Better late.....

Just recently, I stumbled across a movie I had seen before, but had not thought much of, The Shipping News.  And of course, like everything else in my life, I Googled it. I had no idea it was based on a book by E. Annie Proulx.  A book, no less, that won the Faulkner/PEN, National Book award, and the Pulitzer.  Must be pretty good.  Inspired by such an amazing film, I headed for my trusty local Used Bookshop.  Though they did not have The Shipping News, they did have Accordion Crimes, a book that, in an interview with The Paris Review (remember, I Googled), Proulx said  "...is probably the best book I've written.  I like the big sweep of it..." (Cox, Christopher. "Annie Proulx: The Art of Fiction, No. 188." The Paris Review. Spring 2009).  I grabbed it.  I had read only an interview but I knew that this was someone to respect and whose books I knew I would mark up. And would you believe, the next day I would find The Shipping News at the Goodwill?  Oh yes, it was meant to be. While only on page 9, I have marked up, circled, underlined, and notated  the poor thing so that it is permanently mine and Annie and I are friends.  Here are some of my favorite passages-meaty and wordy and I love it.

"A great damp loaf of a body.  At six he weighed eighty pounds.  At sixteen he was buried under a casement of flesh.  Head shaped like a crenshaw, no neck, reddish hair runched back.  Features as bunched as kissed fingertips.  Eyes the color of plastic.  The monstrous chin, a freakish shelf jutting from the lower face."

"The small decisions of local authority seemed to him the deep workings of life.  In a profession that tutored its practitioners in the baseness of human nature, that revealed the corroded metal of civilization, Quoyle constructed a personal illusion and smoking jealously he imagined rational compromise."

Check it out :)

http://shop.holstee.com/?campaignid=446&mbsy=7pD

One of my favorite sites is Brain Pickings, a fantastic array of literary snippets, indelible art and courageous ideas. Very inspiring and thought-provoking.  Check it out :)

Out of Hibernation

  


 Greetings!  I am incredibly glad to be back in the universe of blogging.  I see my last post was in JULY?! Well, I did say there would not be much quiet time for a bit.  Between then and now I have moved across town, started and withdrawn from college courses, shafurred and helped the little one with his homework, played with the baby kept house and aquired a 10 month old fox hound.  I have begun reading NW by Zadie Smith and Cleopatra's Nose by Judith Truman.  Sadly, I have finished neither and so my running list of open books continues to grow.  I have thought possibly, I have a problem...I never want the story to end :) 

    I hope you have all been well and look forward to catching up on your reading endeavors-more complete than mine :)

Great Book-Important Subject...

While at the library the other day-always fun for the kids, especially when the heat index is in the 100's-I took a gander at writings by Joyce Carol Oates.  While I have seen many movies based on her novels--Foxfire, We Were the Mulvaney's-- I had yet to read one.  Rape:A Love Story caught my eye.  I am drawn to stories of mental and physical abuse-sexual violence in particular.  So I grabbed it, this small, 154 page novella.  I finished it in 3 days- a major feat for me :)  Without going into it to much, it is about a mother who is gang-raped and her daughter who is beaten-narrowly escaping only to listen to the rape and beating of her mother.  Horrendous.  The story is told in multiple points of view.  From the daughter, to the officer first on the scene to some of the suspects.  I could not read it fast enough.  I cannot say whether or not I will read another of her books- I am uneasy with reading alot of swearing and this book is full of it.  However, I do not hold that against the book- it has its place and this story was one of those places.  Favorite line: "You spared the adults in your household.  You learned how if a thing is not spoken of, even those closest to you , who love you, will assume that it doesn't exist."

Visit RAINN for info on sexual violence

No Quiet Time Till Fall?!

Source: slices-of-life.com

Life had to catch up some time now didn't it?  School is out for the summer and, well, it is 2:30 in the morning and  you get the idea.  After finishing Loitering with Intent and while impatiently waiting for our library to aquire, A Far Cry From Kensington,  I was able to finish Rosanna of the Amish by Joseph Yoder.  A beautiful story, which is now on it's way to the Dakotas where my mother awaits it patiently. Joesph Yoder was Rosanna's son and being raised in the Amish church, is very qualified to write a loving  biography not just on his mother but on the Amish culture.  I love simple living stories and books of faith and this was a great encouragement to me. I would find myself more eager to do dishes after reading- LOL  :)  I will certainly read it again and its companion, Rosannas Boys.

Source: slices-of-life.com

I am happy to announce the 2 books replacing the ones I have sadly finished-The Handmaid's Tale  by Margaret Atwood and Anne of Avonlea by Lucy Maud Montgomery- a favorite author of mine.  I can not wait to visit Prince Edward Island one day as I have always wanted to live there.  But, being closer to Ecuador than Canada I do not see the idea of moving so far north to be a feasible act.  Oh well.  A visit then!

Bookgirl went a thrifting...

Recent steal:  Loose Girl, a memoir of promiscuity by Kerry Cohen
 The Island of Lost Maps, A true Story of Cartographic Crime by Miles Harvey
Stolen Innocence, Triumphing Over a Childhood by Abuse: a memoir by Erin Merryn
More Classics to Read Aloud to Your Children Edited by William F. Russell
Early Christian Fathers Edited by Cyril C. Richardson
The Short Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald Edited by Matthew J. Bruccoli

And my favorite, John Ransom's Andersonville Diary.  I have a soft spot for anything "Andersonville".  A few years ago while traveling through Georgia, our family visited the military prison in which Union soldiers were held.  The stockades have been rebuilt and one can stand where these prisoners stood and walk where they walked.  Watching the movie is haunting after having been to Andersonville. I am excited to begin this book but in such a way as I know what went on and feel an odd sort of connection to the prisoners.

Source: University of Pennsylvania

"I think I may boast myself to be, with all possible vanity, the most unlearned and uninformed female who ever dared to be an authoress."
                                      -Jane Austen  letter, 11 December 1815