Books and Movies

I finished listening to Voyager by Diana Gabaldon - the unabridged audiobook - this evening. All 36 discs! In fact, I started it so many weeks ago, and so close on the heels of Dragonfly in Amber, that I had to think very hard about how the book started!

There is no easy way to give a plot synopsis of this - especially if you’re not familiar with the first two books, so I’m just going to jump in and tell you what I thought.

I loved this book - more than Dragonfly in Amber - and I think that’s because Jamie and Claire were together in the present during most of it, like Sandy mentioned in her review. Of course, before Jamie and Claire were reunited, she had to say goodbye to her daughter, Brianna, an emotionally exhausting scene. Then comes Jamie and Claire’s reunion in the print shop in Edinburgh, which made me sob like a baby.

Of course, not long after being reunited, Jamie and Claire are thrust into a sequence of events that take them from Edinburgh, home to Lallybroch, to France, and then to the West Indies. They encounter a Jewish naturalist, a defrocked priest, a murderous fiend, a foot-fetishist Chinaman, a voodoo priest, Portugese pirates, an Irish galley cook, and more than one familiar character from the previous books.

This book has just about everything you could want in a book: adventure, romance, history, danger, and magic. Claire and Jamie weather it all together, reinforcing the idea that theirs is a love for the ages. I am thoroughly exhausted after finishing this book. I don’t remember much about Drums in Autumn - it’s been so long since I’ve read it - but I hope for the Frasiers’ sake that they get some much deserved down time. I will be taking a bit of a rest from the emotional investment that these books require, and listen to a Stephanie Plum or two.

4 out of 5 stars

I’ve read a couple graphic novels this year, but Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons is the first one that’s actually on my list for the Graphic Novels Challenge. It took me a while to get through this one - for a graphic novel, it’s on the long side. It’s also not a comfortable read.

The world of Watchmen is a bleak, grim world - one in which the worst of humanity is spotlighted. Moore asks the question, “What would the person behind a masked vigilante be like? What would that kind of life do to him or her? What would motivate a person to take on that role?” The masked anti-heroes in Watchmen are not your typical Superman or Spiderman good guys. They are full of contradiction and human frailty and dark habits and secrets that drive them. The good guys are not good people, and therefore they are hard to root for.

I’m not quite sure what else to say about Watchmen. It is brilliantly written, amazingly drawn, and very violent. It asks a lot of questions about humanity and answers very few of them. In the end, our “heroes” are forced to make a horrible choice in order to keep humankind from annihilating itself. Not a feel-good ending by any means. I’m glad I read it, but I can’t say I loved it.

3 out of 5 stars

I’m currently about halfway through Sea Changes by Gail Graham and have just dipped my toe into Watchmen. Probably won’t have a lot of time for reading today - singing at church, then have to pick up my son at my parents house (he had a sleepover last night), then choir practice in the evening. I’d like to finish Sea Changes - I need to review it and two other ARCs before I can move onto my Spring Reading Thing list without guilt.

Since we have started a new season, I thought it would be good to check out how I’m doing with my reading challenges for the year. Here are the stats:

100+ Challenge
Goal: 135
Completed: 20

It doesn’t look like I’m doing very well on this one, but I do the majority of my reading during our summer break from homeschooling. I think my goal is still possible.

Read Your Own Books Challenge
Goal: 70 of my own books
Completed: 8

I have to quit giving into book blogger peer pressure! I was so on track for this, but then people started talking about Uglies, and I keep getting sent ARCs, and I’ve bought some books that don’t count, because I didn’t have them before January 1st….

Support Your Local Library Challenge
Goal: 25 books from my public library
Completed: 8

This one will be a cinch to complete, because I get all of my audiobooks from the library, plus the rest of the Uglies series, and I promised my daughter I’d read Lois Lowry’s The Giver - all library books.

Audiobook Challenge
Goal: 12 audiobooks
Completed: 3

Another one that will be easy to complete before the end of the year.

The Art History Reading Challenge
Goal: 6 books
Completed: 0

Haven’t started this one yet. We’ll see - this may be one I have to drop.

Essay Reading Challenge
Goal: 30 essays
Completed: 17

My list only says I’ve finished eight; I’ve finished nine more but haven’t found time to post about them.

The Outlander Challenge
Goal: 7 books
Completed: 2 and a half

I am so glad I signed up for this challenge; I love these books on audio!

Graphic Novels Challenge
Goal: 6 books
Completed: 3 - but not any on my list. ~shrug~

I did just start Watchmen, which is on my list.

To Be Read Challenge
Goal: 12 books
Completed: 1

I plan to make a dent in this list during spring and summer.

Classics Challenge
Goal: 6 books
Completed: 0

100 Shots of Short
Goal: 100 short stories
Completed: 33

I don’t have to worry about this one, because it’s ongoing - I don’t have to have it finished by the end of the year.

So, are you doing reading challenges this year? If so, how is it going? Did you bite off more than you can chew - as it is becoming apparent I did?

Callapidder Days is hosting her annual Spring Reading Thing, and I thought joining it was the perfect reason to form a more organized plan for my reading. I joined all of those reading challenges at the beginning of the year, and then have proceeded to choose my reading material in a very haphazard fashion, which doesn’t bode well for my chances of completing even a few of the challenges.

The rules for the Spring Reading Thing are fairly simple: post a list of books to read during spring, sign up with Mr. Linky on March 20th, and do a follow-up post in June. Here’s my list:

For The Audiobook Challenge and The Outlander Challenge:

Finish Voyagerby Diana Gabaldon
Three to Get Deadlyby Janet Evanovich
Drums of Autumnby Diana Gabaldon

For The Art History Reading Challenge:

Leonardo’s Swansby Karen Essex

For The Essay Reading Challenge:

Finish Essays of the Masters

For The Graphic Novels Challenge:

Mom’s Cancerby Brian Fies
Watchmenby Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons

For The TBR Challenge and The Classics Challenge:

Tess of the D’Urbervillesby Thomas Hardy
Death Comes for the Archbishopby Willa Cather

For ARC and review commitments:

Land of Marvelsby Barry Unsworth
The Laws of Harmonyby Judith R. Hendricks

It’s a sickness; it really is. You know what I mean - you probably have it, too. You’re disgusted with yourself. You’re wondering why you did it so often to begin with. You vow to never do it again. And then that post shows up in your Bloglines or Google Reader and you get that feeling of anticipation, that rush of longing, in the pit of your stomach. And before you know it, you’re clicking the link and…

…signing up for yet another reading challenge.

“But, Carrie,” you say, “you’re already signed up for ten reading challenges, challenges which you will probably not finish by the end of the year.”

You’re right, you’re right, I know you’re right. But I just can’t help it. And, in my defense, all six of the books I’m putting on my list for the Classics Challenge 2009 are cross-overs from my TBR Challenge list, so they count twice.

There are three levels to this challenge:
1. Classics Snack - Read FOUR classics
2. Classics Entree - Read FIVE classics
3. Classics Feast - Read SIX classics

I’m signing up for the Classics Feast. The challenge runs from April 1st through October 31st. That’s seven months to read six classics. I think I can, I think I can….

Here’s my list:

1. The Age of Innocenceby Edith Wharton
2. Wives and Daughtersby Elizabeth Gaskell
3. Death Comes for the Archbishopby Willa Cather
4. Angle of Reposeby Wallace Stegner
5. Women in Loveby D.H. Lawrence
6. Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy

I finished two more essays from Essays of the Masters by Charles Neider - and as I was searching for it on Amazon so I could add a link to the bottom of this post, I see that he also edited a book called Great Short Stories of the Masters. I am such a book geek, cause that just made me so happy - I added it to my wish list.

Title: Chesterton on Shaw
Author: George Bernard Shaw
Style: Literary
Source: Essays of the Masters, edited by Charles Neider
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

This essay was George Bernard Shaw’s reponse to G. K. Chesterton’s essay about him. To read the essay, you’d think they hated each other, but they actually called each other “friendly enemies,” and enjoyed debating about their widely divergent world views: Shaw was a socialist; Chesterton was an Orthodox Christian. This essay was entertaining, but nothing profound.

Title: On Being Found Out
Author: William Makepeace Thackeray
Style: Definition Essay
Source: Essays of the Masters, edited by Charles Neider
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

In this essay, Thackeray writes about the idea that we all have things to hide in our lives, and discusses the horrible place society would be if everyone’s habits and past mistakes were exposed to all to see. Interesting topic, and it made me think, but it didn’t make me pull out my pencil to underline any passages.

If you read essays - or would like to - click on over to the Essay Reading Challenge and sign up.

When I was at Barnes and Noble a couple weeks ago with Kevin, I picked up a copy of The Believer, and was absolutely blown away by the first essay.

Title: The Sentence is a Lonely Place
Author: Gary Lutz
Source: The Believer - read it online
Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

This essay is a lecture that was delivered to college creative writing students by short story writer Gary Lutz. The writing in this essay is simply brilliant. Lutz begins by explaining that language didn’t come naturally to him - he didn’t come from a family who loved words and books and reading. This is how he described his first encounter with the wonder of words:

I can’t remember reading anything with much comprehension until eighth grade, when, studying for a science test for once, I decided to try making my way quietly through the chapter from start to finish—it was a chapter about magnets—and found myself forced to form the sounds of the words in my head as I read. Many of the words were unfamiliar to me, but the words fizzed and popped and tinkled and bonged. I was reading so slowly that in many a word I heard the scrunch and flump of the consonants and the peal of the vowels. Granted, I wasn’t retaining much of anything, but almost every word now struck me as a provocative hullabaloo. This was my first real lesson about language—this inkling that a word is a solid, something firm and palpable.

He puts you right there in his head as he experiences the words and their magic. He goes on to talk about the wonder of the sentence, and how some authors seem to write sentences that vibrate with intensity - not a word out of place, nor an extra or missing word. I found myself wanting to write and read and write some more after reading this essay. I recommend that you click over and read it for yourself.

The sentence is the site of your enterprise with words, the locale where language either comes to a head or does not. The sentence is a situation of words in the most literal sense: words must be situated in relation to others to produce an enduring effect on a reader. As you situate the words, you are of course intent on obeying the ordinances of syntax and grammar, unless any willful violation is your purpose—and you are intent as well on achieving in the arrangements of words as much fidelity as is possible to whatever you believe you have wanted to say or describe. A lot of writers—many of them—unfortunately seem to stop there. They seem content if the resultant sentence is free from obvious faults and is faithful to the lineaments of the thought or feeling or whatnot that was awaiting deathless expression. But some other writers seem to know that it takes more than that for a sentence to cohere and flourish as a work of art. They seem to know that the words inside the sentence must behave as if they were destined to belong together—as if their separation from each other would deprive the parent story or novel, as well as the readerly world, of something life-bearing and essential. These writers recognize that there needs to be an intimacy between the words, a togetherness that has nothing to do with grammar or syntax but instead has to do with the very shapes and sounds, the forms and contours, of the gathered words. This intimacy is what we mean when we say of a piece of writing that it has a felicity—a fitness, an aptness, a rightness about the phrasing. The words in the sentence must bear some physical and sonic resemblance to each other—the way people and their dogs are said to come to resemble each other, the way children take after their parents, the way pairs and groups of friends evolve their own manner of dress and gesture and speech. A pausing, enraptured reader should be able to look deeply into the sentence and discern among the words all of the traits and characteristics they share. The impression to be given is that the words in the sentence have lived with each other for quite some time, decisive time, and have deepened and grown and matured in each other’s company—and that they cannot live without each other.

I’ve really gotten behind in posting about the essays I’ve been reading. I read a little out of Essays of the Masters every evening, and I’ve managed to finish five more essays. Rather than do a detailed review of each, I’m going to do a “sum-up” post.

Title: Market Day
Author: D.H. Lawrence
Style: Descriptive
Source: Essays of the Masters, edited by Charles Neider
Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

This is exactly what a descriptive essay should be. The topic is broad enough to allow for enough material, but not so broad that the essay rambles on and on. Lawrence is a master of description:

To buy and to sell, but above all, to commingle. In the old world, men make themselves two great excuses for coming together to a centre, and commingling freely in a mixed, unsuspicious host. Market and religion. These alone bring men, unarmed, together since time began. A little load of firewood, a woven blanket, a few eggs and tomatoes are excuse enough for men, women, and children to cross the foot-weary miles of valley and mountain. To buy, to sell, to barter, to exchange. To exchange, above all things, human contact.

Title: Chyrsanthemums
Author: Maurice Maeterlinck
Style: Descriptive
Source: Essays of the Masters, edited by Charles Neider
Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

Although this is the same type of essay as the Lawrence one, Maeterlinck did exactly the opposite of Lawrence: he chose a topic so narrow that I was sick of it before I finshed reading. Six pages on chrysanthemums is about five pages too long, in my opinion.

Title: Anna Karenina
Author: Thomas Mann
Style: Critical
Source: Essays of the Masters, edited by Charles Neider
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Mann writes on one of my favorite books, Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, and shows how different his writing and philosophy is in this work than in his earlier works. Informative and interesting.

Title: Summing Up
Author: W. Somerset Maugham
Style: Personal
Source: Essays of the Masters, edited by Charles Neider
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Very witty personal essay about Maugham’s philosophy of life.

Title: Manhattan: The Great American Desert
Author: Jean-Paul Sartre
Style: Descriptive
Source: Essays of the Masters, edited by Charles Neider
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Sartre didn’t think much of New York City. Good descriptions, though.

I finished listening to Outlander, the first book in Diana Gabaldon’s epic series, a couple of days ago. I enjoyed experiencing it on audiobook this time, especially since Davina Porter, who reads the book, is one of the best audiobook narrators I’ve ever heard.

4 out of 5 stars

Title: Soldier’s Joy
Author: Antonya Nelson
Source: The New Yorker - read it online
Rating: 2 out of 5 stars