Books and Movies

Happy Easter Weekend! I hope you have some fun and relaxation planned for the weekend. We dyed Easter eggs last night (my fingertips are blue). Today, we will be spending most of the day at the dojang - Josiah is promoting from his white belt to his yellow stripe belt in Tae Kwon Do. He has been to many promotions to watch his older brothers and sister; this is the first one he will be taking part in, and he’s very excited. Sunday morning I’ll be playing the piano for our church’s Easter service, then we’ll be heading to my parents’ house for Easter dinner and an egg hunt.

Monday, we start our Spring Break from homeschooling - which means we’ll be spending our afternoons at the park or the pool, and I’ll get lots of reading time. I can’t wait!

Giveaways:

~ Sheri at A Novel Menagerie is giving away a copy of Follow Me by Joanna Scott.

~ Wendy at Caribousmom is giving away a copy of Buffalo Lockjaw by Greg Ames.

~ Kathy at Bermudaonion is giving away a copy of The School of Essential Ingredients by Erica Bauermeister. (This book is fantastic - and Kathi is giving away an autographed copy of the Australian edition, which has a gorgeous cover.)

~ Angela at Library Girl Reads is giving away 5 copies of Girls in Trucks by Katie Crouch.

~ Popin’s Lair is giving away The Lost Hours by Karen White.

~ Devourer of Books is giving away two copies of Tears of the Desert: A Memoir of Survival in Darfur by Halima Bashir.

~ She is also giving away one copy of The Tory Widow by Christine Blevins.

~ Jenn at Jenn’s Bookshelf is giving away five copies of The Turnaround by George Pelecanos.

~ S. Krishna is giving away three copies of Admission by Jean Hanff Korelitz.

~ Teddy Rose at So Many Precious Books, So Little Time is giving away 5 copies of Made in the U.S.A. by Billie Letts.

~ I’m giving away five copies of Jantzen’s Gift by Pam Cope and Aimee Molloy.

Book news:

~ Two Michael Crichton novels will be published posthumously.

~ Reading can help reduce stress.

Bookish discussions:

~ Natalie at Book, Line, and Sinker has a great conversation starter post: What are your favorite features on book blogs?

~ Do author photos really matter?

Poetry links:

~ How to Read a Poem: Beginner’s Manual by Pamela Spiro Wagner - click over to read the whole thing - here’s a snippet:

First, forget everything you have learned,
that poetry is difficult,
that it cannot be appreciated by the likes of you,
with your high school equivalency diploma,
your steel-tipped boots,
or your white-collar misunderstandings.

Do not assume meanings hidden from you:
the best poems mean what they say and say it.

Review:

~ Beth at Beth Fish Reads has a review of The Killing Tree by Rachel Keener. It sounds intriguing.

~ Amy at My Friend Amy has a review of The Ruins by Scott Smith. She loved it. I’ve been tempted to read this one, but I wonder if it would be too scary for me.

Other bookish links:

~ I recently went on a Gilmore Girls binge and watched all seven seasons back to back. I loved all the literary references - and someone has gone to the trouble to compile a list of all the books Rory read and mentioned on the show.

~ Shelburns at Write for a Reader is excited about Support Teen Literature Day on the 16th. She’s planning to leave a YA title in a public place and is challenging other book bloggers to do the same.

I’m reading Wuthering Heights for my TBR Challenge, and reading in tandem with Sandy at You Gotta Read This and some of her readers, though Sandy is much further along than I am. I wanted to be halfway through by Friday, but it didn’t quite happen.

The writing in Wuthering Heights is beautiful and the story is intriguing, but the characters are despicable. I’m finding it hard to engage with because I don’t like any of the characters.

I did, however, finish and review Gossamer by Lois Lowry and read stories 24 and25 and 26 and 27 for the 100 Shots of Short Challenge.

I’m hoping to spend some significant time with Wuthering Heights this afternoon. If I need something lighter, I’ll pick up O Jerusalem by Laurie R. King or pretty much anything else, because pretty much any other book will be lighter than WH.

Well, I made it through our first week back to homeschooling after a three-week Christmas break. I’m beat - and very glad it’s Friday. Looking forward to a weekend of reading, writing, and visiting with my folks.

Some links for your weekend browsing:

~ Anne of Green Gables joins The Modern Library.

~ Alyce at At Home With Books is giving away a great prize package, including the new YA fantasy, Eon: Dragoneye Reborn by Alison Goodman.

~ Margaret at Literary Menagerie is giving away a copy of The Time Traveler’s Wife.

~ Karen at Scobberlotch posted a great video of Brian Williams talking about the digital age - very funny.

~ If you like looking at book covers as much as I do, you have to check out The Book Cover Archive.

~ Can you still read like a girl? Very few books have the ability to completely sweep me away like when I was younger. The Harry Potter and Twilight series both proved it’s still possible, though.

~ Not really a bookish link, but for those of you who are interested, I posted a year in review at my personal blog, Mommy Brain.

There are a ton of reading challenges being hosted for 2009, but I haven’t seen one for essays. I started reading essays a couple of years ago, but didn’t read nearly as many this year as I would have liked. In an effort to rectify that, I am hosting the 2009 Essay Reading Challenge. (See that great graphic up there? My hubby made that for me. )

I would love it if lots of bloggers would join me and encourage their readers to give essays a try.

Here are the details:

~ Join anytime, but don’t start reading until January 1, 2009. The challenge ends December 31, 2009.

~ If you read a book of essays, that book can also apply to any other challenges you are working on.

~ Choose a goal of reading 10, 20, or 30 essays during 2009, and then write a challenge post, linking back to this post. Feel free to copy and paste the above image into your challenge post.

~ Leave a comment here with the link to your challenge post, and I will put all the challenge participants on my sidebar.

~ You don’t have to list your essays ahead of time, just post them as you go.

~ At the end of the year, everyone who completes the challenge will be eligible for a giveaway - prize to be determined later. Probably a book of essays - since that would be appropriate.

If you’re looking for some essay ideas to get you started, here’s a list of books I’ve enjoyed:

How Reading Changed My Life by Anna Quindlen

Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader by Anne Fadiman

Sex, Economy, Freedom, and Community: Eight Essays by Wendell Berry

Writers on Writing: Collected Essays from the New York Times

Writers on Writing II: More Collected Essays from the New York Times

Sarah is hosting The Art History Reading Challenge. The challenge is to read six books that are about art during 2009. Genre doesn’t matter: fiction, non-fiction, graphic novel - as long as it is somehow about art, it counts. These are my six choices:

1. Leonardo’s Swans by Karen Essex
2. The Sense of Paper by Taylor Holden
3. Luncheon of the Boating Party by Susan Vreeland
4. The Lady and the Unicorn by Tracy Chevalier
5. Girl in Hyacinth Blue by Susan Vreeland
6. The Private Lives of the Impressionists by Sue Roe

I added a page on the sidebar called Reading Challenges for 2009, where I will track all of my reading challenges next year.

Title: Gold Boy, Emerald Girl
Author: Yiyun Li, the author of A Thousand Years of Good Prayers
Source: The New Yorker - read it online
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

In this poignant story, a single woman and single man are drawn together by his mother. Siyu and Hanfeng meet at the suggestion of Hanfeng’s mother, who taught Siyu as a student in college. Hanfeng’s mother is eccentric and solitary, and Siyu is the only student she has remained connected with. When Hanfeng returns to China after working in the States for several years, his mother sets the two up to meet, although the only thing they have in common is her. The three characters are each alone in a different way, and the story ends with an arrangement that leaves them each a little less alone, but still not whole.

They were half orphans, and beyond that there was the love for his mother that they could share with no one else, he as a son who had once left but had now returned, she who had not left and would never leave.

RobAroundBooks is hosting the 100 Shots of Short Reading Challenge. The idea is to read 100 short stories. The cool thing is that the challenge is open-ended: no time limit, no specific titles.

My first short story is Three by Andrea Lee. I read it in The New Yorker, and you can read it online.

I’ve been reading short stories in The New Yorker for almost a year now, and this is the first story that compelled me to search Amazon for more fiction by the author, Andrea Lee. Lee lives in Italy with her husband, and the story reads very much like memoir rather than fiction, though that is pure speculation on my part.

Lee has written a story of the deaths of three people close to the narrator: her mother-in-law, Ombretta; a local artist, Francescon; and Remo, a handyman. She writes honestly about the way these people’s lives brushed up against hers, sometimes in obviously significant ways; other times the connection is less obvious.

Lee’s prose is alive with description and she places the reader in her village in Italy, experiencing the sights, sounds, smells, and tastes that her narrator does. I found myself grieving the deaths of these three people who had become very real to me while I read the story.

5 out of 5 stars.