infoquest's 1010 challenge

Well, here I go again . . . I did the 999 Challenge last year (twice), but I didn't manage to do any real commenting, which I'd intended to. This time I'll do better, hopefully.

The rules are as follows:

A) At least 3 books from each category must be ones that I own. Of course, preferably not ones that I just received or purchased, but that's okay too.
B) There must be at least 10 books per category, but I'll allow myself to read more than 10 in any given category. I expect the mysteries and YA books will fill comparatively rapidly.
C) Individual "rules" for each subject heading are not percentage based--so it's okay to read 20 history books to five science books and vice versa.
D) Books read for school assignments count, but only if read in their entirety.
E) The challenge will officially begin at 12.01 on January 1st, and preferably will be finished before October 10th.

And that's about all I can think of at present. I know I ought to have fun names for each category, but after twelve hours on campus, including 3 hours on William Faulkner, the following will just have to do:

1. History/Science (at least 5 of each; books on the history of science count as the latter)
2. Other Non-fiction (inc. at least one each poetry and drama)
3. European Authors
4. Non-European Authors
5. Sci Fi/Fantasy
6. Mysteries
7. "Classics" before 1900 (at least 2 over 500 pages)
8. "Classics" after 1900 (at least 2 over 500 pages)
9. Children's/Young Adult (at least 2 graphic novels)
10. Miscellaneous

I'll make posts for each subject later, hopefully including a few options from my "Owned but Unread" collection for each one.

Non-fiction (increasingly vaguely) related to Nazi Germany
(Formerly History/Science)

1. Germans Into Nazis by Peter Fritzsche (28 January)
2. The Plot: the secret story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion by Will Eisner (22 February)
3. Between Dignity and Despair: Jewish Life in Nazi Germany by Marion A. Kaplan (25 February)
4. Hitler's Private Library: The Books that Shaped His Life by Timothy W. Ryback (14 March)
5. The Man Who Shocked the World: the life and legacy of Stanley Milgram by Thomas Blass
6. Maus I: A Survivor's Tale: My Father Bleeds History by Art Spiegelman
7. Frauen: German women recall the Third Reich by Alison Owings (13 May)
8. Better for All the World: The Secret History of Forced Sterilization and America's Quest for Racial Purity by Harry Bruinius (Yes, it's a stretch, but it's very interesting.)
9. Dear Miss Breed by Joanne Oppenheim (Related only by contrasting and comparing the racial hatred/propganda and the like) (20 July)
10. Hitler Youth: Growing Up in Hitler's Shadow by Susan Campbell Bartoletti
11. The Cost of Discipleship by bonhoefferdietrich::Dietrich Bonhoeffer Owned
12. Introducing Hegel by spencerlloyd::Lloyd Spencer (23 October) Okay, so Nazism is mentioned as one response to Hegel's vision of the "total" . . . and he's German! Um, yeah.
13. Resistance by Carla Jablonski and Leland Purvis (3 November)

Possible owned books:

~Life in the Third Reich by Richard Bessel
~other books I can't think of at present

The Proud Tower is excellent. If you're looking for a science book that is kind of historical in nature (and a great read) you could try Catastrophe by David Keys.

Thanks for the recommendation; my library has a copy, so I'll definitely put it on the list of possibilities. And this has nothing to do with the following, but it doesn't matter much.

Science and Other Non-fiction

1. The Quotidian Mysteries by Kathleen Norris (5 January)
2. On Hope by Josef Pieper (12 January) Owned
3. A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams (19? January)
4. The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid by Bill Bryson (4? February)
5. Job's Daughters: Women and Power by Joan Chittester (6 February)
6. The Old Dog Barks Backwards by Ogden Nash Poetry - Owned (9 February)
7. Holy the Firm by Annie Dillard (9 February)
8. The Stuff of Life: A Graphic Guide to Genetics and DNA by Mark Schultz (23 February) Science
9. Rock, Paper, Scissors: Game Theory in Everyday Life by Len Fisher (13 March) Science
10. The Complete Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi (3 April)
11. Write These Laws on Your Children: Inside the World of Conservative Christian Homeschooling by Robert Kunzman
12. Syncopated: an anthology of nonfiction picto-essays ed. by Brendan Burford (6 April)
13. Kids at Work: Lewis Hine and the Crusade Against Child Labor by Russell Freedman
14. The Magical Life of Long Tack Sam by Ann Marie Fleming
15. 6167479::The best American science and nature writing 2008 by Jerome E. Groopman (15 April) Science
16. 14501::How to be a Bad Birdwatcher by Simon Barnes Science
17. 54475::A Fever in Salem by Laurie Winn Carlson
18. Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book by Walker Percy Owned
19. 2418470::The Magic Numbers of the Professor by Owen O'Shea Science
20. 7726948::Annie's Ghosts by luxenbergsteve::Steve Luxenberg (17 September)
21. 4087898::The Man Who Tried to Clone Himself by Marc Abrahams (20 September) Science

Possibilities from my owned, but unread books (no science, unfortunately) include:
~bonhoefferdietrich::Dietrich Bonhoeffer's theological works (The Cost of Discipleship, Life Together, and Creation and Fall / Temptation
~C.S. Lewis's "professional" writings (The Allegory of Love and The Discarded Image)
~Madeleine L'Engle's Two-Part Invention
~Miscellaneous essay compilations and a few books on words and their origins
~Non-Nazi history books: Thomas B. Costain's four books on the Plantagenets, The Collapse of the Third Republic by William Shirer, The Proud Tower by Barbara Tuchman, The remaining three volumes of Winston Churchill's History of the English Speaking Peoples, and Bede's Ecclesiastical History

European Authors
One entry per language/country of origin

1. Night by wieselelie::Elie Wiesel (3 February) France
2. Faceless Killers by Henning Mankell (31 March) / The Dogs of Riga by Henning Mankell / The White Lioness by Henning Mankell (6 September) Sweden
3. The Brontes Went to Woolworths by Rachel Ferguson UK - Owned / Sam the Sudden by P. G. Wodehouse UK - Owned / The Foolish Gentlewoman by sharpmargery::Margery Sharp UK - Owned (2 July) / Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day by Winifred Watson UK (4 July) / The Vanishing of Katharina Linden by Helen Grant (23 October) UK (Dang it. I wish she was German.)
4 R.U.R. by Karel Capek Czech Republic
5. Faithful Place by Tana French Ireland
6. Winter's End by Jean-Claude Mourlevat France
7. The White King by György Dragonmán Hungary/Romania (11 October)
8. The Flanders Panel by Arturo Perez-Reverte Spain (20 October)
9. The Squirrel's Birthday and Other Parties by Toon Tellegen The Netherlands (7 November)
10. Creation and Fall Temptation by Dietrich Bonhoeffer (28 November) / Self's Murder by Bernhard Schlink (18 December) Germany

Possibilities from my owned, but unread books include:
~Helga Schneider's Let Me Go
~The Norton Anthology of World Literature--horridly ambitious, I know, but maybe there are a few full-length works I could pull out of it
~Aus Unsrer Zeit--a collection of German short stories and excerpts which I'd like to finish
~Sixteen Famous European Plays

And now it's time to bake more rolls. And do more dishes. Baking is one of my favorite parts of Christmas, but the large-scale dishwashing much less so. Oh well.

Info,
There's some group reads for classics out there, check them out.

Thanks, cyderry; I've already read most of the (classic) ones listed so far, though, and I don't think I'll count rereads.

Non-European Authors
One entry per language/country of origin

1. The Diving Pool by Yoko Ogawa (20 January) / All She Was Worth by Miyuki Miyabe (5 June) / Death Note: Boredom (Vol. 1) and Vols. 2-5 by Tsugumi Ohba Japan
2. Krik? Krak! by Edwidge Danticat Haiti
3. Say You're One of Them by Uwem Akpan (6 April) Nigeria
4. The Good Women of China: Hidden Voices by Xinran (11 April) China
5. Wife of the Gods by Kwei Quartey Ghana
6. The Living by Annie Dillard USA - Owned / Naomi and Her Daughters by Walter Wangerin USA (Yes, it's rather cheating, but oh well . . .)
7. The Color of Earth, The Color of Water, and The Color of Heaven by Kim Dong Hwa Korea
8. The Naming by Alison Croggon Australia (22 November) It counts. I said so.
9. There are Jews in My House by Lara Vapnyar Russia (29 November) Most of Russia is technically in Asia . . .
10. No New Land by M.G. Vassanji Kenya/Canada/out of India

Possibilities from my owned, but unread books include:
~The Norton Anthology of World Literature--once again, horridly ambitious, but I'll see if there are a few full-length ones

Sci Fi/Fantasy

1. Fool's Run by Patricia A. McKillip (1 January 2010)
2. Sideways in Crime edited by Lou Anders (13 January)
3. Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde (17 January)
4. The Warded Man by Peter A. Brett
5. The House on the Strand by Daphne Du Maurier
6. The Door into Summer by Robert Heinlein
7. Raven's Ladder by Jeffrey Overstreet (29 March)
8. TOC: a new media novel by Steve Tomasula (28 April) Owned
9. Incarceron by Catherine Fisher (9 May)
10. The Risen Empire and The Killing of Worlds by Scott Westerfeld
11. Numbers by Rachel Ward (14 May) Owned
12. White Cat by Holly Black
13. Moving Pictures by Terry Pratchett Owned
14. Tooth and Claw by Jo Walton
15. The Dream of Perpetual Motion by Dexter Palmer
16. The Desert Spear by Peter Brett
17. Time and Again by Jack Finney Owned (10 August)
18. Tam Lin by Pamela Dean (15 August)
19. 100 Cupboards by N. D. Wilson (25 August) / Dandelion Wine / The Chestnut King
20. Seventh Son by Orson Scott Card (12 September)
21. The Skin Map by lawheadstephen::Stephen Lawhead (17 September) yay!
22. The science fiction hall of fame, volume two B : the greatest science fiction novellas of all time (21 September)
23. Fire and Hemlock by Diana Wynne Jones
24. The Surrogates and its prequel by Robert Vendetti (17 October)
25. Enclave by reedkit::Kit Reed (21 October)
26. Reckless by Cornelia Funke (26 October)
27. 86823::1632 by Eric Flint (7 November)
28. Fables vols. 2-12 and Jack of Fables vol. 1-5 by Bill Willingham (25 November)
29. Masterpieces: the best science fiction of the century ed. by Orson Scott Card

Possibilities from my owned, but unread books include:
~the Patricia A. McKillip novels I picked up
~Terry Pratchett's Bromeliad books and Moving Pictures
~2410323::The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss, which I picked up at a library booksale, having read a few good reviews, but never got around to reading.
~The complete Hans Christian Andersen, Brothers Grimm, and Lewis Carroll

Mysteries

1. The Game by Laurie R. King (10 January) Owned
2. A Duty to the Dead by Charles Todd (14 January)
3. The Winter Thief by Jenny White Owned
4. Locked Rooms by Laurie R. King Owned (18 March)
5. All Unquiet Things by Anna Jarzab (4 April)
6. The Seduction of Water by Carol Goodman (11 April)
7. The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag by Alan Bradley Owned
8. The Moving Toyshop by Edmund Crispin
9. Full Dark House by Christopher Fowler (14 May)
10. The Language of Bees by Laurie King
11. The God of the Hive by Laurie King (4 July)
12. The Water Room by Christopher Fowler
13. The Memorial Hall Murder by Jane Langton Owned
14. A Darker Place by Laurie King (11 September)
15. The Cater Street Hangman by perrynne::Anne Perry (17 September) argh!
16. Cover Her Face by jamespd::P. D. James (18 September)
17. A Mind to Murder by P. D. James (2 October)
18. The Father Hunt by Rex Stout (9? November)
19. Maisie Dobbs by Jacqueline Winspear (12 November)
20. Too Many Women by Rex Stout

Possibilities from my owned, but unread books include:
~Two books from the Mary Russell series by Laurie R. King
~The Winter Thief by Jenny White, which I got through Early Reviewers
~The Weed that Strings the Hangman's Bag by Alan Bradley, which I also received via ER
~The rest of the novels of Dashiell Hammett
~A few "Great Mystery" collections

"Classics" before 1900

1. Gilgamesh, translated by Stephen Mitchell (19 February)
2. The Frozen Deep by Wilkie Collins (20 April) Owned
3. Framley Parsonage by Anthony Trollope 500+ Pages - Owned
4. The Holly-Tree Inn by Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, et al. Owned
5. The Warden by Anthony Trollope Owned (16 October)
6. Barchester Towers by Anthony Trollope Owned - 500+ pages 28 October)
7. How Nancy Jackson married Kate Wilson and other tales of rebellious girls & daring young women by marktwain::Mark Twain (1 December)
8. Kleider machen Leute by Gottfried Keller (2 December) Owned
9. The Diary of a Nobody by George Grossmith (8 December)
10. The Haunted Hotel by Wilkie Collins (17 December)

Possibilities from my owned, but unread books include:
~Plutarch's Lives, Plato's Republic, random Greek dramas
~Fyodor Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov

"Classics" after 1900
As of 5 July: Drat. This is rapidly devolving into "20th Century American Authors," (aside from Golding) but I'll try to keep it fairly "classic."

1. Light In August by William Faulkner (8 January) 500+ pages - Owned
2. Maud Martha by Gwendolyn Brooks
3. The Lord of the Flies by William Golding (18 March) Owned
4. Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson (3 April)
5. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
6. Daddy Long-Legs and Dear Enemy by Jean Webster (3 July)
7. The Lottery and Other Stories by Shirley Jackson (2 October)
8. Neuromancer by William Gibson (18 October) Okay, so I'm stretching the definition of "classic" a bit . . .
9. Passing by Nella Larsen (7 November)
10. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck (22 November)

Possibilities from my owned, but unread books include:
~Poetry collections by ogdennash::Ogden Nash, Dylan Thomas, and T.S. Eliot
~Orlando by virginiawoolf::Virginia Woolf
~The Good Soldier by forfordmadox::Ford Madox Ford
~Brighton Rock, The Comedians, and Travels with my Aunt by Graham Greene
~Ulysses by james joyce::James Joyce, which my sister and I plan to read together, starting June 2010

Young Adult

1. Castle Waiting by Linda Medley (9 January)
2. Montmorency by Eleanor Updale (19 January)
3. Feed by M.T. Anderson (21 January)
4. The House of the Scorpion by Nancy Farmer (23 January)
5. Lady Macbeth's Daughter by Lisa Klein (31 January)
6. Forest Born by Shannon Hale
7. Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld / Behemoth by Scott Westerfeld (5 November)
8.Twilight by Stephanie Meyer (7 February)
9. Beowulf by Gareth Hinds (12 February)
10. The Maze Runner by James Dashner
11. Girl in the Arena by Lise Haines (26 March)
12. This Gorgeous Game by Donna Freitas (14 May)
13. An afternoon of graphic novels: Notes for a War Story by Gianni Pacinotti, Kaput and Zosky by Lewis Trondheim, and The Man Who Grew Young by Daniel Quinn
14. Another, briefer afternoon of graphic novels: The Way Home & The Bittersweet Summer and 36461::Just A Little Blue by Andy Runton (really adorable and sappy wordless stories about "Owly" the anthropomorphized owl and his friends), along with 8454531::The Storm in the Barn by Mark Phelan
15. 8440195::A Conspiracy of Kings by Megan Whalen Turner
16. 111899::I Am the Cheese by cormierrobert::Robert Cormier (18 September)
17. 9172520::For the Win by Cory Doctorow (9 October)
18. 8583531::Heist Society by carterally::Ally Carter (25 October)
19. 1664288::Cathy's Book by seanstewart::Sean Stewart et. al. (2 October)
20. 52348::Interstellar Pig by sleatorwilliam::William Sleator (8 November)
21. 1045574::Only You Can Save Mankind by Terry Pratchett (10 November)
22. 8547268::Sisters Red by pearcejackson::Jackson Pearce (12 November)
23. 4979986::Hunger Games and 8662515::Catching Fire and 9279041::Mockingjay by 971359885::Suzanne Collins (8-10 December)
24. Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones (16 December)

Possibilities from my owned, but unread books include:
~1045574::Only You Can Save Mankind and the Bromeliad books by Terry Pratchett
~1753071::So This Is How It Ends by sutherlandtuit::Tui T. Sutherland, which I got as a birthday present from a friend who liked the series
~others I can't think of at present

Children's Lit and Newbery Award Winners

1. The Story of Mankind by Hendrik Willem Van Loon Newbery 1922
2. The Dark Frigate by Charles Boardman Hawes Newbery 1924
3. Tales from Silver Lands by Charles J. Finger (1 April)Newbery 1925
4. The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (17 April) Owned
5. Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfeild
6. Shen of the Sea by Arthur Bowie Chrisman (29 May) Newbery 1926
7. The Second Mrs Giaconda by E. L. Konigsburg Owned
8. Dear Mr. Henshaw by Beverly Cleary Newbery 1984
9. When the Siren Wailed by Noel Streatfeild
10. The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare Newbery 1959 Owned
11. Gay-Neck: The Story of a Pigeon by Dhan Gopal Mukerji Newbery 1928
12. Theatre Shoes by Noel Streatfeild (15 August)
13. The Hero and the Crown by Robin McKinley Newbery 1985 & The Blue Sword (16 September)
14. The Pushcart War by Jean Merrill (14 September)
15. The Trumpeter of Krakow by Eric P. KellyNewbery 1929
16. Adam of the Road by elizabethjanetgray::Elizabeth Janet Gray Newbery 1942
17. Diary of a Wimpy Kid, books 1-5 by Jeff Kinney (28 September and later)
18. The Unsinkable Walker Bean by Aaron Renier (9 October)
19. The Cat Who Went To Heaven by Elizabeth Coatsworth (11 October)
20. Binky the Space Cat (4 November) and Binky to the Rescue (11 November) by Ashley Spires
21. Bone (8 November) and Bone: tall tales (21 November) by Jeff Smith
22. Dancing Shoes by Noel Streatfeild
23. Thursday's Child by Noel Streatfeild (17 November)
24. Amulet Books 1-3 by Kazu Kibuishi
25. The White Stag by Kate Seredy Newbery 1938 (20 November)

Possibilities from my owned, but unread books include (no Newbery winners, yet):
~What Katy Did by Susan Coolidge
~The Mouse and His Child by Russell Hoban
~The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery
~The various children's story collections lying about the place . . .

My first completed book of the year was Patricia McKillip's Fool's Run, which I enjoyed quite a bit. The book is unusual for McKillip in having a science fiction rather than fantasy setting. A band is scheduled to play at an off-earth prison where a notorious mass murderess is being experimented upon in an effort to uncover the meaning behind her symbolic visions. The actual denouement might be a slight letdown, if the book were being read for plot alone, but for McKillip, the dreamlike atmosphere is tremendously engaging and the characters are enthralling, if often confused, lending to the overall sensation. It sounds confusing (and it is, rather), but it's also really wonderful. I'd definitely recommend the book to any fans of fantasy or sci fi, and it would make a good introduction into McKillip, for anyone who's not yet encountered her writing.

Serious McKillip fan here but I do not definitely recall Fool's Run. You're sending me on a hunt now. It is in an unlogged crate? Did I never read it? What? What? Thanks for the recommendation. To me, all of McKillip's novels include a magical element that most other fantasy writers just can't quite land. Enjoy the rest of your 2010 reads.

I have never heard of that McKillip either! Race you to bookmooch, NeverStopTrying!

The Mouse and His Child was my favorite book as a kid.

I'd never heard of it either (though I'm still quite a new McKillip fan, so it's probably not as surprising), until I found it a few weeks ago while shelving at the library where I work. And thanks for the recommendation, kristenn; it looked interesting when I picked it up at a library booksale--and my mom and I still quote parts of the Frances books at each other . . .

My second book finished of this year was Kathleen Norris's The Quotidian Mystery: Laundry, Liturgy, and Women's Work, which is assigned reading for my Senior Seminar this coming semester. It's a sort of extended essay (88 pages) on the usefulness of everyday ("quotidian") activities as a form of spiritual exercise. Norris's Christianity is somewhat more liturgical than my own, but I definitely appreciate both her ideas and her prose, which has just the right blend of memoir and theological musing for my tastes. And I'm still working on Faulkner's Light In August. I think I like Faulkner, but it tends to take rather longer than I'd prefer. Actually, everything seems to take longer when I'm on vacation from school. This does not bode well for graduation . . .

Well, I finally finished Light in August, my third book of the year and also my third by Faulkner (after The Sound and the Fury and As I Lay Dying, the former read because I thought it would be assigned for my American Lit class, and the second because we ended up studying it instead). It tells the intertwining stories of Lena Grove, a young pregnant woman seeking her runaway boyfriend, Lucas Burch; suspected quadroon Joe Christmas, Burch's fellow bootlegger and the apparent murderer of an unpopular spinster; and disgraced minister Gail Hightower, who is obsessed with the death of his grandfather during the Civil War.

I've actually enjoyed Faulkner's novels a great deal more than I ever expected to, even though I began with The Sound and the Fury, which is rather less accessible than the other two due to Benjy's narration. It did almost put me off, but by the time I finally got to the other narrators, it definitely went better and I finally figured out what was going on--and the discovery provides a great deal of naturally compelling suspense. I've also discovered lately that Modernism is one of my favorite literary periods; I love the multiple perspectives and thematic emphases, all within a strongly narrative framework and not quite as fragmented or constantly tongue-in-cheek as Postmodernism. And now it's time for lunch. Or dinner. Or whatever.

Actually, I think it's time for Absalom! Absalom!, which I think is his best book. It's difficult--though not as much as TSaTF--but it is definitely worth the work. You're making me want to go back and read some Faulkner myself!

I shall have to make that one my next Faulkner, then. But I think it'll probably have to wait a while, since I'm not sure that I'm quite ready to dedicate myself to so "serious" a read quite yet.

And that's probably why my next book was Castle Waiting by Linda Medley, a rather interesting feminist fantasy graphic novel. I read a few good reviews of it some time ago, but didn't bother looking it up until I'd determined to try a few more graphic novels this year. It's apparently a collection of episodes in a longer story, so a few threads were left hanging at the end, but it was fairly coherent for that sort of thing.

Of course that doesn't mean it's really possible for me to summarize it. Essentially, Sleeping Beauty's castle becomes a sort of mythic haven after her awakening and departure. The reader enters this community along with an expectant mother fleeing from her husband after the death of her child's father (but the details of her situation are apparently being saved for later), and the interesting assortment of characters includes a sister from an unorthodox convent of bearded women. Her history, told in a series of extended story-telling sessions, is at least one-third of the volume, and while it is both strange and interesting, the length of the "flashbacks" added to the unevenness of the pacing of the volume as a whole. But I suppose that's a fairly common side-effect of the genre, rather than a weakness of this particular book.

I finished my first owned book today--The Game by Laurie R. King, one of the Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes novels. In this installment, Russell and Holmes set out for India on a mission from Mycroft to find the missing and presumably captured British spy, Kimball O'Hara, of Rudyard Kipling's novel, Kim. I read that novel some years ago and enjoyed it, though my paperback copy sees to have been lost at some point. I don't remember the details of the story fairly well, but it's fairly obvious that King is a fan of Kipling's story. The Game reminds me rather more of O Jerusalem than any other of Mary Russell's adventures; that one wasn't my favorite, but it wasn't quite the let-down that some others have said in the reviews I've perused. Nevertheless, I think I prefer the British to the more "exotic" settings. And I still can't imagine being anything like fluent in a foreign language after only a week or two . . . But regardless, it's quite a nice adventure.

Well, I'm already behind. Only by two, though, I think.

I read the "alternate mystery" collection Sideways in Crime over the past few days. It was shelved in the young adult section at the library, but personally I'd say it's more adult fiction--not that there's anything really explicit, but thematically it doesn't really fit with most young adult sci fi/fantasy. Not that it has to, but it didn't seem like any of the authors were attempting for that particular audience. Of course, most of the stories I remember almost nothing about, because I sat down and read 3/4 of the book in a single sitting between my Bonhoeffer and Senior Sem classes. Probably not the best use of time, but I had to do something . . .

Anyhow I'm not a bit reader of alternate history; I like the idea, but generally the execution is off-putting. I read something by Turtletaub once, and the prose was pretty much deplorable, even though the plot sounded interesting. It turned out to be less interesting that it sounded, anyways. But back to the collection. Some of the stories were better written than others; some were more interesting than others. None of the mysteries were very good, as such, though again some were better than others. I can't tell you which were which though, because I'm functioning on rather less sleep than I'd like. And will be for the next three months. Bother.

The second book (which I actually finished first) was Josef Pieper's little On Hope, which is a surprisingly marvelous little examination of natural hope, theological hope, and the twin pitfalls of despair and presumption which arise from an improperly balanced understanding of hope. Pieper was a Thomist, so there's more Thomas Aquinas and less actually biblical references than some of my fellow students would prefer, but I thought it was really a lovely little book with some very thought provoking, theologically and logically sound concepts. Highly recommended to anyone (okay, probably just Christians) interested in philosophically based theology and particularly interested in, of course, hope--or acedia, which Pieper also discusses.

I finished A Duty to the Dead on Thursday, and wasn't particularly blown away. The plot didn't sound particularly promising to begin with: a nurse in WWI promises to deliver a dying soldiers' final message to his brother, and in doing so uncovers a mystery in the family, which she then feels it her duty to solve.

Good points first: I liked the mid-war setting, which felt integral to the story, rather than peripheral stage-dressing. The dialogue felt true to the period, without being overdone. And the prose was quite serviceable.

Less satisfactory issues: Well, there was a lot. First, I solved the mystery--without making any effort whatsoever--less than halfway through the book. Now, I'm not one of those mystery readers who feels compelled to solve the crime before the hero; I do come up with theories, but I don't really "try" to. I was actually hoping there was some other answer, because it was so obvious--but when the "detective" never suggested the option, I knew it was the real one. And that's the next point: the narrator was essentially a figurehead. I think the novel was written in first person, but there was no real reason for this, as she had no unique voice and no interior life important enough to care about (aside from her speculations on the case, of course).

And *SPOILERS COMING* the story felt dreadfully implausible. It involved an irrationally wicked stepmother and a nine-year-old clubfooted murderer, who successfully carried out five more murders under the age of 25--most of which were judged to have been accidental deaths. Maybe it's just me, but--while I'm more than willing to say children are capable of evil and even murder--I don't think that such a young person could be so "successful" in a felonious career without repercussions. And the mother would have to be seriously disturbed--which she might be, given her behavior towards her step-son, but she doesn't evince irrationality in conversation--to not realize that her beloved child is completely out of hand and ought to be taken better care of. Well, it bugged me, anyway.

So, I guess the verdict is that A Duty to the Dead wasn't an agonizing waste of time, by a long stretch, but it was not as good as it could have been. I might pick up the sequel at some point, because the setting interested me, but if it's no better, I don't think I'll try any more of Charles Todd's novels.

Okay, three more. I think.

I've been looking forward to Shades of Grey for probably about two years now; all I knew is that it was by Jasper Fforde and had something to do with color, but the first point was quite enough. And it definitely lived up to my expectations, which is actually rather surprising since they were quite high. I actually thought it wasn't to be released until the summer, for some reason, and was marvellously surprised to find it on the new fiction shelf while I was putting away yet another Patterson "novel."

For anyone who doesn't know, Jasper Fforde is a British (I think Welsh) writer in the comic and rather odd vein; comparisons to Pratchett and Adams abound, of course, but he really just does his own thing, often with a great deal of literary allusion and wordplay. The former was not present in this book, as it is a post-apocalyptic dystopia, where the Word of Munsell is law, every person is ranked by their perception of color, and many generations after the "Something that Happened" the land is still loaded with ephemera of the "Previous."

Yes, there's a lot of absurdity: spoon-making is outlawed, colors are used as drugs (legal and otherwise), barcodes grow naturally on fingernails, and the Last Rabbit is on its last legs. But there is a story--and more than a bit of darkness--amidst the humorous chaos. Young Edward Russett, a soon to be tested and hopefully high-perceiving young Red, moves with his swatchman (color-doctor) father to the fringes of civilization, meets Jane, an abrasive and confrontational Grey, and discovers that there may be more to the color-coded society than meets the eye, while of course falling for Jane.

The story ventures into rather more serious territory--as might be expected from a dystopia, after all, especially after some sort of apolcalypse. The characters do tend towards the superficial, but they grow on the reader, so that the somewhat surprising ending really does have an emotional impact. But, yes, suffice it to say that I can't wait until the other two volumes of the series--presumable trilogy--are published. Well, I'll wait, but I won't be happy about it . . .

And the second book was Montmorency by Eleanor Updale, a fairly straightforward, inoffensive, and unfortunately dull, little Victorian crime novel. It was shelved under YA fiction at my library, and while it's not particularly YA-focused, its brevity and simplicity definitely made for a more juvenile feel. Essentially, the story follows the titular character from prison hospital to the high life, as he recovers from serious injuries sustained in a robbery and gets the lucrative, if somewhat unoriginal idea to use the London sewers as a gateway into the homes of the wealthy. As the manservant Scarper, he scuttles down manholes and returns with loot; as the gentleman Montmorency, he attends the opera and pawns the stolen goods. For an infamous burglar, the dual-natured young man makes for an excessively dull protagonist, and the tacked-on espionage ending, leading of course to his renunciation of crime and a new career, feels pointless and unwarranted. But, oh well. There are two or three more in this series, and they are rather longer, which might indicate that actual dialogues take place more than once every twenty-five pages, but I don't think I'll bother.

And last but not least I read Yoko Ogawa's The Diving Pool, a collection of three disturbing novellas, all first person female narration and each becomes morbidly obsessed with some aspect of femininity. The first and titular novella deals with the young daughter of a minister who runs an orphanage, her sense of orphanhood, and her obsession with one of her foster-brothers and his diving practice. And, by the by, her glee at making little children cry. The second novella is a woman's chronicle of her sister's pregnancy and extreme food obsessions in the throes of morning sickness and hormonal cravings. The jacket of my edition suggested that the pregnancy was imaginary on the part of either the sister or the narrator, but I don't really know; something was off about the whole thing, but I couldn't pinpoint it. Of course, I might be missing something important. And the last novella tells of a woman on the verge of moving to Sweden to meet her husband, who puts her life on hold to help her cousin move into her former college dormitory, run by an extremely disabled man, whom she begins to nurse. That one was really odd. I think I had no idea what was actually happening by the end of it.

The last of the stories had the strongest horro element, though they all did to a certain degree, though perhaps more that of twisted psyches than grotesque events; the grotesqueness is more in the narrators' perception of ordinary (well, fairly ordinary) things than in the events themselves. I read this book because The Housekeeper and the Professor was such an interesting and beautiful little novel; these stories were very different, but quite as well done and engaging, if odd and more than mildly disturbing.

ah another good review of Shades of Grey, I really must go and hunt it down.

Yes, clfisha, please do. It's quite marvelous fun.

I think I've finished three more novels: Feed by M.T. Anderson, The House of the Scorpion by Nancy Farmer, and Krik? Krak! by Edwidge Danticat. I did also read a fourth, Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, but since that was a reread, it doesn't count. It's a lovely book though.

I read Feed on Thursday, because I was at the library, it was at the library, I had just finished rereading The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Vol. 1: The Pox Party for a class the evening before, and I didn't want to spend the time until my next class focusing on the reading for that day (selections from Thoreau's Walden, a book of which I am not fond). So, there we are. Anderson seems to be inclined towards the moral problem novel (at least in the Octavian books and Feed), but his narrative voices are authentic and his world-building thorough enough to prevent the stories from lapsing into tracts.

Actually, the novels was an interesting look at the dangers of over-commercialization and the addiction to "having fun," sort of a 21st Century, YA Brave New World. A group of teenagers in a futuristic society travel to the moon during Spring Break and explore the nightlife. There the narrator, Titus, meets an unusual girl, Violet, who as a homeschooler is not as immersed in the culture as they are. Unforeseen circumstances cause them to lose access to their "feeds"--the biologically implanted, audio-visual computer/Internet on which their society is based. Of course, Titus and Violet begin to fall in love and learn about the problems of the feed, though all is not smooth sailing from this point. The ending is actually surprisingly bleak for a YA dystopia, though still quite satisfying. The characters aren't as fully fleshed as they could be (though the shallowness of the individual in a consumeristic society is part of the point, I guess), which is a drawback. And there is a decent bit of sexual content, as well as pretty pervasive language, though not as much as in an adult novel on the same theme. But, overall, definitely a better experience than rereading Walden . . .

That was way too long. Oh well.

The House of the Scorpion was another assigned reading for my Adolescent Lit class. Basically, the story follows Matteo "Matt" Alacrán (Spanish for scorpion) as he grows to adolescence in the futuristic land of Opium, a buffer state between the US and what was formerly known as Mexico, now Atzlan, which is run by drug dealers called the Farmers, headed by the original Matteo Alacrán, of whom Matt is the clone. The opium fields are harvested by eejits, slaves with a computer brain implant which makes them virtual puppets, and usually clones are intentionally brain-damaged and are considered "livestock" under international law. But Matt is different: he is intelligent and given a reasonably normal childhood, but he doesn't know why. And everything will change once he finds out.

It sounds great. And the first half is really quite marvelous and engaging, but the second half peters out into a mess of uncoordinated events and ideas. We agreed in class tonight that the book had enough material in it for at least two books, and that the second half should have been separate, in order to more fully flesh out the ideas and characters in it. But oh well. It wasn't.

The third book was a collection of slightly related short stories by Haitian-American Edwidge Danticat. I found this book while shelving a few days after the earthquake and realized I'd never read anything by or about Haiti, other than scraps in World History textbooks. The stories take place during different parts of the 20th century and often explore a woman's pivotal experience. Some stories briefly reference events in the previous stories, and it turns out that a number of the protagonists are related, though the effect is moving even without their relationship. As might be expected from any acquaintance with Haitian history, most of the stories are deeply moving, full of sorrow and oppression, but the prose is lovely, the effect overall moving and beautiful. I'm very glad I picked up this little book, though I wish I had a better knowledge of Haiti's history than one can pick up from glancing at Wikipedia. Oh well, that can be remedied.

Well, it's been a month, and I've finished 17 books (though nearly a third of them were YA, and two of them were under 100 pages). And I'm behind by three again; one of which I actually read a while ago and forgot about. I read A Streetcar Named Desire at least a week ago, but I forgot about it. It's really not a forgettable play, but I don't think I appreciated it as much as I ought to have. I probably wasn't in the mood. I'm not going to bother summarize it, not least of all because I'm not to sure of the fine points this long after reading it. But none of the characters were particularly sympathetic; and, yes, I know Williams was trying to make them all "real" people, neither heroes nor villians, but it just didn't work for me. Maybe after we study it in March I'll appreciate it more. Or maybe not.

I also finished Germans into Nazis a few days ago. It was for the Nazi Germany history class I'm taking at present, and while the argument was interesting and for the most part believable, the prose left something to be desired. It wasn't exactly dry as dust--Fritzsche was definitely trying to be engaging, though whether he succeeded is a matter of opinion--but his writing style wouldn't have sent my creative writing teacher into raptures (not that mine did). Like some other historians of the period (1990s) he downplayed the antisemitism rather more than was probably accurate, but overall the idea was interesting: the German people turned to the Nazi party because it offered the best nationalist, populist, non-class based platform, and harked back to the "glory days" of unity in April 1914 with its community-based, grass-roots efforts and vigorous pan-Germanism. A very good explanation for some things about the rise of Nazism, in my only vaguely educated opinion, though doubtless not the whole story.

And finally this evening I read Lady Macbeth's Daughter by Lisa Klein, another book assigned for the YA lit class I'm taking this quad. I just realized (oops!) that I'm supposed to be keeping a reading log for that class (I'll have to go back and make something up for the earlier readings), so I'll just copy/paste what I wrote for that:

Well, Macbeth is not my favorite Shakespearean tragedy (that would be King Lear, with Hamlet as a close second), so I wasn’t either tremendously enthused or offended by the idea of this novel as an adaptation of it. And as adaptations go, it was a fairly decent one, though I didn’t personally find it anything to get excited about. Basically, Klein invents Albia, the abandoned and presumed dead daughter of Macbeth and his wife, who was raised by the Wyrd sisters. Naturally, the sister turn out to be New Age-y wise women, engaged in an innocuous and vaguely feminist nature worship. Albia grows up in ignorance of her parentage, ends up as foster-daughter of Banquo, falls for her foster-brother Fleance, and generally orchestrates the events leading up to her father’s death at the hands of Macduff. In this version, Lady Macbeth doesn’t die, and the story goes a bit further than Shakespeare, showing the instability of the political situation following the tyrant’s demise without giving it a neat resolution.

The story was told in alternating chapters by Albia and her mother Grelach; the narrative voices weren’t particularly distinct, but their activities were separate enough to prevent confusion. Of course, Albia resembled a modern teenager more than a medieval one, but not disastrously so. The dialogue existed in a tenuous balance between “high” pseudo-Shakespeareanism (with some quotations) and colloquialism, but again it wasn’t particularly awful or offensive to one’s intelligence.

Really, that’s my overall impression of the novel: it’s hardly authentic, but not so obnoxiously modern as YA historical fiction can easily be. But that’s not to say that it’s the best of all possible balances between the two. There were several points, both in dialogue and plot (the entire romance sub-plot, the “warrior woman” sections, and so on), which verged on the cringe-worthy. I can see how it could be useful for teaching in parallel with the “real” version, although it would probably color the students’ reading a bit more than I’d personally prefer. At the same time, a responsible teacher could use it as a resource for discussions of feminism and postmodernist intertextuality as literary phenomena. But as a stand-alone work, I don’t think it’s of enough literary or historical value to bother with in the classroom.

Yeah, not really the greatest YA novel ever, but it was decent. And now to finish the other YA books I've got on the back burner. Then I should really start something for the European or pre-1900 classics . . .

25 - I liked Montmorency more than you did, I think. I enjoyed his attempt to recreate his life and the struggle he felt with wanting to build friendships and yet not reveal his past. But you are right to stop the series here. It becomes a mess, as he joins in some complicated fight against the evil anarchists and it really loses its appeal for me altogether. I read the next two, but I should have stopped while I was ahead.

#27 I have only read one non-fiction book by Edwidge Danticat called After the Dance: A Walk Through Carnival in Jacmel, Haiti (Crown Journeys) but it was very good, shows a different side to Haiti.

29: I probably would have liked it better if I was in the mood for it, but thanks for letting me know about the sequels. Anarchists can be interesting, but one never knows . . .

30: Sounds interesting, clfisha, I shall have to see about library holdings.

So: I managed to get very behind in my listings, so much so that I have a feeling I've forgotten several--hurrah! And I can't remember the order either. It'll just have to work.

Well, I know it took forever to finish Forest Born, because it was excessively formulaic and dull. I realized this within the first chapter, but I felt I ought to finish it anyway, since I'd very much enjoyed The Book of a Thousand Days and found Princess Academy and The Goose Girl very good and quite good, respectively. Unfortunately, the sequels to the last named feel uniformly unnecessary and repetitious, so unless Hale publishes another stand-alone YA fantasy or a different series, I don't think I'll bother with another one. And if anyone really cares what the story is about, he or she will just have to look it up elsewhere.

I'd read a few good reviews for Scott Westerfeld's newest sci-fi series-initiator, Leviathan, and once it finally got going, it was an enjoyable little adventure. It's set in an alternate Europe at the beginning of World War 1, when the British "Darwinists" begin to pit their genetically manipulated beasts against the German (et. al..) "Clunkers" with their legged battle-machines. The story follows the son of the murdered Archduke as he escapes from the Austro-Hungarian empire and meets a British female "midshipman" posing as a boy. Of course, the most interesting stuff began to happen at the end, so one feels compelled to seek out the sequel, but overall the world-building was intriguing, if not as understatedly put as I'd have preferred, and I suppose I shall have to read the rest once they arrive at the libraries.

For school last week I read Gwendolyn Brooks lovely mid-fifties' novel Maud Martha. It's a series of vignettes in the life of an inner city black woman of the period, a coming of age as well as a celebration of life. Brooks deals with the evils of poverty and racism straightforwardly, but without the seething fury and overt preaching that other writers have (understandably) employed to similar purposes. Really, it's a novel about life, appreciating the moment, marriage, and becoming a person. Unfortunately it's Brooks' only novel, but her poetry (at least the ones we read in class) is equally marvelous, and I shall have to remember to try some more.

For fun I picked up Bill Bryson's The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid, an amusing memoir about his youth in the1950s (and early '60s), specifically in reference to life in Des Moines, Iowa. Yes, it was excessively amusing and laugh-out-loud funny at times, although Bryson does discuss the more serious problems of the era, generally with a light-hearted tone, though the end was a bit darker. All in all I really enjoyed it, but it wasn't the cleanest read ever, which rather spoiled things at times. I mean, I do understand the necessity of discussing adolescence, "warts and all," but there are some things about a boy's development I really have no interest in . . .

I picked up Job's Daughters: Women and Power because it was another of the Madeleva Lectures in Spirituality, of which Kathleen Norris's The Quotidian Mysteries was one. Besides it was on the library shelf and it was brief, and it sounded interesting. And it was. Chittester looks at the various definitions of power and how they have been employed on women through the world and throughout history, coming to some conclusions about the need for better living standards and more equality for women around the globe. The lecture was given twenty years ago so doubtless some of her facts are out of date, and her theological application of the story of Job and his daughters was pretty tacked on, but it was definitely interesting and perhaps useful academically at some point.

I finished Elie Wiesel's novel/memoir Night as well; it was not the sort of thing to attempt on audiobook, so I'd abandoned it some months ago. I'm sure its impact was profound when it was published, soon after the events and prior to the huge proliferation of related stories. And it was very moving and vivid even after all the other books I've read, though to a lesser extent that it probably could have been. I was rather unsure about Wiesel's ultimately theological reaction to his experiences; it seemed at times that he turned agnostic or even atheist, but then at other points he seemed to affirm, at least to some extent, the existence and presence of God. It would have been interesting if he had elucidated that tension rather more. Perhaps he did so in his later works. I shall have to find out, though probably later, after finishing these classes on Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Prison Writings and the history of Nazi Germany . . .

And, yes, I also read Twilight, though I refuse to touchstone the thing or list it in my library. It's the book to be discussed in Adolescent Lit this Wednesday, and I'm hoping everyone is as ready to unload his or her individual loathing as I am. Okay, admittedly, I laughed out loud on numerous occasions, so it was "enjoyable," in a sick and twisted sense. I actually read paragaphs aloud to my younger sister, who'd only tried a page or two in the book store and thought I was making up the schlock that I read to her. I wasn't. I did use a slightly theatrical tone of voice, but the text demanded it. It might be interesting to examine the applications of power which Chittester discussed to the dynamic (I hesitate to use the term "relationship") between the protagonist and the object of her infatuation. I'm sure it would be to the detriment of both parties. Not to mention the author, whose intentions of course cannot be ascertained with absolute certainty--there's always the possibility she's been perpetrating an immense and personal joke on an unsuspectingly gullible reading public. Now there's a fantasy I'd be willing to live with.

Seriously, I'm having difficulty determining the appeal of this book; okay, forbidden romance I get, and "bad guy" who's actually good, I can understand as well. Though, really, Meyer goes out of her way to make her male romantic lead squeaky clean (except in the deeply disturbing ways which one could argue she intended tongue-in-cheek). But the prose is so absurd, dull, and agonizing that I don’t know what to think, and the pacing is practically stationary, until the final portion where it does consider moving. Most of the secondary characters were flat, but I'd willingly have read about the life stories and inner lives of practically any one of them, if only to get away from main characters for a few hundred pages. Oh well. At least it was "short" enough to read in an afternoon.

And now I think I'm done. Finally. I really ought to sleep sometime tonight.. .

Um. It's been about a month, and I've only read about a dozen books, which is still too much to discuss in this post. That includes three graphic novels (an adaptation of Beowulf for YA lit class and two non-fiction books I randomly came across while shelving), so it's even worse than it sounds.

I have enjoyed much of the science fiction I've read recently though. In preparation for my planned summer read of Connie Willis's latest, Blackout, I'm trying out her list of favorite time travel stories and so read Daphne Du Maurier's The House on the Strand and Robert Heinlein's The Door into Summer.

I had decently high expectations for the former, since Du Maurier's Rebecca is rightfully considered a classic of sorts, and the book was no disappointment. The main character, a dissatisfied and unoccupied British man whose American wife is urging him to move to the US, is not a very pleasant or admirable figure--okay, there really aren't any such characters in the whole book--but his behavior makes for a compelling read (though in one sense I have to agree with reviewers who note the story is more about drug addiction than time travel). The events he observes in the 14th century are not in themselves very absorbing until nearly the end, and even then the focus is more on the protagonist's reaction to those events, which is much more interesting. And, yes, the ending is brilliant.

I did not have very high expectations at all for The Door into Summer though, as my only previous attempt (Have Spacesuit, Will Travel) irritated me more than it amused. However, I enjoyed this light-hearted take on cryogenic sleep and time travel as the ticket to perfecting one's life. There were a few odd bits (the marrying-a-woman-first-met-as-a-young-child is somewhat disturbing), but the protagonist's first person narration was great fun, and his cat was pretty much marvelous. I may have to give Heinlein another chance.

And I've started reading through the Newbery Award winners, skipping those I've read previously and remember well. So I read the first award winner The Story of Mankind, which editorialized a bit more--and with varying effectiveness/accuracy--than I'd prefer even a children's history book to do. It was obviously dated, of course, but I think I can see why it was an award-winning effort, if nothing else. The Dark Frigate is a little harder; I'm exactly not sure why this Americanized Treasure Island won in 1924, except that it seems to do well in portraying the language of the period and uses the obligatory adolescent Bildungsroman motif. The main character is hard to get close to, and I guess the moral complexity is somewhat interesting, but his adventures took way to long to get anywhere, without providing any really meaningful characterization beyond the initial Dickensian variety (which, admittedly, Hawes shows some adeptness at, although I think he could have honed his skill a bit more, had he lived longer).

And I read other books, most of which I liked moderately well, including The Warded Man--which I really liked, up until the obligatory and overdone action sequences in the end. I'll still read the sequels, though. And The Maze Runner was a fairly decent YA post-apocalyptic science-experiment-run-amok story, which I shall also pursue in its sequels, though the end felt to me over-done. Gilgamesh was pretty much just weird, though the translation seemed quite good. I probably wouldn't have finished it, if it wasn't for the audiobook's reader, who did a fine job dramatizing the over-the-top stylized, yet philosophical nature of this ancient epic.

And now to get some more reading done . . .

Glad you liked your 2nd Heinlein more than the first and I've recently acquired The Door Into Summer myself along with another couple of his juveniles. If you do decide to pick up another of his works may I suggest that you give The Moon is a Harsh Mistress a try. If you don't like that one then there really is no hope for you ;)

Thanks for the suggestion, though I don't think I'm in the mood to try another just yet, so it's difficult to ascertain whether or not "hope" is an option . . . And, having just finished the audiobook of The Lord of the Flies, I'm inclined to think it isn't.

That's not to say I didn't "enjoy" William Golding's "cult classic" (as the writer of the audiobook's synopsis deems it)--it was actually an overwhelming and amazing experience. Admittedly, the fact that it was a seven-hour audiobook rather than an hour-and-a-half physical book likely had something to do with it, since there's a definite value in immersing oneself in the language and characters for so long a time. I'm not sure yet whether it's quite a "real, adult classic," whatever than means, but it's certainly a masterpiece of adolescent literature. Really, it's the sort of thing I think I'm always looking for in YA dystopian lit, but it has a level of sophistication which many of them lack. And, yes, this is more a gushing statement of emotional reaction (I just finished it fifteen minutes ago) than any sort of recommendation, journal, or review, but I don't suppose I can help it.

I have also finished Hitler's Private Library, a book mentioned in my Nazi Germany class as being somewhat interesting (which it was, but only just barely) and Rock, Paper, Scissors: game theory in everyday life which was significantly more interesting. And I'm reading a few others (Locked Rooms, The People of the Abyss, and Civilization and Its Discontents, which I'm not sure I'll read in its entirety, so it might never appear here). But now I have to leave for work . . .

I've rearranged a few categories now: Miscellaneous has become Newbery Award Winners; History/Science has become Non-Fiction related to Nazi Germany; Other Non-fiction has become Science and other Non-fiction. The last two changes were motivated by the realization that many of my history books and a decent number of my non-fiction books were at least tangentially related to Nazi Germany, the murder of the Jews, and the ethic issues therein, and I should like to read more on the topic (both for class and "for fun"). So, that's that.

For that category, I've read Maus I and The Man Who Shocked the World, the latter being one of the more marginally related sort, since it tells of the life and experiments of Stanley Milgram, the social psychologist whose obedience expirements have contributed (in part, by design) to the conversation surrounding the perpetrators of the Holocaust. And the former is a graphic novel memoir by the son of a Holocaust survivor. I do intend to read the second half and likely quite soon, but for sheer interest, the biography of Milgram probably won out, since I didn't know as much about him as I do about the horrible situation of Polish Jews during the 1940s.

For my "other non-fiction," I've read Write These Laws on Your Children, a study of Christian homeschoolers; The Complete Persepolis, a graphic novel memoir of woman who grew up during the revolution in Iran; and Syncopated: an anthology of nonfiction picto-essays, an uneven collection of graphic novel-formated "essays" on a variety of topics. The first book was really very interesting to me: I was raised in "the World of Conservative Christian Homeschooling" and will continue to be involved in it, as I will teach homeschooled middle school students in the coming school year (English for 7th graders and Intro to Western Civ for 8th graders--what fun!). I felt that Kunzman's interviews and analysis were overall very balanced and comparatively representative, though I feel he ought to have included a bit more detailed look at online homeschooling (since I spent my last three years of high school doing it almost exclusively). Persepolis had been brought up in my Young Adult lit class last quad as an interesting graphic memoir, and it was, though the second half bogged a bit for me, as Satrapi focuses on her youthful rebellion, a topic that has never much interested me, since I've heard enough horror stories from my older relations. The collection of "picto-essays" was extremely uneven to me, with only a few sections that I found compelling or worthwhile, but since I only spent about half-an-hour on it, I don't suppose my time was altogether wasted.

I listened to Faceless Killers on audiobook while driving to and from school and while working at the college archives. I'm quite conflicted on this one. The character of Kurt Wallander is quite stereotypical in a way and his inner thoughts are miserable to listen to for hours on end; the mystery was interesting in stops and starts, though it certainly wasn't "fair" in any sense of the word; the ending seemed a bit contrived, with Wallander's relationships and the mystery tying up a bit more neatly that I'd have expected from the overall tone. But there was something compelling about the story and the characters, and I do think I shall check out the second book at some point, though perhaps I'd rather read it than listen to it, in order to shorten the length of time submerged in Wallander's head.

Say You're One of Them was another audiobook "read," though I picked up the book to finish it midway through the fourth of five stories--and I'm glad I did, because the last two stories ended quite badly for all concerned. The narrators did an excellent job with the dialects and accents, so it was rather awkward to have to sound everything out in my head with the actual book, but I think the book would be worth it either way, although it's definitely not a feel-good read. There are glimmers of hope in these five stories about the loss of any remaining childhood innocence in different countries and regions of Africa, but overall the children's experiences are heart-breaking. However, I think I'd recommend them almost without reservation, even if the book was part of Oprah's book club . . .

Raven's Ladder is the third book in a fantasy series (I think there are two more to come) by an editor/film reviewer whose blog I frequent. Once again, it took a few dozen pages to get into the story, but then I'd rather not put it down. Overstreet's work is a cut above run-of-the-mill Christian fiction and rarely gives into obvious biblical or societal parallels. His prose is quite good as well, though sometimes the characters' accents and slang can be a bit tilted, though not quite awkward and definitely not cumbersome. Anyhow, I do hope he finishes the next before I forget what happened in this one, which has rather more of a cliff-hanger ending than the previous two, as if to prove this is not a trilogy.

Locked Rooms was quite good, though not my favorite of the Mary Russell series (and I read it awhile ago), so there's not much to say. All Unquiet Things was another mystery, this time one with a YA audience, and is quite satisfactory for a first novel. There's a bit more talkiness and repetition than would be ideal, but the characters are exceptionally well drawn and flesh out the high school drama they inhabit. Some reviews have said the two (or three) main characters were too unlikeable, but I felt they were an adequate mixture of good and bad qualities, warped enough to make their plights understandable and realistic, yet somehow decent enough for the reader to care about them. Actually, I felt it was a pretty exceptional YA high school story with a more than adequate mystery to boot. (And I can't say that about Girl in the Arena, another highly recommended YA novel which floundered in overly broad satire and awkward characterization).

I read Housekeeping for Senior Seminar and feel it is certainly a 20th Century classic. Of course, the language and metaphors are gorgeous and provocative, but the disturbed (and disturbing) narrator and her family were what kept me reading (aside from the fact that it was assigned). Well, "family" is too strong a word--"female relations" is a bit more accurate. In class we looked at a few critical readings (particularly 2d wave feminist ones) and were surprised to note that a number of them see Ruthie as a positive figure in some way--I never felt that way. Okay, she does reject traditional feminine values and appreciates nature, but she rejects all forms of community and human relationship, has definite anorexic (and other need-crushing) impulses, and just has some really odd ideas about what it means to be human (definite neo-platonism in the least). Which is not to say that she is not a sympathetic character--it's just that's she also pathetic, in a "causing one to feel pity for"-type of way. However, this is one to read again for the imagery alone, and I shall definitely move on to Robinson's other works, which y teacher and classmates have said answer some of the questions Ruthie raises.

Tales from Silver Lands is a strong favorite of the three Newbery Award winners I've read this year: the stories are presented as "exotic" without being condescending and are really just well retold folktales without any huge attempt to wrest them into a larger narrative. Finger's authorial comments generally restrict themselves to explaining his sources (there is a bit more condescension here, but not an overbearing amount, considering the period and all), and he isn't the twee, patronizing storyteller that ruins some early children's story collections. This is actually one I'd recommend as a read aloud or to be given to a child interested in fairy tales and folklore.

And now, I'd better quit while I'm nearly ahead.

What is there to say, except that it's been six and a half months, and I've just finished my 164th book (or thereabouts, since I probably forgot to list a few)--Barchester Towers by Anthony Trollope. Better excessively late than never, right? Perhaps not.

Well, Barchester Towers is said to be one of his best loved books, and I can see why. The characters are well drawn and amusing; the dialogue, while generally not witty, is certainly lively and humorously realistic; the plot is not suspenseful (by the author's choice), but nevertheless engaging and often kept me awake far longer than I intended to be. Yes, this was a bed-time book for me and has been next to my pillow (or under it) far longer than I'd care to admit, not because of the particular faults of the narrative, but because it is the sort of book which lends itself to a lengthy perusal. I wasn't exactly sure if I wanted to both with Trollope when I began The Warden, but now, having finished my second, I have purchased a third (Can You Forgive Her) and will begin Doctor Thorne in December, since Trollope doesn't seem to be the sort of fluff I will likely indulge in during my first NaNoWriMo.

I can't say that I'm caught up now--I don't dare to consider the attempt--but there's something to be said for not entirely giving up.

Now that I've reached 30,000 words in my NaNoWriMo project and want to avoid working on tomorrow's lesson plans, I shall attempt a lamentable update. In no particular order:

The Squirrel's Birthday and Other Parties was a very interesting little collection of children's stories, rather in the vein of Winnie-the-Pooh, but rather more melancholy in my opinion--not to say they weren't lovely little fables. It's rather hard to tell whether the sense of melancholy is from the content or the translation, so I won't attempt to elaborate further. In any event, quite pretty little stories and of course well worth the fifteen or so minutes I spent with them.

Passing was mentioned by the professor of my senior literature seminar in conjunction, I believe, to Brook's Maud Martha. The era and milieu is the similar, but Larsen's reminded me very much of Chopin and Wharton, albeit considering questions of race as well as those of gender or class. I wish I had a professor to tell be all about the literary consensus, but I suppose I could try to find it on my own. I'm still not quite clear on what exactly happened in the final scenes, but to say it's haunting would definitely be appropriate in any case.

Behemoth was rather a better novel than its predecessor, I think; the characters were a bit more lifelike and the plot moved ahead in ways that interested me more. And, yes, like everyone else who mentioned it -- I want a Perspicacious Loris. Tara the spaz-kitten is cuter, but not quite as, well, perspicacious. A fun read, if nothing else.

I've read a few (ha!) graphic novels lately, as well as my first manga, in an attempt (failed) to not spend as much time reading this month when I could be writing. So instead I picked up the complete Bone in one volume, since I've been seeing the individual books at the library and wondered whether they were as good as the blurbs indicated. Besides, I wanted to see what all the fuss was about, since they circulate like crazy. Well, suffice it to say that all nine books were awesomely fun, at once hilarious as comics and compelling as a children/young adult fantasy. I also want a Rat Creature, while I'm hoping for fantastical beasts -- preferably one like Bartleby (the Scrivener!), though I'll go for one of the quiche-lovers, if nothing else is available . . .

So I also picked up Binky the Space Cat and its sequel while checking in things, because they reminded me of our own silly little beasties. And I read the first volume of Death Note because it was a manga that didn't seem to have the really weird animation of most of the others. I'm not sure if I "liked" it (the main character has some serious delusional qualities, not to mention ethical problems), but I'll try the next few, just to see if it gets better or worse. Then at least I can tell my manga-loving friend in Ohio that I've tried something.

I've also read a few YA novels, on the theory that they're shorter and less dense than adult novel -- and besides, I like them. None of the ones I've read this month have been amazing. Only You Can Save Mankind was definitely Pratchett in "message mode" and secular humanist preachiness is just as irritating as Christian preachiness (plus it tends to be very pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstrap-ish, which I never find motivating. Oh well. His adult Discworld stuff is always better than the juvenile (and I've still got one saved up on my humor shelf!) Interstellar Pig did tend more towards the horror end of science fiction; the sort of thing where creepy aliens want to destroy the planet, but with a few interesting twists, so it made for a nice end to an hours-long session of writing. Cathy's Book was something I was more interested in because of all the fun little "clues" in the front pocket (which all have to be counted when it's checked in--blast and argh!), but the narrative voice was rather fun, if not particularly unique or compelling. Sisters Red was quite disappointing, as I'd read a good review a while back, but found it at once overly violent and insipid with deplorably obvious plot "twist" and an imbalanced and somewhat implausible sister-relationship. Oh well, at least it wasn't very long.

1632 was also overly violent at times, only serviceable written, chockful of really patriotic sentiments, and with some really idealized characters to boot, but I still stayed up far too late reading it and enjoyed the chance to encounter a fictionalized Gustavus Adolphus with a possibly different ending to the Thirty Years War. I sympathize, to an extent, with Flint's desire to provide a positive backwoods town and to provide a working model of fledgling democracy, but it didn't work well as a political (or whatever) statement. However, I tend to enjoy time travel stories and have a soft spot for alternate history, so I might give this sprawling series another try sometime. We'll see.

I'd heard the Maisie Dobbs series is good, so I read the first one. The protagonist is likable and the milieu seems well depicted, so it wasn't a washout, by any means, though the mystery was given extremely short shrift and only made moderate sense, to be generous. I'll try the next ones, because the time between the wars fascinates me, but I hope Winspear gets a handle on her plotting.

I think that's about it for the past two weeks' reading, though chances are I've forgotten something. Oh well. In any event, that's all for now.

Wow! All that reading and 30K on the NaNo too.... good job!

Thanks, Victoria, though it probably would have been a lot more writing if I didn't feel the need to "celebrate" every milestone with a bit more reading . . . Or, alternately, a lot more reading if I didn't need to write so much. I think it works better the former way.

Anyhow, I've now read Dancing Shoes (or Wintle's Wonders) and Thursday's Child by Noel Streatfeild, both "bedtime" reads which kept me up rather later than I ought to have, since why bother starting such slim books if you can't finish them? I should really stick to non-fiction or Trollope when sleep is -- or should be -- in the offing. Both of them were quite sweet little stories, the former very much in the vein of all her other "child-entertainer" stories, with some sibling(s) loving the dancing and another preferring to act. The aunt and cousin were a bit over-the-top, in my opinion, but practically everyone else was tremendously helpful and dear to the children, as per usual, so it makes one rather wish for orphanhood, if one is to fall among such lovely family and friends.

Thursday's Child has a similar feel as regards orphans: practically everyone loves them, except the absurdly awful authoritarian, but it fits well with all the other "orphaned nobility" stories of the late-Victorian/Edwardian era (in which it was set) -- though admittedly, by inclusion of a dramatized Little Lord Fauntleroy, though no Sara Crewe was mentioned. I did like the second novel a bit better, as the four children and their adventures were a bit more fun to read, though even more improbable, than those of Rachel and Hilary.

This evening after work I read Diary of A Wimpy Kid: The Ugly Truth, which was fun, as were the others. The appeal to young readers, “reluctant” or otherwise, is quite evident and explains the preponderance of knock-offs and really long hold lists at our library (20 copies of this one checked out or on a hold shelf, 60+ additional holds on them, and growing every day).

Okay, I'd like to reach 37K and quit before midnight, so back to NaNoWriMo. *is seriously bored with her story* Woohoo.

Only about 1500 words left for NaNoWriMo, but I think I'm done for tonight. In any event, I also finished The Naming (aka The Gift) by Alison Croggon today--which is something of a feat, as I've been trying to finish it for over a week now. If anyone cares about the synopsis, it's pretty readily available, but it wasn't that the story was dragging or the language was difficult or the characters were dull.

Really, I don't know why, but I just could not get into the book until I'd read more than half of it. I probably wouldn't have bothered except that I decided it would count towards "Non-European Authors," since Croggon is from Australia. The story is on the very Tolkien-heavy side of the high fantasy spectrum, almost too much so, and while I liked the characterization (and even the plot and setting, for the most part), it just felt a bit forced for a while, though the prose was quite nice throughout. Eh. I don't know. Now that the story just started to "get good" near the end, I'll probably try the second one. But not until next year, most likely.

I also read some itty-bitty kids' graphic novels, including a Bone "tall tales" collection that was quite fun. And I'm almost done with the Bonhoeffer I've been reading. And I'm sure I'm forgetting something. But I've got to get up in the morning and get going, so heading towards sleeping would probably be ideal at this point.

Wow, I'm getting really, really circuitous. Must be all that NaNoWriMo-izing. 'Tisn't good for the stylistics. Nope.

I'm really going now.

Jumping right in:

Of Mice and Men was tremendously better than I expected, primarily because I've had a dreadfully low opinion of John Steinbeck since reading The Pearl about a decade ago. It was, in my remembrance, both dull and horrifying, and I determined to avoid Steinbeck at all costs. But I needed to read another 20th Century classic, the novel was on the recently returned shelves, it was thin, and I had a fifteen minute break with nothing to do, so I picked it up. And then checked it out. And read it before bed. And cried. Dang it. Sometimes one needs a dose of good old fashioned modernist alienation.

And then I decided to try the Fables graphic novels again; I read the first one last year, because I'd heard it was good, but couldn't find a copy of the second one and was put off by the violence in the third, so I dropped it. Well, I tried again and became moderately obsessed--about ten graphic novels in less than forty-eight hours. So, yeah. Um. I liked them. Lots. The Jack of Fables volume I tried wasn't quite as good, but I plan to read them anyway (there are five sitting in my library bag, just waiting for a spare hour or two). There's not much to say there, except that I find the blend of fairy tales, hard-boiled fiction, and fantasy pretty much irresistible, despite my antipathy toward visual depictions of sensuality and violence. Oh well. I can't help it. Much.

And I also finished Creation and Fall; Temptation finally. Bonhoeffer's analysis of the first chapters of Genesis was intriguing, to be sure; though I don't quite agree with him on all points, I liked his angle overall and found much food for thought and reflection therein. Even if the translation seemed to cling to the German phrasings rather more closely than I think was necessary . . . I do like reading German, when I can manage it; I just don't like reading English that reads like German. If that makes sense.

And now that NaNoWriMo's done, I just have to write lots of tests and homework assignments and things, go to work, help with Christmas preparations, perform other miscellaneous household tasks, and then spend all the rest of of my time reading--only 4 pre-1900 classics and 2 non-European writers (and three large-ish books on hold) to go! Sure. Why not.

I picked up two books at the library recently because they were thin and by authors from somewhat non-European countries. Really. That's the only reason. Oh well. Neither of them were bad, just not my cup of tea. I'm really not much of a literary fiction reader, so There are Jews in My House, a collection of short stories by recent-ish Russian immigrant Lara Vapnyar, was not very satisfying. There was the inordinate and oddly abstract preoccupation with sexuality, the lingering over fairly common emotional responses until they turn neurotic, the just barely too literary language (regardless of the narrator's education background)--all of which combined make for a tedious read on my part. Oh well. I was interested in the title story most, primarily because of my readings on Nazi Germany and the Holocaust, so I probably liked it best.

My second ill-fitting read was No New Land by M.G. Vassanji, a Kenyan-Canadian of Indian heritage. I did find the depiction of life for such "country-less" people very interesting, and some of the minor characters were fascinating, but the main character didn't really draw my attention, so I got rather bogged down. The style was not particularly literary in the above-described manner, but it was not particularly lively either, so overall the story was more valuable as a glimpse into the lifestyles and challenge of a particular minority than anything else (not that that's not valuable--it's just not my favorite type of reading).

I also read a few more Fables collections--the companion 1001 Nights of Snowfall was probably my favorite, as it offered some more backstory for the characters. Volume Two, which I had skipped as it was unavailable, wasn't as good as I'd hoped, but it was still a worthwhile read. I read the rest of the Jack stories that our library has (up to volume five), and while I still am not at all fond of the titular Fable or his behavior, the additional mythology of the Fables universe is absolutely marvelous. I shall have to get the rest of them from one of the nearby libraries.

And that brings me to my inter-library loan item, The Diary of a Nobody, which I believe I came across while perusing Jasper Fforde's website, as a humourous book he recommended. And it was that. In fact, it was a marvelous little gem of Edwardian humour, just the sort of thing that I love when done well. Mr. Charles Pooter is a lower middle-class clerk, always looking for social advance and opportunities for bad puns, and he documents (with withering honesty) the little absurdities of his life and class. The opinion of LT reviewers appears split as to whether he is overly vilified or presented as a lovable fool--I'm firmly in the latter category. As satirists go, the Grossmith brothers (George the author and Weedon the illustrator) are definitely in the lighter vein and never make Mr. Pooter seem wicked or completely idiotic. So I liked it. And want a nice little copy like the 1940s Everyman I got from Southern Illinois University.

I also read the Hunger Games trilogy over the past three days or so. While I didn't think it was the best YA fiction ever, it was very good and thoroughly engrossing; the writing was passable and the characterization overall quite good, if inclined towards extremes (somewhat excusable, given the circumstances). I love a good dystopia, and Collins certainly didn't skimp on the awfullness. Heck, she gave a couple different types all in one, from Brave New World-esque culture of excess through concentration camp-style forced labor and violent retributions to 1984-type ubiquitous surveillance, with a strong dose of anti-celebrity reality show bite and more than a bit of the old-fashioned smashing of the "Dulce et Decorum Est" trope.

Really, she bit off a lot more than most authors would care to chew, and she pulled it off pretty impressively. True, the writing was only so-so for me, getting pretty stilted at times and info-dumpy at others--sometimes to the point where I no longer despair of my own writing style, which is really saying something. I read the books a bit too fast and with too many distractions to really know if there was a strong emotional connection between the reader and characters (though I have to admit to being a Peeta partisan: drat those self-sacrificial, seriously injured romantic leads!), but the characterizations were strong enough to provoke them.

And I did like the ending, by the by. It struck almost the right balance between sentiment (yup, I wanted Peeta and Katniss to get married) and realism (they're living on the ruins of her homeland). It did feel a bit rushed to me; I would have liked more on the politics and the trial and the rebuilding, with less time to the more first-person-shooter elements of Capitol-storming parts. However, enough good people died and there was enough ambivalence about the fate of the nation post-Capitol that it felt okay to enjoy Katniss's improbable survival and happiness with Peeta and their children.

So, I think I'm caught up again.

>42 InfoQuest: Very nice reviews! I've added Diary of a Nobody and The Hunger Games to my wishlist.

I hope didn't give too many spoilers for The Hunger Games series! Somehow my "reviews" either tend to say nothing at all about the plot or far too much, and I think I rather erred towards the latter, but 'tis too late to do anything about it.

Well, I've sort of finished this challenge, at least the at least ten books in ten categories part, though not so much of my own minor challenges (at least three unowned in each category, etc.). The final "required" read was The Haunted Hotel by Wilkie Collins for the "Pre-1900 Classics," which ended up being mostly Victorian literature anyway.

That particular novel/novella was supposedly Collins' last "coherent" work, but it really wasn't too coherent anyway. Okay, so the plot made some sense: a mysteriously ill-fated foreight adventuress and her "brother" carry off her new British husband to Venice, where he falls ill and dies, much to the chagrin of his siblings and jilted fiancee. Whereupon, the surviving friends-and-relations ending up half-hazardly discovering his fate a year or so later. It's really melodramatic, even for Collins' more sensational moments, and the characters are so thin and flat, they're practically transparent. The awful, dark-featured villainess has some really strange premonitions--and, of course, by the end, very little common sense or self-composure--and her blond, "heroic" nemesis is as shallow as can be. I feel rather gypped. Bother.

The White Stag, the brief Newbery Award winner from 1938, also differed from my expectations, but in a good way. I had only the vaguest of notions about the story when I started it--some sort of fairy tale? But it turned out to be a very intriguing origin myth for Attila and his Magyar/Hun people. Nimrod, the "mighty hunter" of Genesis figures prominently; there are interesting syncretistic rituals and visions; and it's all presented quite straightforwardly, but with a light poetic touch here and there. I'm not sure what sort of child would like the story--it would have been a bit too strange for me as a child (but, heck, I was half-traumatized by "The Great Mouse Detective" and had nightmares about pink elephants after watching "Dumbo"). However, as a mythic short story, I give it quite good marks.

Howl's Moving Castle was just as fun as I'd hoped, given the marvelous time I had with Fire and Hemlock. My only regret is that I quite gulped the former, in a (failed) attempt to get to bed before 3 am, so I'm not sure if the ending was as rushed as I felt it to be, or if that was just my hurried reading. In any event, I was pleased with Sophie as a character and grew to like Howl/Howell, though I'm still not quite sure why he felt compelled to be such a heartbreaker. Sophie could handle him, though, I'm sure.

Let's see. I also read a collection of science fiction "Masterpieces" edited by Card. Since I'm not too well read in the genre, I'm not sure if the title was warranted, but a few definitely stuck out to me--"Sandkings" by George R. R. Martin for one and (for some odd reason) "The Tunnel Under the World" by Frederick Pohl for another. At least, the former left me seriously disturbed and very intrigued and the latter definitely pulled off the O. Henry "twist and double-twist" very neatly. Quite a few of the rest (there are twenty-seven in all) were very good, but at least a few seemed not quite to warrant the title's effusion. All in all, though, I enjoyed the time spent with this anthology and am still in the mood for more science fiction.

Other than these, I've read a few fun picture books lately (they don't count, and I don't remember all the titles) and another two volumes of Fables (going back to read Mean Seasons and moving ahead with Dark Ages). And I'm plowing through Metaxas' monster biography of Bonhoeffer--it's actually quite interesting, but the sheer mass of the printed book is definitely daunting, though the margins and typeface are large. And I have a feeling I'm missing something that I read yesterday or the day before, but returned to the library without writing it down. Oh well. I guess I'll remember it later. Or not.