Archive | September 2008

Sunday Salon: How Can I Help?

Sep21

This post is not about books or reading, but it’s certainly about how I spent my Sunday. We went to church this morning and began to hear the stories of how members of our church and others from all over the country have been working already to help people in Galveston, Houston, and surrounding areas, all the way to Louisiana, recover from Hurricane Ike. Our denomination, Evangelical Free Church of America had crisis response teams in southeast Houston by Monday after the hurricane had passed on Saturday. They and members of our church, Trinity Fellowship in Friendswood, have been working all week, cutting down trees, clearing debris, gutting water-logged houses, and acting out the love of Christ.

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If you would like to read more about their efforts or discover ways in which you can help no matter where you are, Mark Lewis, Director of EFCA TouchGlobal Crisis Response, is blogging daily at EFCA Crisis Response. If you live in the storm affected areas and you would like to communicate needs directly to Mark Lewis, email him at crisisresponseATefcaDOTorg. To donate money or needed materials and tools, email efcahurricanereliefATefcaDOTorg. You can also email my pastor at mailATtrinityfellowship if you have needs or donations.

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Please, there are many, many needs here and especially further south and on Galveston Island, and the need won’t go away anytime soon. The national media will soon have gone on to other more interesting stories, but the people, especially the poor and the elderly, will still be with us and in need of your help and prayers. Consider contributing money, time or material goods as you are able. I have seen the fruits of the labors of the EFCA crisis response teams, and they will put your contributions to good use. Also, you don’t have to be affiliated with an EFCA church to volunteer or to contribute. They are organizing and coordinating volunteer teams from many groups and from all over the country.

(Because we have been dealing with the illness and death of a family member in addition to our own minor hurricane clean-up, we haven’t been directly involved in the crisis response this week. However, I see the need everywhere, and I’m sure that God is calling us to help and probably calling on you, if you are a Christian, to do whatever you can to minister to those in need here in Houston/Galveston/Southern Lousiana.)

Pictures of my neighborhood, which was not as hard hit as some others, immediately after Ike.

Cybils: Middle Grade Fiction

Sep19

Nominations open on October 1 for the Cybil Awards, children’s and young adult literature awards given by blogger readers. And I get the privilege of being on the panel for judging the first round of nominees for Middle Grade Fiction. I can hardly wait to see which books are nominated and to start reading.

The other panelist judges for Middle Grade Fiction are:

Panelists (Round I judges)

Sarah Mulhern at The Reading Zone. Sarah’s a teacher, and I get the idea here that she has a passion for helping her students connect with books. I think we’ll connect, too.
Alysa Stewart at Everead. Alysa’s a new mom, and she has the cutest little boy. She blogs with Laura at Everead.
Mary R. Voors at ACPL Mock Newbery. Mary’s blog is brought to you by the Children’s Services department of the Allen County Public Library in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Mary’s a librarian, and it looks as if the rest of us will be trying to play catch-up since she’s already been reading all the possible Newbery books for 2009 (published in 2008). I can hardly wait to start the race.
Sherry Early at Semicolon.
Kim Baccellia. Kim is a mom and a writer, author of Earrings of Ixtumea, a Young Adult novel. I haven’t read her book, but I guess it’s time to find a copy and see what my fellow judge brings to the table. From the looks of her blog and her website, she’ll be bringing an author’s sensitivity and point of view, not a bad ingredient for the mix.
Melissa Fox of Book Nut. Melissa says her only qualifications for judging the Cybils are that she’s a mom and a reader. I’d say those jobs entail some fine skills, especially since they happen to be my skills, too. According to her blog, Melissa has four daughters and an avid love of reading. And she likes Tolkien and Jane Austen. I think we’re kindred spirits.
Matthew Wigdahl at The Book Club Shelf. Matt’s blog specializes in evaluating children’s books in terms of suitability for children’s book clubs. It’s a good idea and well-executed. And I think it’ll be good to have a guy on the panel as long as he doesn’t feel too outnumbered. Oh, and Matt’s a teacher. too.

Two teachers. At least four moms. One homeschool teacher. One librarian. One former librarian. One author. One guy. Seven readers.

Lots and lots and lots of books to read and talk about and evaluate and choose. It sounds like a recipe for a fun fall. Oh, and by the way, my kids will be helping me to read and assess the nominees. Maybe the rest of you can get some kid-help, too.

Again, I can’t wait to begin. Yeah for Cybils!

Poetry Friday: Seasons (Mostly Winter)

Sep19

By Bethy-Bee, age 9

Hello, I will tell you what I think of the seasons,

and get your self very even.

Spring is okay, It’s cold and warm.

Sometimes I have to sit  in my bed while their are storms.

Summer is hot, horuble and glum.

It makes me not want to suck my thum.

Now fall is pretty good with the leaves to fall….

but Winter Is the best one of all!

It’s cold, and I go outside and I will find ….

MY winter is there to comefert me!

Semicolon’s September: Celebrations, Links and Birthdays

Pirates: Books for Talk Like a Pirate Day

Sep19


Of piratical books there is no end. However, here are a few of my favorites. Here’s a more exhaustive list of pirate fiction.


Picture Books:
Obadiah the Bold by Brinton Turkle. A young Quaker boy on Nantucket Island decides to become a pirate when he grows up, but he’s dissuaded after he’s forced to walk the plank (pretend) by his older siblings. Semicolon review here.

Classics:
The Dark Frigate by Charles Boardman Hawes. Semicolon review here.

Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson. Classic story of the boy, Jim Hawkins, and the pirate, Long John Silver.

Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie.

Children’s Fiction:
Mystery in the Pirate Oak by Helen Fuller Orton. I used to read Ms. Orton’s mysteries when I was a kid of a girl. Good children’s mystery books.

Captain Kidd’s Cat. The True Chronicle of Wm. Kidd, Gent. and Merchant of New York as narrated by His Ship’s Cat, McDermott, Who ought to know by Robert Lawson. Not as well known as Lawson’s other animal-narrated historical chronicles, Ben and Me and Mr. Revere and I, but this story of Captain Kidd is written in the same style and just as fun and informative. By the way, I think I may be related to Captain Kidd. At least I have some Kidds in my family tree.

Ghost in the Noonday Sun by Sid Fleischman. Oliver FInch, because he was born exactly at midnight, has the ability to see ghosts. And the pirates who kidnap him need his help to to get to a treasure guarded by . . . ghosts, of course. Fleischman wrote lots of funny adventure stories just right for a rollicking good time.

Isle of Swords by Thomas Wayne Batson. I thoroughly enjoyed this pirate tale from last year. Semicolon review here.

Jade by Sally Watson. This one falls in the category of great story but hard to find because it’s out of print. In fact, Sally Watson is an author worth keeping in mind at used book sales and the like. Her books, first published in the 1950’s and 60’s, seem to be available here in reprint editions. Jade is the story of sixteen year old Melanie Lennox, an anti-slavery crusader, who joins the pirates who capture her ship so that she can continue her fight against slavery on the high seas. If anyone has an extra copy of this book lying around, I’ll certainly take it off your hands. I have fond memories of it from my childhood.

Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome.

Young Adult Fiction:
Airborn by Kenneth Oppel. Air pirates in an alternate world. Semicolon review here.

Pirates! by Celia Rees, reviewed by Carrie at Mommy Brain. YA fiction about a couple of girl pirates and about the evils of slavery.

The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle by Avi.

Nonfiction:
Sea Queens: Women Pirates from Around the World by Jane Yolen, reviewed by Matt at The Book Club Shelf.

Semicolon Author Celebration: Samuel Johnson

Sep18

Today is the birthday of lexicographer, essayist, novelist, literary critic, and eighteenth century celebrity Samuel Johnson. He was born in 1709, so next year will mark the 300th anniversary of his birth. Commonly known as Dr. Johnson, he was the subject of James Boswell’s Life of Samuel Johnson, one of the most famous biographies ever written in the English language.

More about Dr. Johnson.

Quoth Samuel Johnson:

“I never desire to converse with a man who has written more than he has read.”

“A cucumber should be well sliced, and dressed with pepper and vinegar, and then thrown out, as good for nothing.”

A lady once asked him how he came to define pastern as the knee of a horse: instead of making an elaborate defence, as she expected, he at once answered, “Ignorance, Madam, pure ignorance.”

“A man ought to read just as inclination leads him; for what he reads as a task will do him little good.”

“Read over your compositions, and wherever you meet with a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.”

“But if he does really think that there is no distinction between virtue and vice, why, Sir, when he leaves our houses let us count our spoons.”

“I hate a fellow whom pride or cowardice or laziness drives into a corner, and who does nothing when he is there but sit and growl. Let him come out as I do, and bark.”

When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford.”

“I would rather be attacked than unnoticed. For the worst thing you can do to an author is to be silent as to his works.”
More quotations from Dr.Johnson.

Some of Dr. Johnson’s more creative definitions:

LEXICOGRAPHER: A writer of dictionaries, a harmless drudge.

NETWORK: Any thing reticulated or decussated, at equal distances, with interstices between the intersections.

OATS: A grain which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people.

PATRON: n. One who countenances, supports or protects. Commonly a wretch who supports with insolence, and is repaid in flattery.

Samuel Johnson, the critic:

Samuel Johnson on Lord Chesterfield: “This man I thought had been a Lord among wits; but, I find, he is only a wit among Lords!”

On Thomas Gray: “Sir, he was dull in company, dull in his closet, dull everywhere. He was dull in a new way and that made people think him great.”

On poet Christopher Smart: “Madness frequently discovers itself merely by unnecessary deviation from the usual modes of the world. My poor friend Smart showed the disturbance of his mind, by falling upon his knees, and saying his prayers in the street, or in any other unusual place. Now although, rationally speaking, it is greater madness not to pray at all, than to pray as Smart did, I am afraid there are so many who do not pray, that their understanding is not called in question.”

On John Milton: “Scarcely any man ever wrote so much and praised so few.”

Happy Birthday, Dr. Johnson!

Semicolon’s September: Celebrations, Links and Birthdays

Apple Songs

Sep17

Last year in September I did a whole series of posts on apple-related things, and I invited others to link to their own apple-y posts. Somehow this post was leftover, but it’s still good even after a year in cold storage.

Can you name the apple songs that feature these lyrics? Can you name the composer or the artist who made the song famous? Guesses go in the comments, and if you get one or more right (without googling), buy yourself an apple!

1. I just got word from a guy who heard
From the guy next door to me
The girl he met just loves to pet
And it fits you to a T!

2. I feel like this is the beginning
Though I’ve loved you for a million years
And if I thought our love was ending
I’d find myself drowning in my own tears:

3. “The oriole with joy was sweetly singing;
The little brook was burbling its tune.
The village bells at noon were gayly ringing
The world seemed brighter than a harvest moon.
For there within my arms I gently pressed you
And blushing red you slowly turned away
I can’t forget the way I once’t carressed you
I only pray we’ll meet another day . . .

4. And I wake up in the morning with my hair down in my eyes and she says hi
And I stumble to the breakfast table while the kids are going off to school, goodbye.
And she reaches out and takes my hand and squeezes it and says how you feeling hon?
And I look across at smiling lips that warm my heart, and see my morning sun.

5. I can tell you’ve been hurt by that look on your face girl.
Someone brought safety to your happy world.
You need love but you’re afraid that if you give in,
Someone else will come along and sock it to ya again.

Book Meme

Sep16

Which book do you irrationally cringe away from reading, despite seeing only positive reviews?

The Road by Cormac McCarthy. I’m not sure I want to do the whole nuclear holocaust thing in my reading.

If you could bring three characters to life for a social event (afternoon tea, a night of clubbing, perhaps a world cruise), who would they be and what would the event be?

I’m tempted to bring to life Mr. Darcy or Meriadoc Brandybuck or even Lord Peter Wimsey, but that would involve me in marital issues, and I avoid those. I only have eyes for Engineer Husband.
So, I’ll have tea with Katherine Forrester VIgneras from A Severed Wasp by Madeleine L’Engle, Aunt Betsy Trotter from David Copperfield, and Father Tim from Jan Karon’s Mitford books. It might turn out to a rather Mad Hatter/March Hare sort of tea party, but fun. Oh, I just thought, let’s invite Miss Marple, too. I like old folks.

(Borrowing shamelessly from the Thursday Next series by Jasper Fforde): you are told you can’t die until you read the most boring novel on the planet. While this immortality is great for awhile, eventually you realise it’s past time to die. Which book would you expect to get you a nice grave?
Ulysses by James Joyce.

Come on, we’ve all been there. Which book have you pretended, or at least hinted, that you’ve read, when in fact you’ve been nowhere near it?
I really don’t know. I haven’t actually read every word of Moby Dick, but I taught it in a class anyway. I guess that counts. I didn’t tell the kids that I’d read the whole thing. In fact, I think I admitted to skimming parts.

As an addition to the last question, has there been a book that you really thought you had read, only to realise when you read a review about it/go to ‘reread’ it that you haven’t? Which book?
Yes, but I’m not sure which ones. I forgot that I forgot.

You’re interviewing for the post of Official Book Advisor to some VIP (who’s not a big reader). What’s the first book you’d recommend and why? (if you feel like you’d have to know the person, go ahead and personalise the VIP).
What Joe Biden should read: All the King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren.
What Sarah Palin should read: Some YA fiction, particularly this book, to see what she’s up against in the secular, liberal mindset.
Ender’s Game might be a good primer on war games for both of the VP candidates.

A good fairy comes and grants you one wish: you will have perfect reading comprehension in the foreign language of your choice. Which language do you go with?
Russian. I really think Russian novels lose something in the translation.

A mischievious fairy comes and says that you must choose one book that you will reread once a year for the rest of your life (you can read other books as well). Which book would you pick?
The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien.

I know that the book blogging community, and its various challenges, have pushed my reading borders. What’s one bookish thing you ‘discovered’ from book blogging (maybe a new genre, or author, or new appreciation for cover art-anything)?
I’ve discovered lots of new-to-me books and authors:Jamie Langston Turner, Athol Dickson, Barbara Pym, C.J. Sansom. I’ve become re-aquainted with contemporary chlidren’s literature and YA literature.

That good fairy is back for one final visit. Now, she’s granting you your dream library! Describe it. Is everything leatherbound? Is it full of first edition hardcovers? Pristine trade paperbacks? Perhaps a few favourite authors have inscribed their works? Go ahead-let your imagination run free.

Window seats. Lots of lighting, overhead and floor and desk lamps. Computer with internet access for blogging while you read. Walls lined with books. All of the books by all of my favorite authors in hardback library binding editions. And they’re all shelved in alphabetical order according to the author’s last name. It’s the librarian in me.

Unfortunately, I don’t remember where I got this book meme. Please forgive, and feel free to copy and play along.

Semicolon’s September: Celebrations, Links and Birthdays

Random Harvest by James Hilton

Sep15

I read Lost Horizon a long time ago, and I’ve seen the movies. I enjoyed the book and the movies. Random Harvst by the same author is a different book, but it has the same feel to it. The characters have, and give the reader, that same longing to return to a simpler time and place; it’s a romance in the best sense of the word, just like Lost Horizon.

In fact, either finishing Random Harvest or a hormonal flare or both made me feel incredibly sad and nostalgic tonight. Then, I had a discussion with Eldest Daughter about politics and nuclear weapons and the war in Iraq and American imperialism and the global economy (yeah, all that), and that made me even sadder. So this review may or may not be truly indicative of the quality of the book. When you factor in romanticism and politics and hormones, anything can happen.

Random Harvest is an amnesia story about a man who loses three years of his life when he is wounded during World War I. The man, Charles Ranier, finds himself in Liverpool on a park bench and remembers everything that happened to him before he was wounded but nothing of the past three years, the ending of the war, and his return home. I’m not sure, but I think Hilton was trying to say something about the collective amnesia of the British people on the brink of another war because they had purposely forgotten the lessons of World War I. The book indicates that the pursuit of riches and economic power and the crusading spirit of the socialists are both inadequate substitutes for personal relationships and commitment to or faith in something beyond the here and now. Actually, I’m not sure Mr. Hilton was embedding such a didactic message in his book, but that summation approximates the message I got out of the book.

Mostly, Random Harvest is just a good story. There’s an impossibly romantic surprise ending, and I didn’t catch on to it until the last few pages of the book. So the finale was quite satisfying. And the story itself moved along somewhat slowly, but with enough going on to keep my interest, and just enough philosophical speculation to make me think a bit without straining my brain too much.

And the writing is very British and very 1940’s. Here’s a sample quotation that made me think of blogging:

“Those were the happy days when Smith began to write. As most real writers do, he wrote because he had something to say, not because of any specific ambition to become a writer. He turned out countless articles and sketches that gave him pleasure only because they contained a germ of what was in his mind; but he was never fully satisfied with them himself and consequently was never more than slightly disappointed when editors promptly returned them. He did not grasp that, because he was a person of no importance, nobody wanted to read his opinions at all.”

Smith would have been a perfect blogger.

Random Harvest was a fun, sort of melancholy-producing, book, and if you like amnesia books set in the 1920’s, written in the 1940’s, you should try it out. Other time-bending, amnesia books with a similar feel to them:

A Portrait of Jennie by Robert Nathan. Semicolon review here.

Brat Farrar by Josephine Tey. Not exactly an amnesia story, but it reminds me of Hilton’s style somehow. Semicolon review here.

Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac by Gabrielle Zevin. More modern and young adult-ish. Semicolon review here.

The Adoration of Jenna Fox by Mary Pearson. Also YA and more of a twenty-first century feel. Semicolon review here.

Anne Perry’s William Monk detective series features Mr. Monk as a late nineteenth century private detective suffering from amnesia. His assistant/love interest/foil is a nurse named Hester.

Any more amnesiac selections that you can remember? Mr. Hilton’s birthday was on the 9th of September, by the way. I forgot.

Semicolon’s September: Celebrations, Links and Birthdays