disagree on almost every important issue, but I love her prose style and find her opinions to be thought-provoking.
-Desire of the Everlasting Hills- a discussion of the historical impact of the life of Jesus from basically a secular viewpoint. The author brings a very different perspective to Biblical stories than you get from Sunday School. Like with Kingsolver, I don't always agree...but it's thoughful reading.

In the queue:
-Atonement by Ian McEwan
-Dispaches from the Front by Anderson Cooper
-The Stranger by Albert Camus
-The DaVinci Code by Dan Brown
-The Virgin Blue by Tracy Chevalier
-A Year in Provence by Peter Mayle


"Literature duplicates the experience of living in a way that nothing else can, drawing you so fully into another life that you temporarily forget you have one of your own. That is why you read it, and might even sit up in bed till early dawn, throwing your whole tomorrow out of whack, simply to find out what happens to some people who, you know perfectly well, are made up." -Barbara Kingsolver

Thought for the Day

Here's a thought for the day, courtesy of my Starbucks cup:

"For all those parents who wonder, How do I get my kids to read? -- Here's a simple, earthshaking solution: Give them a book. For gosh sakes, give them a couple of books." -James Patterson

And Karen, sorry I forgot about your prize. Here you go (don't spend it all in one place):