Happiness!

WHEEE! R.I.P V Begins!

Carl over on Stainless Steel Droppings has announced Readers Imbibing Peril V! As summer ends, theoretically i guess as it is far too warm here to think about fall, the book blog world turns darker and creepier. We all switch from happy summer reads to gothic mysteries and heart stopping horror!

I'm going for to do Peril the First, reading at least 4 books. And i am sure i'll be throwing in a few short stories and movies as well! Here's my pool of possibilities:

• The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins- old school Victorian mystery
• The Meaning of Night and The Glass of Time by Michael Cox- historical weird mystery
• Feed by Mira Grant- YA dystopia sorta-zombies, i think
• Perfume: The Story of a Murderer by Peter Suskind- non-fiction
• The Year of Disappearances by Susan Hubbard- YA vampires
• Beloved by Toni Morrison- Well, it is about a ghost!
• Murder Must Advertise by Dorothy L Sayers- classic mystery
• Handling the Undead by John Ajvide Lindqvist- foreign zombies
• House of Mystery, Vol. 1 by Matthew Sturges- Graphic Novel

I've also got three books on my library hold list that, if i get them in time, will count for this challenge too!

• The Murder Room: The Heirs of Sherlock Holmes Gather to Solve the World's Most Perplexing Cold Cases by Mike Capuzzo- Non-fiction
• The Walking Dead, Vol 12 by Robert Kirkman and Charlie Adlard- Graphic Novel
• The Fall: Book 2 of the Strain Trilogy by Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan- obligatory BIG Bestseller :)

So i have lots and lots of choices here. I'll be packing and moving apartments but surely i can get through 4 books!

Speaking of moving, I'll be doing that over the weekend of Oct 8-10, which is also the weekend of the Southern Festival of Books here in Nashville and the weekend of Dewey's fall read a thon! eek! I guess i'll have to get a little bit of everything done.

What's your peril?

More Murakami

Reading Haruki Murakami is strange. His writing evokes this dreamy weirdness that you don't really stop reading, you just wake up from. Kafka on the Shore is no exception.

It is rather difficult to describe without giving too much away or not explaining enough. Kafka Tamura is a 15 year old boy who runs away from his father's home. He's just suffered too much neglect and emotional abuse to stay any longer. The town he runs to has a public reading library where he begins to spend his days. In another storyline, an old man Nakata has never recovered from a strange coma he suffered as a child. He woke with no memory and has never been able to learn to read or write. He can talk to cats and as he's searching for a lost cat he meets some sort of shape changer who asks Nakata to murder him.

it's weird. But i loved it. a 6. and i really need to read more of Murakami's work. and this counts for the 1% Challenge and is a 1001 book.

Currently: wishing i wasn't at work.

a wordle

B likes this.

Weekly Geeks- Connections

So first i'll post a quote of a quote (of a quote i think really):

This is the phrase

“We didn't get any reading done tonight. I told Jack we must read some tomorrow! It connects us somehow. I can't explain it, but it does. It's good to do things together”

Shayne © This and That

and the questions for this week are:

Firstly, have you come across a phrase recently that has made just such an impact. And secondly – who do you read with, if you don’t read with anyone –WHY NOT?

ok, i promise not to gush about B after this post for at least, hmm, 72 hours. B is really the first person i've read with since i lived with my family, not counting studying in the library or dorm in college. We don't read out loud to each other but we'll be reading at the same time and it's kind of nice. guys i have dated previously didn't like it when i read, mainly because i am not aware of my surroundings and don't hear when people talk to me. I'm sure some of it had to do with the perception of reading as a solitary, and even selfish, pursuit. When you are reading you are in the book's world and you aren't concerned with entertaining other people. Some guys don't respond well to that. but B is cool. He reads. so we'll both be lounging in the living room, in our own books, no one feeling neglected, except maybe the dog :)

movies, part 5ish?

I feel like i'm watching plenty of movies now. B being around my place now has increased my movie rate i think.

Jumper: 4, not bad but not that good. and i can't stand the OC girl and Anakin so bad casting. I will look into reading the book though.

Red Cliff, International Version: 6, this one is loooong. the first 3rd of the movie really, really dragged. the second half was really good though so i am going with a 6.

The Fantastic Mr. Fox: 6. funny!

The Blind Side: 5. ok. I liked the movie but i kept feeling like i shouldn't, that it, while a true story, was a Dickens story set today. though...i may read the book. still ambivalent.

Dr. Horrible's Singalong Blog: ok, so i was tipsy when i watched this. a 5. which leads to...

The Guild, Seasons 1-3: 6, funny stuff, really liked it. If you've ever played World of Warcraft or Everquest and the like you'll find so much to laugh about. Great characters too.

High Fidelity: 6. I managed to somehow miss this before. i really liked it. Does John Cusack kinda play the same guy all the time?

Public Enemies: 3. Johnny Depp is pretty and all but this was way too long. When you start wishing the hero would just get shot already, you know you're done with a movie. I was also trying to hear the whispery dialogue over two dogs chomping on bones so i may have missed some spoken word that would have made the movie awesome.

Kick Ass- funny and very cool. 6.

i'm also watching gobs of soccer right now, and preseason football when i can find it.

OK, now I DEFINITELY want to be a librarian

Reading this book clinched it! This Book is Overdue! by Marilyn Johnson made me really completely think that i would enjoy that job for another 30 years. Even with going back to school and being broke for a while and being 37 when i got finished with school i really think it would be worth it to do something i would find a lot of fulfillment in.

There are two main themes in the book: that librarians are defenders of knowledge, history and freedom and they are becoming even more relevant as the world goes digital. The digital section is a great anthropological study of the online librarian community. I've never played Second Life but i am curious now to see these online places Johnson describes.

She also describes the differences between librarians (finders) and archivists (keepers). I'm really in the middle myself. I love digging up stuff and researching things, even if i never particularly liked writing papers. And the preservation of artifacts fascinates me as well. I would really do college so much differently now than when i went the first time, keeping that anthropology degree but taking a bunch of Library and Info Science classes instead of some of that hard science i did for that medical school ambition i thought i had. Ah, well.

This book gets a 6 from me. I'm passing this library book on to B and I'll be getting an NYC public library card as a souvenir the next time i go to New York! according to Johnson, anyone can!

How Fiction Works

I finished a little book and i want to reread it and take notes. How Fiction Works, by James Wood, describes all the ways authors, and readers, create novels. I'll let his preface explain.

In this book I try to ask some of the essential questions about the art of fiction. Is realism real? How do we define a successful metaphor? What is a character? When do we recognize a brilliant use of detail in fiction? What is point of view, and how does it work? What is imaginative sympathy? Why does fiction move us?

He does a very good job, both of explaining the questions and answering them. I didn't know what free, indirect style was until this book. I loved the chapter on metaphor. I learned about register and characterization and gobs of other things. I have put this on my list to buy now so i can have my own copy to mark up and refer to. A warning, he does seem to give away a good many plots to various classic novels so the whole book should really have a big spoiler warning. a 6.