Every Month is a Holiday Challenge

[not sure what I'll read yet, but making the list sure will be fun]

A to Z Challenge

General reminder of what you're signing up for:

Option A: Read authors A to Z. Commit to reading 26 books theoretically speaking.

Option E: Read 26 Alphabet books. Embrace your inner child and go visit the children's section!
Here's what we have at home:
1. Accidental Zuccini
2. Dr. Seuss's ABC
3. Alphabatics
4. Halloween ABC
5. Chicka Chicka Boom Boom [needs mending]
So, we will have to find 21 more via the library, or the occasional used book sale.

Mention in your comment which option(s) you'll be committing to. Sign ups begin December 1, 2008. (The challenge does NOT start until January 1, 2009, but early sign ups are definitely encouraged!) The challenge closes to new participants on June 30, 2009.

2009 Read and Review Challenge

Rules:
* review each book you read between January 1st and December 31st, 2009
* PLEASE keep your reviews clean & respectful ~ these books we read are the hard work of an author, and we don’t need to be mean. Even if you didn’t like the book, please try to find something you can say that would be encouraging to the author.
* reviews can be as short, or long, as you wish
* you MAY overlap with other challenges
* eBooks and Audiobooks ARE allowed
* if there will be spoilers in your review, please note this in the subject line of your post so that those who don’t want to read them can skip that review.

I must confess this will be a tough one for me. I've been bad about reviewing for a few years now. It will take a lot of discipline, and also a lowering of expectations (quality-wise) for myself.

Really Old Classics Challenge

The Rules:

1. Choose how many Really Old Classics you’d like to read by the end of July 2009, from 1 to 100.
2. Read that number of Really Old Classics by the end of July 2009. If you finish, pat yourself on the back.

I've settled on these 4 (TBR in no particular order):

Tale of Genji here
Aenid, by Virgil (on Bartleby.com)
Song of Roland (on Bartleby.com)
Faerie Queene, by Spenser (Book 1 on Daily Lit, in 77 installments)

Casual Classics Challenge (1/1-12/31/09)

This challenge is simple…

* Read 4 “Classics” between January 1st and December 31st, 2009
* Overlaps with other challenges ARE allowed
* eBooks and Audiobooks ARE allowed

1. The Yellow Wallpaper, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
2. The Good Earth, by Pearl S. Buck
3.
4.

100 Shots of Short Reading Challenge.

The challenge is a simple one - no time limit, no specific titles, just the goal of reading 100 self-picked short stories as and when possible.

I'll keep a master list in this post (with links to individual reviews).

Here's a list of my preliminary source books:
Black Heart, Ivory Bones (fantasy)
I Shudder at Your Touch (horror)
Sisters in Crime 3 (mystery)
1. Arts and Crafts, Mary Jo Adamson
2. Listen and Listen Good, Marcia Biederman
3. SuSu and the 8:30 Ghost, Lilian Jackson Braun
Jeeves and the Song of Songs (humor)
4-9, descriptions here.
What Are You Looking At? (fat fiction)
Redshift (speculative fiction)


There's well over 100 stories in these six titles, but I'm allowing for not being able to finish some particularly uninteresting shorts.

Watch this space

I'm hoping to blog regularly again soon(ish).



Morgann is 2 months old (that's what I've been occupied with since I last wrote) and I'm finally trying to take back small bits of my life. I'll be participating in NaBloPoMo next month (because no, I'm still not ready to tackle a novel), so I hope to have something for y'all to read daily, be it a meme, a review, a blogroll, or an excuse for not having book-related content in the post.

Grimm’s Last Fairytale (Haydn Middleton)

Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm were collectors of fairy tales (amongst other scholarly pursuits) and Middleton has created a novel telling the parts of their story where history has been lost to us. I’ve no idea what they would think of the Disney-fied versions of their people’s folklore, but from reading this novel, I have a feeling they’d shake their heads in despair for today’s society.

Middleton fills out the Grimms’ story by using 3 threads: a “current” narrative about Jacob’s homecoming tour, flashbacks to his childhood and early adulthood (especially in regard to his brother), and a very different version (one on the grisly end of the spectrum) of Sleeping Beauty than any I’ve yet to see. Middleton did very well with the transitions between them, and each was flavored distinctively enough that I had no trouble following each of the threads and seeing their connections.

Another sub-plot which I found both interesting and informative was Auguste’s quest for truth (and for love), and what Kummel’s place was in the overall metaphor of the story. I won’t ruin it, but will say that for some authors, there are truly no minor or useless characters, and that Middleton demonstrates this very well.

In the Author’s Note at the end of the book, Haydn suggests several books for further reading, one of which is Bruno Bettelheim’s The Uses of Enchantment, which, coincidentally, I had chosen as another read in the same challenge for which I’d read this book. Other titles are: The Complete Grimms’ Fairy Tales (Routledge and Kegan Paul), The Hard Facts of the Grimms’ fairy Tales (Maria Tatar), Paths Through the Forest (MUrray B. Peppard), and The Brothers Grimm and Their critics (Christa Kamenetsky).

I made this my bedtime read for several days, but I still managed to stay alsert enough to take note of the following significant passages:

“A long time ago, when wishing was still of use...”
This seems to be the traditional opening for the tales collected in the Grimms’ home country. Sets quite a different tone than what we use today (“once upon a time...”), and is also indicative of the people’s mood at that time in their history.

“Boys don’t tell stories. Not men either. There’s no Father Goose, is there? Only maids and mothers.”
Another societal indicator, as seen through the eyes of young Wilhelm, long before he knew what he and Jacob would do to make a living. I for one am glad that they shattered this stereotype so that other men could add their voices to the mix. My world would definitely be lesser if Gaiman and deLint weren’t writing.

“...there were far better things to love than a country. A country, after all, can never love you back.”
An especially touching quote, given today’s state of veteran care; a few good developments, but thousands un- or under-treated.

“...never be distracted from the written word. Talk can always wait.”
*sigh* A girl can dream. Too bad society takes the opposite stance.

“The pure good and the pure evil--it’s right for children to know all about that, and in such beautiful language, too.”
I could craft a lenghty rant about how we’re doing a disservice to our children when we neglect to prepare them for encounter with evil, but I won’t, for the sake of staying on-task. I hope to give my children version of fairy and folk takes that haven’t been Hollywood-ized to death.

“Not law, but literature--spoken, written, shared, passed on--that is the common bond uniting the entire German Volk.”
I’ll agree that one gets a very different sort of society when its focus is on the first to the detriment of the other. I often wonder whether a return to a study of the classics would be appropriate or desirable to today’s students, or if our culture is too far gone to take anything positive from them.

“Taken as a whole, the tales’ range of raw emotion was almost overwhelming. Spite, envy, malice, dread, obsession, love: they all roiled up off the pages like steam.”
I think that this is the mark of a good story, that it actually touches us on an emotional level, instead of just demonstrating the tribulations of the characters.

“For what was national pride but a hollow form of ancestor-worship? And what did natonal differences really mean?”
So, is there no other (new) place for the immigrant? How many generations does it take before a family is made welcome? Why have Americans so conveniently forgotten who was here first?

“What a people says is, after all, essentially what that people is.”
For me, this ties together two of the quotes above: a people’s common bond through literature, and Americans’ apparent lack of cohesion due to a variance of voices.

“The tales contain our volkisch spirit, our vital soul. The fact that we share them helps to make us a Volk in the first place.”
A few months ago, I read and reviewed Fahrenheit 451, and was deeply affected by Bradbury’s take on a society that had ceased sharing stories. As I’d said in the review, that thought makes me cling to my books and my writing all the harder.

“It was Schiller who claimed that the fairytales of his childhood had a deeper meaning than the truths taught by life.”
I don’t know the quote verbatim, and I’m not sure if my source is the original, but it has been said that the best part of a fictional work is the truth it holds, or reveals about life. After having read this, I think about my reading material very differently.

“ ‘Thought is the lightning,’ he once said, comically waving his arms for her like a spoof shaman, ‘words the thunder, consonants the bones and vowels the very blood of language.’ “
Aside from being very poetic, this reminds me of another quote about how easy it is to write, and all that’s necessary is to open a vein.

“Nothing would be the same once he was gone. A door to the past would be closed forever.”
As it is with all who die. No matter how insignificant we can come to feel, our presence here matters not just to the here and now, but to the past we’ve known.

“His mistake perhaps had been to stay in a world already mapped out by others, and not gone on to chart one of his own.” This is one of the basic themes laid out in many fairy tales, and one which people struggle with now. Are there new courses to chart anymore?

“But he was not her prince, and her heart was not at home on this map. Love was another realm again. A country whose borders she guessed she would only ever cross for visits, just long enough to satisfy herself that it was there.”
Just as there are those who aren’t suited to conventional professions, there are some people who simply aren’t geared toward committed lifelong relationships. It seems to me that a society that doesn’t allow for this creates a lot of problems when pairing-off is legislated too strictly.

Punk Rock Dad (Jim Lindberg)

Lindberg and I are about the same age, but I missed out completely on the Punk movement. I’m sure it didn’t help that I grew up in a small town on the opposite end of the state (our musical influences were different), nor did my low social status with my peer group (the cooler people were such partly because they listened to the “right” music). I decided to review this for the Blogher virtual book tour anyway, because the notion of rebels raising the next generation was just too interesting to pass up. Also, the fact that it is written from a father’s point of view made for a very different sort of parenting book.

In general, this book was a great read. The author’s voice is articulate without being over-intellectual, he uses vivid examples from his own childhood to illustrate his points, and he even gives the reader a solid, concise history of American music. I’d recommend this to any Generation X-er, whether their life has directed them to “sell out” or not (at least, in regards to having kids, a mortgage, and life insurance). I’d considered registering this on BookCrossing for a wild release, but I’m rethinking that. I believe I will hang on to this for a while, and perhaps loan it out to friends before I let it find another home.

These were the most thought-provoking passages, or those that I found noteworthy enough to pull for further discussion:

“With overpopulation and the lack of good health care, it’s actually great that some people choose not to have kids, but for many of us, it can be the one thing that gives you a shot at true happiness in what can otherwise seem like a cold, forbidding world, and it may even help you begin to finally accept some of the responsibilities you’ve been actively rebelling against your whole life.”

“We wanted to find out in advance just so we’d know what color to paint the baby’s room and what kind of clothes to buy and also to save ourselves from any type of unexpected spontaneous response in the delivery room if we didn’t get what we were secretly hoping for. I didn’t want the kid to come out and have the first words it hears be, ‘Oh, crap!’”

“When I wrote songs about wanting to change the world, I meant it more than ever, because now there was a lot more than my own miserable future at stake, and that something needed its diaper changed regularly and food put on the table every day.”

“We older folk are the ones who repress the biological need to let out a good long wail every once in a while, which is why most of us turn to therapy or alcohol or become lead singers in punk bands so we can scream our lungs raw every night. We all need to bitch and complain about the world and our predicaments in it--babies just have a better way of vocalizing it.”

“When a guy is sitting around not saying anything, most women will have to ask them what they are thinking about. You should never tell them the truth: that your mind is a swirl of pornography, sports scores, food, and a constant running down of a list of people you’d like to punch in the mouth. They want you to say that you’re thinking about her and how wonderful she is, and that you were trying to come up with ways to make your relationship more romantic, and just wishing you two had more time to cuddle.”

“Punk rock, in all its nihilistic glory, somehow became the catalyst that helped close the generation gap, probably due to the fact that many of the people from our generation saw growing up and taking on responsibility as selling out and giving up, and have tried to hold on to their youthful looks that much longer.”

“Thumbing our noses at people in authority and derailing their power trips are how we take back some of the control for ourselves. Kids come with this impulse preinstalled, so it’s up to us to know how to handle it.”

“Respect for authority needs to earned. My kids will hopefully respect our authority as long as we set a good example and treat them like human beings instead of little cretins to be molded into whatever image we think they should be shaped into. They’e still going to test the boundaries daily, it’s in their genes. A parent becomes cool by considering their kids’ point of view and by remembering back to when we were little punks and how shitty it felt when no one gave a crap about our opinions. When you have to lay down the law, you do it by setting boundaries beforehand, explaining the reasons why things are the way they are, and then doling out consistent humane discipline so they can learn a lesson they won’t have to repeat a hundred times. If I can somehow manage this, maybe then they won’t one day write a song about what a terrible dad i was.”

This is a review of a complimentary copy of a book provided by Harper Collins. No other incentive has been made that would influence this writer’s opinion of the book.

Untamed Tongues: Wild Words from Wild Women, by Autumn Stephens

Stephens collected inspirational, wise, and humorous quotes from a wide variety of women; here are my favorites...

"The more articulate one is, the more dangerous words become." May Sarton

"Nobody's interested in sweetness and light." Hedda Hopper

"I don't have the time every day to put on makeup. I need that time to clean my rifle." Henriette Mantel

"I never worry about diets. The only carrots that interest me are the number you get in a diamond." Mae West

"I'm just a person trapped inside a woman's body." Elayne Boosler

"Kiss my shapely big fat ass." K.T. Oslin

I'm no lady: I'm a member of Congress, and I'll proceed on that basis." Mary Norton

"I have a brain and a uterus, and I use both." Patricia Schroeder

"As a woman, I can't go to war, and I refuse to send anyone else." Jeanette Rankin

"I think extreme heterosexuality is a perversion." Margaret Mead

"I learned that women were smart and capable, could live in community together without men, and in fact did not need men much." Anna Quindlen

"A girl can wait for the right man to come along but in the meantime that still doesn't mean she can't have a wonderful time with all the wrong ones." Cher

"The only jobs for which no man is qualified are human incubators and wet nurse. Likewise, the only job for which no woman is or can be qualified is sperm donor." Wilma Scott Heide

"In twenty years, I've never had a day when I didn't have to think about someone else's needs. And this means the writing has to be fitted around it." Alice Munro

"But oh, what a woman I should be if an able young man would consecrate his life to me as secretaries and technicians do to their men employers." Mable Ulrich

"I have bursts of being a lady, but it doesn't last long." Shelley Winters

"No day is so bad it can't be fixed by a nap." Carrie Snow