Here’s a sign I saw in Pompeii. I absolutely love that we cannot throw “rubbish.”
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Monthly Archives: October 2007
New Vox Group: Kid's Lit
Whenever I post about Children’s literature, I’m always hesitant to post it to the 2 reading Vox groups that I’m in, because everyone on there seems to only read adult books. So I’ve created a Vox book group for people who love Children’s literature. There must be at least a handful of us here who enjoy children’s lit, as well as adult lit. Voxers with children who want to post about books their kids love, or ask for/read about book suggestions, are welcome too.
Additional info: There’s no restrictions on what kind of Kid’s Lit you post about – it can be picture books, children’s chapter books, Young Adult novels, or anything in between.
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Indexed and Harry Potter
In case you haven’t heard of the blog Indexed yet, here’s a great recent card that she posted:
I love Indexed because it combines two of my favorite things, graphs and index cards.
I didn’t think I would post about the whole Dumbledore thing, but I read a blog post today (by ShelfTalker) that 100% summed up my feelings on the issue, much better than I could have hoped to. Here’s the link to the wonderful post, and here’s an excerpt (I’ve bolded the points I like most):
I personally don’t like hearing about characters’ lives off the printed page, because to my mind that’s NOT those characters. Characters exist only as we know them as readers, and the information we’re given about them is what appears in the stories that are written about them and nowhere else. If an author believes something about her characters but doesn’t make those beliefs clear in her writing about them, there’s no guarantee that the reader will pick up on or share those same beliefs. Those character may not, then, “BE” what the writer envisioned them to be.
I think the semantics of Rowling’s original announcement are significant. “I always saw Dumbledore as gay,” she said. And that’s exactly it. SHE always saw Dumbledore as gay. But many of her readers did not, and it seems unfair now to suggest that they/we were somehow wrong.
As readers we each come to a book with our own ideas, our own experiences, our own interests, and those things inevitably influence what we see on the printed page. In the end, Dumbledore is gay if you read the Harry Potter books and believed he was gay, he’s straight if you read the books and believed he was straight, and he’s non-sexual if (like me) you just never bothered to think about his sex life at all.
Let’s end this post with a great link I found on Design*Sponge today, a link to a site with horribly excellent pictures of Europe’s worst interior designs of 1974 – Eurobad ’74.
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What I'm Up To
Weekend plans:
Seeing Dan In Real Life
The idea for this “Up To” post came from the wonderful blog – Not Martha, who does lovely Up To posts herself. I like that they are simple, but fun.
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Stevo Biebo turns 24!
Today I’d like to wish my good friend Stevo Biebo (her name is Emily too, but we call her Stevo) a big huge HAPPY BIRTHDAY!
She lives in Boston, and is in grad school studying to be an Opera singer, which means she is cooler than you or me.
In honor of Stevo, I’m posting my favorite song from one of the many wonderful musicians that I would not know about if it wasn’t for her. It’s called “She’s in love with a geek” and it’s by Wally Pleasant.
Wally Pleasant
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On My Nightstand – 10.22.07
It’s been a while since I’ve done an On My Nightstand post – here’s the current stack. I’m in various stages of reading all of these books.
The Elements of Style by Strunk/White – I haven’t picked this up in a while, and need to do so soon. It’s been in all of my On My Nightstand posts thus far.
The House at Pooh Corner by A. A. Milne – The original Winnie the Pooh has been read and replaced.
Good Poems by Garrison Keillor – Still working on reading this entire wonderful collection.
The Collected Stories by Amy Hempel – These wonderful stories are so short it’s easy to pick up and read whenever I have a moment.
Essays of E. B. White – The original master of the personal essay.
I am America (and so can you!) by Stephen Colbert – very hilarious, reading a little every day so as not to finish too fast.
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Hilary Knight Book Event
Saturday I battled my weekend laziness and went to the Lincoln Center Barnes and Noble for a book signing for Hilary Knight. The event was for his “new” book – a reissue of his book The Circus is Coming. This book was first published in 1978, and the updated version has better printing with more vivid colors, new pictures, and all new text.
In honor of the theme of the book, Paul Binder (founder of The Big Apple Circus) wrote the afterword to the book, and also talked at the event. Hilary also asked the kids in attendance to name their favorite animals that they would want to see in a circus, and then mashed them all together into one new super animal, which he drew for us:
While I think his new book is beautiful, I went to the event because I am absolute in love with his work with the Eloise books. The five Eloise books are my favorite children’s books, and I was thrilled to be able to meet him and have him sign my copies. And I found The Circus is Coming at Strand, so I had that for him and Paul to sign as well, which was nice.
The Eloise books, like most of the children’s books that have become classics, are brilliant because the pictures and text work equally to make it a masterpiece. They are both extraordinary, but each would not work without the other. Some books may have wonderful pictures, or wonderful text, but in order to become timeless they have to have both. And Kay Thompson and Hilary Knight had an incredibly rare work relationship…they actually worked together on each book, and the books were an outcome of their teamwork. Most children’s book authors and illustrators never meet.
Kay Thompson
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Picture Post
Just a few pictures from my trip(s) to Michigan earlier this month. Michigan was absolutely gorgeous, especially up north. The trees are incredible. I miss Michigan in the fall.
And here’s a picture of the most relaxing afternoon in the world: reading in the hammock in our backyard:
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Vox Hunt: Blog Action Day – Good For The Environment
Show us something that’s good for the environment.
I recycle everything I can and turn off lights, but the most eco-friendly part of my life is that I don’t have a car anymore. For the past year and a half, I get everywhere by walking or taking the subway.
It also helps us spend less at the grocery store, since we have to carry everything we buy home.
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Vox Hunt: Blog Action Day – Good For The Environment
Mister Pip and the Man Booker Prize
Lloyd Jones
Mister Pip was one of the front runners for this year’s Man Booker Prize (which I find to be one of the most reliable prize lists to select a novel from) and I kept hearing amazing things about it.
I had read two of the six shortlisted books (The Reluctant Fundamentalist and On Chesil Beach) already, and my thought last weekend was that if I could finish Mister Pip before Tuesday afternoon I’d have an impressive 50% chance of having already read the winning book. (The prize was announced Tuesday night.) Especially considering that Mister Pip and On Chesil Beach were the front runners.
But alas, as the Booker Prize seems to go in recent years, it went to a dark horse, The Gathering by Anne Enright. I suppose I’ll need to read that too, though I hear it’s incredibly dark.
But back to the point of this post: Mister Pip was an incredible story. I respond very well to novels where books themselves play an essential role in the plot and in the character’s development, probably because I relate so easily. (The Book Thief by Markus Zusak is the most brilliant example of this I can think of and one of my very favorite books.) In Mister Pip, however, it was one specific book that played such a critical role in the protagonist’s survival (probably evident from the title): Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. Not only is Great Expectations a story that provides Matilda with an escape from her troubled life as well as parallel her own story in many ways, it’s also the only book available on her native island.
It’s a bit alarming to be transported into a world that knows only one book, and humbling too.
Interesting to note: This is the third work of fiction I’ve read with Miss Havisham as a character, and I have not even read Great Expectations. The first two were Lost in a Good Book and The Well of Lost Plots, both by Jasper Fforde. It’s about time I read the book myself, so I’ve decided it’s going to be my next classic in my Classic Catch-Up. Not surprising, I’ve strayed from my original list. But oh well, the point is to catch up with classics, so I won’t be fussy about which one I catch a whim to read.
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