The last seven books I've read have been all seven Harry Potter books. I feel it's not necessary to list the titles! 1-6 were rereads, but 7 was basically the first time I've read through it, because I only read about 100 pages of it when it came out and had to stop to finish up my summer reading. I sort of dreaded reading it, and spread it out over like 4 days, when I could have easily finished it in one or two. I'm feeling slightly upset that I've finished them all for good, but ah well time to move onto other things!
I do suppose it was good for me to reread all of them as they've helped my book count tremendously, but when I start school in less than a week, I'll go back to reading two books a month, oof. Short entry, whatever!
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Friday, August 21, 2009
{Lindsay} 31-40
Moving right along! I love reading binges.
I read some more S
hakespeare, this time in the form of Titus Andronicus. Apparently this is Shakespeare's critically worst play, but I enjoyed it. Pretty violent plot driven by vengeance, which I tend to love, so purely from an entertainment angle, I was satisfied with it. Unfortunately I really need the assistance of SparkNotes to help me get past an appreciation of the Bard based purely on entertainment, but whatever. Thanks, Lit degree! Here's hoping I don't fail miserably as an English teacher...
Next were a couple VERY different feminist works. One was called Cunt: A Declaration of Independence, by Inga Muscio. I'll admit, I picked up this book solely because of the title, but what this book seemed to be about was what made
me buy it. What I THOUGHT I was gonna read was a long, detailed history of the word "cunt" and how it's meaning and connotations have changed over the course of its history. This was how the book seemed to be marketed, since that was mostly what the little back-cover blurb focused on. Since this is one of my favorite words in any language, and since I'm a whore for language in general, obviously I thought this was going to be a great read. Unfortunately, the marketing and reality of the content of the book didn't quite pair up. Even after reading it, I'm not sure I could give an adequate description of the overall point this author is trying to make. The word origin section is the shortest section in the book, and it's completely lacking in concrete details. The rest of the book lacks clear flow, cohesion, and and has the worst editing I have ever seen in a widely-published work, with the most awkward line breaks I have ever seen in anything. This woman is a SUPER feminist, who takes the stance that men aren't needed for anything and that women should just let their period blood flow down their legs every month. I also had a hard time 
reconciling her stance against birth control with her detailed descriptions of how horrible two of her three abortions were. I don't necessarily fault her as a person for that, but it's not quite the same path of girl-power I myself tread. Overall I found this book completely alienating, both in content and presentation. I enjoyed Jessica Valenti's Full-Frontal Feminism a lot more. She's a bit younger, appreciates the presence of men in her life, and overall just seems to take a much more balanced view on the whole feminism thing. I really enjoy her writing style, and find myself agreeing with a lot of what she has to say.
Next was No Plot? No Problem! by Chris Baty. I'd been meaning to get this book for awhil
e, but never felt like paying $15 for it (it's a fairly small volume), but luckily I found it at a book discount warehouse for a third of the retail price. Baty is the creator of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), which takes place every November. Basically you have a month to write a super shitty first draft of a 50,000 word novel. This book is full of tips and support to get through the month and keep your ideas and word count going. I've tried to participate a few years, but never end up getting very far. I'm hoping to finally bite the bullet this year and actually let myself write horrible prose simply for the sake of doing it.
After that was some children's/young adult fiction. First was Pippi Longstocking,
which I almost feel bad for counting because it's SO short. That's okay, though. I'll just have to read a 53rd book to make up for it. Despite it being somewhat of a classic, I'd never read it before. I did, however, enjoy the movie when I was little. I thought it was okay. I don't know that I'd care to read it again any time soon, but I guess it was enjoyable.
I continued with something a bit longer: A Wrinkle In Time by
Madeleine L'Engle. This is another classic I'd never read until now, and I definitely enjoyed this one more than Pippi. I really had no idea what to expect going into it, and my first read through of it was a bit frustrating because I had no idea what sort of characters and situations were about to be encountered along the way. Interestingly, at the same time I felt the very end chapters lacked any real tension in terms of plot, but maybe that doesn't necessarily hold true for younger readers. Either way, a good read, and I might be interested to read the rest of the books in the series.
Next was The Tale of Despereaux by Kate Dicamillo, which I think is my favorite of this bunch. The plot constr
uction of this book is great, because it focuses mostly around character introductions. In the course of these introductions, a little bit of the plot is set in motion, but before it goes too far, the next character gets introduced, and then the plot involving that character ends up tying in with the plot bits of the character prior. This makes you really want to keep reading. The writing itself is really great, and the book is full of universal themes and truths, so it's also very emotionally fulfilling.
Finally, an omnibus of three Michael Crichton novels, The And
romeda Strain, The Terminal Man, and The Great Train Robbery. I'd been trying to get through this collection for weeks, so I'm glad to finally just have it out of the way. I've come to realize that I really don't even care about plot when it comes to Crichton, because all the science and technology and random facts he throws into his stories are so freaking interesting. I'm fairly certain I would be entertained reading anything by him.
I read some more S
hakespeare, this time in the form of Titus Andronicus. Apparently this is Shakespeare's critically worst play, but I enjoyed it. Pretty violent plot driven by vengeance, which I tend to love, so purely from an entertainment angle, I was satisfied with it. Unfortunately I really need the assistance of SparkNotes to help me get past an appreciation of the Bard based purely on entertainment, but whatever. Thanks, Lit degree! Here's hoping I don't fail miserably as an English teacher...Next were a couple VERY different feminist works. One was called Cunt: A Declaration of Independence, by Inga Muscio. I'll admit, I picked up this book solely because of the title, but what this book seemed to be about was what made
me buy it. What I THOUGHT I was gonna read was a long, detailed history of the word "cunt" and how it's meaning and connotations have changed over the course of its history. This was how the book seemed to be marketed, since that was mostly what the little back-cover blurb focused on. Since this is one of my favorite words in any language, and since I'm a whore for language in general, obviously I thought this was going to be a great read. Unfortunately, the marketing and reality of the content of the book didn't quite pair up. Even after reading it, I'm not sure I could give an adequate description of the overall point this author is trying to make. The word origin section is the shortest section in the book, and it's completely lacking in concrete details. The rest of the book lacks clear flow, cohesion, and and has the worst editing I have ever seen in a widely-published work, with the most awkward line breaks I have ever seen in anything. This woman is a SUPER feminist, who takes the stance that men aren't needed for anything and that women should just let their period blood flow down their legs every month. I also had a hard time 
reconciling her stance against birth control with her detailed descriptions of how horrible two of her three abortions were. I don't necessarily fault her as a person for that, but it's not quite the same path of girl-power I myself tread. Overall I found this book completely alienating, both in content and presentation. I enjoyed Jessica Valenti's Full-Frontal Feminism a lot more. She's a bit younger, appreciates the presence of men in her life, and overall just seems to take a much more balanced view on the whole feminism thing. I really enjoy her writing style, and find myself agreeing with a lot of what she has to say.Next was No Plot? No Problem! by Chris Baty. I'd been meaning to get this book for awhil
e, but never felt like paying $15 for it (it's a fairly small volume), but luckily I found it at a book discount warehouse for a third of the retail price. Baty is the creator of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), which takes place every November. Basically you have a month to write a super shitty first draft of a 50,000 word novel. This book is full of tips and support to get through the month and keep your ideas and word count going. I've tried to participate a few years, but never end up getting very far. I'm hoping to finally bite the bullet this year and actually let myself write horrible prose simply for the sake of doing it.After that was some children's/young adult fiction. First was Pippi Longstocking,
which I almost feel bad for counting because it's SO short. That's okay, though. I'll just have to read a 53rd book to make up for it. Despite it being somewhat of a classic, I'd never read it before. I did, however, enjoy the movie when I was little. I thought it was okay. I don't know that I'd care to read it again any time soon, but I guess it was enjoyable.I continued with something a bit longer: A Wrinkle In Time by
Madeleine L'Engle. This is another classic I'd never read until now, and I definitely enjoyed this one more than Pippi. I really had no idea what to expect going into it, and my first read through of it was a bit frustrating because I had no idea what sort of characters and situations were about to be encountered along the way. Interestingly, at the same time I felt the very end chapters lacked any real tension in terms of plot, but maybe that doesn't necessarily hold true for younger readers. Either way, a good read, and I might be interested to read the rest of the books in the series.Next was The Tale of Despereaux by Kate Dicamillo, which I think is my favorite of this bunch. The plot constr
uction of this book is great, because it focuses mostly around character introductions. In the course of these introductions, a little bit of the plot is set in motion, but before it goes too far, the next character gets introduced, and then the plot involving that character ends up tying in with the plot bits of the character prior. This makes you really want to keep reading. The writing itself is really great, and the book is full of universal themes and truths, so it's also very emotionally fulfilling.Finally, an omnibus of three Michael Crichton novels, The And
romeda Strain, The Terminal Man, and The Great Train Robbery. I'd been trying to get through this collection for weeks, so I'm glad to finally just have it out of the way. I've come to realize that I really don't even care about plot when it comes to Crichton, because all the science and technology and random facts he throws into his stories are so freaking interesting. I'm fairly certain I would be entertained reading anything by him.
Sunday, August 9, 2009
(Fritz) Books 22-27
I finished a few books in the last week or two since my last post. Obviously two cross country flights and vacation in general give you plenty of time to just hang out and read. I actually finished books 22-27, some of which I'll be reviewing after the list:
22. Walking Dead 1-3
23. Walking Dead 3-6
24. Jurassic Park - Michael Crichton
25. No One Belongs Here More Than You - Miranda July
26. Norwegian Wood - Haruki Murakami
27. Capacity - Theo Ellsworth
The first book I finished was Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park. I suppose this book is sort of old news to most people, especially because of the movie coming out 17 years ago and such, but it was a favorite film of mine, and I think it's definitely worth reading the book. There is a greater depth to the details, as well as a large change to many [big] plot points. Characters exist in the novel that aren't even in the movie, characters who don't die in one medium do die in the other, etc. etc. The one nice thing about this story, is that as science fiction, it displays a pretty good grasp of real science and a realm of believable pseudoscience that never really breaks you away from the story. The novel always manages to keep an element of suspense and the ending actually did a great job at surprising me. I guess it would be right to end this review by saying the novel was memorable and thoroughly enjoyable.
The next book in the last few weeks was "No one belongs here more than you." which is a
compilation of short stories by Miranda July (of course you could probably discern that from the picture). There's about 16 short stories in here, and I don't think I could do any one of them justice trying to explain it. I guess this may seem like a negative criticism, but every story in here is firmly a Miranda July story. I'm told by two friends that her early writing was very different than her stuff after the film "Me and You and Everyone We Know" and that a lot of her old fans were alienated by her later works. I couldn't really find anything to substantiate this rumor online really, but apparently she used to be in with Kill Rock Stars records, and is good friends with a member of Le Tigre, so there you go. Anyway, what I meant by all these stories being obvious Miranda July stories, is if you've read her other famous stories, or seen any of her films, the stories in here are clearly written by the same person. There's this constant sense of alienation, awkwardness, social anxiety, or whatever word or words would fit this better. You feel the desperation of trying to work things out in a mundane and lonely world. (That's deep, man). There is a huge element of sexuality to these stories as well, and a lot of focus on illicit love. Somehow though, you never really feel like you should be condemning these characters, though, you sort of just understand what things would lead them to these places. And this is not to say that all the stories are perverted or depressing or any of that, far from it. Many of these stories contain moments of extreme beauty and insight that make you really consider how you approach your world, which is obviously one of the most powerful things a story can do. I would definitely recommend checking out at least a few of the stories in here, "This Person" and "I Kiss A Door" particularly stand out in my memory as being worthwhile stories.
Even more recently still, I finished Haruki Murakami's Norwegian Wood.
Murakami is (I guess) generally known, for a stylistic combination of Magical Realism or supernatural themes, with Pop. I could probably go on for a while about the Pop themes in this, and then couple it with Pop themes in other shit, I'll avoid the travesty as that's what it would be. The short story is that this book was seen as a radical departure by many of his long term fans, as, quite simply, nothing particularly supernatural ever happens in this book. The thing is, that's okay though. This is sort of a love story, and that's okay too. However, due to Murakami's wonderfully detailed writing, it goes beyond just being a love story, it almost becomes an adventure. We see wonderfully complex characters growing, learning, developing, and changing over the course of the story in great ways. There are great surprises, and even some of the things that you expect to occur, still come across as shocking when they happen. The ending is the only part of the book I felt even a little let down by, and that's solely because of the openness of it. I guess, if your only complaint about a book is that the author let you have your own interpretation the work, then the author did a fine job? Coincidentally (I don't think this counts as ironically), this book, while being a departure from his known style, is what 'launched' Murakami into stardom, much to his chagrin.
Capacity by Theo Ellsworth is a graphic novel of beyond-surreal narratives. The introduction to the book deals with you (yes, literally you, the reader) traversing through a dream world, where you are confronted by different bizarre creatures who help you to eventually reach the actual author himself. The rest of the book could simply just be a compilation of his smaller zines of comics he's released over the past five years, but given the grandiose beginnings, he's not content to do just that, and he strings the different pieces from his past together in a sort of adventure theater that almost becomes challenging to figure out what's "actually happening" to you and what's just occurring in front of your eyes, until the very end when he pulls it back together with a wonderful ending. This of course says nothing of the narratives which are compiled within, which are even more enchanting or enchanted, in every sense of those two words. There is a tremendous amount of self doubt in the artist-insert-narrator's voice, but it is never cliché or trite, but instead it's endearing. You get a sense for the literal aspects of his life, as they're told in the most mundane of detail and the most exaggerated of magical realism, sometimes at the same time. (Does this go beyond magical realism? Probably, you should judge for yourself). And of course, this says nothing of the art, which is just breath-taking. I was constantly made jealous of Ellsworth's talent and dedication to his craft (which he of course talks about at points, along with everything else in his life and your life and the bizarre dreamworlds we all often inhabit). If you're one of those people who doesn't see graphic novels or comics or whatever as "art" or "literature" then this book could probably change your mind. And if it doesn't, then you're some kind of troglodyte. Though, be prepared, this is a heavy read, I'd say far heavier than most books of this length (334 pages). I picked up a newer zine of this guy's work while I was in Los Angeles, which I'll be reading soon, somewhere in between my next two books. I'll let you know how it is (though at 18 pages, I won't be counting it as a full book, obviously).
22. Walking Dead 1-3
23. Walking Dead 3-6
24. Jurassic Park - Michael Crichton
25. No One Belongs Here More Than You - Miranda July
26. Norwegian Wood - Haruki Murakami
27. Capacity - Theo Ellsworth
The first book I finished was Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park. I suppose this book is sort of old news to most people, especially because of the movie coming out 17 years ago and such, but it was a favorite film of mine, and I think it's definitely worth reading the book. There is a greater depth to the details, as well as a large change to many [big] plot points. Characters exist in the novel that aren't even in the movie, characters who don't die in one medium do die in the other, etc. etc. The one nice thing about this story, is that as science fiction, it displays a pretty good grasp of real science and a realm of believable pseudoscience that never really breaks you away from the story. The novel always manages to keep an element of suspense and the ending actually did a great job at surprising me. I guess it would be right to end this review by saying the novel was memorable and thoroughly enjoyable.The next book in the last few weeks was "No one belongs here more than you." which is a
compilation of short stories by Miranda July (of course you could probably discern that from the picture). There's about 16 short stories in here, and I don't think I could do any one of them justice trying to explain it. I guess this may seem like a negative criticism, but every story in here is firmly a Miranda July story. I'm told by two friends that her early writing was very different than her stuff after the film "Me and You and Everyone We Know" and that a lot of her old fans were alienated by her later works. I couldn't really find anything to substantiate this rumor online really, but apparently she used to be in with Kill Rock Stars records, and is good friends with a member of Le Tigre, so there you go. Anyway, what I meant by all these stories being obvious Miranda July stories, is if you've read her other famous stories, or seen any of her films, the stories in here are clearly written by the same person. There's this constant sense of alienation, awkwardness, social anxiety, or whatever word or words would fit this better. You feel the desperation of trying to work things out in a mundane and lonely world. (That's deep, man). There is a huge element of sexuality to these stories as well, and a lot of focus on illicit love. Somehow though, you never really feel like you should be condemning these characters, though, you sort of just understand what things would lead them to these places. And this is not to say that all the stories are perverted or depressing or any of that, far from it. Many of these stories contain moments of extreme beauty and insight that make you really consider how you approach your world, which is obviously one of the most powerful things a story can do. I would definitely recommend checking out at least a few of the stories in here, "This Person" and "I Kiss A Door" particularly stand out in my memory as being worthwhile stories.Even more recently still, I finished Haruki Murakami's Norwegian Wood.
Murakami is (I guess) generally known, for a stylistic combination of Magical Realism or supernatural themes, with Pop. I could probably go on for a while about the Pop themes in this, and then couple it with Pop themes in other shit, I'll avoid the travesty as that's what it would be. The short story is that this book was seen as a radical departure by many of his long term fans, as, quite simply, nothing particularly supernatural ever happens in this book. The thing is, that's okay though. This is sort of a love story, and that's okay too. However, due to Murakami's wonderfully detailed writing, it goes beyond just being a love story, it almost becomes an adventure. We see wonderfully complex characters growing, learning, developing, and changing over the course of the story in great ways. There are great surprises, and even some of the things that you expect to occur, still come across as shocking when they happen. The ending is the only part of the book I felt even a little let down by, and that's solely because of the openness of it. I guess, if your only complaint about a book is that the author let you have your own interpretation the work, then the author did a fine job? Coincidentally (I don't think this counts as ironically), this book, while being a departure from his known style, is what 'launched' Murakami into stardom, much to his chagrin.Capacity by Theo Ellsworth is a graphic novel of beyond-surreal narratives. The introduction to the book deals with you (yes, literally you, the reader) traversing through a dream world, where you are confronted by different bizarre creatures who help you to eventually reach the actual author himself. The rest of the book could simply just be a compilation of his smaller zines of comics he's released over the past five years, but given the grandiose beginnings, he's not content to do just that, and he strings the different pieces from his past together in a sort of adventure theater that almost becomes challenging to figure out what's "actually happening" to you and what's just occurring in front of your eyes, until the very end when he pulls it back together with a wonderful ending. This of course says nothing of the narratives which are compiled within, which are even more enchanting or enchanted, in every sense of those two words. There is a tremendous amount of self doubt in the artist-insert-narrator's voice, but it is never cliché or trite, but instead it's endearing. You get a sense for the literal aspects of his life, as they're told in the most mundane of detail and the most exaggerated of magical realism, sometimes at the same time. (Does this go beyond magical realism? Probably, you should judge for yourself). And of course, this says nothing of the art, which is just breath-taking. I was constantly made jealous of Ellsworth's talent and dedication to his craft (which he of course talks about at points, along with everything else in his life and your life and the bizarre dreamworlds we all often inhabit). If you're one of those people who doesn't see graphic novels or comics or whatever as "art" or "literature" then this book could probably change your mind. And if it doesn't, then you're some kind of troglodyte. Though, be prepared, this is a heavy read, I'd say far heavier than most books of this length (334 pages). I picked up a newer zine of this guy's work while I was in Los Angeles, which I'll be reading soon, somewhere in between my next two books. I'll let you know how it is (though at 18 pages, I won't be counting it as a full book, obviously).
Saturday, August 1, 2009
{Lindsay} 20-30
My latest reading spree was quite a success, and I have plenty more lined up that I wanna get through before school starts again. I'm hoping to get a little bit ahead in the next month, because I'm sure I'm going to be plenty busy between class and two jobs and won't have much free time for reading. Boooo!
Anyway, I started the latest batch with Jon Stewart's Naked Pictures of Famous People. I was expecting t
o really enjoy it, because I've always been amused by The Daily Show when I've watched it, and thought his stand-up was really great when I saw him a few years ago at the Bushnell. However, this book is kind of a snoozefest, and I was glad it was short and didn't take me long to get through. I honestly don't think I laughed once reading it.
Next was The End of Overeating by David Kessler. I borrowed it fro
m my dad and thought it was pretty interesting. It goes into how food in the U.S. is developed and marketed to condition us crave more of it by using a lot of fat, sugar, and salt. He takes a psychological approach to the country's obesity problems, and focuses on the food industry as driving our psychological needs for unhealthy foods.
After that I ventured again toward some childhood favorites. First was Roald Da
hl, with The Witches and Charlie
and the Chocolate Factory. I didn't actually read Charlie when I was younger, but Witches was always a favorite, and they both made for nice quick reads.
Next was a book called Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn. I first read this book in college as part of a campus book-club type thing, but hadn't read it again until now. If you like language, this is a really fun book to check out. The premise of the book is as follows (courtesy of Amazon.com):
"Ella Minnow Pea is a girl living happily on the fictional island of Nollop off the coast of South Carolina. Nollop was named after Nevin Nollop, aut
hor of the immortal pangram,* “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.” Now Ella finds herself acting to save her friends, family, and fellow citizens from the encroaching totalitarianism of the island’s Council, which has banned the use of certain letters of the alphabet as they fall from a memorial statue of Nevin Nollop. As the letters progressively drop from the statue they also disappear from the novel. The result is both a hilarious and moving story of one girl’s fight for freedom of expression, as well as a linguistic tour de force sure to delight word lovers everywhere.
*pangram: a sentence or phrase that includes all the letters of the alphabet"
Next was The
House With a Clock In Its Walls by John Bellairs, who was one of my favorite authors when I was younger. I also read The Figure In the Shadows and The Letter, the Witch, and the Ring, which are both sequels to House and follow the same characters. They're sort of gothic novels for kids, and involve magic and evil things that need conquering, but the characters and settings are set in reality. Hopefully I'll get to re-read the other Bellairs books I have soon.
I decided to venture back into the world of Shakespeare and see if I like it
any better, so I decided to re-read "Romeo and Juliet," which I haven't looked at since 9th grade. It turns out old William's not so bad after all. I guess my brain just needed a reeeeeeally long time to get comfortable with the language, though I think "R&J" is one of his easier plays (thus it being taught in high school, even though in high school I really didn't get it). Still, I haven't really appreciated him until now, despite taking a whole class on him in college. I will definitely be reading more of his plays soon. Good thing I have a giant anthology of everything he ever wrote.
My decision to read more Shakespeare stemmed from my reading The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood by Howard Pyle, which I picked up on a whim while I was at
Borders one day. I got the "Borders Classics" edition, so it's a nice hardcover with faux-gilted page edges and one of those attached fabric bookmark things (unfortunately I couldn't find an image of it). It was originally published in 1883, but Pyle, and American author who also illustrated the book, used late medieval/really early modern English to write the book. It's not quite as tricky as the language Shakespeare used, but it definitely requires some slow reading.
Finally, just today I finished reading Metaphors We Live By by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson. I wanted to read it because I had heard it mentioned in a couple of my more
linguistic-y classes in my grad program and wanted to see what all the fuss was about. I had a hard time getting through it, but I can't figure out why. It's definitely more of an academic-oriented book, but the language of the book itself isn't that difficult to weed through, nor are the concepts. I think it just has so much packed in that I had a hard time figuring out what the point of it was or really remembering anything from it for a significant amount of time. I'm sure if I read it one or two more times, I would be able to appreciate it more, or read it for a class and have discussions about it. It really just talks about ALL language as being very metaphorical, as opposed to just literary or poetic language, and it gives a ton of examples and breaks things down into categories of different types of metaphors. I guess I got the book in hopes that I could incorporate it into my teaching someday/how, but after reading it once, I'm not so sure. Oh well.
I'm not too sure what I'll be reading next, but I still have quite a stack of things to keep me goin for the rest of the year!
Anyway, I started the latest batch with Jon Stewart's Naked Pictures of Famous People. I was expecting t
o really enjoy it, because I've always been amused by The Daily Show when I've watched it, and thought his stand-up was really great when I saw him a few years ago at the Bushnell. However, this book is kind of a snoozefest, and I was glad it was short and didn't take me long to get through. I honestly don't think I laughed once reading it.Next was The End of Overeating by David Kessler. I borrowed it fro
m my dad and thought it was pretty interesting. It goes into how food in the U.S. is developed and marketed to condition us crave more of it by using a lot of fat, sugar, and salt. He takes a psychological approach to the country's obesity problems, and focuses on the food industry as driving our psychological needs for unhealthy foods.After that I ventured again toward some childhood favorites. First was Roald Da
hl, with The Witches and Charlieand the Chocolate Factory. I didn't actually read Charlie when I was younger, but Witches was always a favorite, and they both made for nice quick reads.
Next was a book called Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn. I first read this book in college as part of a campus book-club type thing, but hadn't read it again until now. If you like language, this is a really fun book to check out. The premise of the book is as follows (courtesy of Amazon.com):
"Ella Minnow Pea is a girl living happily on the fictional island of Nollop off the coast of South Carolina. Nollop was named after Nevin Nollop, aut
hor of the immortal pangram,* “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.” Now Ella finds herself acting to save her friends, family, and fellow citizens from the encroaching totalitarianism of the island’s Council, which has banned the use of certain letters of the alphabet as they fall from a memorial statue of Nevin Nollop. As the letters progressively drop from the statue they also disappear from the novel. The result is both a hilarious and moving story of one girl’s fight for freedom of expression, as well as a linguistic tour de force sure to delight word lovers everywhere.*pangram: a sentence or phrase that includes all the letters of the alphabet"
Next was The
House With a Clock In Its Walls by John Bellairs, who was one of my favorite authors when I was younger. I also read The Figure In the Shadows and The Letter, the Witch, and the Ring, which are both sequels to House and follow the same characters. They're sort of gothic novels for kids, and involve magic and evil things that need conquering, but the characters and settings are set in reality. Hopefully I'll get to re-read the other Bellairs books I have soon.I decided to venture back into the world of Shakespeare and see if I like it
any better, so I decided to re-read "Romeo and Juliet," which I haven't looked at since 9th grade. It turns out old William's not so bad after all. I guess my brain just needed a reeeeeeally long time to get comfortable with the language, though I think "R&J" is one of his easier plays (thus it being taught in high school, even though in high school I really didn't get it). Still, I haven't really appreciated him until now, despite taking a whole class on him in college. I will definitely be reading more of his plays soon. Good thing I have a giant anthology of everything he ever wrote.My decision to read more Shakespeare stemmed from my reading The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood by Howard Pyle, which I picked up on a whim while I was at
Borders one day. I got the "Borders Classics" edition, so it's a nice hardcover with faux-gilted page edges and one of those attached fabric bookmark things (unfortunately I couldn't find an image of it). It was originally published in 1883, but Pyle, and American author who also illustrated the book, used late medieval/really early modern English to write the book. It's not quite as tricky as the language Shakespeare used, but it definitely requires some slow reading.Finally, just today I finished reading Metaphors We Live By by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson. I wanted to read it because I had heard it mentioned in a couple of my more
linguistic-y classes in my grad program and wanted to see what all the fuss was about. I had a hard time getting through it, but I can't figure out why. It's definitely more of an academic-oriented book, but the language of the book itself isn't that difficult to weed through, nor are the concepts. I think it just has so much packed in that I had a hard time figuring out what the point of it was or really remembering anything from it for a significant amount of time. I'm sure if I read it one or two more times, I would be able to appreciate it more, or read it for a class and have discussions about it. It really just talks about ALL language as being very metaphorical, as opposed to just literary or poetic language, and it gives a ton of examples and breaks things down into categories of different types of metaphors. I guess I got the book in hopes that I could incorporate it into my teaching someday/how, but after reading it once, I'm not so sure. Oh well.I'm not too sure what I'll be reading next, but I still have quite a stack of things to keep me goin for the rest of the year!
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