'Tis the Season: As the school year winds down...

The end of the school year (both K-12 and college) brings a flurry of odd bookstore encounters.

Two high schoolers (likely boyfriend/girlfriend) are looking around the history section with that utterly lost look on their faces.
Me:  Can I help you find something?
Girl:  Well...we need to read 1984 but it's not here. (Waves at US History)
(Oh honey, no....)

Two teachers are wandering around in the fiction section.
Male teacher:  Do you have any Faulkner?
Me: Yes we do - which book are you looking for?
Female teacher:  Oh, any are fine.
(I showed them the shelf of Faulkner, they made appreciative noises, and I left them to browse.  About 15 minutes later, they come find me.)
Female teacher:  Do you have any shorter Faulkner?
Me (shorter?):  Are you looking for short stories?
Female teacher:  Not really.  These are pretty dense.  (Shows me Absalom, Absalom, As I Lay Dying, and The Sound and the Fury)  We were hoping for something like this but shorter.
Me: Well...I don't see any abridgements available in the catalogue.  There are literature guides like Sparknotes.
Male teacher: Oh, those will work.  We just need it for Contest Speech.
(I've never come across a kid who did Faulkner for Contest Speech - I can't decide if that would be interesting or just plain nuts)

Parent with an armload of AP biology and calculus study guides: Are these books guaranteed?  The tests are next week and my son needs a 5.
(Unless the courses and exams have changed greatly since 1996, which I doubt, the result is more dependent on whether one paid attention in class all year rather than the cram session but, no, a study guide is not a guarantee of a perfect score.)

Customer (college-aged male): You don't have any copies of Paradise Lost.
Me (finding this very hard to believe because I saw some not long ago): Well, let's go look on the shelves in poetry.
Customer: Poetry?? But I don't want to read a poem.
Me: Here it is, under Milton in poetry.
Customer: Do you have one that isn't a poem?
Me: No. Milton wrote a poem about the fall of Satan.
Customer: Do you have it in English?
(Give up while you're ahead, big guy)

Very pleasant college student on the phone:  Do you have a copy of Ulysses?
Me: We do, do you need a particular edition?
(She needs the Knopf with the 1961 text, which we had on hand)
Student: Great! I'll be in to pick it up tonight.  Will it take long to read?  I have to have my paper done by the end of finals.
(Finals were about 10 days away when she called.  Um....)

Most often-heard response to the statement "Unfortunately, I don't have a copy in the store but I can get one in about a week":
"But I need it tomorrow!"
(And then when I mention things like libraries and ebooks I get a withering look in return)

I also have a more generalized comment about Lexile scores, but will save that for a different post.

Dancing with Mr. Darcy (mini-review)

Dancing With Mr. Darcy contains the best entries from the Jane Austen Short Story competition as judged and edited by novelist Sarah Waters.  The entries had to take inspiration from Austen herself, her work, or from Chawton House where she lived out her later life and wrote many of her most famous works.

On the whole, the collection is a nice, fun read.  Some stories are more serious ("The School Trip"), some are more lighthearted ("The Jane Austen Hen Weekend"), and some borrow from a more contemporary author, too ("The Delaford Ladies' Detective Agency" and "One Character in Search of Her Love Story Role").

The winning story, "Jane Austen Over the Styx", put Jane Austen on trial after her death in a prosecution lead by the odious Mrs. Norris (over the objections of Lady Catherine de Bourgh).  Her less-well-like female characters felt slighted, you see, and a rather interesting punishment is meted out.

Although I didn't like all the stories as much as I had the ones in Jane Austen Made Me Do It this was a nice book to finish up during the Readathon.

Dewey's #readathon: Wrap up!

What a fun readathon!  I hosted my first mini-challenge (congrats Michelle from A World of My Own!) and it was such a blast.  I have commenting for days now, ya'll, since I have yet to make it through all the entries.

I finished five books and read more of a sixth:

Books finished:
Dancing With Mr. Darcy (178 pages)
Ten White Geese (202 pages)
The Hero's Guide to Saving Your Kingdom (423 pages)
Cloud Atlas (415 pages)
The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making (236 pages)

Partially read:
The Use and Abuse of Literature (62 pages)

Total pages read: 1516

Oof.

So I'm going to make like Chaucer and go pass out.

Dewey's #readathon Hour 2 mini-challenge winner!

According to Ye Olde Random Number Generator (www.random.org), the winner of The Deception of the Emerald Ring in audio is....

Comment #32, Michelle from A World of My Own!

Stop by her blog to see her book spine poem.  Congrats Michelle - email me your snail mail address (my email is in the Welcome message to the left)!

Many thanks to everyone who entered - it's going to take me forever to go through and read everyone's poems.  I'm looking forward to it!

(My poor blog stats are going crazy today, haha)

Dewey's #readathon Hour 5 mini-challenge entry: Self-Portrait

Andi and Heather are hosting the Hour 5 mini-challenge at The Estella Society: Self-portraits.

I was trying to take a "nice" picture with the Dante-kitteh but at the last second he decided to give me kisses instead.  What a goob.

Dewey's #readathon Hour 2 Mini-Challenge: Book Spine Poetry!

Welcome to the second hour of Dewey's Readathon!  I am your mini-challenge host for this hour and we are doing poetry!

April is National Poetry Month so I've been doing (almost) daily poetry features.  What's better than reading poetry?  Making book-spine poetry, of course!

Your challenge is thus:

• Using the titles on book spines, make a short poem at least three "books" long/tall. 
• Don't worry about form or meter or anything like that.  Just have fun!  And don't over-think it - I did the one pictured above in about ten minutes.
• Take a picture of your book spine poem, post it on your blog/Twitter/Tumblr/Instagram/etc., then paste the permalink to that post in the comments to this post.
• You have about six hours.  At the beginning of Hour 8 I will use Ye Olde Random Number Generator to pick a random book-spine poem entry.
• The winner gets: Lauren Willig's The Deception of the Emerald Ring on audio read by Kate Reading!
• I'm willing to ship the prize anywhere in the world so get cracking!

Dewey's #readathon Spring 2013: Starting line!

Whoop, whoop!  Dewey's readathon is up and running again!  Bright and shiny early at 7am CDT (my time).  At least, that's when I have this post set to go up because I am famous for being a Saturday morning bed slug.  I'll probably crawl out of bed long enough to start the coffee, snag a book of some sort, and crawl back into bed.

I have my snacks/meals all ready to go (last time I had to start the morning with a trip to the store due to poor planning): dried strawberries, carrots and peanut butter, monster trail mix (yum yum!), lobster cheese balls (they looked really good in the case at Target), yogurt, and lasagna I made (or, I unfroze and cooked) yesterday.  And coffee, several bags of coffee to keep the pot going.  And tea, for when I wuss out at 3am and need some sleep.

I have my reading spots all ready to go: cozy bed, downstairs couch, downstairs recliner (likely not, the cats have sort of made it theirs), and the upstairs couch and chair with ottoman.  And my blanket and comfy pillows.

I have my book stack all ready to go:

 

 

Yes, I know that is a very tall stack of books.  There is no way on Earth I can read all those.  But some of them are half-finished and some are short story/essay collections just to shake things up.  I made a conscious decision to not read DRCs/galleys that I received for review (to clarify, I got the ARC of The Hero's Guide to Saving Your Kingdom as part of a bloggiesta prize pack so it doesn't count).  And that is my nook on top of the stack; Eleanor and Park, American Gods, and Where'd You Go, Bernadette live on it.

 

Check back in at the beginning of Hour 2 - I'm hosting the mini-challenge!

 

Viva la readathon!

April is NPM: Dante Alighieri

I admit I have a bit of a soft spot for Dante Alighieri.  Anyone who gets exiled for political reasons then writes a very, very long poem where all his least favorite people receive imaginative punishments in Hell gets a thumbs up in my book.  Dante also wrote in Italian, rather than Latin, and so The Divine Comedy became the preeminent work of Italian literature.

The punishments of Hell (Inferno) are many and diverse.  One of the more illustrative is the punishment of simonaics, those who sold Church offices - they are buried upside down with their feet set alight.  In another Circle, the suicides are sympathetically represented as a weeping wood.

I have decided to post my favorite canto, the fifth from Inferno, here in both Italian and English.  I love the rhythm of the original terza rima when read in Italian.  The fifth canto concerns the second circle of Hell wherein the lascivious are confined.  The condemned souls are buffeted about by a wind to represent their inability to control their lusts.  At the end of the canto, Dante speaks with Francesca di Rimini and her lover/brother-in-law Paolo Malatesta who committed adultery together after reading about Lancelot and Guinevere and were subsequently killed by her husband.

(In a little pingback, John Keats wrote the sonnet "On a Dream" that imagines part of this scene from the point-of-view of Paolo.)

Canto V

Così discesi del cerchio primaio giù nel secondo, che men loco cinghia e tanto più dolor, che punge a guaio.Stavvi Minòs orribilmente, e ringhia: essamina le colpe ne l’intrata; giudica e manda secondo ch’avvinghia.Dico che quando l’anima mal nata li vien dinanzi, tutta si confessa; e quel conoscitor de le peccatavede qual loco d’inferno è da essa;10 cignesi con la coda tante volte quantunque gradi vuol che giù sia messa.Sempre dinanzi a lui ne stanno molte: vanno a vicenda ciascuna al giudizio, dicono e odono e poi son giù volte.«O tu che vieni al doloroso ospizio», disse Minòs a me quando mi vide, lasciando l’atto di cotanto offizio,«guarda com’ entri e di cui tu ti fide; non t’inganni l’ampiezza de l’intrare!».20 E ’l duca mio a lui: «Perché pur gride?Non impedir lo suo fatale andare: vuolsi così colà dove si puote ciò che si vuole, e più non dimandare».Or incomincian le dolenti note a farmisi sentire; or son venuto là dove molto pianto mi percuote.Io venni in loco d’ogne luce muto, che mugghia come fa mar per tempesta, se da contrari venti è combattuto.30La bufera infernal, che mai non resta, mena li spirti con la sua rapina; voltando e percotendo li molesta.Quando giungon davanti a la ruina, quivi le strida, il compianto, il lamento; bestemmian quivi la virtù divina.Intesi ch’a così fatto tormento enno dannati i peccator carnali, che la ragion sommettono al talento.E come li stornei ne portan l’ali40 nel freddo tempo, a schiera larga e piena, così quel fiato li spiriti malidi qua, di là, di giù, di sù li mena; nulla speranza li conforta mai, non che di posa, ma di minor pena.E come i gru van cantando lor lai, faccendo in aere di sé lunga riga, così vid’ io venir, traendo guai,ombre portate da la detta briga; per ch’i’ dissi: «Maestro, chi son quelle50 genti che l’aura nera sì gastiga?».«La prima di color di cui novelle tu vuo’ saper», mi disse quelli allotta, «fu imperadrice di molte favelle.A vizio di lussuria fu sì rotta, che libito fé licito in sua legge, per tòrre il biasmo in che era condotta.Ell’ è Semiramìs, di cui si legge che succedette a Nino e fu sua sposa: tenne la terra che ’l Soldan corregge.60L’altra è colei che s’ancise amorosa, e ruppe fede al cener di Sicheo; poi è Cleopatràs lussurïosa.Elena vedi, per cui tanto reo tempo si volse, e vedi ’l grande Achille, che con amore al fine combatteo.Vedi Parìs, Tristano»; e più di mille ombre mostrommi e nominommi a dito, ch’amor di nostra vita dipartille.Poscia ch’io ebbi ’l mio dottore udito70 nomar le donne antiche e ’ cavalieri, pietà mi giunse, e fui quasi smarrito.I’ cominciai: «Poeta, volontieri parlerei a quei due che ’nsieme vanno, e paion sì al vento esser leggeri».Ed elli a me: «Vedrai quando saranno più presso a noi; e tu allor li priega per quello amor che i mena, ed ei verranno».Sì tosto come il vento a noi li piega, mossi la voce: «O anime affannate,80 venite a noi parlar, s’altri nol niega!».Quali colombe dal disio chiamate con l’ali alzate e ferme al dolce nido vegnon per l’aere, dal voler portate;cotali uscir de la schiera ov’ è Dido, a noi venendo per l’aere maligno, sì forte fu l’affettüoso grido.«O animal grazïoso e benigno che visitando vai per l’aere perso noi che tignemmo il mondo di sanguigno,90se fosse amico il re de l’universo, noi pregheremmo lui de la tua pace, poi c’hai pietà del nostro mal perverso.Di quel che udire e che parlar vi piace, noi udiremo e parleremo a voi, mentre che ’l vento, come fa, ci tace.Siede la terra dove nata fui su la marina dove ’l Po discende per aver pace co’ seguaci sui.Amor, ch’al cor gentil ratto s’apprende,100 prese costui de la bella persona che mi fu tolta; e ’l modo ancor m’offende.Amor, ch’a nullo amato amar perdona, mi prese del costui piacer sì forte, che, come vedi, ancor non m’abbandona.Amor condusse noi ad una morte. Caina attende chi a vita ci spense». Queste parole da lor ci fuor porte.Quand’ io intesi quell’ anime offense, china’ il viso, e tanto il tenni basso,110 fin che ’l poeta mi disse: «Che pense?».Quando rispuosi, cominciai: «Oh lasso, quanti dolci pensier, quanto disio menò costoro al doloroso passo!».Poi mi rivolsi a loro e parla’ io, e cominciai: «Francesca, i tuoi martìri a lagrimar mi fanno tristo e pio.Ma dimmi: al tempo d’i dolci sospiri, a che e come concedette amore che conosceste i dubbiosi disiri?».120E quella a me: «Nessun maggior dolore che ricordarsi del tempo felice ne la miseria; e ciò sa ’l tuo dottore.Ma s’a conoscer la prima radice del nostro amor tu hai cotanto affetto, dirò come colui che piange e dice.Noi leggiavamo un giorno per diletto di Lancialotto come amor lo strinse; soli eravamo e sanza alcun sospetto.Per più fïate li occhi ci sospinse130 quella lettura, e scolorocci il viso; ma solo un punto fu quel che ci vinse.Quando leggemmo il disïato riso esser basciato da cotanto amante, questi, che mai da me non fia diviso,la bocca mi basciò tutto tremante. Galeotto fu ’l libro e chi lo scrisse: quel giorno più non vi leggemmo avante».Mentre che l’uno spirto questo disse, l’altro piangëa; sì che di pietade140 io venni men così com’ io morisse. E caddi come corpo morto cade.

Thus I descended out of the first circle Down to the second, that less space begirds, And so much greater dole, that goads to wailing.There standeth Minos horribly, and snarls; Examines the transgressions at the entrance; Judges, and sends according as he girds him.I say, that when the spirit evil-born Cometh before him, wholly it confesses; And this discriminator of transgressionsSeeth what place in Hell is meet for it;10 Girds himself with his tail as many times As grades he wishes it should be thrust down.Always before him many of them stand; They go by turns each one unto the judgment; They speak, and hear, and then are downward hurled."O thou, that to this dolorous hostelry Comest," said Minos to me, when he saw me, Leaving the practice of so great an office,"Look how thou enterest, and in whom thou trustest; Let not the portal's amplitude deceive thee."20 And unto him my Guide: "Why criest thou too?Do not impede his journey fate-ordained; It is so willed there where is power to do That which is willed; and ask no further question."And now begin the dolesome notes to grow Audible unto me; now am I come There where much lamentation strikes upon me.I came into a place mute of all light, Which bellows as the sea does in a tempest, If by opposing winds 't is combated.30The infernal hurricane that never rests Hurtles the spirits onward in its rapine; Whirling them round, and smiting, it molests them.When they arrive before the precipice, There are the shrieks, the plaints, and the laments, There they blaspheme the puissance divine.I understood that unto such a torment The carnal malefactors were condemned, Who reason subjugate to appetite.And as the wings of starlings bear them on40 In the cold season in large band and full, So doth that blast the spirits maledict;It hither, thither, downward, upward, drives them; No hope doth comfort them for evermore, Not of repose, but even of lesser pain.And as the cranes go chanting forth their lays, Making in air a long line of themselves, So saw I coming, uttering lamentations,Shadows borne onward by the aforesaid stress. Whereupon said I: "Master, who are those50 People, whom the black air so castigates?""The first of those, of whom intelligence Thou fain wouldst have," then said he unto me, "The empress was of many languages.To sensual vices she was so abandoned, That lustful she made licit in her law, To remove the blame to which she had been led.She is Semiramis, of whom we read That she succeeded Ninus, and was his spouse; She held the land which now the Sultan rules.60The next is she who killed herself for love, And broke faith with the ashes of Sichaeus; Then Cleopatra the voluptuous."Helen I saw, for whom so many ruthless Seasons revolved; and saw the great Achilles, Who at the last hour combated with Love.Paris I saw, Tristan; and more than a thousand Shades did he name and point out with his finger, Whom Love had separated from our life.After that I had listened to my Teacher,70 Naming the dames of eld and cavaliers, Pity prevailed, and I was nigh bewildered.And I began: "O Poet, willingly Speak would I to those two, who go together, And seem upon the wind to be so light."And, he to me: "Thou'lt mark, when they shall be Nearer to us; and then do thou implore them By love which leadeth them, and they will come."Soon as the wind in our direction sways them, My voice uplift I: "O ye weary souls!80 Come speak to us, if no one interdicts it."As turtle-doves, called onward by desire, With open and steady wings to the sweet nest Fly through the air by their volition borne,So came they from the band where Dido is, Approaching us athwart the air malign, So strong was the affectionate appeal."O living creature gracious and benignant, Who visiting goest through the purple air Us, who have stained the world incarnadine,90If were the King of the Universe our friend, We would pray unto him to give thee peace, Since thou hast pity on our woe perverse.Of what it pleases thee to hear and speak, That will we hear, and we will speak to you, While silent is the wind, as it is now.Sitteth the city, wherein I was born, Upon the sea-shore where the Po descends To rest in peace with all his retinue.Love, that on gentle heart doth swiftly seize,100 Seized this man for the person beautiful That was ta'en from me, and still the mode offends me.Love, that exempts no one beloved from loving, Seized me with pleasure of this man so strongly, That, as thou seest, it doth not yet desert me;Love has conducted us unto one death; Caina waiteth him who quenched our life!" These words were borne along from them to us.As soon as I had heard those souls tormented, I bowed my face, and so long held it down110 Until the Poet said to me: "What thinkest?"When I made answer, I began: "Alas! How many pleasant thoughts, how much desire, Conducted these unto the dolorous pass!"Then unto them I turned me, and I spake, And I began: "Thine agonies, Francesca, Sad and compassionate to weeping make me.But tell me, at the time of those sweet sighs, By what and in what manner Love conceded, That you should know your dubious desires?"120And she to me: "There is no greater sorrow Than to be mindful of the happy time In misery, and that thy Teacher knows.But, if to recognise the earliest root Of love in us thou hast so great desire, I will do even as he who weeps and speaks.One day we reading were for our delight Of Launcelot, how Love did him enthral. Alone we were and without any fear.Full many a time our eyes together drew130 That reading, and drove the colour from our faces; But one point only was it that o'ercame us.When as we read of the much-longed-for smile Being by such a noble lover kissed, This one, who ne'er from me shall be divided,Kissed me upon the mouth all palpitating. Galeotto was the book and he who wrote it. That day no farther did we read therein."And all the while one spirit uttered this, The other one did weep so, that, for pity,140 I swooned away as if I had been dying,And fell, even as a dead body falls.

April is NPM: Chaucer

English poet Geoffrey Chaucer modeled his long poem on an Italian prose work, The Decameron.  In Chaucer's version, the motely crew is on pilgrimage to the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket at Canterbury Cathedral.  Unfortunately, posterity hasn't preserved the entire work so it is grouped in ten fragments.  I've chosen to post the beginning of the General Prologue although my favorite tale is told by the Wife of Bath.

Now, reading in Middle English isn't all that hard - just read it aloud to get the hang of it then consult a footnote or two for those words you're not sure of.

Here bygynneth the Book of the Tales of Caunterbury

	Whan that Aprill, with his shoures soote
	The droghte of March hath perced to the roote
	And bathed every veyne in swich licour,
	Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
5	Whan Zephirus eek with his sweete breeth
	Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
	The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
	Hath in the Ram his halfe cours yronne,
	And smale foweles maken melodye,
10	That slepen al the nyght with open eye-
	(So priketh hem Nature in hir corages);
	Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages
	And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes
	To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry londes;
15	And specially from every shires ende
	Of Engelond, to Caunterbury they wende,
	The hooly blisful martir for to seke
	That hem hath holpen, whan that they were seeke.

	Bifil that in that seson, on a day,
20	In Southwerk at the Tabard as I lay
	Redy to wenden on my pilgrymage
	To Caunterbury with ful devout corage,
	At nyght was come into that hostelrye
	Wel nyne and twenty in a compaignye
25	Of sondry folk, by aventure yfalle
	In felaweshipe, and pilgrimes were they alle,
	That toward Caunterbury wolden ryde.
	The chambres and the stables weren wyde,
	And wel we weren esed atte beste;
30	And shortly, whan the sonne was to reste,
	So hadde I spoken with hem everichon
	That I was of hir felaweshipe anon,
	And made forward erly for to ryse
	To take our wey, ther as I yow devyse.

(ok, fine, have mercy - check out the Librarius site to see a side-by-side translation and listen to audio tracks)

April is NPM: William Shakespeare

April 23 is generally regarded as the date of Shakespeare's death.  So today's poet is, of course, the Bard of Stratford-on-Avon.

Because Shakespeare = poetry.  Because he wrote in an era when many people were illiterate every thing he wrote was meant to be spoken aloud, not read.  That's how I was able to get into Shakespeare.  I watched films, saw the plays performed onstage (in Shakespeare's day one "heard" a play, not "saw" one), and then started reading.  The first play I read and heard?  Henry V (the Branagh version).  I loved all of it, from the first Chorus to the last.  I was about twelve and I asked for a complete Shakespeare for Christmas.

So here is a sonnet, Sonnet 116.  It's one of my favorites.  Read it aloud, shout it, sing it. Enjoy it.

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
      If this be error and upon me proved,
     I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

April is NPM: How to be Horton

This is how you dress up as Horton from Horton Hears a Who for Dr Seuss Day at work.

Step 1: Make a pattern.  Cut two ears from gray felt.

Step 2:  Use the pattern to cut out batting then trim to make the inserts smaller than the felt.

Step 3:  Set up the sewing machine.

Step 4:  Straight-stitch approximately 1/4 inch from the edge of the felt with the batting sandwiched between (but don't stitch across the channels you made for the headband).

Step 5: Show one of the cats the partially finished ears.  He is unimpressed because you won't let him eat thread.

Step 6: Trim any excess batting then zig-zag stitch around the edges of the ears (again, not stitching across the headband channels).

Step 7: Cut apart a stretchy Goody sports headband, thread through the channels in the ears, and re-sew the ends of the headband together.

Step 8:  Try and get one of the cats to model the ears.  It doesn't work so well.

Step 9:  Take a picture of yourself at work.  With luck, one customer will get right off the bat you are Horton.  The others will stare at you then ask if you're a moose.

April is NPM: Rumi

Jalaluddin Rumi is another Persian poet, but from the early 13th century.  He was born on the eastern edge of the Persian empire but settled in Turkey when his family fled the Mongol invasion.  He followed his father's path and became a scholar and mystic.  Rumi wrote about divine love and the soul in many of his poems.

This poem comes from Ladinsky and Barton's work on The Purity of Desire.

THINGS ARE SUCH

Things are such, that someone lifting a cup,
or watching the rain, petting a dog,

or singing, just singing - could be doing as
much for this universe as anyone.