Hello! I’m sorry I mysteriously dropped of the face of the blogosphere. I’m back now, well-rested, and ready to begin blogging again. I’ve got quite the line up of books to review, so be prepared! I missed you!
June 17, 2009
The Grapes of Wrath – First Thoughts
Some thoughts on finishing Grapes of Wrath:
1. It’s amazing.
2. It’s disturbingly relevant.
3. Steinbeck writes beautiful prose and a beautiful story.
4. Even at 500 pages, I still didn’t want it to end.
5. It has one of the most poignant endings I’ve ever read.
Favorite quotes:
The man sitting in the iron seat did not look like a man: gloved, goggled, rubber dust mask over nose and mouth, he was part of the monster, a robot in the seat. The thunder of the cylinders sounded through the country, became one with the air and the earth, so that earth and air muttered in sympathetic vibration. The driver could not control it – straight across country it went, cutting through a dozen farms and straight back. A twitch at the controls could swerve the cat’, but the driver’s hands could not twitch because the monster that built the tractors, the monster that sent the tractor out, had somehow got into the driver’s hands, into his brain and muscle, had goggled him and muzzled him – goggled his mind, muzzled his speech, goggled his perception, muzzled his protest. He could not see the land as it was, he could not smell the land as it smelled; his feet did not stamp the clods or feel the warmth and power of the earth. He sat in an iron seat and stepped on iron pedals. He could not cheer or beat or curse or encourage the extension of his power, and because of this he could not cheer or whip or curse or encourage himself. He did not know or own or trust or beseech the land. If a seed dropped did not germinate, it was nothing. If the young thrusting plant withered in drought or drowned in a flood of rain, it was no more to the driver than to the tractor.
He loved the land no more than the bank loved the land. He could admire the tractor – its machined surfaces, it surge of power, the roar of its detonating cylinders; but it was not his tractor. (page 37)
One of my favorite characters was Ma.
Ma raised her eyes to the girl’s face. Ma’s eyes were patient, but the lines of strain were on her forehead…. “When you’re young, Rosasharn, ever’thing that happens is a thing all by itself. It’s a lonely thing. I know, I ‘member, Rosasharn.” Her mouth loved the name of her daughter. “You’re gonna have a baby, Rosasharn, and that’s somepin to you lonely and away. That’s gonna hurt you, an’the hurt’ll be lonely hurt, an’ this here tent is alone in the worl’, Rosasharn.” She whipped the air for a moment to drive a buzzing blow fly on, and the big shining fly circled the tent twice and zoomed out into the blinding sunlight. And Ma went on, “They’s a time of change, and when that comes, dyin’ is a piece of all dyin’, and bearin’ is a piece of all bearin’, an bearin’ an’ dyin’ is two pieces of the same thing. An’ then things ain’t lonely any more. An’ then a hurt don’t hurt so bad, ’cause it ain’t a lonely hurt no more, Rosasharn. I wisht I could tell you so you’d know, but I can’t.” And her voice was so soft, so full of love, that tears crowded into Rose of Sharon’s eyes, and flowed over eyes and blinded her.
All I can say right now is, read it! It’s awesome!
June 15, 2009
Sunday Salon – On Tuesday
So, I was all set to write this post to have it published on Monday. Day late and a dollar short and all that, but you know, just one dollar and one day. Then I got distracted and ate dinner. Then I picked up An Abundance of Katherines and all of the sudden it was 11:40 and I didn’t have a TSS post, but I had finished a book. Also, it was a really good book! I loved it to pieces and I can’t wait to properly review it, though it will be a lot of incoherent gushing about books that make you forget what time it is or where you are or anything else about the real world.
I’m sorry I have not been bringing you all the posts I promised, including the spotlight on Borges, the review of Supersense and just generally have been an absent blogger. Things got crazy at work and then things got crazy in life, but they’re fixin to settle down and I’m fixin to purchase a car, which will seriously cut down on the amount of time I spend hopping from train to bus to train (to taxi to bus to bike).
The good news is that I finished The Grapes of Wrath (and loved it) and An Abundance of Katherines (and adored it), so you have 3 book reviews to look forward to this week, including Supersense. Hopefully I’ll get my act together and write up that Spotlight post.
I am catching up on my blog reading, so you will be hearing from me soon. Happy reading everyone!
June 11, 2009
Ohh this is so beautiful!
I really want this dress! Grosgrain is giving away this beautiful dress to one lucky winner. Head on over to check it out 
June 10, 2009
Library Loot – Second week of June
Everyone, I’d like to introduce you to someone very special.
This is my bike. She gets me through the rough times. She is old, old, old, but is in great shape. She has survived two hurricanes, flash floods, and my own carelessness. She has a bike basket, she currently has a plastic bag over her seat because lately, the weather has been trying to kill me. It has been a race against the storms here in Virginia and it seems every day I have to decide how likely it is that I will get struck by lightening on my way home. I also have to avoid hecklers… let me just say it right now: NO, Toto is NOT in my basket. NO, you may not ride your motorized scooter next to me. NO, I do not like it when you shout foul words at me, in any language. I DO NOT appreciate it when you sneak up behind me and set off a fog horn off and scare the crap out of me so I almost crash my bike. How much gas did it take you to stall there and bother me? OH YEAH, I’m only burning calories baby.
June 8, 2009
Review – The Mystery of Grace by Charles De Lint
“I do not understand the mystery of grace — only that it meets us where we are and does not leave us where it found us.” – Anne Lamot (novel epigraph)
June 7, 2009
Sunday Salon – 7 June 2009
Good morning, everyone! I hope you’re having a wonderful start to your Sunday. I’m up visiting my dad and younger sisters (K the Older and K the Younger) in Pennsylvania. That means I’ve had plenty of Amtrak time to read and catch up on my reviews and will have even more when I head back down to Virginia tomorrow. It’s been a fairly uneventful weekend. Yesterday I fell asleep around 12, after waking up at 6 am, and slept until 3 pm! It was so nice, I haven’t napped like that in forever. Then I went outside and read The Grapes of Wrath.
At the moment, I’m reading three equally wonderful books. As I mentioned before, I’m reading The Grapes of Wrath and so far I love it. It’s so descriptive and the language and characters are absolutely amazing. Of course, I’m only on page 25.
I’m also reading Supersense: Why We Believe the Unbelievable by Bruce Hood. Bruce Hood has agreed to be interviewed for RegularRumination, so I was worried that I wasn’t going to like his book, then it was going to be awkward, and I would have to write a negative review and then the author would not want to be interviewed. Fortunately, that is NOT what has happened! I love the book, and I can’t wait to tell you all about it. Essentially, the book is about how there is a biological reason for believing things that are, well, unbelievable. I definitely appreciate Hood’s nonoffensive stance, so that I feel anyone can read this novel, regardless of their belief system.
Do you have any questions for Bruce Hood? If so, I’ll include them in my interview! Just leave a question in the comment section. Here is more information about his book Supersense and his blog.
I’m also reading The American Resting Place by Marilyn Yalom. You really need to get this book! It’s so good. I’m loving every minute of it. It’s so hard reading three excellent books at once, I never know which one to read. I’ve been reading one chapter of each.
How is your reading going this week? What is the best book you’ve read recently?
June 6, 2009
Reading Meme – Just for fun
A combination of reading memes floating around the internet, especially at things mean a lot!
Which author do you own the most books by?
Probably JK Rowling (9), but next on the list is Madeline L’Engle (5), Charles De Lint (3), José Saramago (3) and Haruki Murakami (3)
Which book do you own the most copies of?
I randomly have 2 copies of The Dante Club after a mishap at Paperback Swap, but that’s it.
Did it bother you that both those questions ended with prepositions?
Nah.
What is the biggest or most embarrassing gap in your reading?
I try to be fairly well-rounded, but I’d really like to read more classics. All kinds of classics!
Which fictional character are you secretly in love with?
I can’t really think of any particular character, but I’ve always loved Henry and Claire as a couple, from The Time Traveler’s Wife. They just completed each other.
June 5, 2009
Review – Tender Morsels by Margo Lanagan
“The girls were two flames at which she warmed herself to humanness, having long been something else—stone, perhaps; dried-out wood. Their perfect trust that the happy times would continue—she watched it and she sipped it as some small birds sip nectar, and she began, if not to perfectly trust it herself, at least to hope more strongly, at least to look beyond the beauties of the immediate season to the plans and practicalities demanded by the next—or the next several years, maybe? Maybe.”
June 5, 2009
SPOTLIGHT – Latin American Authors
Starting this week, I’m going to be hosting a Spotlight event. Originally, Spotlight was just going to be a forum for me to introduce some of my favorite Latin American authors after a lot of you expressed interest. I decided that there are probably plenty of you out there who wants to put the spotlight on your own expertise. That’s the great thing about book blogging, everyone has a little expertise somewhere, and everyone is different. So if you’re interested, feel free to snag the button! I’ll post a blank one, without my subtitle, and I’d love for you to use and abuse it. The original photo can be found here and modification is permitted under a Creative Commons license.
So I’m going to begin this Spotlight event with a brief introduction to Latin American literature. It’s hard to talk about a specific time period in literature without first exploring what came before it. Fortunately, what came before the Boom was not so unique to Latin America. It was modernism, and as far as modernism goes, it was pretty normal. There are some great poets to read, from the modernist period in Latin American literature, like Rubén Darío, a Nicaraguan poet. The Latin American modernists, for the most part, followed what was going on in Europe, while adding thier own perspective. I’m not as well-versed in modernism as I am in what came after it – post-modernism, aka the Boom.
However, between modernisma nd the Boom came someone very important. Jorge Luis Borges – the transitional author between Modernism and the Boom, one of the greatest writers of all time. As the father of post-modern Boom literature, he will be the first installment of the Spotlight on Latin American Authors series.
