2007 ... My first post was about Jhumpa Lahiri's The Namesake. 2008 ... I missed my "end of January" blogiversary by a day. 2009 ... I completely missed the day because I was sick enough to require open-heart surgery. 2010 ... I nailed the day with a blogiversary post. 2011 ... I went to church and remembered to post about my blogiversary. 2012 ... I now know how to schedule this to post at "1:30 AM" to match the 1-30 date.
Is this progress? I think so. Now let's look ahead at what's best, according to you, the readers of this blog. Which (if any) of these interest you? By clicking on the links, you can look over the various features I've tried, listed in alphabetical order.
Leave a comment with the NUMBER of the ones you like, unless you prefer to write it out. You may put the numbers in order, listing the features you like best before the less liked ones. What would you like more of? For you dedicated readers, tell me what you like about a feature — or about the blog in general.
I have a stack of library books still to read, but I may set them aside to read one of the books Donna has put in my hands. Yesterday, she handed me Room by Emma Donoghue (2010), which I could call library loot, since I picked it up for her the other day when I was at the library getting my own books.
To five-year-old-Jack, Room is the world. It's where he was born, it's where he and his Ma eat and sleep and play and learn. At night, his Ma shuts him safely in the wardrobe, where he is meant to be asleep when Old Nick visits. Room is home to Jack, but to Ma it's the prison where she has been held for seven years. Through her fierce love for her son, she has created a life for him in this eleven-by-eleven-foot space. But with Jack's curiosity building alongside her own desperation, she knows that Room cannot contain either much longer.
The other book is The Last Week by Marcus J. Borg and John Dominic Crossan (2006), which is the February choice for her book club. Since I'm considering joining that group, I should probably read the book, especially since I think these writers are excellent, whether writing alone or together.
Borg and Crossan discovered that many Christians are unclear on the details of events during the week leading up to Jesus's crucifixion. Using the gospel of Mark as their guide, Borg and Crossan present a day-by-day account of Jesus's final week of life. They begin their story on Palm Sunday with two triumphal entries into Jerusalem. The first entry, that of Roman governor Pontius Pilate leading Roman soldiers into the city, symbolized military strength. The second heralded a new kind of moral hero who was praised by the people as he rode in on a humble donkey. Jesus is this new moral hero, a more dangerous Jesus than the one enshrined in the church's traditional teachings. The Last Week depicts Jesus giving up his life to protest power without justice and to condemn the rich who lack concern for the poor.
Have you read either of these books? What do you think? Should I read one of these or one of the seven I still have checked out from the library?
The Book Thief ~ by Markus Zusak, 2006, YA fiction (Germany) ~ due 1-31
Gilgamesh ~ by Joan London, 2003, fiction (Australia and Armenia) ~ due 1-31
"Why did the chicken cross the road?" Google helped me find some answers and even more humorous pictures. One web site has a Chickens Crossing lesson plan for drawing and writing sentences, along with this video of what children have come up with:
My favorite on this video is the chicken who crossed the road "to rescue his girlfriend from Colonel Sanders." Elsewhere online, I found out the chicken (or should it be chickens, plural?) crossed the road "to show the possum it could be done." Captain James T. Kirk says, "To boldly go where no chicken has gone before." A cartoon showed a hen telling a duck, "To be perfectly honest, I cross the road to get away from my husband." Here's a link to lots of answers, from people like Darwin and Moses and Martin Luther King, Jr., who is quoted by this cartoon chicken:
By the way, you do know that a chicken crossing the road is poultry in motion, right? Okay, it's a pun, but I like puns — because I like to play with words. So here's a compound pun by Richard Whately that I simply must share with you:
"Why can a man never starve in the Great Desert? Because he can eat the sand which is there. But who brought the sand which is there? Noah sent Ham, and his descendants mustered and bred."
Get it? Sand-which-is? Musterd? Bred? Oh, and maybe I should mention that Noah's sons are named Shem, Ham, and Japheth (see Genesis 6:10).
Jamey at the Pocket Wilderness near Montlake yesterday
Another view with Jamey taken yesterday
Earlier this week, Jamey called me from the University and came by my house on his way home from classes. We talked a bit, then went to Wendy's for lunch — I love their salads and he had a burger. I ask you, can anything be grander than taking a handsome grandson to lunch when he chose to come visit on his own?
Last Saturday, as Kiki told you, my friend Ginny was in town from Tallahassee to take part with these other clarinet players in an all-day rehearsal and workshop at the University. I attended the excellent Clarinet Concert which followed their long day. Ginny is wearing red, on the left edge of the photo. The official photo is posted online here.
Saturday Snapshot is a meme hosted by Alyce from At Home With Books. To participate, post a photo taken by you (or a friend or family member). Your photo can be old or new, as long as its subject is appropriate for all eyes to see. Check out snapshots others are sharing this week.
Flooding in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, 2005
Zeitoun ~ by Dave Eggers, 2009, history (Louisiana), 10/10
On moonless nights the men and boys of Jableh, a dusty fishing town on the coast of Syria, would gather their lanterns and set out in their quietest boats. Five or six small craft, two or three fishermen in each. A mile out, they would arrange the boats in a circle on the black sea, drop their nets, and, holding their lanterns over the water, they would approximate the moon.
The fish, sardines, would begin gathering soon after, a slow mass of silver rising from below. The fish were attracted to plankton, and the plankton were attracted to the light. They would begin to circle, a chain linked loosely, and over the next hour their numbers would grow. The black gaps between silver links would close until the fishermen could see, below, a solid mass of silver spinning.
This "book beginning" is going to segue right into a book review because I could not stop reading. I started late, but read all night. I needed sleep, but I needed to know what came next even more. So I kept turning the pages, horrified at what could — and did — happen when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans in 2005.
Abdulrahman Zeitoun comes across as a good man, driven to do good things for others, doing good work, caring about his construction workers and the people who hire him to build, repair, and board up windows. And yet, I was appalled by what happened to this man. I can't really tell you what upsets me, because it would be a spoiler. But I do heartily recommend you read this book. I rate it 10 of 10, which means I couldn't put it down.
Salvage the Bones ~ by Jesmyn Ward, 2011, fiction (Mississippi), 9/10
I'm making this a double review, since the first book I finished in 2012 was also about Hurricane Katrina. This one was set in Mississippi in a pocket of rural poverty, and it is also tough to read and horrifying, but in a different way. Dogs die in both books: in Zeitoun because they were left behind when owners were forced to evacuate, in Salvage the Bones because men trained them for vicious dog fights. I was startled when someone's comment on the book's beginning was "sounds like a cute story." Cute? No, it was not even close to cute. It was an intense story that was well-written, but I didn't enjoy it at all. That does not mean it was not a good story — just that it isn't one I could possibly "enjoy." It was more gut-wrenching than enjoyable, a brutal story. These characters in Salvage the Bones were believable, but I don't think I know anyone quite like them. I rated it 9 of 10.
If you want to play along, this meme is hosted by Katy at A Few More Pages. Share the first sentence or two of the book you are reading. (Sometimes it takes several sentences to get the full thought.) Then, share your impressions of that beginning. Click this link to see what others say about the books they are reading this week.
February is the month for the Twenty-Third National African American Read-In, sponsored by the Black Caucus of the National Council of Teachers of English. Churches, schools, book clubs, and bookstores all over America will get together to read and discuss books by African Americans. Vasilly (1330v), Doret (TheHappyNappyBookseller), and Edi (Crazy Quilt) will host an online read-in. We are invited to vote for the one book of these six we would like the group to read. Vasilly will announce the results on Monday, January 30th. Because I've already read two of the others, I voted for Good Fortune by Noni Carter.
Fences ~ by August Wilson, 1983, play
Garbage collector Troy Maxson clashes with his son over an athletic scholarship. Set in the 1950s, it is the sixth in Wilson's ten-part Pittsburgh Cycle. Like all of the Pittsburgh plays, Fences explores the evolving African-American experience and examines race relations, among other themes. The play won the 1987 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
Good Fortune ~ by Noni Carter, 2010, YA fiction
Ayanna Bahati lives in a small African village when she is brutally kidnapped, along with her brother, and forced onto a slave ship to America. As Ayanna, renamed Anna, rises from the cotton fields to the master’s house, she finds the familial love she’s been yearning for in elderly Mary and Mary’s son Daniel—but she is also faced with more threats to her survival. Risking everything to escape the plantation, Anna manages to make it north and to freedom, eventually settling in the free black community of Hudson, Ohio, and educating herself to become a teacher.
A Lesson Before Dying ~ by Ernest J. Gaines, 1993, fiction
Set in a small Cajun community in the late 1940s, A Lesson Before Dying is a novel of one man condemned to die for a crime he did not commit and a young man who visits him in his cell. In the end, the two men forge a bond as they both come to understand the simple heroism of resisting — and defying — the expected. Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction.
Twelve-year-old Lanesha lives in a tight-knit community in New Orleans' Ninth Ward. She doesn't have a fancy house like her uptown family or lots of friends like the other kids on her street. But what she does have is Mama Ya-Ya, her fiercely loving caretaker, wise in the ways of the world and able to predict the future. So when Mama Ya-Ya's visions show a powerful hurricane — Katrina — fast approaching, it's up to Lanesha to call upon the hope and strength Mama Ya-Ya has given her to help them both survive the storm.
Pull ~ by B. A. Binns, 2010, YA fiction (Illinois)
High school senior David Albacore is dealing with major upheaval after his father murders his mom. In the terrible aftermath, he changes his name and moves to a tough new inner-city Chicago high school with his younger sister Barney, when they and their now silent younger sister, Linda, move in with their aunt. David blames himself for not saving their mom that night; after being injured in a basketball game in which he was the star, David was given strong painkillers, which caused him to sleep through the shooting. Barney, who found their mom's body, is fragile after a hospital stay and is barely able to cope. With their mother gone and their father in jail, David tries to take care of his sisters as they grieve and adjust to a different kind of life. When he's forced to join the basketball team or be expelled after getting in too many fights, it cuts into his after-school construction job that he takes to help his aunt support his family.
Topdog/Underdog ~ by Suzan-Lori Parks, 2001, play
A darkly comic fable of brotherly love and family identity is Suzan-Lori Parks latest riff on the way we are defined by history. The play tells the story of Lincoln and Booth, two brothers whose names were given to them as a joke, foretelling a lifetime of sibling rivalry and resentment. Haunted by the past, the brothers are forced to confront the shattering reality of their future. Winner of the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
Read more about symmetry at Miss Rumphius Effect, where Tricia Stohr-Hunt posted a link to Seeing Symmetry. Loreen Leedy has a book by that title coming out this spring.
Inside Out and Back Again ~ by Thanhha Lai, 2011, children's (Alabama)
"No one would believe me but at times I would choose wartime in Saigon over peacetime in Alabama." For all the ten years of her life, Hà has only known Saigon: the thrills of its markets, the joy of its traditions, the warmth of her friends close by, and the beauty of her very own papaya tree. But now the Vietnam War has reached her home. Hà and her family are forced to flee as Saigon falls, and they board a ship headed toward hope. In America, Hà discovers the foreign world of Alabama: the coldness of its strangers, the dullness of its food, the strange shape of its landscape, and the strength of her very own family. This is the moving story of one girl's year of change, dreams, grief, and healing as she journeys from one country to another, one life to the next. Winner of the 2011 National Book Award for Young People's Literature.
The Knife of Never Letting Go ~ by Patrick Ness, 2008, YA fiction
Todd Hewitt is the only boy in a town of men. Ever since the settlers were infected with the Noise germ, Todd can hear everything the men think, and they hear everything he thinks. Todd is just a month away from becoming a man, but in the midst of the cacophony, he knows that the town is hiding something from him — something so awful Todd is forced to flee with only his dog, whose simple, loyal voice he hears too. With hostile men from the town in pursuit, the two stumble upon a strange and eerily silent creature: a girl. Who is she? Why wasn't she killed by the germ like all the females on New World? Propelled by Todd's gritty narration, readers are in for a white-knuckle journey in which a boy on the cusp of manhood must unlearn everything he knows in order to figure out who he truly is.
Birthday . . .April 20, 2000 Location . . . under the bed Gender. . .female You can whistle and steam can whistle, so why don't you sing in the shower? (random question) Because never, ever under any circumstances would I consider taking a shower! Ewwww! Water is for drinking!
This is what happens to cats who can't hide fast enough when their human is out of control.
Traveling in books
"Within the pages of books I travel to all corners of the world ... and occasionally beyond." – Sheila (Book Journey)
