In the Meantime

I actually haven't been reading too much in the last couple of months. I did listen to the audio of my favorite books of all times; The His Dark Materials trilogy by Philip Pullman. The third book, The Amber Spyglass is among the top five books I have ever read. The audio version was very well done. It was narrated by Philip Pullman and read by a full cast.

I also just finished the unabridged audio of How the Irish Saved Civilization by Thomas Cahill. It was very interesting, if perhaps a bit overstated.

Other than that, the reading department has been very disappointing. For a while, I was trying to read Wicked:The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire. We saw the musical a few months ago, and it was fantastic. I wanted to read the book to get a fuller picture of the story, but I just can't get into it. So, I have put it aside.

Now, I am trying very hard to read Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke. It is good, but I haven't had any concentrated time in which to really sit down with it. John Paul loved the book, and doesn't want me to listen to the unabridged audio but to read the story myself so as to have a pure experience with the story. That's all well and good, but I have basically two hours a day in which to listen to books but only about 15 minutes a day, during lunch, in which to read a book. So, out of loyalty to my husband, I am reading Jonathan Strange 15 minutes and 5 pages a day. If you are unfamiliar, the book is 800!! pages long, so this is probably the only book I will be reading for the next eight months or so.

However, I have checked out a slew of audio books. I put a bunch on reserve as they came to my attention, and they all became available at the same time. I haven't quite decided what to do about that. Included among these are Villette by Charlotte Bronte, The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon, Don't Know Much About History by Kenneth C Davis, and Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by Jared Diamond. They are all unabridged, so it makes a might mountain of minutes.

Well then

This really has been a bit of a failure as a blog. I very much wanted to be keeping a list of everything I read. I had high hopes that a blog would be the perfect format for such a list. Easy-schmeasy. But, no, it didn't work out that way. Maybe this year will be better.

Now, I will try to remember some of what I read, but failed to document, last year. The only problem with checking out books from the library is that there is no record. You can't look back on your bookshelf to remember what you have read. My library record only notes books I accrued fines for; not too helpful. Hmm....

The books I can remember:

The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova (I loved this book!!)
The Giant's House: A Romance by Elizabeth Mccracken
The Dante Club by Matthew Pearl
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Locked Rooms by Laurie King (The most recent Mary Russell novel; a series I quite enjoy)
Olivia Joules and the Overactive Imagination by Helen Fielding
Every Secret Thing by Laura Lippman
By a Spider's Thread also by Laura Lippman

Among the Children's/Young Adult books I read (or re-read) are:

The Chronicles of Narnia by CS Lewis (in the original order (^_^) )
Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren
The Penultimate Peril by Lemony Snicket
Matilda by Roald Dahl
Trixie Belden #01: The Secret of the Mansion and Trixie Belden #2: The Red Trailer Mystery by Julie Campbell (These were my favorite books in fifth and sixth grade! They are much better than Nancy Drew.)
The Dark Hills Divide and Beyond the Valley of the Thorns by Patrick Carman
Gregor the Overlander by Suzanne Collins
Gathering Blue by Lois Lowry


I am currently reading Stormwitch by Susan Vaught, a Young Adult novel. It is about a 16 year old girl who comes from Haiti to Pass Christian, Mississippi in 1969, bringing with her traditional beliefs about African ancestors and battling storms. I am enjoying it thus far. It also seems to discuss the tension between the nonviolent civil rights movement and the emergence of the black power movement.

I have currently checked out:

Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke
Wicked:The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire (We saw the musical a couple of months ago and it was fantastic!)
Villette by Charlotte Bronte
Women Who Run with the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype by Clarissa Pinkola Estes
Boiling Point: How Politicians, Big Oil and Coal, Journalists, and Activists Have Fueled the Climate Crisis and What We Can Do to Avert Disaster by Ross Gelbspan

Thursday 19, 8:50 am
Some more books remembered.

Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim by David Sedaris
Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal by Eric Schlosser
Peter and the Starcatchers by Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson
Whales on Stilts: M. T. Anderson's Thrilling Tales by M. T. Anderson

Busy

I love Harry Potter! What else is there to say? Well, a lot, if you have already read it, but if you haven't, I don't want to spoil it for you. Let me know when you're ready to speculate on everything.

Since I finished The Half-Blood Prince, I have started over on the series, and am re-reading The Sorcerer's Stone at the moment. I also listened to the unabridged audio of Eragon by Christopher Paolini. He was just 15 when he started writing the book, and 17 when it was finished. It is obvious that it was written by a teen, but it is a book for teens, so that is fine. The story is rather derivative and choppy in places, but I found it relatively entertaining. Still, it is not nearly as good as Goose Girl (I know- will I shut about Goose Girl already? I am very disappointed that I failed in my attempt to persuade my 13-year-old, animal-loving, fantasy-reading cousin to read Goose Girl. You, dear reader, are suffering for this disappointment. Sorry.)

An interesting problem with The Chronicles of Narnia has come to my attention. For years, the series was labeled with the order of publication.

1. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (1950)
2. Prince Caspian(1951)
3. The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (1952)
4. The Silver Chair (1953)
5. The Horse and His Boy (1954)
6. The Magicians Nephew(1955)
7. The Last Battle (1956)

To me, this allowed the reader to experience a gradual unfolding of the mysteries of Narnia. I think The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe is the only place to start. However, in recent years, publishers have re-ordered the series into chronological order within the story. The re-ordering comes from a reply C.S. Lewis wrote to a little boy, agreeing that one could read them in chronological order as the boy wished to.

1. The Magicians Nephew
2. The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe
3. The Horse and His Boy
4. Prince Caspian
5. The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
6. The Silver Chair
7. The Last Battle

I agree with the conclusions of the author of previously linked discussion.

"My own opinion? One of the things that Narnia 'is' is Lewis's own internal never-never land. He sends child-versions of himself into a landscape (not really a 'world' in Tolkein's sense) which is full of every image, every theme, every thing, he ever loved as a child: dressed animals and mythology and knights in armour and sea voyages and 'joy' and the hatred of school and a slight undercurrent of cruelty and hovering at the edges, working his way in, and finally becoming the central, unifying motif, Jesus Christ. To read it as strict allegory loses that. To read it as imaginary history, looses that. I think that what the 'Publicationists' are saying is that you should allow yourself to read the books in that way—that is part of their charm. I think that what the 'Chronologists' are saying is that you should read it as history and allegory—that is part of their charm.

"And they are both right. The 'publicationist' tends to make the books more arbitrary, more contradictory, less 'sub-creationist' than they actually are. The 'chronologist' makes them more unified, more consistent, and more strictly allegorical than they really are.

"Indeed, there is a similar problem with applying the word 'allegory' to Narnia in the first place. Saying 'Aslan is Jesus' misses the point of the books: Aslan works precisely because he is not Jesus—because there are no stained glass windows and teachers and stupid hymns telling us we ought to love him. Saying 'Aslan is not Jesus, it's just a story, just a fantasy, just entertainment' (as one contributer to the C.S Lewis usenet group did) misses the point in just the opposite way. Aslan both is and is not Jesus; the books both do and do not have order."

With the movie coming out, there are many children (and their parents) in the library looking for the Narnia books. I have tried on several different occasions to discuss with parents the question of reading order. They listen to my explanations, but then insist on reading them in the new order; "Mmm, OK.... I want The Magician's Nephew. It is the first book."

In fact, the head librarian here told me that when the publishers first printed the books with the new order, all of the county's children's librarians were up in arms. They initially thought it was a misprint and wanted to return all of the volumes to the publishers. I wish they had done that. I think publishers should just print the books unnumbered and let people decide for themselves.

Verdict on The Eyre Affair

I just finished The Eyre Affair and I thought it was quite good. It was a cute story with a quirky reality. In fact, the alternative present is what I enjoyed most about this book. It was a quick and entertaining read, but I never felt as though I really got into the story. Unlike the characters in the story, I never felt myself pulled fully into the narrative; rather, I maintained a surface relationship with the characters and their story. Nonetheless, it was still an enjoyable story.

The Past Few Months

Well, I have been reading quite a bit the past few months. I am having trouble remembering all of what I've read (which was part of the point of my creating this blog.) Oh well. I'll tell you about what I can remember.

On the recommendation of Mr. Rich Radke, I am currently enjoying The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde. I have just started, but am already quite caught up in the story. It is set in an alternate recent past: Great Britain in 1985. Time travel is possible, Literature dominates the culture (instead of proselytizing Latter Day Saints, they have fanatical Baconians knocking on doors trying to convince people that Francis Bacon, not Shakespeare, was responsible for those works), and Britain is still warring with Imperial Russia in the Crimean War. Fforde was a bit heavy handed naming his characters, which is slightly distracting, but the story is great so far.

Thursday Next is a Special Operative agent in Literary Detection. She gets caught up in a very strange and secretive mess following the theft of an original Charles Dickens manuscript. I don't know quite where the story is going, but I am looking forward to following.

I am also listening to the Audiobook of Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman. And, yes, I do think unabridged audiobooks are books. Feynman sure was a character. I really enjoyed his stories of pre-war academic life at MIT and Princeton, and his time at Los Alamos breaking into filing cabinets and safes. His intentional lack of political consciousness disturbed me a little bit. I mean, there he is creating the atomic bomb and he doesn't really dwell on the consequences. He mentions that you get caught up in the practicalities of the project and forget about the meaning, but he doesn't expand his thoughts on the issue. And, later, he says that he decided you can't be responsible for the world, so he just dismisses political and social issues. I find it unsettling. He's right, it would help you sleep better and have more fun, but is it really the best thing for the world? Feynman has important insights into the failures of math and science education (in Brazil and the US in the 80s or before), but he just points them out and dismisses them. I would say the same problems remain with us today. I must say, his jokes are quite funny and his life whimsical and joyful. I'm not sure his slight misogynism provides a great example for young men, but eh? Anyway, it is a very interesting book.

Previous to this, I read the not-so successful The Genesis Code by John Case. Like the ever-popular Dan Brown novels, this was a Catholic conspiracy thriller, for which I am a sucker. While I found Case's writing to be much stronger than Brown's, the story was just as flimsy. I foresaw the story's "terrible twist" within the first ten pages. It made the next 470 pages rather frustrating. I did try to talk myself out of believing that that was the plot twist, as it was so ridiculous; but, alas. I keep hoping for another Foucault's Pendulum. Such greatness is not easy to come by.

Recently, I also read Enna Burning, the sequel to the fantastic Goose Girl. I was less impressed with Enna. This was a much darker book. This story focuses on her best friend, Enna, who learns to speak to and control fire. Here, the gifts of talking with nature came to be a curse, nearly destroying the characters who have this power. I guess it speaks to the danger of imbalance; allowing one "gift" to overwhelm you can consume your true character. Shannon Hale writes well, with great description and imagination, but this story just didn't come off as well as her first.

Simultaneously, I was re-reading the first two Artemis Fowl books via audiobook. If you haven't read Artemis Fowl and The Arctic Incident, I highly recommend them. A co-worker described them as James Bond meets Harry Potter. It is about a devious adolescent mastermind who gets mixed up with the fairy police. They are great stories.

I am ashamed to say that I haven't yet read the third or fourth in the series. I was re-reading the first two to work into the rest, but then got distracted with other things. And, now it is time to re-read the Harry Potter books in preparation for July 16th!! If you haven't already, be sure to check out J. K. Rowling's pretty cool website.

Goose Girl

Goose Girl is a fantastic retelling of the Grimms's Fairy Tale by the same name. Ani is a young princess who finds easy friends among birds and horses but is socially awkward in human company. Not good for a Crown Princess. Among the royal household, she finds acceptance only from her father, the king. When he dies, her younger brother is unexpectedly made Crown Prince and, in order to seal an alliance, Ani is sent off to marry a neighboring prince she knows nothing about. During the long journey, she is betrayed by her only friend and many of her soldiers. Ani escapes to become a goose girl in the palace of the kingdom she was to have ruled. She must must learn how to trust herself and her new friends in order to save the kingdom from war and reclaim her throne.


Goose Girl was a 2004 Texas Lone Star book, recommended by the Texas Library Association for children between sixth and eigth grade. Shannon Hale creates an excellent re-telling of this classic fairy tale. I love the idea that people can learn the language of nature if they open themselves to it. The magical, Hale's timeless world is so appealing and her charcters are full of life. It is easy to get swept up in Ani's journey to self-discovery.

Also, I don't know why, just love these crackle paintings!! The book was illustrated by Alison Jay, created by oil painting on paper and applying a crackling varnish. Alison Jay also illustrated I Took the Moon for a Walk and the beautiful If Kisses Were Colors.

I Took the Moon for a Walk

I have been very impressed with all of the children's books published by Barefoot Books, an an independent children’s publisher started in England. I Took the Moon for a Walk by Carolyn Curtis, from March of this year, is one of my favorites. It is about a little boy who goes out walking with the moon. It starts:

I took the Moon for a walk last night.
It followed behind like a still summer kite,
Though there wasn't a string or a tail in sight
when I took the Moon for a walk.

The text is gentle and lovely, and the illustrations beautiful. The book vividly reminds me of childhood rides in the car at night, and my own wonder and facination with how the moon could travel along with us. The book successfully captures the absolute delight in the natural world all children feel. If only more people would encourage these explorations in the children they know.

Age suggestions:
Read Alone: 6-8
Read Together: 3-5