Never was a gossip girl...

I'm totally lying about the title. I love gossip. I love reality shows - though I watched one on MTV tonight (something about this terrible teen who spent $200,000 on a Sweet-16 party) that made me feel dirty. This girl was awful, though oddly reminiscent of someone I went to high school with. I like work gossip, and family gossip, and even the Gossip Girl series. But this week, too much gossip has made me tired. As I mentioned last year, August is the season for tempers to flare. They did so today, dramatically, on a listserv I'm on. I'm tired and depressed by this. In a world where the Administration is pursuing unwise political paths here in the U.S., and it seems that the world is going to hell in a handbasket (made at Wal-Mart, natch), I hate to have one of my safe havens become a quarrelling ground. Not saying there weren't good reasons - just saying I'm tired.
I'm still reading Anna Karenina. Anna's motives are becoming more clear, though I still find them tiresome. I'm amused by Levin, and laughed out loud at some bits when his brother came to visit (not Nikolai - Sergei, I think his name is). the last book I finished was Dorita Fairlie Bruce's Dimsie Carries On, which wasn't the best DFB I've ever read.

"there once was a duck..."

I'm doing math here as I type (pause to finish the math problem) - ah, yes, I've just worked out that I do 75 storytimes a year (that's a conservative guess), and I read 5 picture books at most of them. On average, then, I'm reading one picture book out loud, to an audience, every day of the year. That number doesn't include the ones I read to myself - I'd guess I read a few extras every week. Yet I never write about them. Here's a small effort to redress the balance:
"There once was a duck who had the bad luck to live with a lazy old farmer. The duck did all the work...." - that's from Farmer Duck by Martin Waddell. I absolutely love this story, and I've heard others say the same thing. The illustrations are fabulous, and the text is witty: "'Moo', said the cow. 'Baa', said the sheep. 'Cluck', said the hen. And that was the plan." I like this book so much that I get a little too enthusiastic sometimes. It's easy to play up the drama, and people respond well to the hush as the animals "creaked up the stairs" to the farmer's room. Then I get louder and louder as the farmer gets rocked "about and about and about", and very dramatic on the "and...he...never...came...back" (the ellipses are mine, natch. It's not a Barbara Cartland novel!). I've read this book as a tribute on International Workers' Day (though I didn't tell the storytime audience that!), and I think it's a good book on several levels. It has animal noises and a simple plot, but it really could be seen as book about a violent overthrow by the downtrodden proletariat. I'm happy either way.
I'd considered writing about The Big Orange Splot by Daniel Pinkwater and Bark, George by Jules Feiffer, too, but i think this is enough book enthusiasm for one evening. Goodnight!

"the *Phan*-tom of the O-per-a is here"

"...the Phantom of the Opera is here inside my mind" - thanks to my friend Gina, who has been playing the CD almost incessantly this last week. And not the superior Michael Crawford version, either; this new version from the film is more melodramatic than the Broadway version. Zut alors! I didn't think such a thing was possible.
Anyway, the blasted Phantom won't leave my mind, so I couldn't come up with a subject line. Perhaps the Phantom isn't inappropriate, though, because I really wanted to talk about Anna Karenina, which I am still reading. I was enjoying it, but now poor Anna is stricken with shame at her adultery, and - yawn. Seriously, it hadn't occurred to her that she'd be ashamed? And somehow, sex and having some sort of formal relationship was shameful, but being in love with a man she's not married to wasn't? This is such a Lawrencian (is that a word?) view of things - that sex is some sort of Supreme Act - and it makes me cranky. I hope the book provides more explanation for Anna's behavior - if it was going to make her so unhappy, why did she do it? Some would say that that is a classically sad, Russian view of love: "she knew it would make her unhappy, but she had to do it anyway! Ah (kissing fingers), what artistry!" But I'm not Russian, and I'm not patient with Anna Karenina, though I enjoy the rest of Anna Karenina.
For fun reading, I just finished The Hallowed Hunt by Lois McMaster Bujold. I read a review that said that Ijada was no Ista (it's a good review; if you like Bujold's books, look here: http://www.sfreviews.net/hallowedhunt.html), and I fully agree. So today I started re-reading Paladin of Souls.
One last thing about books: check out today's Overdue strip at http://www.overduemedia.com/archive.aspx?strip=20050821 . I don't know why, but Merv's comment that "they sound well-rounded" makes me grin every time I think of it. And good heavens, if you haven't read Ender's Game, why are you waiting? Yes, I mean you. All of you!

Comments are usually welcome, but...

My last post received a long comment - something about how I should invest in the logging industry, I think. Clearly spam. So I hid the comment, and am not allowing comments on my last post. If you'd like to comment on it, please do so here. Thanks!

classic lit-tra-ture

I've been reading several old books lately - books written before 1940. Over the weekend I read parts of Elinor Brent-Dyer's A Thrilling Term at Janeways, Baroness Orzcy's Way of the Scarlet Pimpernel and Tolstoy's Anna Karenina. As many witty people have pointed out before, A Thrilling Term... doesn't even come close to living up to the title. I get tired of girls' adventure stories that feature the girls finding treasure hidden during the dissolution of the monasteries; one would think the Tudors didn't benefit at all from this. This book had treasure - but not just any treasure. No, these were original Benvenuto Cellini pieces - half a dozen of them, I believe. The Way of the Pimpernel was almost realistic, by contrast.
I'm reading Anna Karenina for a book club, and I had set myself a quota, so many pages each day. To my astonishment, I found myself enjoying the book, and far exceeding my quota. I was never very fond of Dostoevsky, though I've read Crime and Punishment a few times, and the short Tolstoy pieces I'd read hadn't made me want to tackle Anna. Of course, this is like saying, "Well, I didn't like Dickens, so I assumed I wouldn't like Austen." Ridiculous! But I'd never thought about it that way before.
I've been listening to a lot of books on tape lately - I just finished listening to Ballet Shoes, which I enjoyed, and am halfway though listening to a good version of Lady Susan (mentioned Austen in the paragraph above reminded me of this). I've heard people complain about Harriet Walter's voice before (particularly when she played Harriet Vane), but I don't mind it. I'm less charmed by Elizabeth Sastre's voice - she's not in Lady Susan, but she's reading the Streatfeild books (I've moved on to Dancing Shoes - I didn't dislike her voice that much). Sastre's voice is a little twee for my taste, but I can't get Streatfeild books on tape any other way.