Sally

October 22, 2016May 30, 2017

Dewey’s Readathon: End-of-Event Survey

My overall assessment of Dewey’s 24-Hour Readathon: It was magical. It was wonderful. I spent the entire day with a smile on my face.

The biggest surprise of this Readathon for me: I actually read the three books on my initial list. That hardly ever happens. Usually, my list is seven miles long, and I end up reading books that weren’t even on it. I also didn’t get a chance to do many of the mini-challenges or update here. My books kept me hooked! When I could pull myself away, I was more focused on engaging with the social media communities.

Since I knew I wouldn’t be able to push through the full 24 hours – I’m working today so had to be rested – I made a point of being ready to begin at the start time. This tweet captured the feeling perfectly for me:

And now, on to the end-of-event survey:

Which hour was most daunting for you?

The Friday before Readathon felt like Christmas Eve. I was so excited, I had trouble falling asleep. The toughest hour for me was the first one. I was tired and wired. Once I hydrated, though, I felt better, and the rest of the day went smoothly.

Could you list a few high-interest books that you think could keep a Reader engaged for next year?

For readers who enjoy children’s/YA, Shannon Messengers Keeper of the Lost Cities is super suspenseful. They’ve kept me up reading even when I feel like my eyeballs are going to fall out. For murder mystery readers, I adore M. C. Beaton’s Hamish Macbeth novels. They’re short, quick reads as well, so perfect for Readathoning. Two others who have kept me glued to a book are Octavia Butler and Liane Moriarty.

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

Blasphemy! How could it possibly get better?

What do you think worked really well in this year’s Read-a-thon?

The community was amazing, once again. It’s so moving to see people coming together with so much passion, enthusiasm, warmth, encouragement – ahhh, I’m having a moment. *discretely wipes eyes*

How many books did you read?

I read one full book and got halfway through another. I also finished one that I’d started before Readathon.

What were the names of the books you read?

The Mothers by Brit Bennett (full)

Exile by Shannon Messenger (halfway)

When Books Went to War by Molly Guptill Manning (finished)

Which book did you enjoy most?

They’re such different books. I enjoyed them in different ways.

Which did you enjoy least?

See above. 🙂

How likely are you to participate in the Read-a-thon again? What role would you be likely to take next time?

Barring anything unexpected, I will definitely participate in the next Readathon. I loved writing a warm-up post this year. Next time, I would like to do more – perhaps host a mini-challenge and/or help out in other ways.

Dewey’s 24-Readathon is here! If this is the first you’ve heard of it, click here to learn more about it because it’s the best thing happening on the internet. 🙂

I plan to read as much as I can. I mean, obviously. As a fairly slow reader, I keep my stack modest (it’s good for managing expectations):

When Books Went to War: The Stories That Helped Us Win World War II by Molly Guptill Manning (I have 10 pages left)

The Mothers by Brit Bennett

Exile by Shannon Messenger

I also want to make time to be social (Readathoners are The Best) and update my progress right here on this page.

Hour 10 Update

I have yet to post a progress report because I’ve been so engrossed in Brit Bennett’s The Mothers! It was a great readathon pick that kept me reading feverishly. This isn’t because it was exactly plot drive. Rather, I was invested in the characters and what would happen to them.

In addition to The Mothers, I also finished the last 10 pages of When Books Went to War. That happened waaay back in hour one.

Now, it’s on to Exile by Shannon Messenger. But first, a mini-challenge!

This one is hosted by Ampersand Read. It’s a challenge after my heart: Literary World Tour. Here is the prompt:

“This challenge seems simple: if money and time were no object (you’ve won the biggest lottery jackpot ever, and your boss is totally fine with you taking all of the time off work you need), where would you go to experience your favorite book(s) or series? Fictional places count too, of course.”

The hard part, of course, is picking a place to visit. Well, not too hard because I think about this at least once a day!

If money and time were no object, I would travel to the U.K. for as long as I could secure a visa. I would need loads of time because my ideal visit would include:

Extended time in London for Charles Dickens and Harry Potter related walking tours and train station and museum visits
Gad’s Hill
Bath
Jane Austen sites
Bronte sites
Extended time in Edinburgh, to which I would travel by train from London, naturally
Hay-on Wye for the bookstores

Also, bookstores throughout the U.K. including Barter Books (where the Keep Calm Carry On posters were first rediscovered) and Mr. B’s Emporium

What’s your ideal literary travel destination?

Opening event

1) What fine part of the world are you reading from today?

Connecticut, USA. It’s pouring and gloomy out. Perfect reading weather!

2) Which book in your stack are you most looking forward to?

I can’t pick favorites. I just can’t. 🙂

3) Which snack are you most looking forward to?

That would be the bananas I bought yesterday. Gotta stay fueled!

4) Tell us a little something about yourself!

This question may be coming at the perfect time since I was working on my writing portfolio yesterday and had to come up with a pithy “about me” statement. Writing these makes me so anxious, like I’m on a deadline I’m going to miss. What I said was this: “My mission is to inspire reading for pleasure and enrichment, and I bring my passion for that to everything I write.” Or at least, I try to!

5) If you participated in the last read-a-thon, what’s one thing you’ll do different today? If this is your first read-a-thon, what are you most looking forward to?

This is only my second Readathon, so I have only slightly more of a clue, ha. I’m more organized and pro-active this time around. I got Andi‘s awesome stickers and have organized my day more than I did last time. I still won’t be able to read the full 24 hours because I have to teach tomorrow.

I will definitely be setting aside time to connect with the awesome community as well. That is what I’m most looking forward to, hands down (or up, as the case may be)!

October 19, 2016June 1, 2017

WWW Wednesday: October 19

This week's reading wrap up includes a classic, a children's book, some nonfiction. Just your basic Wednesday roundup of eclectic reads. :)

Many thanks to Taking on a World of Words for hosting WWW Wednesday! Follow the link to read more about it, and be prepared to discover buckets of new books. Thanks also to Coffee and Cats for introducing me to WWW Wednesday!

What are you currently reading?

After finishing Pancakes in Paris, I returned to Pym by Mat Johnson. Besides being a rollicking adventure, the novel is making me think and rethink. It’s not a book I’ll be able to zoom through. I find myself pausing for long intervals to process the story and how it’s put together and its ideas. It can go from wacky hijinks, to incisive social commentary, to hilarious in a beat.

In an August book sale, I picked up When Books Went to War: The Stories That Helped Us Win World War II by Molly Guptill Manning. Nonfiction books tend to hold my attention when I’m frantically busy and have a hard time settling down to read. Ergo, this book from my Nook. The stirring introduction is worth reading even if you never commit to the whole book. Continue reading “WWW Wednesday: October 19”

October 14, 2016May 30, 2017

Happy 90th birthday, Winnie-the-Pooh!

For Winnie-the-Pooh's 90th birthday, a few favorite quotes and a recording of A. A. Milne reading from his iconic book!

It felt distinctly like autumn today in my New England town. The temperatures have settled into the neighborhood of the 60s. There was a light breeze gently tugging golden leaves off their branches, sending them skipping and swirling.

On these days, the word “blustery” comes to mind. It’s a blustery day, I’ll think. The word always invites Winnie-the-Pooh into my mental landscape, as much for A. A. Milne’s lovely books as for the Disney videos my son enjoyed when he was very small. We both enjoyed them, actually, as well as reading Milne’s books together.

When I was a little girl, I loved to imagine my dolls and stuffed animals enjoying adventures all their own, independent of me. Milne’s story has always appealed to me on that level. Beyond the story, I love the quirky characters. Each furry friend harbors his own endearing peccadilloes. None is perfect, but they work quite well together as a group. It rather calls to mind the human experience, doesn’t it? Continue reading “Happy 90th birthday, Winnie-the-Pooh!”

October 12, 2016June 1, 2017

WWW Wednesday: October 12

A WWW Wednesday that has more books on it than my reading tally for the month of September. Happy WWW Wednesday indeed!

WWW Wednesday is hosted by Taking on a World of Words. Follow the link to read more about it, and be prepared to expand your to-be-read list! A special shout-out to Coffee and Cats for introducing me to WWW Wednesday.

What are you currently reading?

I’m getting over a terrible cold that knocked me flat on my back for the better part of a week. It also side-tracked me from The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton. She is a brilliant social observer/critic and prose stylist. But her novels are not exactly comfort reading while guzzling hot soup and DayQuil. As I’m on the mend, I picked it up again yesterday and … wow. It’s suspenseful and tense and thought provoking.

What did you recently finish reading?

Since my last WWW Wednesday, I’ve done more reading than I did the entire month of September! What’s missing here is even one asterisk indicating #ReadMyOwnDamnBooks title. This is because I have yet to read one of my own books in October! Good thing we’re only halfway through, eh?

During a stroll through Barnes and Nobel, this title stopped me in my tracks: Pancakes in Paris: Living the American Dream in France by Craig Carlson. I have a personal connection to pancakes (which is a story for another time). As for the book, it’s a warm-hearted, immensely readable memoir about opening a diner in Paris. It’s also Carlson’s story of overcoming a difficult childhood and finding family and love in the City of Light. Uplifting and engaging, it’s the perfect pick-me-up for a dreary day.

I also listened to Kitchens of the Great Midwest by J. Ryan Stradal, which I borrowed from my library. When I started it, I didn’t know anything about the story. I’m grateful for that. It’s not a traditional narrative. It tells the story of Eva Thorvald as seen through the eyes of seven different people whose lives intersect with hers. Words I think of in relation to this novel: fresh, inventive, kind. I loved it! Continue reading “WWW Wednesday: October 12”

October 9, 2016May 30, 2017

2016 Reading Challenges: The Quarterly Report

This year brought two highly appealing reading challenges into my life. So how have they been going? It's time for a quarterly report!

Reading challenges make me nervous. They can create a competitive dynamic where it’s unnecessary and unproductive. They can set expectations that, if not met, cultivate feelings of failure that drain the pleasure from reading.

Who needs that kind of negativity, especially from an activity that one engages in by choice, presumably for pleasure and enrichment?

I don’t know. Maybe some people like negativity (that would explain a lot, actually). But I don’t. So I’m very wary of engaging in reading challenge, generally speaking. And yet!

This year brought two highly appealing reading challenges into my life: Read My Own Damn Books initiated by Andi at Estella’s Revenge and When Are You Reading? by Sam at Taking on a World of Words.

Read My Own Damn Books

This was the challenge that convinced me to do a challenge this year. I needed it desperately. My book hoarding had achieved intervention levels. I’ve bought two and even three copies of the same book because I no longer have any idea what books I own, and trying to find them on my overstuffed shelves takes hours and days. It’s ridiculous.

One major difference resulting directly from Read My Own Damn Books: My impulse buys are way, way down. I’m still buying new books, but I’m actually reading them too. As opposed to sticking them on a shelf where I’ll promptly forget them. Imagine that! E-book sales were a huge temptation for me. My new policy: I only buy the on-sale e-books if the titles were already on my to-read list.

This year, I’ve bought 45 books and read 24 of them. So I’m over 50 percent in my buy-to-read ratio. The numbers become even more favorable in the last three months. I’m most pleased by that! Continue reading “2016 Reading Challenges: The Quarterly Report”

October 6, 2016May 30, 2017

Happy National Poetry Day!

At the end of Elif Batuman’s memoir The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them, she writes—and I promise this won’t spoil the book should you choose to read it:

“If I could start over today, I would choose literature again. If the answers exist in the world or in the universe, I still think that’s where we’re going to find them.”

This may, for me, have been the best line in a book full of great lines, and I couldn’t imagine a more appropriate ending for her memoir, which weaves literary analysis with artfully crafted, incisive portraits of writers, scholars, literary landmarks, and personal experiences.

Maybe answers are possible through literature because of its ability to make us feel deeply, which in the practical world can cause pain and so we try to prevent ourselves from doing it. And literature can prompt understanding of otherness by plunging us into the other’s experience, which can also be scary and painful and thus something we may try to avoid.

Despite my deep faith in literature to prompt empathy and insight, poetry and I have never been the closest of confidantes. Lately, I’ve taken to thinking of poetry as I would an acquaintance admired from afar, that one inscrutable person who, when you speak with her or hear what he’s been doing, you’re impressed. But somehow, you can never get past the surface pleasantries when in that person’s presence.

I’m thinking about this today because it’s National Poetry Day. Out of deference to my enigmatic acquaintance and in honor of the day, I offer three personal favorites:

“Nothing Gold Can Stay” by Robert Frost

This melancholy but beautiful poem renders an experience universal to all living things. How often can we say of eight lines that they speak to all living beings?

“This Is Just To Say” by William Carlos Williams

The first reason I fell in love with this poem is it made me laugh (though I probably shouldn’t!). Upon closer inspection, I marvel at its exquisite construction.

“13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird” by Wallace Stevens

For me, this evocative poem is interwoven with the experience of reading it one stanza at a time on the Wallace Stevens Walk in Hartford.

What are a few of your favorite poems for national poetry day or any day?

October 4, 2016May 30, 2017

The unabridged list of books I read in September

My September book tally isn't a long list. But the books I read were varied and highly satisfying, though in very different ways. And now, on to October!

Looking at my September book tally makes me realize just how quickly the month flew by and how busy I was. All this is to say: I didn’t find nearly as much time for reading as I would have preferred.

No matter, though. A successful reading month (or year) isn’t measured by how many books I read. It’s measured by the quality of my reading experiences. At least, that’s what I keep reminding myself! In that sense, September was an excellent month of reading.

BOOKS I READ IN SEPTEMBER

(* asterisk indicates a Read My Own Damn Books title)

Once again, I came so very close to achieving my goal of having at least half the books I read each month come from my own shelves. This month, I was two for five.

The Nix by Nathan Hill (library e-book)

I devoured this sprawling, empathetic novel in one weekend and then spent a week thinking about and rereading parts of it. The story revolves around Samuel, a grudging college professor and struggling writer, and his mother, who walked out on Samuel and his father when he was a boy. It weaves in and out of the past and of various characters’ points of view. It embraces paradox and has a meta-narrative aspect. It’s trenchant social and political commentary. It’s funny and heartbreaking and deeply felt.

The Revolving Door of Life by Alexander McCall Smith (e-book)

The 10th book in the 44 Scotland Street series finds Bertie in a very happy place. If you’ve read the series, you’ll know what I mean. If you haven’t, I highly recommend it for readers who enjoy gentle, philosophical novels about characters and the relationships among them. It’s not plot-driven but very much about community and place and reflection. I can’t wait for the next one, The Bertie Project!

Shelf Discovery: The Teen Classics We Never Stopped Reading by Lizzie Skurnick (e-book) *

I love books about books. This one is a collection of essays about the YA books Skurnick and her contributors read as teens. Many of the titles were familiar to me, but I also discovered intriguing new books to add to my to-read list (as if it needs more titles!). The essays are fun, in part because the writers clearly enjoy writing them. The best part, though, is how respectfully these YA books are approached. They’re treated as worthy of consideration and discussion, which of course they are, especially to readers who grew up with them!

The Odyssey by Homer (e-book) *

Ah, reading an ancient epic can be so grounding. On his journey home to Ithaca after the Trojan War, Odysseus faces monsters and sirens, loss and despair. He is forced to make difficult choices. The home he remembers is not the place that he left. More trials await him upon returning. I loved being immersed in a world that felt so familiar and strange, at the same time. It’s a powerful read. I recommend reading it after The Iliad (Stephen Mitchell’s translation is wonderful!) since the two are so closely linked thematically.

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe (paperback)

Set in pre-colonial Nigeria, the story describes traditions and ways of life through the story of Okonkwo. Strong and prideful, he wants to achieve status and respect in his village in a way his own father did not. This leads both to successes and tragedies. His story is individual and collective, narrative and metaphoric. Reading the novel, I was struck by the beauty of the language, which felt so essential in crafting the sense of a lost, inaccessible world. It is poetic, highly descriptive, and often emotionally removed, which reminded me of other warrior epics I’ve read over the last year – Beowulf as translated by Seamus Heaney and The Iliad as translated by Stephen Mitchell. In Things Fall Apart, as in Beowulf and The Iliad, emotional intensity is heightened for being so rare. In all three, it felt like the characters were swept up in powerful currents they could not take a hand in shaping. Through it all, dignity remains, even after all else is lost. Continue reading “The unabridged list of books I read in September”

September 28, 2016June 1, 2017

Wednesday reading roundup: September 28

The highlight of this week's reading: I finished Homer's The Odyssey.

This week’s reading adventures have been classic (pun intended). I dedicated myself to The Odyssey this week and finally moved it to the read column. And I started The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton.

For the weekly inspiration of WWW Wednesday, many thanks again to Taking on a World of Words for hosting it and to Coffee and Cats for introducing me to it.

What are you currently reading?

For once, my current read corresponds with the book I said I would read next: Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth. I began reading it despite suspecting very little actual mirth will be involved. Two chapters in, my prediction is holding up, though obviously I’ve a long journey to the other end of the book.

Her prose sort of grabs you by the throat. I meant to read a few sentences to feel out the story. But after reading the first paragraph, I found I couldn’t stop until I reached the end of the chapter.

What did you recently finish reading?

The Odyssey by Homer. As I mentioned last week, I settled into Robert Fagles’ translation. The more I think about it, the more I see how his version gave me the same dual experience as Stephen Mitchell’s The Iliad: The contemporary-ish writing style cast into relief the inaccessibility of the story’s world. I found that push-and-pull humbling, a thought-provoking reminder of how we can know but not know. Continue reading “Wednesday reading roundup: September 28”

September 22, 2016June 1, 2017

Wednesday reading roundup: September 21

My Wednesday reading roundup: My odyssey with The Odyssey is almost over. I finished Shelf Discovery. And now I'm wondering what to read next, as usual.

Yesterday, I mentioned to my love the title of a book I wanted to read. His response: “If it’s a book, assume we already own it.” Ha. Ha. “What if it’s a new release?” I replied. He came back with, “You probably pre-ordered it. We probably already have two copies.” Ah, he knows me so well.

My thanks to Taking on a World of Words for the weekly inspiration of WWW Wednesday and to Coffee and Cats for introducing me to it!

What are you currently reading? Continue reading “Wednesday reading roundup: September 21”

September 20, 2016May 30, 2017

The Reading Life: Lifestyle or cultural pursuit?

If you had to pick just one, would you call reading a lifestyle or a cultural pursuit?

This week, I’ve been mulling over whether reading is primarily a lifestyle or primarily a cultural pursuit. Writing that sentence annoyed me. Because why must it be either/or? These false binaries are, irritatingly, everywhere.

However, for the sake of filing newspaper stories, practical decisions have to be made. Does a story on, for example, hot new releases belong under the heading “Culture” or “Lifestyle”? How about coverage of an author event? What about an essay about rereading a classic, or the latest literary fiction, or a juicy new murder mystery that will keep you up too late, rendering you sleep-deprived and grumpy at work the next day?

The issue has been on my mind since last week, when I finally broke down and read Alexander McCall Smith’s The Revolving Door of Life, book 10 in the 44 Scotland Street series. For anyone keeping track, it came out in February, and it’s now September. Continue reading “The Reading Life: Lifestyle or cultural pursuit?”