Happy 200th Birthday, Charles Dickens!

Today (my half birthday) is Charles Dickens' bicentennial birthday! To honor that, I've finally finished my posting that I began while reading David Copperfield two weeks ago. I haven't read a lot of his novels, but many of my fondest childhood memories involve my mother reading A Christmas Carol  to me and the two of us watching Oliver Twist and other movie adaptations of his books. As I told my mother earlier today, for better or for worse, I'm attributing a good bit of my love for English literature (and consequent desire to study the same) to the fact that she used to read to me from Dickens, Poe, Nash, and Wordsworth (to name only a few). The jury is out on whether it's blame or praise she should receive for this. Today, I'll simply say, "Thanks, Mom. Without your encouragement, I wouldn't be racking up thousands of dollars in student loans."

Though I have often thought it might be fun to be Jane or Elizabeth Bennet, or some other other of Jane Austen's heroines, after reading Charles Dickens' David Copperfield, I have decided that the one thing I would not wish to be in the nineteenth century is a young orphaned boy (though I'm not sure it would be any better to be a young orphaned girl, likely she would end as a prostitute as Little Em'ly does). Poor Davy reminds me quite a bit of Henry Fielding's Tom Jones eponymous main character (whose life I read about last term). Both are orphans, both have self-righteous people telling lies to others about their supposedly irredeemable bad qualities, and both are naively innocent to a point that makes me want to cry out to them, "No, you should NOT trust all of your hard-earned pennies to that person of an obviously suspicious nature!" Dickens, like Fielding, chooses to tell nearly the entire life story of his main character, which while interesting makes both books long to the point of soporific tediousness. The twenty-first century reader in me is always going, "Okay, get on with it. Let's have done with it already." The main difference between the two books is that Fielding's had an amazingly intricate weaving of plot and action interspersed with essays, while Dickens wrote a much more character-centric novel (told in first person) that stops to wallow in character, emotions, and thoughts much more than Fielding did.

Copperfield's eccentric Aunt Betsey is possibly my favorite character in the whole novel (his nurse/maid Peggotty is a close second). In a twist on the usual obsession with male heirs, she shows up on the eve of his birth determined that his mother should give birth to a girl that she (the aunt) will help raise. She's so disappointed upon learning Copperfield's gender that she leaves immediately and isn't seen for about 10 years or so.

I've selected one of my favorite passages about her in honor of Dicken's birthday today and since I didn't end up reading it at our "Twopenny Reading" Birthday Party at school, I will post it here:

From David Copperfield, Chapter XIII

"To this hour I don’t know whether my aunt had any lawful right of way over that patch of green; but she had settled it in her own mind that she had, and it was all the same to her. The one great outrage of her life, demanding to be constantly avenged, was the passage of a donkey over that immaculate spot. In whatever occupation she was engaged, however interesting to her the conversation in which she was taking part, a donkey turned the current of her ideas in a moment, and she was upon him straight. Jugs of water, and watering pots, were kept in secret places ready to be discharged on the offending boys; sticks were laid in ambush behind the door; sallies were made at all hours; and incessant war prevailed. Perhaps this was an agreeable excitement to the donkey-boys; or perhaps the more sagacious of the donkeys, understanding how the case stood, delighted with constitutional obstinacy in coming that way. I only know that there were three alarms before the bath was ready.; and that on the occasion of the last and most desperate of all, I saw my aunt engage, single-handed, with a sandy-headed lad of fifteen, and bump his sandy head against her own gate, before he seemed to comprehend what was the matter. These interruptions were the more ridiculous to me, because she was giving me broth out of a table-spoon at the time (having firmly persuaded herself that I was actually starving, and must receive nourishment at first in very small quantities), and, while my mouth was yet open to receive the spoon, should would put it back in the basin, cry ‘Janet! Donkies!’ and go out to the assault."

Woolf on Reading

"If the moralists ask us how we can justify our love of reading, we can make use of some such excuse as this. But if we are honest, we know that no such excuse is needed. It is true that we get nothing whatsoever except pleasure from reading; it is true that the wisest of us is unable to say what that pleasure may be. But that pleasure--mysterious, unknown, useless as it is--is enough. That pleasure is so curious, so complex, so immensely fertilizing to the mind of anyone who enjoys it, and so wide in its effects, that it would not be in the least surprising to discover, on the day of judgment when secrets are revealed and the obscure is made plain, that the reason why we have grown from pigs to men and women, and come out from our caves, and dropped our bows and arrows, and sat round the fire and talked and drunk and made merry and given to the poor and helped the sick and made pavements and houses and erected some sort of shelter and society on the waste of the world, is nothing but this: we have loved reading."

--Virginia Woolf, "How Should One Read a Book?"

 After spending an entire week reading essays on reading, reviewing, and criticizing by Virginia Woolf and her father and uncle, the essay I quoted above was by far my favorite. And I found quite quickly that I greatly preferred Woolf's essays to those of her male relatives (this should come as no surprise when I reveal that her uncle believed Defoe's Robinson Crusoe to be the apex of all novels). Woolf's love of reading is reflected quite strongly through her essays, and she's a big proponent of reading for pleasure, and not feeling that all one's reading must be restricted to the classics. As the five overflowing bookcases in my apartment (along with the heap of loans I'm incurring to earn my graduate degree in literary studies) will attest, reading is something of an addiction for me. And I wholeheartedly agree with Woolf in believing that reading will make us better, more empathetic, more loving, and more enlightened human beings. I certainly hope so, but the decline of reading in our current culture makes me fear for the worst.

(And I also wonder whether Orwell read this last bit before writing Animal Farm. Ah well, somethings are meant to be pondered and never known.)

Title This! (or, yes, I am a complete and total nerd)

Today I went in search of “happy” news after a friend shared a number of news stories about kids dying or killing themselves. (And, honestly, who wouldn’t need a pick-me-up after that? There is a reason I don’t watch the nightly news.) During this quest, I stumbled across the following article about the winner of the “Oddest Book Title” contest. I love the fact that such a contest exists; it amuses me almost as much as the titles that won (my favorite came in fifth: Governing Lethal Behavior in Autonomous Robots). It reminds me of the time that my friend and former college roommate and I created a faux anthology of “stories” that was really just a list of the fun and crazy titles, because we never got around to writing the stories. As a writer I have always loved titles. I won’t judge a book by its cover, but I will judge it by its title. And I hate when a title is more intriguing than the book itself. A few years ago I was disappointed to learn that marketing departments often title books rather than writers…and I stopped picking up interestingly titled novels without in-depth perusals. It also saddened me because I've always titled my stories before writing them. I can't work on a story if it doesn't have a title. It might change, but I have to title it. When I was in school, I titled just about anything I wrote on note paper. After all, there's that huge space at the top of each page that practically screams "Title Me!" One of my biggest pet peeves with art and poetry is when someone calls a piece "Untitled." Why should I spend time looking at something and trying to figure it out if you couldn't even be bothered to title the damn thing in the first place?


The lesson: Titles rock. And if it's odd enough, you could win a prize!

A Writer's Adventures Backpacking in Yosemite: Hiking Out, A Return to Normalcy, Plus a Recap

Yosemite Park Hike: Day 4 Miles Hiked: 4.6 Total Miles for Entire Trip: 26 (this includes the nearly two miles we had to hike to get from the Trailhead to the Visitor’s Center where Mom is picking us up)
Today we hike out of the valley and back to civilization. The wind is completely gone. It was a perfect morning for fly fishing, except that today the fish are refusing to bite. This is because I have finally managed to figure out the whole casting thing. Dad assured me that had there been fish, I would have caught them. That is just my luck. I was happy just to know that I’d finally succeeded at it, though. That in itself was enough of an accomplishment for me. We tried fishing again later on before heading out of the canyon, but still got nothing. It’s my belief that the bears ate all the fish and that’s why we didn’t find either one (my dad had a bear with cubs visit his campsite on a hike on another trail in Yosemite earlier this summer). On our way out, we found a number of trout feeding about a mile or so downstream, mocking us.

We finally reach civilization and take advantage of the bathrooms in the campground to tidy ourselves up a bit before heading to the grill to have what Dad has called the worst hamburgers ever. While Dad gets the food, I talk to an older guy (probably in his fifties or so) who has hiked from Yuba River and is on his way to Mono Lake. It seems he is a perpetual backpacker who mails himself provisions to pick up at different stops along the way. I’ve decided that apparently the backcountry attracts the most interesting characters. On our way from the grill to the Visitor’s Center, we also meet a bearded hippie and his girlfriend, who are backpacking the entire Pacific Crest Trail, from Mexico to Canada, though they admit to cheating and taking a shuttle from one area of Yosemite Park to Tuolomne Meadows.

All the rocks/mountains in Yosemite are granite. A long time ago, a huge pocket of magma bubbled up under the earth here and after it cooled, pushed its way to the surface. As it came up, the pressure caused the rocks to crack and form the mountains and valleys of the park. And then the glaciers came through and carved the land up even more. (This is a much simplified version of events, for more in-depth explanations see Huber’s book Geographical Ramblings in Yosemite.) In much of the area we hiked through you could still find sheets of granite not far beneath the dirt. It makes for a landscape unlike anything I’ve seen before. In the areas where the ground is too moist for trees to grow are these vast meadows through which the main branch of the river winds. Where the trees are thick, the dirt is loose and silty, in some places it is nearly as fine as sand (and as difficult to walk on).

My favorite moment of the day is when Mom pulls the car into the lot and hands me the bag with my clean clothes. I run to the bathroom and change into new (CLEAN!) clothes for the first time in 4 days. It's just about the best feeling in the world.

A Writer's Adventures Backpacking in Yosemite: Are We at the Top Yet?

Yosemite National Park Hike: Day 2 (or, the day I fell in a river and climbed a mountain) Part 1
This morning when I went down to the stream to get water, I saw a doe on the other side, not more than 15 feet from me. It seemed as if she was trying to decide whether she wished to drink the water or leap across it to test out the other side. Then she looked up and we stared at each other for what felt like forever. Unfortunately, my camera was at camp. (Luckily, I caught one later on. See above.) Then she turned and went back the way she'd come to the shady side of the meadow beyond the forest the stream ran through. As we were finishing loading our pack at camp this morning, a gold mantel ground squirrel started circling the campsite in hopes we would leave some food behind. Not a very lucky squirrel after all (we are good practitioners of Leave No Trace).

In order to get back onto the trail after leaving our campsite, it was necessary to cross the many different branches of the river. Most of the crossings have rocks or sturdy logs to help one across. One crossing, which I'd encountered the day before on our fishing treks, had only two very wobbly logs. I already hated this particular crossing from the day before (and that had been without a twenty-pound pack on my back). Today, of course, it is wetter and as I reach the halfway point, I lose my already precarious balance, slip on the wet wood and my right leg ends up in the water, between the rocks on the bottom of the stream and the log. The only good things were that neither my pack nor my camera got wet. My shoes however felt like portable lakes for the next hour or so. Luckily my pants and socks were both of a special quick-dry material, so I didn't stay soaking for long. Still, it was about the least fun thing to happen, until we reached the mountain.

Earlier, my dad had mentioned that we were almost to the end of the lower canyon and did I want to go up the mountain to the upper part as we would have a really awesome view of the valley looking back? The first day's hike had gone so well that I said "Sure, that sounds like fun."

Now it's 1 pm and we've hiked 4.32 miles and are about 3/4 of the way up the mountain. As I informed my dad moments ago, the next time someone asks if I want to "hike up the mountain at the end of the valley," my immediate answer will NOT be "Oh sure, that sounds like fun." However, it is amazing sitting here (resting) most of the way up the mountain and looking back across the valley we just hiked through, in less than two days. (It has no specific name as it is merely the beginning of the Donahue Pass. I have decided that it shall henceforth be called "My Mountain.") We can see the river snaking back through the meadows and the trees and rocks on either side. As we’re resting, we see a guy probably in his late twenties or early thirties who is climbing the mountain barefoot. He is followed shortly by a guy with a Mohawk who had camped near us in the backpacker’s camp in Tuolomne Meadows the night before hiking in and who is hiking the entire John Muir Trail, which goes from Yosemite Valley to Mount Whitney.


Part 2 Miles Hiked: 2.1 (since 1 pm; daily total: 6.42 miles in 5.5 hours up 2,146 ft) Current Elevation: 10,258 ft above sea level
We have reached the pinnacle of our journey: the top of “My Mountain,” which is actually a valley with a glacier/snowmelt-fed lake (which goes on to become the river snaking through the basin of Lyell Canyon that we’ve been hiking next to for the last day and a half) and the start of the Donahue Pass. We are so far up into the mountains that the valley is no longer visible. There is actually snow on the ground near our campsite and the mountains with the glacier are at the far end of the lake.
The piles of rocks at the foot of the cliffs along with the glacier make me wonder what it must have all looked like hundreds of years ago when the rocks were part of the cliff face and the glacier reached into this valley and the other glacier that we saw earlier was probably connected to this one (all of this is complete speculation, but I did purchase Geological Ramblings in Yosemite by N. King Huber so that I can find out the truth of it all). The water here is crystal clear, not muddy brown like I’m used to from growing up in the Midwest and fishing in Minnesota and Texas. Nor is it like the strange, ethereal blue of the silty, glacier run-off streams I’ve seen in Alaska. It is so clear that as my dad and I stand at the edge of the lake (and earlier the rivers and streams) we can actually spot trout floating in the river, feeding from 30 to 40 feet away.

The valley is picturesque, but crowded. Everywhere I turn, there is another tent pitched. Most the mountains we’ve hiked by and up and through are nameless, but close examination of the GPS reveals that we are camped beside Tarn Lake and the peak on the far end of the lake—a mere 2.8 miles that we will NOT be hiking--is Mount Lyell and Lyell Glacier, the highest peak in Yosemite Park, to the right of which is Earhart Point (which has boulder-type cliffs rather than the pointed peak of Mt. Lyell). Earlier today we saw McClure Glacier when we reached the top of “My Mountain” before continuing on into the upper valley. Donahue Pass continues around the lake, up the cliffs on the other side and then behind the ridge to the left of Mt. Lyell (we are also NOT hiking this).

Despite the fact that the mountains surrounding us are probably a third covered in snow, it is warm enough for shorts and short sleeves. Tonight our campsite is surrounded by white bark pine (these have a five-needle structure), hemlock and the same Lodgepole pine from the day before. There is much more variety in the trees up here than in the valley below. We even saw a grove of aspen as we climbed up the mountain.

Thanks to the flooding in the Upper Lyell Canyon, which has created marshy swampy areas—ideal mosquito breeding grounds—the mosquitoes are AWFUL and surround me if I sit or stand in one place for too long (more than 20 seconds). Despite the fact that I’m wearing bug repellant, they have been hovering around me—sitting or standing—and so now I am walking in circles around the fire pit as I write this in what has become a futile attempt to evade the swarm of bugs that has formed around me. I feel like Pigpen from Peanuts with my own cloud that follows my every step. The bugs aren’t biting me (much) as I have coated all exposed skin with bug dope, but it apparently doesn’t keep them away. They are waiting to see if my movements will expose an area of skin (however miniscule) that they might attack, buzzing in my ears and flying up behind my glasses and in my mouth. I’ve had to take refuge in the tent and I really want the mosquito-net hat I saw a guy wearing earlier when he and his friends passed through our campsite. Even now as I’m writing this inside the tent, they are clinging to the mesh of it and trying to get to me, which doesn’t make me want to leave it anytime soon.

One hour and one nap later. The bugs are actually less bothersome by the lake than at the campsite. I’ve still caught nothing but grass and my own line (creating a knot so badly entangled that Dad just pulled the fly off). Fly fishing does not look especially difficult, but apparently years of casting with a spinning rod have ingrained a casting motion so deeply into me that I am having difficulty overcoming it despite the fact that I haven’t fished for years. While I scared away the fish and tied my line in knots, Dad caught two more trout (one brown and one brook).

Spotted Today: Clark’s Nutcracker, Tri-color Blackbird, Junco, White-Crested Sparrow, Yellow Swallow-tailed Butterflies (I’ve decided these all have ADHD, they flitter around without stopping and fly circles around me, pretending to alight on flowers and rocks, but then rushing off again before I can snap a photo), Lustrous Coppers, yellow-bellied marmot, gold mantel ground squirrel, Belding’s ground squirrel, deer (all does), chipmunks, chickaree squirrel.

A Preface: Historical and Geological Tidbits and the Journey There

Yosemite National Park Hike: Day 0
In 1890, it took five days to get to Yosemite from San Francisco and the average stay was two weeks. Most visitors were wealthy; they had to be to have that much time off from work. Now, it takes five hours to travel from San Francisco and the average stay is only four hours. My dad and I went backpacking in Yosemite for five days. We hiked part of the John Muir Trail through Upper Lyell Canyon, but first, we had to get there. Which meant five hours of driving through the Sierra Nevadas.

The Sierra Nevada mountains are different from the Rockies, which I grew up visiting. They’re mostly rounded-tops and are covered with brush and trees instead of the barren, pebbled peaks of the Rockies. Many of the valleys have vast lakes, creating a beautiful, awe-inspiring view as we make our way to Yosemite. The road winds and twists so much that even at 30 mph, I am tossed around in the backseat like a rag-doll and reduced to clinging to the “Oh Shit!” handle in an attempt to keep myself in one place. Closer to San Francisco, there are a series of hills that have windmills lined up like sentinels on the crests of the mountains. There’s something about these windmills standing tall in perfect lines along the ridges that I can’t quite explain. Almost as if they’re standing guard or patrolling.

The night before we begin our hike, we camp in the backpacker’s camp in Tuolomne Meadows. Luckily, it wasn’t nearly as crowded as the campground my dad stayed at before his trip a few weeks earlier, so we were able to find a great spot that wasn’t surrounded by other people. Everyone is friendly (especially the guy with a Mohawk who had his tent pitched at the campsite next to ours and this guy who asked my dad about his tent and reminded me of a friend I used to work with), though I notice that very few people are carrying lightweight gear and packs like we are. I did not appreciate this when I was packing and Dad told me I had to leave three-fourths of the stuff I had planned on taking behind. I was GREATLY appreciative of the fact that my pack only weighed 19 pounds by day 4.

There was a Ranger Campfire Talk that night about the history and meaning behind Yosemite. The ranger started by telling us three stories about the meaning of Yosemite (obviously of varying degrees of historical accuracy). The first story is that the Mariposa Battalion, which was not actually part of the official army but rather a group of miners from the area, goes after the Miwok Indians in the valley for stealing horses and eating them (which they were doing because the miners were cutting down the black acorn trees that were a major part of their diet). The first group they round up is all from a smaller tribe of the Miwoks, Yos.s.e'meti, meaning we are called grizzly bear.

The second story goes like this: A miner calls to the cook across the mining camp, "Yo! Send me tea!" because he doesn't want coffee. It echoes through the valley and catches on.
The third story is most widely accepted as the true origin of the name. Members of the Mariposa Battalion confuse the Native American words for grizzly bear and black bear—ïhümat.i and ïsümat.i—to get Yosemite (I’m not sure of these spellings; I haven’t found this particular version of the story anywhere, so this is all from memory and online guesswork.). So it actually means Valley of the Two Bears, except that now the California Grizzly is extinct (except for its appearance on the state flag) and only black bears are found in the park. The ranger also told us that Tuolomne means land of the cave-dwelling mud people.


The ranger also mentioned Lembert (and some of the other settlers and business men who first came to the valley), who saw his face (past, present and future) in a cliff face that is now called Lembert's Dome (see above).

After telling us the stories of the meaning of Yosemite, he talked about what the park has meant to people, especially talking about the Wawona Tunnel Tree in the Mariposa Grove (it collapsed under the pressure of snowmelt in the 1960s) and the Fire Fall, which lasted from 1872-1968 when it was stopped because it went against the message of conservation the park was established to promote and the popularity of it was destroying the park land. Fire Fall (if you’re like me and weren’t alive when it was popular) was created by pushing a bonfire off Glacier Point (I think…it was definitely in the main valley near Half Dome) after dark and people would park and set up camp in the valley below to watch the smoldering wood tumble down. If you’re interested, you can see a real Yosemite Fire Fall in Humphrey Bogart's 1954 film, The Caine Mutiny.

Another Book List for Shits and Giggles

A friend sent me a link to NPR'S "Audience Picks: 100 Best Beach Books" and I wanted to see how many I've already read. (And remind myself of books to which I still need to get.) There are quite a number that I want to read or already have in my "To Read" stack (which takes up a couple of bookshelves in my apartment, sadly).
(color guide: read, own, want to read)

1. The Harry Potter series, by J.K. Rowling
2. To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee
3. The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini
4. Bridget Jones's Diary, by Helen Fielding
5. Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen
6. Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, by Rebecca Wells
7. The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald
8. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams
9. Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe, by Fannie Flagg
10. The Poisonwood Bible, by Barbara Kingsolver

11. The Time Traveler's Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger
12. Life of Pi, by Yann Martel
13. The Joy Luck Club, by Amy Tan
14. The Hobbit, by J.R.R. Tolkien
15. The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger
16. Gone with the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell
17. Bel Canto, by Ann Patchett
18. The Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien
19. Middlesex, by Jeffrey Eugenides
20. Water for Elephants, by Sara Gruen
21. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain
22. The Bean Trees, by Barbara Kingsolver
23. The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, by Alexander McCall Smith
24. The World According to Garp, by John Irving
25. Catch-22, by Joseph Heller
26. The Prince of Tides, by Pat Conroy
27. Like Water for Chocolate, by Laura Esquivel
28. The Princess Bride, by William Goldman
29. The Accidental Tourist, by Anne Tyler
30. Twilight, by Stephenie Meyer
31. A Confederacy of Dunces, by John Kennedy Toole
32. East of Eden, by John Steinbeck
33. The Red Tent, by Anita Diamant
34. Beach Music, by Pat Conroy
35. One Hundred Years of Solitude, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
36. Rebecca, by Daphne Du Maurier
37. Ender's Game, by Orson Scott Card
38. Lonesome Dove, by Larry McMurtry
39. The Thorn Birds, by Colleen McCullough
40. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, by Michael Chabon

41. Pillars of the Earth, by Ken Follett
42. Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy
43. Interview with the Vampire, by Anne Rice
44. Cold Mountain, by Charles Frazier
45. Empire Falls, by Richard Russo
46. Under the Tuscan Sun, by Frances Mayes
47. The Count of Monte Cristo, by Alexandre Dumas
48. Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, by Tom Robbins
49. I Know This Much Is True, by Wally Lamb
50. Murder on the Orient Express, by Agatha Christie
51. Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott
52. The Stand, by Stephen King
53. She's Come Undone, by Wally Lamb
54. Dune, by Frank Herbert
55. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, by Mary Ann Barrows
56. Love in the Time of Cholera, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
57. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll
58. Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov
59. The Godfather, by Mario Puzo
60. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, by Betty Smith
61. Animal Dreams, by Barbara Kingsolver
62. Jaws, by Peter Benchley
63. Good in Bed, by Jennifer Weiner
64. Angle of Repose, by Wallace Stegner
65. Snow Falling on Cedars, by David Guterson
66. The Old Man and the Sea, by Ernest Hemingway
67. The Fountainhead, by Ayn Rand
68. Breakfast of Champions, by Kurt Vonnegut
69. Cat's Cradle, by Kurt Vonnegut
70. The Big Sleep, by Raymond Chandler
71. The Sun Also Rises, by Ernest Hemingway
72. The Hunt for Red October, by Tom Clancy
73. Cold Sassy Tree, by Olive Ann Burns
74. The Lord of the Flies, by William Golding
74. Bonfire of the Vanities, by Tom Wolfe [tie]
76. Wuthering Heights, by Emily Bronte
77. Outlander, by Diana Gabaldon
78. The Shell Seekers, by Rosamunde Pilcher
79. Prodigal Summer, by Barbara Kingsolver
80. Eye of the Needle, by Ken Follett
81. Cannery Row, by John Steinbeck
81. The Pilot's Wife, by Anita Shreve [tie]
83. All the Pretty Horses, by Cormac McCarthy
84. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, by Stieg Larsson
85. The Little Prince, by Antoine De Saint-Exupery
86. The Road, by Cormac McCarthy
87. One for the Money, by Janet Evanovich
88. Shogun, by James Clavell
89. Dracula, by Bram Stoker
90. The Unbearable Lightness of Being, by Milan Kundera
91. Presumed Innocent, by Scott Turow
92. Franny and Zooey, by J.D. Salinger
93. The Secret History, by Donna Tartt
94. Dead Until Dark, by Charlaine Harris
95. Summer Sisters, by Judy Blume
96. The Shining, by Stephen King
97. How Stella Got Her Groove Back, by Terry McMillan
98. Lamb, by Christopher Moore
99. Sick Puppy, by Carl Hiaasen
100. Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson

Nash Always Makes Me Smile

My mom's favorite poet is Ogden Nash and so it is no surprise that he was one of the first poets I remember reading (along with Edgar Allen Poe). Sylvia Plath said, "There must be quite a few things that a hot bath won't cure, but I don't know many of them." I think the same is true of poetry. At least for me. So tonight I have been skimming my poetry books and reading Ogden Nash and Dorothy Parker and I had to share.

from Laments for a Dying Language by Odgen Nash
(It seemed to appropriate after my last post.)

V
Coin brassy words at will, debase the coinage;
We're in an if-you-cannot-lick-them-join age,
A slovenliness-provides-its-own-excuse age,
Where usage overnight condones misusage.
Farewell, farewell to my beloved language,
Once English, now a vile orangutanguage.

I love the fact that this next poem is written by a man, about men. Ha!
The Trouble with Women is Men

A husband is a man who two minutes after his head touches the pillow is snoring like an overloaded omnibus,
Particularly on those occasions when between the humidity and the mosquitoes your own bed is no longer a bed but an insomnibus,
And if you turn on the light for a little reading he is sensitive to the faintest gleam,
But if by chance you are asleep and he wakeful, he is not slow to rouse you with the complaint that he can't close his eyes, what about slipping downstairs and freezing him a cooling dish of pistachio ice cream.
His touch with a bottle opener is sure,
But he cannot help you get a tight dress over your head without catching three hooks and a button in your coiffure.
Nor can he so much as wash his ears without leaving an inch of water on the bathroom linoleum,
But if you mention it you evoke not a promise to splash no more but a mood of deep melancholium.
Indeed, each time he transgresses your chance of correcting his faults grows lesser,
Because he produces either a maddeningly logical explanation or a look of martyrdom which leaves you instead of him feeling the remorse of the transgressor.
Such are husbandly foibles, but there are moments when a foible ceases to be a foible.
Next time you ask for a glass of water and when he brings it you have a needle almost threaded and instead of setting it down he stands there holding it out to you, just kick him fairly hard in the stomach, you will find it thoroughly enjoible.

And I'll go out with one of my favorite Dorothy Parker verses:
Resume

Razors pain you;
Rivers are damp;
Acids stain you;
And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren't lawful;
Nooses give;
Gas smells awful;
You might as well live.

I'd always pondered the meaning of the title. I've now decided that it's because after nine months of sending out resumes to everyone and anyone, one has to be reminded of why not to commit suicide.

Shame on You, Kanye West

I came across a blog post talking about Kanye West's pride at being a non-reader and had to look up the article for myself, despite the fact that I knew it would only make me unhappy. I was reminiscing just a week ago with Citizen B on how Reading Rainbow was one of our favorite TV shows growing up. I think it is horrible that kids now have nothing like that and instead the people who do influence them say things like the following: "Sometimes people write novels and they just be so wordy and so self-absorbed. I am not a fan of books. I would never want a book's autograph." (Kanye West, Reuters.com) He also said that being a non-reader and a college drop-out gave his writing (he just published a "book", by the by, but make sure you don't read it because he wouldn't approve--not that it's a real book, though it may have a cover and pages bound together) a "child-like purity." I would like to point out that sounding like an illiterate idiot is not "purity." It's just flaunting your ignorance and trying to paint it in a positive light. How could any respectable publishing company publish a book by someone who tells people they shouldn't read books? And, Kanye, books can't give autographs and even if they could, I'm sure none would be fans of you either. As a writer, it astounds me the crap that not only gets published, but that people actually pay good money for. And it saddens me because it only serves to lower the value our society places on the ability to read and write well. It is an important tool, no matter what some "celebrities" may say. And I've always believed that if one is too lazy to say something properly, it shows a complete and total disrespect for the person to whom you are talking or writing. It says that you don't give a damn if they can understand you properly. Writing is an ART. And you canNOT write if you don't READ. Reading is the key to success of every kind. If you cannot read, then you cannot manage a corporation; you cannot sign contracts; you cannot communicate effectively with anyone. A world in which people are encouraged to be ignorant and illiterate is not a world in which I wish to live. My favorite bookstore growing up had the best slogan on their bags: "One reader is worth a thousand boneheads." Congratulations, Kanye, you're officially one of the boneheads.

Austen + Zombies = Lots of Laughs

I got Pride and Prejudice and Zombies to read on the plane for my trip to Denver last week. It was hilarious. I like that he didn't really fuck with the essentials of the story and yet it's definitely not just a simple job of cobbling together Austen's words with scenes of zombie mayhem as the descriptions on Amazon.com and BN.com suggested when my friend first shared it with me so many months ago. I think the best way to describe it is as P&P for Guys. All the slower parts of the story were replaced with zombie fights and other more "exciting" adventures. I still love the original (of course!) but this was definitely worth reading. (If only because I found myself once again wondering if Elizabeth and Darcy would end up together. SPOILER ALERT: Had either them been eaten by zombies or become one--Charlotte did after all, so I couldn't be sure--I would have burned the book.) It even had me laughing to myself on the plane. (I long ago got past feeling like a freak for that. If somebody wants to have a problem with my finding books amusing in public, they can shove it.) My only complaint is that the 3 or 4 "ball" jokes jarred me out of the story because they just seemed so juvenile (I groaned upon reading them, they were so bad) and not at all in keeping with the rest of the dialogue (which for the most part was period). Its redemption was definitely in the poetic justice that is delivered to the characters a bit more directly than in the original novel. But you'll have to read it if you want to know what that is. ;-) My friends and I think that we now need Jane Eyre and Werewolves (Mr. Rochester's crazed wife is locked in the attic because she's a werewolf and when she bites him he becomes one, too?) and Wuthering Heights and Vampires (Heathcliff's brooding character makes him a perfect candidate, non?).

I Promise: No More Video-Intensive Posts

Yes, I got a little video-crazy last weekend. Sorry! They were saying what I felt so well, that it made more sense to post that than repeat them poorly. This week has been slow, boring and depressing. No follow-up interview to last Friday's quick meet-and-greet. No call from the company I've made it to the top three at. No response from my application to the ultimate perfect dream job three weeks ago. All I got was the possibility of having my part-time job dry up, a job offer that I believe to be a total scam (FYI: Companies that offer jobs without requiring interviews and then say they want you to receive money in the form of Certified Checks on behalf of the company and then pass the funds along to them are probably NOT legit. This was not what the job posting specified when I originally applied for it or I would have said, "No way!"), and finally yet another rejection email for a job (this one came less than a minute after the email saying they were looking at my resume and writing samples, apparently they didn't need to look very closely to deem me completely unqualified, which is what the rejection email informed me I was). On top of everything else, I planted flowers on my patio today and tonight it's decided to drop below freezing.

The only good things that happened all week were my banana bread that I baked today, which came out absolutely perfect, and I made it to the end of Part Four of Crime and Punishment, only two more parts to go and I'll have finished it!

A Literary Look at Abuse Rhetoric

A few days ago, Citizen B posted a story on abuse and it made me think of Stephen King's Rose Madder (woman tries to escape from her abusive cop husband who turns psycho and then lots of weird shit happens...it is a Stephen King novel after all...but all in all it's a happy story because she does get away from him). Then today I'm reading Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment and come across the following defense of this reprehensible man's actions (he propositioned Raskolnikov's sister when she was working as a governess in his house, she refused him but his wife blamed her and fired her):

I pursued a defenseless girl in my own home, and I 'offended her with my infamous proposals'--is that it? (I'm getting a little ahead of myself!) Just suppose, however, that I, too, am a man, et nihil humanum...in a word, that I can be attracted and fall in love (and of course that doesn't happen to us according to our will)...and everything's accounted for in the most natural manner. The whole question boils down to this: am I a monster or am I a victim? Well, you may ask, what do you mean, 'victim'? Well, when I proposed to my object that she run away with me to America or Switzerland, I might have been nourishing the most worthy sentiments all along, and I might even have been planning our mutual happiness! ... my conscience is absolutely clear in the matter [of his wife's recent death, which rumors say he caused]. ... I thought: didn't I contribute to all this...bad luck...by upsetting her morally in some way, or something of that sort? Even that I concluded was definitely out of the question. ... But why do you laugh? Just think: I only hit her twice with the switch. There weren't even any traces that showed...You mustn't think I'm a cynic. I can assure you I know just how beastly it was on my part and all that. I also happen to know for certain, mind you, that Martha Petrovna [his wife] was actually quite pleased with what you might call this little diversion of mine. ... I won't even go into the fact that there are times when women find it very very agreeable to be offended, all their apparent indignation to the contrary notwithstanding. They all have times like that. Man in general enjoys offense--haven't you noticed? But women especially. You might even say it's all they've got to live on. ... We lived quite harmoniously, and she was always content with me. During our seven years together I used the switch only twice in all (not counting a third time that was extremely ambiguous anyway). ... And you thought I was a monster, a reactionary, a serf owner? - Arkady Ivanovich Svidrigailov

The tone of the rest of the novel leads me to suppose that Dostoyevsky is exaggerating an "accepted" point of view in order to make people think about it and consider it more closely. The sad thing is that I still come across stories of abuse (and rape) where men justify their behavior by making similar arguments. "She wanted it." "She was asking for it." I've had people accuse me of being overly cautious because I don't go walking in my neighborhood after dark; I don't go to bars or clubs by myself; and I insist on living in a gated community. But from junior high/high school on up, I've had it drilled into me that I must be careful to avoid situations where I might get raped. That going out late at night in a slutty outfit is a bad idea. I'm not saying I agree with these things. I wish that it didn't matter what I wore or where I went or what time of night it is. The only thing that should matter is whether I want the attentions that may be focused upon me. But the fact of the matter is that this isn't so. Women get raped. Women get hit. Women get verbally abused. And men continue to tell us that we deserve it. That we like it. That underneath it all, we actually want them to do these horrible things. What we need is to help each other (like the woman's boss in the story Citizen B posted) stand up and say "No. We don't. We're not going to take it anymore."

What's Your Book Number?

I'm bored at work today, so I decided to figure out my book number. I started by searching for lists of top 100 novels. The first I found was by the Modern Library. It is not listed here, nor will it ever be as it had only 10 novels written by women, of which there were only 5 or so different authors, and it did not have a single one of Jane Austen's books. So not only is it anti-women authors, but the people determining it obviously have no taste. Though I must admit, it probably shouldn't be so surprising that people who like 4 of Joseph Conrad's novels (including Heart of Darkness, which still tops my list of worst books ever written) cannot appreciate the genius and wit of Jane Austen. [Post Note: It has been brought to my attention that their list is limited to 20th century authors, a fact not mentioned on the page with the list I would like to point out. I still cannot agree with anyone who thinks Heart of Darkness is worth reading. And there are DEFINITELY more than 5 women authors worth mentioning from the 20th century. Many of the women authors I read in my modern literature classes were omitted.] Continued searching unearthed BBC's The Big Read which is much more to my liking. (I also found another list that is a bit more high brow, but I'll save that for later.) For now, my Book Number is 33/100. Not too shabby, considering I'm a bad English major (I love me some genre fiction, oh yes I do) and have an incredible dislike for much of the highly lauded literary canon. Anyway, so here's the interactive part of today's post: What's your book number?

Books I have read: 33
Books I have started to read: 4
Books I own but haven't read: 6
Books I have yet to read or buy: 54
Books I refuse to ever read: 3

1. The Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien
2. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
3. His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman
4. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
5. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, JK Rowling
6. To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
7. Winnie the Pooh, AA Milne
8. Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell
9. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, CS Lewis
10. Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë
11. Catch-22, Joseph Heller
12. Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë
13. Birdsong, Sebastian Faulks
14. Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier
15. The Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger
16. The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame
17. Great Expectations, Charles Dickens
18. Little Women, Louisa May Alcott
19. Captain Corelli's Mandolin, Louis de Bernieres
20. War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy
21. Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell
22. Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone, JK Rowling
23. Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets, JK Rowling
24. Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban, JK Rowling
25. The Hobbit, JRR Tolkien
26. Tess Of The D'Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy
27. Middlemarch, George Eliot
28. A Prayer For Owen Meany, John Irving
29. The Grapes Of Wrath, John Steinbeck (I read The Red Pony and I refuse to ever read another book by Steinbeck. It was the most pointless book I've ever read.)
30. Alice's Adventures In Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
31. The Story Of Tracy Beaker, Jacqueline Wilson
32. One Hundred Years Of Solitude, Gabriel García Márquez
33. The Pillars Of The Earth, Ken Follett
34. David Copperfield, Charles Dickens
35. Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl
36. Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson
37. A Town Like Alice, Nevil Shute
38. Persuasion, Jane Austen
39. Dune, Frank Herbert
40. Emma, Jane Austen
41. Anne Of Green Gables, LM Montgomery
42. Watership Down, Richard Adams
43. The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald
44. The Count Of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas
45. Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh
46. Animal Farm, George Orwell
47. A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens
48. Far From The Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy
49. Goodnight Mister Tom, Michelle Magorian
50. The Shell Seekers, Rosamunde Pilcher
51. The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett
52. Of Mice And Men, John Steinbeck
53. The Stand, Stephen King
54. Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
55. A Suitable Boy, Vikram Seth
56. The BFG, Roald Dahl
57. Swallows And Amazons, Arthur Ransome
58. Black Beauty, Anna Sewell
59. Artemis Fowl, Eoin Colfer
60. Crime And Punishment, Fyodor Dostoyevsky
61. Noughts And Crosses, Malorie Blackman
62. Memoirs Of A Geisha, Arthur Golden
63. A Tale Of Two Cities, Charles Dickens
64. The Thorn Birds, Colleen McCollough
65. Mort, Terry Pratchett
66. The Magic Faraway Tree, Enid Blyton
67. The Magus, John Fowles
68. Good Omens, Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
69. Guards! Guards!, Terry Pratchett
70. Lord Of The Flies, William Golding
71. Perfume, Patrick Süskind
72. The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, Robert Tressell
73. Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
74. Matilda, Roald Dahl
75. Bridget Jones's Diary, Helen Fielding
76. The Secret History, Donna Tartt
77. The Woman In White, Wilkie Collins
78. Ulysses, James Joyce
79. Bleak House, Charles Dickens
80. Double Act, Jacqueline Wilson
81. The Twits, Roald Dahl
82. I Capture The Castle, Dodie Smith
83. Holes, Louis Sachar
84. Gormenghast, Mervyn Peake
85. The God Of Small Things, Arundhati Roy
86. Vicky Angel, Jacqueline Wilson
87. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
88. Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons
89. Magician, Raymond E Feist
90. On The Road, Jack Kerouac
91. The Godfather, Mario Puzo
92. The Clan Of The Cave Bear, Jean M Auel
93. The Colour Of Magic, Terry Pratchett
94. The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho
95. Katherine, Anya Seton
96. Kane And Abel, Jeffrey Archer
97. Love In The Time Of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez
98. Girls In Love, Jacqueline Wilson
99. The Princess Diaries, Meg Cabot
100. Midnight's Children, Salman Rushdie