Read-a-thon: Hour 13

Responding to Dewey's mid-event survey:

1. What are you reading right now?

I'm currently working on Promised Land: Thirteen Books That Changed America and Drood (historical fiction featuring Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins).

2. How many books have you read so far?

Maybe two if you add up Death's Daughter plus fragments of three more.

3. What book are you most looking forward to for the second half of the Read-a-thon?

Drood is the most promising, though I don't think I'll finish as it's quite long.

4. Did you have to make any special arrangements to free up your whole day?

No, in fact, I didn't know about this until yesterday, so I'm doing my best without disrupting my family's plans.

5. Have you had many interruptions? How did you deal with those?

Frequent. At one point, my husband took our 4-year-old to the park so the house would be quiet for me.

6. What surprises you most about the Read-a-thon, so far?

That west coast readers would be willing to wake up by 5 a.m.? :)

7. Do you have any suggestions for how to improve the Read-a-thon next year?

This is my first. I can't participate fully for a couple reasons, but I'm just happy to take part in any way.

8. What would you do differently, as a Reader or a Cheerleader, if you were to do this again next year?

Hmm . . . I'd plan to get more sleep in the days leading up to the read-a-thon.

9. Are you getting tired yet?

I've been tired for 5 years! :) Seriously . . . I was already tired when I woke up from having little sleep two nights in a row. I'm not burned out on reading at this point, but I doubt I'll be able to stay awake past midnight.

10. Do you have any tips for other Readers or Cheerleaders, something you think is working well for you that others may not have discovered?

I'm fairly laid-back, so I do best with 20% planning and 80% winging it. I didn't feel like reading another chapter of my history book just yet, so I started a historical fiction novel that sounded intriguing.

Read-a-thon: Hour 11

I finished Death's Daughter an hour ago before taking time off for lunch (reading fuel: banana-PB-chocolate-hemp smoothie) and chatting about this evening's dinner and movie plans.

I'm now reading Promised Land: Thirteen Books That Changed America. I read a really good review for it many months ago (I forget where now) and had been far back in the library queue until a dear friend gifted the book to me. I only read a half chapter earlier in the week because I needed to (try to) finish my book group's selection by discussion night yesterday. Now I've finished the first (of thirteen) chapters, on Of Plymouth Plantation, which claims that much of what we know of the Pilgrims came from Bradford's text, which had been quoted from but the full text had been long lost before being rediscovered in an old book shop in Victorian England.

I have two more hours of reading before going out for the evening.

Read-a-thon: Hour 9

I didn't know if I'd switch books hourly, but I don't want to start anything else until I finish Death's Daughter. I'm only 80 pages from finishing now, so I might be able to finish before DH and DD return from the park. After that, I'm breaking for lunch before starting something new.

I haven't kept a tally of how many minutes/hours I've read, but it looks like I've read maybe 350 pages today between DD and the end of To Say Nothing of the Dog - probably the most I've read in a single day in 2009 so far.

Drood is still planned for today, but it's so long I won't finish. I may switch between Drood and All Other Nights (an in-progress Dara Horn ARC I need to review).

Read-a-thon: Hour 7

I'm now 100+ pages into Death's Daughter, so I'm now in the thick of the plot. It turned out to be a really good choice for today as it boosts my spirits.

My husband and daughter just left for the park for a couple hours, so I'll be able to focus in silence (assuming the cat's done puking for the day). I just heard about the challenge starting yesterday, so we already had plans for this evening (adults' night out while the munchkin goes to a kiddie event), so there will be no reading from 5:30-10:30. When we return, I'll decide whether to call it a day for the read-a-thon or whether I want to stay up to read more.

Read-a-thon: Hour 6

I took a short break to make a large mug of golden chai before starting Death's Daughter. It sounded fun from the description, but I wasn't prepared for how funny it is - Calliope cracks me up. I'm eager to find out what happens next!

Read-a-thon: Hour 5

Since I got a late start, I've only been reading for an hour.

I just finished To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis. My general weariness fit in perfectly with the characters' time travel-lag symptoms. I may read it again one day, but somewhat more immediately, it makes me wants to dip into 1930s mysteries.

Next up is Amber Benson's Death's Daughter, her first solo novel (I got a signed copy at Mysterious Galaxy). It sounds like a fun read.

Read-a-thon: Hour 1

* Where are you reading from today?

I'm in San Diego, where the forecast calls for lots of sun and a high of 74 (clearly a day to stay inside reading).

* 3 facts about me …

1. I'm a stay-at-home mom to a 4-year-old, so I won't be able to do the full 24 hours, but I'll try for 8+ (at least my husband is home).

2. I've had ~8 hours of sleep in the past 2 nights combined.

3. I'm obsessed with LibraryThing.

* How many books do you have in your TBR pile for the next 24 hours?

I'm somewhat playing it by ear, but I'd like to finish To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis (which I was meant to have finished for book club last night). Books I'd like to start are Drood by Dan Simmons, and Death's Daughter by Amber Benson.

* Do you have any goals for the read-a-thon (i.e. number of books, number of pages, number of hours, or number of comments on blogs)?

I'll try for 8 hours, but no promises. :) I hope to enjoy myself most of all!

It's 7:30 a.m. in California, and I'm off to start now (better late than never). I'll post updates to my Twitter account.

Ida B
Katherine Hannigan

To the amusingly eccentric, 4th-grade, eponymous heroine, the trees in her family's apple orchard make for interesting conversation partners:

Now, some people might stop me right there and say, "Ida B, you could wait for eternity and a day and you're not going to hear one of those trees talking to you, let alone a brook. Trees don't have mouths, and they don't speak, and you might want to take yourself to the doctor's and get a very thorough check-up real soon."

And after I took a minute to give my patience and forbearance a chance to recover my mouth from the rudeness that was itching to jump out of it, I would just say this: "There's more than one way to tell each other things, and there's more than one way to listen, too. And if you've never heard a tree telling you something, then I'd say you don't really know how to listen just yet. But I'd be happy to give you a few pointers sometime."

Near the end of the book, I repeated to myself resolutely, "Not going to cry. Not going to cry." After one tear slipped out, I thought, "just one tear isn't really crying." Then another . . . Ida B wasn't sappy, just moving in its wonder and honesty; I'll have to keep it in mind to suggest to my daughter when she's older.

On Chesil Beach
Ian McEwan

SPOILER! What follows is the book's final paragraph. It was so beautifully written and made such an emotional impression on me that I was compelled to include it. On Chesil Beach has rattled about in my head since I read it, and I would heartily recommend it to someone who would like to experience McEwan but is wary of committing to Atonement or Saturday.

o

o

o

When he thought of her, it rather amazed him, that he had let that girl with her violin go. Now, of course, he saw that her self-effacing proposal was quite irrelevant. All she had needed was the certainty of his love, and his reassurance that there was no hurry when a lifetime lay ahead of them. Love and patience - if only he had had them both at once - would surely have seen them both through. And then what unborn children might have had their chances, what young girl with a headband might have become his loved familiar? This is how the entire course of a life can be changed - by doing nothing. On Chesil Beach he could have called out to Florence, he could have gone after her. He did not know, or would not have cared to know, that as she ran away from him, certain in her distress that she was about to lose him, she had never loved him more, or more hopelessly, and that the sound of his voice would have been a deliverance, and she would have turned back. Instead, he stood in cold and righteous silence in the summer's dusk, watching her hurry along the shore, the sound of her difficult progress lost to the breaking of small waves, until she was a blurred, receding point against the immense straight road of shingle gleaming in the pallid light.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Douglas Adams

(This is a fresh post - I just read this book last week, in mid-April.)

Am I the last person or dolphin to read this book? Generally, the only fiction genre I enjoy is mystery, so unless I get a strong recommendation from someone, I tend to avoid science fiction, horror, romance, etc. Chris encouraged me to give Hitchhiker's a try recently and said that I'd know right off whether I should slam the book shut or read the whole series. (I'm currently reading a book of which it was said, "the first 300 pages are slow, but if you can trudge through them, it gets a lot better.") I really liked the book and already have the second on reserve.

We are told the poetry of the Vogons is among the worst in the universe (one such title: "Ode to a Small Lump of Green Putty I Found in My Armpit One Midsummer Morning"). What made me chuckle was earthling Arthur's flattery in "theory" speak:

'Oh yes,' said Arthur, 'I thought that some of the metaphysical imagery was particularly effective.'
[. . .]

'Oh . . . and, er . . . interesting rhythmic devices too,' continued Arthur, 'which seemed to counterpoint the . . . er . . . er . . . .' he floundered.

Ford leaped to his rescue, hazarding '. . . counterpoint the surrealism of the underlying metaphor of the . . . er . . .' He floundered too, but Arthur was ready again.

'. . . humanity of the . . .'

'Vogonity,' Ford hissed at him.

'Ah yes, Vogonity - sorry - of the poet's compassionate soul' - Arthur felt he was on a homestretch now - 'which contrives through the medium of the verse structure to sublimate this, transcend that, and come to terms with the fundamental dichotomies of the other' - he was reaching a triumphant crescendo - 'and one is left with a profound and vivid insight into . . . into . . . er . . .' (which suddenly gave out on him).

Ford leaped in with the coup de grace:
'Into whatever it was the poem was about!' he yelled.

Ah yes, "the other" - must-use babble for "theory is so hot!" grad students. (Not that years of literature studies have left me cynical or anything. . . .)

How to Hepburn: Lessons on Living from Kate the Great
Karen Karbo

It has been far too long since I've posted to this, my digital commonplace book. I just found four posts that have been sitting in draft for months. The quotations were noted months ago, but most of the comments I just wrote today (April 21). Here's the first:

[Hepburn had] sensational bone structure, the most fabulous bone structure in the history of cinema, up to and including the one belonging to Johnny Depp.

That man is too beautiful for his own good.

Once, she wore jeans to work. That was simply too much. In the 1930s, no one wore jeans but farmers, forty-niners, and movie cowboys. A production assistant was instructed to take Hepburn's jeans while she was in her dressing room, hoping to shame her into finding a skirt to slip into. Instead, Hepburn traipsed around in her underwear until the jeans were returned.

Love that chutzpah!

[A]ctresses of Hepburn's stature strove for uniqueness. Garbo was pure mystery with her sloe eyes and deep voice. Bette Davis had that famous mouth, curious diction, and rock-lyric-inspiring eyes. Lauren Bacall was a home-grown exotic, with her honey-colored hair and jungle-cat grace. They all made it their business to be one of a kind, to strive to be in no one else's category but their own. How different from today. We are all alleged nonconformists, with our individual playlists, our sassy bumper stickers, small-of-the-back tattoos, and pierced parts. I'm always reminded of the great scene from Monty Python's Life of Brian. Brian tells his followers, 'You've got to think for yourselves. You're all individuals!' And the crowd recites, 'Yes, we're all individuals!' And one lone voice in the crowd pipes up in a cockney accent, 'I'm not!'

Above was my favorite passage in that book, not only because I'm a lifelong fan of classic movies in general and those actresses in particular, but because it acknowledges the genius that is Monty Python (. . . and the peasants rejoice!).

Everyone is the marrying kind these days, with the exception of George Clooney.* [. . .] *Clooney is a sort of male Hepburn for the modern age. There's his devotion to privacy, the mystery surrounding his love life, his intelligence and wit, unique sense of personal style, iconoclastic movie career, and eccentricities, one of which he displayed recently when he publicly grieved the death of Max, his three hundred-pound Chinese potbellied pig, who is rumored to have shared Clooney's bed, thus making him the envy of millions.

This made me giggle. As a Clooney swooner, I admired his devotion to that pig.

The world is full of tenderhearted, intelligent people who are waiting for their personal misery to let up before attacking anything that might interest them. These people have suffered.

Ouch. That hit a nerve.

For the problem with ignoring grief is that is doesn't go away. It's not a harmless rash. Whoever said that time heals all needed to have his head examined. Primo Levi said that sometimes an injury cannot be healed, that it extends through time. The writer Jonathan Safran Foer wondered recently, 'What if time is the wound?'

My life took a dark turn last December. I struggle each day and wonder if one day it won't hurt quite so much anymore. My neighbor has a framed quotation on her mantle that reads "Surviving is important; thriving is elegant" (by Maya Angelou, I believe), and I've been repeating that in my head every day since I first laid eyes on it. Surviving is important. Surviving is important. Surviving is important. I believe that time heals some but not all, and so I find myself politely smiling when a well-meaning friend tells me my life will be better a year from now. I truly hope they see something I can't, but in the meantime, I'm just trying to survive.

Way #22 for getting your Hepburn on:

Make it count.

The United States of Arugula: How We Became a Gourmet Nation
David Kamp

Paul, husband of Julia Child, related this story from her pre-fame days:

Paul described, for the first time, the sight of his wife, in their home kitchen, cooking French food - most likely a cassoulet, given the details: "The oven door opens and shuts so fast you hardly notice the deft thrust of a spoon as she dips into a casserole and up to her mouth for a taste-check . . . Now & again a flash of the non-cooking Julie lights up the scene briefly, as it did the day before yesterday when with her bare fingers, she snatched a set of cannellini [beans] out of the pot of boiling water with a cry, 'Wow! These damn things are as hot as a stiff cock.'"

Sauce maven by day . . . saucy wench by night.

I'm really enjoying this book. J'admets, like an impatient child, I've been reading the chapters out of order because I was too eager to read the section on vegetarian chefs. I may have more quotations to add by the time I finish this.

I'm Just Here for More Food : food x mixing + heat = baking
Alton Brown

Standard everyday cooking is relatively forgiving. Baking is rarely so. In fact, baked goods are a great deal like cars: You can change the wheel covers, put in new mats, and change out the stereo, but if you're going to mess around under the hood, you'd better know what you're doing or you may wind up taking the bus.

I confess: I have a mad crush on Alton Brown. Funny and geeky is a winning combination to me (case in point: DH). This book just landed on my doorstep minutes ago, but I wanted to open up a blog post for scribbling since I can't bring myself to dog-ear a hardcover. More to come within the next day, I'm sure...

Madame Bovary, C'est Moi : The Great Characters of Literature and Where They Came From
André Bernard

[Rex] Stout knew nothing of law or crime when he began to write about Nero Wolfe, nor did he pursue any research. He liked to tell aspiring writers that the best method for successful writing was, "Apply the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair, and go."

My tuches would go numb before I could compose a single interesting sentence.

Climbing Parnassus : A New Apologia for Greek and Latin
Tracy Lee Simmons

"Beauty is not democratic; she reveals herself more to the few than to the many, more to the persistent and disciplined seekers than to the careless. Virtue is not democratic; she is achieved by those who pursue her more hotly than most men. Truth is not democratic; she demands special talents and special industry in those to whom she gives her favours. Political democracy is doomed if it tries to extend its demands for equality into these higher spheres. Ethical, intellectual, or aesthetic democracy is death" (33). ~~ quoting C. S. Lewis

[T. S.] Eliot did not believe students competent to decide for themselves what they needed to learn. The lights of tradition and reason must guide them. "No one can become really educated," he wrote, "without having pursued some study in which he took no interest - for it is part of education to learn to interest ourselves in subjects for which we have no aptitude" (39).

We recognize classical culture now not only by alabaster images of stony ruins, but also through thick gauze of verbal brilliance. The men whose words and ideas we remember best were citizens of a republic of letters. They had learned o think and speak and write with precision and flair. They tried not to say something new; they tried to say something worthy, and to say it perfectly (76).

More [Victorian] students could read Greek with some fluency, though the lazy or thick of mind had to help as Greek works began to be buffered by translations - into Latin. (Apparently, if one couldn't read Latin, he had no business trying to drink at the springs of Hellas anyway) [127].

And English poets of the nineteenth century, despite their Romantic trailblazing, tended to be just as drawn and inured to classical learning as poets of the age before. Shelley was a formidable reader of the classics, as were Coleridge, Byron, Tennyson, and Browning. These were not men of feeling alone, but talents of trained sensibility (136).

People [of the mid-20th century] began to think that classical knowledge closed more doors than it opened; it shut out the light; it slowed the pulse of a quickening world. All things were to be made new. What good is climbing a Parnassus within when we can build skyscrapers without? The dikes could hold back the waters no longer. Après nous le Deluge (149).

Advocates for Latin in the past have often sung its mental advantages to the exclusion of all else. According to legions of these priggish, schoolmarmish stiffs, one didn't learn Latin so as to read it, or even in order to gain entry into the upper reaches of Western literary culture. One learned Latin to help one's English - end of case (166).

C had long credited his high SAT verbal scores to his high school Latin, so when I began studying for the GRE, I wished to study Latin, but as Simmons recognizes, the Latin-as-an-aid-to-English argument breaks down when one realizes there are less formidable roads that lead to the same destination. I also aspired to learn Greek at times, but I never got much past the alphabet. I am almost reluctant to commit it to writing, but I feel I must learn Greek now for its prose - yes, for its poetry - more still, but above all, for its own sake.

As has been truly said, "In Latin, you must be absolutely right, or you are not right at all." But the faultless moments, the ones when the winds fill our sails and the words blow perfectly in all their weight and beauty, are the ones we come to live for. They take us halfway up the mountain. We begin to look down on clouds. / Can anyone seriously maintain that such a stiff training in just expression leaves no salutary marks upon the intellect of someone who, having successfully run its gauntlet, becomes captive to the habits of the precise mind? (177).

Greek is a more supple language than Latin; the tongue of Plato doesn't tend to lay marble slabs and erect domes the way that of Cicero and Virgil can. But its suppleness makes it more elastic. It stretches. A Greek sentence breathes in a way a Latin one rarely does. To say that the poetic mind prefers Greek while the prosaic one opts for Latin would be simplistic - and in some signal cases badly wrong - though some so claim, and a truth may lie somewhere amid the dregs. Greek nouns chime a bit more brightly; prose rhythm is smoother and usually swifter. Sounded from clear pipes, the melody of Greek intoxicates (180).

"I believe that the conventional defence of [classical studies] is valid; that only by them can a boy fully understand that a sentence is a logical construction and that words have basic inalienable meanings, departure from which is either conscious metaphor or inexcusable vulgarity" (185). ~~ quoting Evelyn Waugh

I'm sure Waugh and Derrida would get along swimmingly.

Talk of the American Founders leads us inexorably to American qualms about the utility of classics. We like to be useful; nay, we hunger to be useful. Usefulness is a virtue. We don't care for superfluity, and as a people we are perpetually wary of those inessential add-ons in our schools like poetry, music, and art. They seem so unnecessary: not bad perhaps, but nothing we should give time to until all things needful for the good life - gadgets, comforts, amusements - are secured. (And somehow they never are.) These things we can see. More to the point for some people, they're the things by which one's quality of life is measured. We also fear wasting our time. Yet, as we have seen, the Founders as a group had few doubts about the usefulness of Greek and Latin. For them life was too short and small to contain their utility (210-11).

Adams and Jefferson would have understood the claim of the philosopher George Santayana that "Music is essentially useless, as life is: but both have an ideal extension which lends utility to its conditions." "Let us not forget," Emerson once said, "that the adoption of the test 'what is it good for' would abolish the rose and exalt in triumph the cabbage." And man cannot live by cabbage alone (213).

Indeed poetry has been justly defined as that which cannot be translated. We can get away somewhat with translations when reading epic poetry: the story carries us along and a few striking images remain, pulsating like strobe lights at every mention. Whiffs of the magic come through. But the problem with translations is that those readers unlettered in the original languages can't know what they're missing. Almost anyone who has read, say, the Odyssey in both Greek and English finds even the best translation (and there are several splendid ones) grossly inadequate. [. . .] A reader of the original language smells a counterfeit. A translation seems as the shadow of a tree to the tree itself, and the discerning mind will not confuse one for the other. Much of the power and the glory no longer shine within the poem that's been run through the enervating sieve of translation. Something leaks out. / Unfortunately that something is often the very essence that once drove centuries of readers to the poem. We lack that which made it great. We've lost the pearl in the center (218-19).

Novelist Somerset Maugham once averred that "you can't imagine what a thrill it is to read the Odyssey in the original. It makes you feel as if you only had to get on tiptoe and stretch out your hand to touch the stars" (224).

I read Climbing Parnassus with pencil in hand. Those were just a few extracts marked by my squiggle. I didn't always agree with Simmons (or those he quoted), but as I told a friend, "I am seduced."

The Earth Mother
a homeric hymn (tr. Percy Bysshe Shelley)

   O Universal Mother, who dost keep
   From everlasting thy foundations deep,
Eldest of things, Great Earth, I sing of thee!
All shapes that have their dwelling in the sea,
All things that fly, or on the ground divine
Live, move, and there are nourished - these are thing;
These from thy wealth thou dost sustain; from thee
Fair babes are born, and fruits on every tree
Hang ripe and large, revered Divinity!

    The life of mortal men beneath thy sway
Is held; they power both gives and takes away!
Happy are they whom thy mild favours nourish;
All things unstinted round them grow and flourish.
For them, endures the life-sustaining field
Its load of harvest, and their cattle yield
Large increase, and their house with wealth is filled.
Such honoured dwell in cities fair and free,
the homes of lovely women, prosperously;
Their sons exult in youth's new budding gladness,
And their fresh daughters free from care or sadness,
With bloom-inwoven dance and happy song,
On the soft flowers the meadow-grass among,
Leap round them sporting - such delights by thee
Are given, rich Power, revered Divinity.

   Mother of gds, thou Wife of starry Heaven,
Farewell! be thou propitious, and be given
A happy life for this brief melody,
Nor thou nor other songs shall unremembered be.

[public domain]

I ran across this poem while scanning the tables of contents of several anthologies for Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound, which was not to be found, but I did come across this poem, which clearly influenced Shelley's own Prometheus Unbound - serendipity!

Theogony
Hesiod (tr. Lattimore)

"For from her originates the breed of female women,
and they live with mortal men, and are a great sorrow to them,
and hateful poverty they will not share, but only luxury" (590-92).

the ancient version of cherchez la femme

I wasn't surprised to find another cave passage. Echidna, half alluring nymph, half monstrous snake, is described from lines 295-306. I can see Scylla and Errour in her but for her ordained isolation.

The Odyssey
Homer (tr. Fagles)

"But the great leveler, Death: not even the g.ds can defend a man, not even one they love, that day when fate takes hold and lays him out at last" (3.269-71). ~~ Athena

"That is the g.ds' work, spinning threads of death through the lives of mortal men, and all to make a song for those to come..." (8.649-51).

"No winning words about death to me, shining Odysseus! By g.d I'd rather slave on earth for another man - some dirt-poor tenant farmer who scrapes to keep alive - than rule down here over all the breathless dead" (11.555-58). ~~ the ghost of Achilles admonishing Odysseus for admiring the former's high standing in the afterlife

"It goes against my grain to repeat a tale told once, and told so clearly" (12.490-91). ~~ Odysseus

"Homer makes us Hearers, and Virgil leaves us Readers" (p. 489) ~~ Fagles quoting Alexander Pope, himself a translator of Homer

Fagles' is the third or fourth Odyssey translation I've read, and the most poetic. In July, I read the Fitzgerald translation of the Iliad, and while I admire his translation, I much prefer Fagles' (however, not enough to reread the Iliad so soon).

I jotted down 20-odd pages' worth of quotations and my comments, but I'm not about to post long passages of cave descriptions here. :)

Next up is Hesiod's Theogony.

Caldecott & Co. : Notes on Books & Pictures
Maurice Sendak

Max is my bravest and therefore my dearest creation. Like all children, he believes ina flexible world of fantasy and reality, a world where a child can skip from one to the other and back again in the sure belief that both really exit. Another quality that makes him especially lovable to me is the directnesss of his approach. Max doesn't silly-shally about. He get to the heart of the matter with the speed of a superject, a personality trait that is happily suited ot the necessary visual simplicity of a picture book (152).

Where the Wild Things Are was not meant to please everybody--only children. A letter from a seven-year-old boy encourages me to think that I have reached children as I had hoped. He wrote: "How much does it cost to get to where the wild things are? If it is not expensive my sister and I want to spend the summer there. Please answer soon." I did not answer that question, for I have no doubt that sooner or later they will find their way, free of charge (154-55).

As a collection of essays, Caldecott & Co. is rather haphazard, but Sendak is such a passionate artist that the presentation can be forgiven. Besides Sendak's insights into his own works, his opinions of other illustrators are interesting to say the least, ranging from contemptuous to sycophantic.