booktastic

The title of this blog does not refer to my moving-out-of-my-apartment day, but to the fact that I am moving this blog to a different provider:

http://booksandwich.blogspot.com

Please update your links! Thanks! – Mrs. Hall

I think, as a reader, I would have to say that the worst part of moving is moving my books.

Not that I’m terribly anal about them or worried they’re going to get battered on the trip… Well, maybe there’s a touch of that. Just a touch. But that’s not the worst thing. The Worst Thing is that they take up so much space and are so freaking heavy once they’re packed. I mean, look at my collection here…

Granted, it’s only four or five boxes. Not a big deal… if each of them didn’t way somewhere in the area of TWO HUNDRED POUNDS.

Someone please remind us to rent a dolly with the truck. Either that or someone recommend a good physical therapist who can help us rehabilitate from the injuries we are going to suffer trying to move these things…  — Mrs. Hall

I made a mistake tonight. This is the third time that I have babysat Miss A.V.S. Each time I have babysat, I brought a book. The first time, although I brought a book, I didn’t have an opportunity to open it because she was a baby proper - I was watching her constantly. The second time I babysat her, I brought a book. It looked like I was going to get to read it after she fell asleep. However, she didn’t fall asleep - she got over-tired and I had to hold her and carry her around the house for a half an hour while she threw an over-tired tantrum.

This is the book I was going to bring tonight. I’m supposed to be reading it so that I can review it for the publisher. (Isn’t it pretty?)

However, as I was getting ready to leave and throwing things into my tote bag, I thought to myself, “Who am I kidding? I’m not going to have an opportunity to read.” So, I left the book at home.

You know where this is going, don’t you? At nine o’clock sharp, my charge fell sound asleep. Her parents don’t get home until eleven, so I’ve got two absolutely empty hours to myself. The one time I would have got a chance to read is the one time I didn’t bring a book!!!

Oh well. As you can see, it gave me a chance to catch up on my blogging. (Thank goodness Miss A.V.S.’s parents have an internet connection or I would be totally out of luck. I might have been forced to watch television - shudder). And I should have plenty of time to read this book, since the only thing I’m doing in the next few weeks is packing up boxes (my temp job ended on Thursday and now I’m moving).

But trust me not to bring a book the ONE time that I would actually have had an opportunity to read it. And, of course, the next time I babysit I suspect I will bring a book - and have no opportunity to read. Because that is how These Things Work. — Mrs. Hall

I’ve posted this once before on one of my previous blogs… but it’s worth posting again. Some time back I was in the process of applying to a Graduate school’s English program, and I noticed that they had a recommended list of reading you were supposed to have completed before enrolling in the undergraduate English program (i.e. in High School.) As an exercise, why not check and see if you are ready to enroll in a undergraduate level English course by crossing off the materials below that you’ve already read? (Um. I’m apparently almost ready.)

Just to be all open and above-board, I’ll mark the ones I’ve already read with a smiley face.

 ~~~~

READING LIST: HIGH SCHOOL

Fiction

Alcott, Louisa May. Little Women

Bronte, Charlotte. Jane Eyre

Bronte, Emily. Wuthering Heights

Carroll, Lewis. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Through the Looking Glass

Cather, Willa. My Antonia or Death Comes to the Archbishop (I read “O Pioneers!” which evidently wasn’t important enough for the list)

Cooper, James Fenimore. The Last of the Mohicans

Crane, Stephen. The Red Badge of Courage

Defoe, Daniel. Robinson Crusoe

Dickens, Charles. Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, A Tale of Two Cities

Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan. Some Sherlock Holmes stories

Eliot, George. Silas Marner (again, I missed out: I read “Middlemarch” instead)

Fitzgerald, F. Scott The Great Gatsby

Golding, William. Lord of the Flies (I refuse to ever read this book)

Hansberry, Lorraine. A Raisin in the Sun

Harte, Bret. “The Luck of Roaring Camp,” “Tennessee’s Partner”

Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Scarlet Letter, “The Minister’s Black Veil”

Hemingway, Ernest. The Old Man and the Sea, A Farewell to Arms (I read “A Moveable Feast” instead)

Huxley, Aldous. Brave New World

Irving, Washington. “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” “Rip Van Winkle”

London, Jack. The Call of the Wild

Maugham, Somerset. Of Human Bondage

Melville, Herman. Billy Budd, Benito Cereno

Orwell, George. Animal Farm

Poe, Edgar Allan. “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” “The Masque of the Red Death,” “The Fall of the House of Usher,” “The Purloined Letter,” “The Cask of Amontillado”

Salinger, J.D. The Catcher in the Rye

Scott, Sir Walter. A novel (Waverly, Rob Roy), Ivanhoe

Shakespeare, William. Julius Caesar, Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth

Swift, Jonathan. Gulliver’s Travels

Steinbeck, John. Of Mice and Men or The Pearl

Stevenson, Robert Louis. Treasure Island, Kidnapped or Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Twain, Mark. Tom Sawyer or The Prince and the Pauper

Wells, H.G. War of the Worlds or The Time Machine

Wright, Richard. Black Boy

Poetry

Arnold, Matthew. “DoverBeach”

Browning, Robert. “My Last Duchess”

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”

de la Mare, Walter. “The Listeners”

Dickinson, Emily. “Because I Could Not Stop for Death,” “I Like to See It Lap the Miles”

FitzGerald, Edward. The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

Frost, Robert. “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” “Mending Wall,” “The Death of the Hired Man,” “The Road Not Taken,” “Birches”

Gray, Thomas. “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard”

Housman, A.E. “To an Athlete Dying Young,” “When I Was One and Twenty”

Hunt, Leigh. “Abou Ben Adhem”

Keats, John. “Eve of St. Agnes,” “La Belle Dame Sans Merci,” “To Autumn”

Kipling, Rudyard. “A Ballad of East and West,” “Mandalay”

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth. “The Village Blacksmith,” “Paul Revere’s Ride,” The Song of Hiawatha

Marvell, Andrew. “To His Coy Mistress”

Poe, Edgar Allan. “The Raven,” “The Bells,” “Annabel Lee,” “To Helen”

Sandburg, Carl. “Chicago,” “Grass”

Shelley, Percy Bysshe. “Ozymandias”

Tennyson, Alfred. “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” “Crossing the Bar”

Whitman, Walt. “I Hear America Singing,” “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry,” “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d”

Wordsworth, William. “My Heart Leaps Up,” “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud”

~~~

Well, that’s the list. I’m contemplating now whether I should embarrass myself by showing how well I scored on the list of books you’re supposed to have read before enrolling in a graduate level course. — Mrs. Hall

I was harassing Mr. Hall a few minutes ago about getting behind on his blogging (he maintains the Toys 365 blog) when it suddenly struck me that I’ve let mine get away from me, too.

Of course, life has been rather interesting this past week or so. Our lease is up at the end of this month and we’re moving to a different state. This is a rather big change of course, and my mind is not unlike a several-years-old computer… You start up a new program, and then suddenly the whole thing sloooowwsss dowwwwnnnn.

So I haven’t been reading. I haven’t even been listening to books. Well, I have, but I’ve been doing it with a distinct lack of enthusiasm.

I’ve been listening to The Camelot Caper by Elizabeth Peters. None of the Agatha Christie novels I wanted were available for download, so I clicked through the “If you liked ___, you will also like…” buttons (past dozens of Agatha Christie novels, I might add. So, Computer, so you think that if I enjoyed Agatha Christie I might like MORE Agatha Christie? What a deduction!!) until I came across this book. It’s apparently a parody of Gothic romance novels tied together with a mystery, which is not an unpromising combo. (I’ve only read one Gothic romance, Wuthering Heights, but I did enjoy it.) So, despite its rather crappy title, I downloaded The Camelot Caper.

The Plot: The heroine, whatshername, has been invited from America by her estranged grandfather to come to jolly old England and visit him before he dies. And bring the family heirloom ring, he adds. So she goes and almost as soon as getting off the plane she finds herself accosted by a mysterious man who seems to want to rob her or accost her in some way. He follows her around town until revealing his motive: he wants the ring. Well, she meets up with a skinny, big-nosed author of Gothic novels and they chase across England, avoiding and getting into scrapes and trying to figure out the significance of the ring.

Oh, it’s been light and enjoyable so far (I’m over 3/4 of the way through), but my heart just hasn’t been in it for the past few chapters. I don’t know why - maybe I’ve just been too distracted to really get into the book. I know that’s the problem I’ve been having with Dying for Chocolate - which, yes, I am still reading, one or two pages at a time. I got to a section in the book where not much was happening and got stuck.

I think our move is going to go relatively smoothly, so hopefully my brain will speed up again soon and I’ll be able to blog regularly on my bountiful reading. I had such a good momentum at the beginning of this year - I don’t want to lose it! — Mrs. Hall

P.S. Come to think of it, I really need to get back on track as far as reading goes - the mail yesterday brought not one but TWO books that I have to review in this blog. Not just for fun, mind you, but because I’m actually professionally employed to do so. Hooray for being a professional writer!

I was once in an Agatha Christie play; possibly her most famous play, The Mousetrap. I was featured as Molly, the young housewife (and, if I may say so without blushing too much, the ingenue of the play). It was an enjoyable experience, so it may come as somewhat of a surprise that, until last year (some eight years after the production of said play) - I had never, ever read an Agatha Christie novel.

I don’t know why. Possibly because I tend to avoid things that are overly popular on the supposition that “if everybody likes it, it can’t be any good” (a supposition that proves itself at least partially wrong when you consider the popularity of things like chocolate.)

But then I suddenly picked one up last year. I suppose it has to do with this mystery kick that I’ve been on: I was at the bookstore near where I worked at the time (Mustard Seed Christian Books - an unpromising name for a bookstore that I actually came to sincerely enjoy visiting) picking up a couple theological texts, when I happened to notice a copy of the Agatha Christie novel Murder at Hazelmoor (also published as The Murder at Sittaford) on the discount rack.

One dollar, it was tagged. I picked it up - it looked like a quick read, it was a mystery, and one couldn’t beat the price in this area of the world - so I threw it upon my stack of Thomas Mertons and beat a hasty retreat.

Oddly, of all the books I had picked up at that store, that was the one I was the most curious about… possibly because it was the one book I knew the least about. I had cracked it open and read the first couple pages before I even finished my lunch break that day.

The plot, as I recall it, is this: a group of people are at a dinner party and decide to have a seance (as they just randomly did in those days). It’s all fun and games until the “spirit” announces that a certain acquaintance of the group has just been murdered - which rather casts a pall over the party. Distressed, one of the party goers goes to check on the friend, and discovers that he has, indeed, just been murdered.

I wouldn’t say that Murder at Hazelmoor was the greatest work of fiction I’ve ever encountered - but it was an enjoyable book. Exciting in spots, intriguing in spots, and the mystery was fundamental to the plot (an issue I take with lots of modern mystery novels, as I’ve mentioned before, is that the mystery is almost incidental to the plot). It was good, light mystery reading.

However, despite my enjoyment of this book and the volume of Agatha Christie’s work, it has taken me several months to pick up another one… possibly because I really didn’t know where to start. I abhor reading books out of sequence, so I had to do some research before I could start with Miss Marple or Hercule Poirot. I picked up a Poirot novel a few months back under the impression that it was the first, and quickly discovered that it was not - and had to lay it aside as a consequence.

However, this year I am making solid progress. I found a book that was the first of three in a series by Christie - The Secret Adversary, a “Tommy and Tuppence” book. (Christie evidently only did three books featuring the characters of Tommy and Tuppence - a pity, as I rather enjoyed the characters in this first book.) I followed this up immediately with Murder at the Vicarage, the FIRST Miss Marple novel, which I have almost finished.

I suppose the point of this meandering is that Agatha Christie novels really are good. Oh, not good in the “well-honed brilliant writing” kind of good - in sheer writing quality I would say they are above average, but only just - but they are good mysteries. She keeps you guessing, gives you clues, eggs you on, lays out red herrings… and so far, of each book I’ve read, some aspect of the resolution has come as a surprise. I may have guessed the murderer once or twice - but something else still took me unawares, so I have to give her credit.

I guess that here is another instance of something being deservedly popular.

C.S. Lewis once said that faith is bound to undergo a pattern of “peaks and troughs”; i.e. times when you feel particularly attuned and connected to God, and times when you just feel flat and everything religious is a struggle.

I’ve been in something of a reading trough lately.

I’ve kept up my good momentum for this month… until a few days ago. I have just finished Agatha Christie’s The Secret Adversary, which I enjoyed. I started reading Shepherds Abiding (Jan Karon) and am still reading Dying for Chocolate - which, up until a few days ago, I was enjoying reading.

Then, suddenly, it hit me. I tried to read Shepherds Abiding on my way to work, and found myself hit by a wave of motion-sickness (which hasn’t bugged me in weeks). On the way home, I started to open Dying for Chocolate… and found I couldn’t get up the gumption to open the book.

I haven’t done any reading at all since then. Pathetic, hm? Hence my dearth of blogging on the subject this week and part of last week.

Until I get back on track, enjoy this video.

“As drastic as it may appear, God will actually allow a person to experience hell on earth, in hopes of awakening his faith. A holy love makes the tough choice to release the child to the consequence of his actions.” - Max Lucado, p. 42

Max Lucado wrote this book, For the Tough Times, for people experiencing any kind of tough time, from having general anxiety about money to grieving over a loved one.

This is a very short book - 79 pages, and the print isn’t tiny, while the pages are - so while Mr. Lucado tackles a very complex topic, he really doesn’t have the room to do more than scratch the surface. He tackles grief, revenge, suffering, worrying - but each of those topics would be enough for a book in themselves. He dissects a few Bible quotes (”Yet what shall I choose? I do not know! I am torn between the two: I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far,”) making sure to put the distinctly Protestant spin on them (”What Paul is saying here is that the moment he departs or dies, that very moment he is with the Christ.” [p.75] Completely at odds with the Catholic notion of Purgatory of course… and not really supported by the scripture he quoted since it just says he wants to be with Christ, not that he’s immediately going to be with him), makes a point about the subject, (for instance, on Revenge, “Would you like some peace? Then quit giving your neighbor such a hassle,” and yes, that is a real quote from this book,) and then moves swiftly on to the next subject.

This book may be appropriate for somebody who is worried about money, or anxious about the environment, or abstract things like war and suffering. It may even be a good introduction book for somebody who has never, ever contemplated the deeper religious meanings of things like suffering and pain - who is not actually experiencing deep suffering and pain at the time.

However, I wouldn’t even think of giving this book to someone who had lost a spouse or a child - you know, deep pain. If I had just lost Mr. Hall, I would find the tone of this book lightweight and flippant - if not a trifle insulting. (”Cheer up, stupid. God loves you.”) Times of deep pain that deserve a more serious, in-depth discussion of pain and suffering. C.S. Lewis’s A Grief Observed, Victor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning, or parts of Thomas Merton’s The Seven Storey Mountain. I would especially not give this book to someone who someone in deep suffering who was new to the concepts expressed in this book, because I don’t think it would be an appropriate introduction.

Okay, this may seem kind of harsh. I’ve told you what I wouldn’t do with this book and what it isn’t. But, really, what this book is is a brief discussion of a few subjects related to anxiety and suffering; I don’t think this book was intended to be an in-depth treatise on the subject of suffering, or else it would have probably been a bit more than seventy pages long.

So, again: if you know someone who is in real pain, please, give them a more serious book. I think this would be a decent, lightweight book to give to someone who was experiencing mild anxiety about life, or worrying about a concerning abstract concept.  — Mrs. Hall

Somehow in the course of the first ten days of the year I have finished not one, not two, but four books. This is not because I have become an astoundingly voracious reader with the beginning of ‘09 - but because I had quite a few books already under way on January 1st. (Shh, don’t tell).

Well, that and the fact that two of the books were rather insubstantial. The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus was only a hundred-something pages, and big print at that.

The Salmon of Doubt was not as insubstantial as that - technically speaking. It was about the length of a regular book. However, I found the description of the book (implying that it was the last Dirk Gently novel) entirely misleading: the majority of the book is made up of bits and snips, articles, forwards, introductions and the like, all written by Douglas Adams. There are exactly four chapters of the lost Dirk Gently novel, leaving us with a tantalizing non-ending while the story is still substantially and confusingly underway. Following the chapters are a brief summary of the planned book by Adams; a summary which gave us more details about how the story went but not how things finished up. So while I did enjoy those four chapters (they reminded me of what fun I had reading the first two Dirk Gently books, and made me sad that there won’t be any new adventures) - it was more tantalizing than anything else.

Incidentally, who else thinks that the cover of the book pictured here (describing this as “Hitchhiking the galaxy one last time”) is extremely misleading as well??

All and all, I would not advise Adams fans to go out of their way to pick this book up. Maybe, if you want to read a prolongued tribute to Douglas Adams, are interested in his non-fiction work and aren’t bothered by incomplete stories, you could look it up… but if you want a new complete Dirk Gently novel (or are misled by the cover into thinking that this is a last Hitchhiker novel) you can totally give it a miss. — Mrs. Hall

Well, today is the official last day of Christmas by the Catholic calendar (we celebrate Christmas officially on the 24th through the day of Christ’s Baptism, which this year falls on the 11th of January. This gave us an awkward 18 days of Christmas, but who can really complain about a couple extra days of Christmas? Mr. Hall and I were rather sad to discard our beloved tree and pack all the festive decorations away…)

But, in deference to the last day of Christmas, I have one last Christmas offering for you:  The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus by Julie Lane. This is distinct and different from The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus by L. Frank Baum (in spite of the identical names). I finished reading this one yesterday by the lingering light of our last Christmas tree’d night for the next twelve months.

As could probably be gathered from the title, this book is an account of Santa Claus’s life. It describes how the “filling the stockings” tradition came about, how the plant holly got named and put to its use, how he wound up with a red suit, sleigh, reindeer and so on.  It goes all the way from his tragic beginning (his parents and little sister all died in one night) to his own sad but miraculous end (yes, he does die at the end!)

There are some odd elements to the book. It was published (originally) in 1932, and is rather “of its time period” at times - like when young Nicholas’ father see Nicholas making his little sister a doll and complains to his wife, “Eh, Mother… I’d rather see Nicholas down at the boats with me learning to mend a net than fussing with little girls’ toys and forever carrying Katje about with him. ‘Tisn’t naturual for a boy to be so…”

My biggest problem with the book, however, is that it is essentially a realistic fictional account of Santa’s life. Why not, you ask? Well, if you want a realistic account of Santa’s life, why not just write a factual biography of the real St. Nicholas? Writing a realistic but fictional account just seems to be an (inadvertent) attempt to muddy the waters.

I’m not saying this is a terrible book. Quite the opposite - it was cute and had its charming moments, and I daresay child readers might enjoy it. It even had “discussion questions” after each chapter (which I must say I did find a bit odd, since this isn’t a factual, historical book) to increase the enjoyment and understanding of the book, I assume. If you’re a Christmas aficionado, you should probably check it out.

And with this review, the Christmas season of 08-09 comes to a close. I hope it was a good one for you! — Mrs. Hall