Ch-ch-ch-changes

David Bowie would be proud.

The point is that this blog has changed significantly since the project began.  I'm realizing that it's not logical anymore for the 52 books in a year goal when my day-to-day life is somewhat spontaneous.  I tried to stick to a goal, and I don't think I'm going to make it.  Strangely enough, I'm okay with this.  Really, this was partially a study in perseverance and finishing what I start, and although I haven't finished it, and really doubt I will, I still feel like I've stuck it out.  I went through phases where I wasn't blogging often enough, wasn't reading enough, but I feel like I'm really starting to see what this blog can/should/will be.

I'm still sticking to my list of 52 from the start of the project last fall, don't doubt that.  There are too many books on that list that still feel like must-reads, but I will be less structured on my timing.  I start my first La Salle graduate class tomorrow and I just got my reading list for that, and I realized I should feel okay with changing my list.  New books are published all the time, and I shouldn't feel like I need to put something off just to accomplish the arbitrary list I originally started with.  Instead, I'll be adding to the 52 with more 'must-reads' as suggested by my lovely readers, as well as my own personal must-reads.  Not everything I read or have to read will make that list, but I'm looking at it as a literary bucket list.  And there's no way a literary bucket list could be limited to 52.

So send me more suggestions.  I'll be adding a few over the next couple of days, including some from my grad class list, but I'd love to see what's suggested the second time around.

Here's my reading list for class:
- The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake (Bender)
- The Art of Racing in the Rain (Stein)
- Hunger Games (Collins)
- Of Mice and Men (Steinbeck)
- Gossamer (Lowry)
- Heat (Lupica)
- Swallows of Kabul (Khadra)

I've already read The Art of Racing the Rain and Of Mice and Men, but I'll obviously have to read them again to make sure I remember everything.  Because my masters program is in English, but the focus is on education, we are reading a lot of middle and high school level books.  I'm okay with that.  Once I have my first class, I'll have a better idea of the direction she's planning on having us take.

And as a side note, I was reading my book list to Anthony and his response to Of Mice and Men was "oh, I really liked that book."  I just about died.  My non-reading boyfriend likes Steinbeck?  Who knew!

Me, Myself, and Irene (and Sophie)

Sophie's Choice is going to give me an aneurism (which is a difficult word to spell, so thank you, Spell-Check).  I am STILL reading that book, and it's continued to be a difficult read.  It's frustrating because I'm normally a fast reader -- I was blessed with the ability to read a book quickly and retain pretty much everything I've needed for classes, essays, or simple memory.  That's right, Harry Potter 7 in 3.5 hours.

Sophie's Choice, however, has taken me quite some time, and it isn't that I'm lacking in effort.  I've been logging hours and pages into it, but for some reason, it's just not happening.  It's an interesting book, albeit a depressing one, but it's KILLING me.  And it's really bumming me out, so to alleviate my pain, I decided to break for a bit and read another book.  This isn't something that is annoying or difficult for me; being an English major teaches you to multitask novels.  One semester could carry multiple literature courses, so you get pretty good at balancing it out.  I decided to read Uglies as my self-esteem booster because it was a YA book (that's young adult, for those of you not in the know).

YA books are solid choices for a situation like this; if it's award winning or on several book lists -- Uglies is a summer reading for some school district around here, and it's on several ALA and YALSA lists -- it's generally going to be a good read, both topic and style wise.  Uglies was no different. Obviously, there's a message in the plot -- Uglies is about a future 'utopian' society that turns people 'pretty' at 16 with cosmetic surgery so no one can be judged on looks, but some people disagree with this and run away to another society.  Blah blah blah, moral is that you can be beautiful and awesome without looking 'pretty' but it was actually a really engaging book.  The best part? I read the entire thing in one day; part of it sitting on the couch at home, and the other part at work on a boring, rainy night with no real traffic in town.

Then it was back to Sophie's Choice.  The past few days have been hurricane central.  The storm hit Saturday and knocked out the power until this afternoon.  I planned on reading, because there wasn't much else to do, but honestly, reading by flashlight isn't fun after the age of 8 when you were supposed to be sleeping but you were reading under your covers instead.  Unless that was just weird, nerdy, 8 year old Leah... it hurts my eyes, and reading by candle light is even worse.  I thought I'd make good headway into the second half of the book, but instead I played cards and took walks.  I read about half a chapter yesterday, and I'm still not sure what Sophie has to choose.  You'd think by now I'd have an idea, but I'm still stuck.

I refuse to give up, though.  I WILL finish the book if it kills me... and it'll be done before it has to be back at the library by the 7th of September.  I've already renewed it once, and I do not want to be the person renewing books for a third time.  I'm sure there's a big wait for Sophie's Choice, and I don't want to ruin anyone else's good time.  I also have Bastard out of Carolina out right now, so if I need another break from Lady Sophie, I may pick that up.

Bathtub Reading > Bathtub Gin

Honestly, have you ever had bathtub gin? I haven't, but I imagine it's not so great.  The idea of it actually makes me quite uncomfortable.  Bathtub reading, on the other hand, is one of my favorite ways to relax.  How many of us take a bath to actually get clean after the age of 6?  A shower is much easier.  After a bath, I generally turn the shower on to wash my hair and my body; at most, I'll use a bath to shave my legs, but to actually clean myself? No, thank you, but I think I'm good.

I like to use time in the bathtub to relax; some bubble bath, hot water, maybe a face mask to help with the insane break-outs I've been experiencing (adult acne is no myth -- and my stress levels over trying to find a job and pay for school and look for a place to live aren't helping, I'm sure), but my favorite bath-time activity has always been reading a book.  Sure, it's dangerous, but when I'm in the tub, it's generally because I want to relax and reading is -- depending on how hectic my life is -- a relaxing activity.  Reading in water is a relaxing activity, and I really wish they made (you heard it here first) waterproof e-reader covers, so I could lay on a raft in the ocean or pool and read a book.  The tub is nice, but being outside in the sun would make it so much better.

Side-note: I googled 'waterproof kindle covers' and found many.  

I guess I'm not all that original... and if you're looking for a gift to give me

(ANTHONY) that's something to look into.  I'm just saying...

This is the bathtub where I do my reading... the yellow color is not at ALL relaxing!

I find that the places I enjoy reading most are pretty standard; laying in bed before going to sleep, in a comfortable chair, on the beach, in the tub, really anywhere I can get comfortable for a lengthy period of time.  I also like to read during certain activities; traveling, especially in a car (I'm lucky I can read for a while without feeling car-sick), eating.  I also admit -- sorry, any family member reading... and sorry, boyfriend... and sorry, Fernando, who thinks girls don't poop or sweat -- that I'm guilty of reading in the bathroom.

Now before anyone gets grossed out or upset that they just read the above statement, let's think this through; how many people keep magazines/books/newspapers in the bathroom right next to the toilet?  Isn't that encouragement?  How many jokes do people make about doing 'quality reading' time in the bathroom?  As a society, it's almost a joke, but it's turning into something different.  Sure, bathroom reading is still acceptable, but now it's more about cell phones.  Honestly.  People bring a cell phone in the bathroom; just a few weeks ago I went to dinner with a friend (hi, Colleen) and inside the bathroom stall was an ad with a website link and a scan-box.  I honestly don't know what those things are called -- I'm obviously not up on my tech terms -- but it was clearly expecting people to be sitting on the toilet with phone in hand. What an interesting shift!

I'm still reading Sophie's Choice.  It's been slow so far, and it's not because I'm uninterested in the book.  The plot is interesting, but the style is just not for me.  I barely got through one chapter in the tub the other day, and last night only read about 25 pages.  I find it difficult to become engrossed in the story.  I'm not sure what it is about his style that makes it tricky, but it's not a book I can sit and read for hours and hours.  It's due back to the library on Wednesday, and I haven't even touched the other 3 books I checked out, so renewal is on my horizon.  I'm almost ashamed at how slow the process is going.

Once Sophie's Choice is finished, I'm going to watch the movie (my mother loves it) and then move on to Uglies, which is a Young Adult novel.  That should move quickly, and I'll feel a little better about my life.

Midnight in Paris

First things first, you need to know of my intense and odd love for Ernest Hemingway.  It’s not even that I’m a huge fan of his writing; I’ve never read The Old Man and the Sea, and I much prefer his short stories to any of his novels, but I love teaching him and I love the stylistic elements of his work.  One of the classes I taught the past two years was Modern American Literature, and our major works included A Raisin in the Sun, In Our Time, The Catcher in the Rye, The Illustrated Man, as well as a plethora of other similar themed short stories and poetry.  There is something engaging, for me, about that period in American history.  The Modern era began around 1911 and ended around 1963 – we like to break down our literary periods around wars, generally speaking – so it encompasses the roaring 20’s, the Great Depression, the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement, and both World Wars.  For being only 50 years, it covers a huge shift in American thinking.

I loved teaching that curriculum, even more than Multicultural Literature (which has a decent amount of film units, always a big hit with students).  For one, some of my favorite ‘classic’ American authors wrote during this time (Faulkner, Salinger, Bradbury, Williams, Porter, etc.), but I find that these authors work well in a classroom.  They lend themselves to a logical teaching pattern.  I teach parts of In Our Time and we learn how to look for symbolism and metaphor, work with leading and participating in discussion, so that when we get to Salinger and Holden, my students are professionals at finding symbols.  They are all over the ducks. And keeping kings in the back row.  And anything that could remotely represent sex, teenagers love finding sexual metaphors and symbolism.  Freud was on to something there.

Point is, Hemingway is awesome.  He’s got really stripped down writing that’s clear and to-the-point, and once students know a bit about his life, they really get into analyzing why he writes about this and that.

Okay.  With that digression aside, here we go.  Midnight in Paris is, at the least, a bibliophile’s movie.  The main character, Gil, wants to be a writer.  Well, he is a writer, but he wants to write a novel.  Well, he wrote a novel but he’s not sure what to do now.  He also loves 1920’s era Paris, and is clearly an English nerd.  When he is actually able to time-travel, he gets to meet some of his literary idols; Scott and Zelda (he’s on a first-name basis with the two of them), Hemingway, Faulkner… hell, Gertrude Stein even reads his book!  This was the moment when I realized this movie had captured what it means to love literature.  What many of us want is to have an interaction with written word so intense that you actually feel like you know the author.  Holden Caulfield says, in Catcher, that “what really knocks [him] out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it.”  And that’s what Woody Allen has done.  The author’s don’t pick up the phone, obviously, but they are there, friends and acquaintances of our protagonist.

I want Gil’s life.

My favorite part, though, was how brilliantly Allen captured the voices and personae (personas?) of each author or artist.  I – on my own – was laughing out loud, snorting occasionally, at the things and the manner in which the characters spoke.  Hemingway challenges Gil to a fight, asks him if he boxes.  What else would we expect Hemingway to do?  He speaks of the bravery of men and the intricacies of women, his time in the war, and he drinks like a fish throughout the entire film.  I was in love as soon as he introduced himself.

I almost wish this was a novel, but I think the beauty of the film is that it is a film.  It’s the antithesis of a novel, but the thrill of literature is juxtaposed so seamlessly through the film that I honestly felt like it was the written script that created the visual on the screen, and not just the dialogue.  If you are a reader, in any capacity, this is the movie for you.  It’s a movie that really takes Holden’s idea about good authors and makes it a reality.  Do you think Woody Allen was thinking of that quote when he wrote the script?  God, I hope so.  What a perfect full-circle moment that would be…  I imagine him thumbing through Catcher and going ‘a-ha! That’s it!’

Holden really knows what’s up.

Listen!

I have officially delved into the wide world of audio books!  Or, as the Bucks County Library system likes to classify them, Spoken Books.  Knowing I was going to be spending a decent amount of time in the car, moving from Maryland back up to PA, I decided to try it out.  I really have only ever listened to one other 'book-on-tape' in the past, and I couldn't recall if I'd enjoyed it or not, so I set out on a search for the perfect audio book for my trip.

First of all, trying to use a library catologue on my smart phone was painful.  The search options on the site were, even on the computer, confusing and difficult to sort through.  I just wanted a list of the audio books located at each branch, but instead spent time typing in different titles of the books on my reading list to see if an audio option popped up.  It took too much time, and even when I found a few, they were at libraries in the county too far away to justify the travel.

Secondly, in a world of advanced technology, it seems like libraries should be jumping on the app bandwagon.  How nice would it be to have the library at your fingertips, searching through books on my phone, requesting holds?  It's nice that the library works through email, and I get reminders about books, and I do love being able to check things online, but I rarely use my computer to get on the internet and browse anymore.

Finally I found a few options at our local branch.  Before work last Wednesday, I took a trip up the road to our library, which is, unfortunately, not very attractive inside.  I spent many years with my college library, and there is something be said about multiple floors and comfortable seating in a place that houses books.  I felt like I was in a warehouse, with light mustard yellow accents on the walls, and a few tables and chairs scattered around.  I'm not asking for a Beauty and the Beast library -- actually, I am; I wish I had a massive room of books with a ladder that rolled around the walls.  Heaven! -- but something attractive would be nice.

I found the audio books -- pardon me, Spoken Books, section and decided I would just see what titles were there.  I found a few, but in checking the timing, realized that only one really fit with my needs.  The Historian was only 10 CDs and 12 hours long.  Still double the time I'd be spending in the car driving to Maryland and back, but the other options were all around the 18-20 hour mark.  The Grapes of Wrath was 24 hours of recording.  24 hours!  That's an entire day!

Maybe I'm jaded, because I do read quickly.  I finished the last Harry Potter book in three-and-a-half hours (I didn't do much else in that time, to be fair) so 12 hours seemed like a lot for a book.  But in the sake of experimenting and not wanting to be rude on a car trip with my dad, I checked out the CDs.  I also checked out some books; Sophie's Choice, Watership Down, and Uglies.  All due back August 17th, so I think I'm going to be renewing a few online.

My dad and I settled in the car for the ride, and after a few work-related phone calls, I slid the first CD into the slot.  There was music.  What?!?  Each section of the book starts and ends with some music, all of it suspensful and romantic in nature.  Who made the decision to add music?  Do most audio books include music?  The recording also includes different narrators for each character, which I find a little confusing.  Mostly because having a different narrator means that there are no speaker tags.  No 'he said,' 'she replied,' 'I cried.'  Just people reading the parts meant for the character.

Now I'm all for creative expression, but this was too much for me.  I LOVE speaker tags.  Honestly, I do.  That section of my graduate class on memoirs was one of the more interesting.  Where an author places a tag and the tag he/she uses is all signficant.  Do you want to break up the text?  Lead in with the tag?  Are we avoiding 'said' and using more colorful language?  Personally it felt like the audio book was taking some of the personality and writing ability of the author and throwing it to the side.  The use of accents and different character voices and music all seemed to be forcing me to interpret the book in one way.  My imagination -- the main reason why many of us read fiction -- wasn't being put to use.

I think audio books have their place in the literary canon.  I use them to teach, because in a day and age where students have trouble reading and comprehending, listening is a way to let them work with literature.  I have used great recordings of The Secret Life of Bees and Night, but these are read by one person, as found in the text. No music is used.  Students are expected to follow along with the text.  This recording of The Historian felt like a radio show instead.

I will say this; although I primarily listened to this book, which I am almost completely through, in the car, I did spend a few hours cleaning and unpacking and listened to the recording in my room.  It was probably better than what I normally do, which is put a DVD of Always Sunny in Philadelphia on and have that play as background.  I do find myself getting confused while listening to the book, and sometimes I get distracted and my mind wanders, and being unable to turn back a page and re-read is frustrating, but I think if you had a lot of driving or traveling to do, audio books have a real place on a bookshelf.