Wednesday reading meme, weekend edition

Last weekend I took Friday and Monday off work, and Sang and I drove out to Stub Stewart State Park to stay in a one-room cabin, sans internet. The plan was for Sang to study for her comps and me to do my thing of reading, writing, and looking out the window. There were enough trails around that we could also get out for walks as the weather allowed– for example, the bike path where we walked our marathon last month!

We turned on the heat and lights when we arrived at our cozy little cabin. The heater got right to work raising the temperature from 40 degrees to 70, but man, the lights. The lights worked, but they consisted of one small overhead fixture, probably with compact fluorescents inside, and it was DEPRESSING AS HELL.

Sang could see my mental health unraveling as we sat there. At her urging we got back in the car and drove toward Forest Grove, looking for a big-box store that might sell us a couple of lamps for cheap. We walked into the Walmart in Cornelius and Sang started laughing. We were turning to soul-sucking Walmart to stabilize my mood?

So now we are the proud owners of a five-dollar desk lamp and a plastic screw-together floor lamp, and with their help the cabin was cheery and snug for the rest of the weekend! We drank many hot beverages and Sang studied stats like a champ. I read four books:

To Tell Your Love, by Mary Stolz. Her first YA novel, published in 1950. I’m going to read them all; there’s something I love about her style. I do notice lots of Madeleine-L’Engle-style quoting of literature by the characters to endear them to us bookish artsy types. The book’s prescription: go to college instead of marrying right out of high school. But if you’re pushing 27 or 28, grab your man and no matter if you met him four days ago!
Charlotte Sometimes, by Penelope Farmer, a 1969 children’s novel of boarding school and time travel. I guess it’s a classic, as everyone I mentioned it to said they’d read it. I liked the spooky identity questions about how to stay yourself and whether anyone but your sister will even notice if you become another person.
The Residue Years, by Mitchell S. Jackson. Portland setting by an African-American writer from Portland who got his MFA at PSU (but now lives in Brooklyn), a novel about a mother and son fighting poverty and addiction. It had a tragic quality to it that made me think it could be transposed to opera.
Ask the Passengers, by A.S. King. I had very high expectations for this YA novel, and they were disappointed a little. The characters’ changes did not seem to be believably driven by the events in the story, for me; they seemed to be driven by it being that time in the page-count of the book for them to change. Then again, school bullying and gay-bashing are on my Not Favorite list of topics, and King seems to write about bullying a lot.

And on Monday I started my reread of The Subtle Knife. Boy, he doesn’t worry about explicating via discussion and conversation, does he? And I didn’t remember Will being such a little hardass at the beginning in Cittagazze. There is something about this series that makes me miss my bus stop while reading it, even when I hadn’t thought I was all that absorbed.

Oh, and when we got home I opened the crisper drawer in the fridge and the Cider Fairy had visited and stuffed it full of bottles of delicious Spire Mountain cider! It’s not every day that happens.

Time Lord meme

From Tumblr, apparently, via owlectomy:

You are now a Time Lord. The object closest to your left hand is your Sonic item. One of your parents’ occupations is your title. Your last text is your catchphrase

I am The Secretary. I have a Sonic Oatmeal Bowl. My catchphrase is, “Someone should tell them about the Idea Fairy in the shower.”

If I do say so myself, I would totally watch a holiday special about Time Lord Me.

Fic Corner 2013

Remember how I was rereading all the Ramona books to get ready for a fic exchange? [edited to add: oh wait, you don’t, because it was a secret!] Now all the stories are up!

And I feel so so lucky, because the story I got is wonderful, and is about Nsibidi in Nnedi Okorafor’s Zahrah the Windseeker. Tall, bold Nsibidi who is friends with the idiok. Here it is.

The story I wrote about Mr. and Mrs. Quimby is here.

I’m still reading through many of the others. This is one I liked a lot, a Code Name Verity fic.

And speaking of fanfic, I just finished Wishing for Tomorrow, Hilary McKay’s sequel to A Little Princess. I was really a Secret Garden and Lost Prince person myself, but I like Hilary McKay, especially her dialogue and one-line deadpan events, and this was a fine Hilary McKay book.

My reading life’s been good lately.

The Spa

I really like the part of the book where the main character, who has gotten all beat up and come to a dead end, is taken to an out-of-the-way place whose inhabitants have their act together and get along peacefully with each other and their environment. There is usually a really great bath involved:

Aunt Beast in A Wrinkle In Time
Medwyn in The Book of Three
The Greeny Gorillas in Zahrah the Windseeker

A training montage early on and an oasis like this later in the book… that would make me so happy.

Elementary School

Yesterday I helped out at a focus group in an elementary school. I’d been looking forward to the cute little chairs and the restrooms labeled Boys and Girls instead of Men and Women, but man, I forgot how much instructional signage there is! There were signs on the wall about how to listen from your seat, how to listen from the rug, and how to enter the library. (Eyes open, feet walking, voice quiet, a couple of other pointers, I forget.) In the cafeteria there were posters about how to fill your plate with the different food groups, how exactly to wash your hands, how to have good lunchroom manners. (If you drop food on the floor, pick it up and throw it away.)

There were instructions on how to respond to bullying and how to address conflicts. There were exhortations to read, but overall hardly any of the writing on the wall was about academics.

It’s a nice homey school, with art all over the place and a spacious library. But all the signage gave me a weird feeling of Cult of Rules, Cult of Written Instruction And Policies. Maybe part of it is knowing that some kids are at school from eight in the morning until quarter to six at night (the after-school program provides dinner before the bus ride home). If I were a student there, I might want to willfully forget how to read.

I am proud of my ability to micro-nap

I replaced my damaged Scarlatti keyboard sonatas CD with one by Dubravka Tomsic. I’ve always liked listening to Scarlatti while I work– I remember a happy snowy morning of geometry homework and Scarlatti when we were doing compass and straight-edge. Yes, trisecting an angle for fame and fortune, I will get right on that! And Scarlatti is in the subset of my writing music that Sanguinity can tolerate when we’re at home writing together. (Russian men’s chorus, no. Enya’s Shepherd Moon definitely no, although it always works because I wrote my whole thesis to it. Cristina Branco yes.) Anyway, I think this version and I will become friends just fine.

Many of our tomatoes were volunteers this year, but they made it and the orange cherry-sized ones are especially nice. Some split skins because of the sudden rains.

Sanguinity took me for pho last night and the restaurant’s TV was showing the Emmys. I hadn’t seen any of the comedies. Remember when the best TV was sit-coms and the Friends cast made more money than any actors ever? When I stayed at a hotel alone this summer and channel-surfed before going to sleep, none of the reruns I clicked through held up to the test of time except Frasier. That surprised me, because I got pretty sick of Frasier when it was being broadcast.

I’m supposed to go to a strike captains’ training tomorrow because my union may go on strike Monday. But even though the union’s good about providing food, I am a very hard sell for meetings that last over an hour. No way 5:30 to 8:30 is going to work for me.

Reading Wednesday

I signed up for my first fic exchange, The Exchange at Fic Corner 2013! About a hundred people signed up, and assignments will come out tomorrow. The fandoms I requested are:

Ramona Series – Beverly Clearly
The Melendy Quartet – Elizabeth Enright
Harriet the Spy – Louise Fitzhugh
From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler – E. L. Konigsburg
Zahrah the Windseeker – Nnedi Okorafor
His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman
Arlene Sardine – Chris Raschka
The President’s Daughter Series – Ellen Emerson White

As you can probably tell, it’s a kidlit and YA exchange. My letter here has more of my thoughts about these fandoms and what I like and what I wonder.

So I’ve been keeping the Melendy Quartet by my bedside (I like syndicated comic strips or many-times-reread children’s books for bedtime) and reading the chapters all out of order. I wish there were a Great Brain at the Academy type book about Rush at boarding school. That’s the kind of book you dream about reading and then wake up and feel so disappointed that it doesn’t exist after all.

Things I was surprised did not get nominated for The Exchange at Fic Corner: anything by Daniel Pinkwater, The Westing Game, Jean Little’s books about Kate and Emily, the Little House series, and The Hunger Games.

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Meanwhile, I read the first book in the British YA adventure series about Alex Rider– Stormbreaker, by Anthony Horowitz. Oh, it reminded me so much of reading Nancy Drew books! Better prose, but since I didn’t notice the bad prose in Nancy Drew as a kid, that felt the same too. Our hero is fourteen and always knows how to land the necessary karate kick, except when he doesn’t and gets tied up. So much aplomb, plus spy toys and a giant Portuguese Man o’ War! There was a movie version, but it got a whopping 33% on Rotten Tomatoes.

Dream plus Wednesday reading plus movie news

ALL I wanted my dad to do was sign the Reba McIntyre CD so I could send it in and get… um, I don’t remember now. But he wouldn’t, suddenly he was saying it was like prostitution and pot-smoking. “It is NOT,” I said, thinking, how are those two things even alike except that they are illegal, which Reba’s disc deal clearly is not, and the only reason you’re conflating them is you’re a RULES-FOLLOWER. DAD.

And then the cat was licking my armpit so we got up to start another long day of thwarting and oppressing her.
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I’m rereading The Golden Compass, and relishing the feeling of going slowly, and thinking and looking back at who said what in previous scenes, now that I don’t have to vicariously solve the plot right now by reading. I’m especially taken with the witches so far this time around, particularly in contrast to the daemons. I don’t remember it bothering me before, but the way the unsettled daemons have no conservation of mass (Pantalaimon is sometimes a moth, sometimes a porpoise) tips them too far away from actual animals for me. Then I start thinking about how they don’t interact like animals, and certainly don’t have social groups. Is an animal without its family group or ecosystem really truly that animal? Not quite, for me. It’s all a bit decorative.

The witches, however, are presented as not all one group, and they seem less of a foil to humans than the bears do. I sense complexity in the way they conduct their lives and politics in the natural world. Perhaps it’s this underlying connection that allows them to send their daemons farther away? I haven’t been in the north very long, so there is lots more to reread about them.
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omg you guys, there’s a new documentary about Andre Gregory and it’s playing at the art museum on Friday night!

a few bullet points

To my surprise, I was invited to a Jeopardy audition after all! I wasn’t really feelin’ it once dates and travel budgets got real, but it’s nice to be asked.
Last night I cut up a bunch of fruit for a training I was helping with this morning, and put it in the car to keep it cool overnight because there wasn’t enough room in the fridge. Sure enough, the car was prowled overnight…but they didn’t take the fruit. Who doesn’t want 25 bucks’ worth of delicious precut fruit?! The trunk was open and stuff was thrown around, but all that was missing were the Shell gift cards that had been in the glove compartment. A ball cap was left behind in the driver’s side footwell. It has duct tape on the front and on the duct tape is written REDNECK. I don’t want it, so I’m srsly thinking of hanging it on the fence near where the car was parked, in case Car Prowler wants it back.
Sanguinity and I have gotten up to nine miles in our marathon training walks, which means on Saturday evening we walked from our house down to Sellwood Riverfront Park and home again. I heard a pair of mourning doves from the Springwater Trail. Next week’s assignment is a modest four miles, so maybe a hike at Angel’s Rest?
I’m reading Peter Cameron’s Coral Glynn. It’s a quiet book, but this scene at an awkward wedding luncheon made me laugh:

The bridal party arrived, and when they were all correspondingly seated, a waiter appeared with a magnum of champagne and went round the table, filling everybody’s coupe. He was young and terrified and had apparently been told that each squat glass must be filled to its brim. Everyone sat in silence while this feat was slowly and painstakingly achieved. Little beads of quivering perspiration appeared on the waiter’s forehead. Watching him was like watching a medical student suture a wound.

When the waiter had scurried out of the room, Robin stood and attempted to raise his glass, but its brimming abundance made this impossible, so he bent down and sipped preventatively from it, and, so tamed, managed to hold it before him. “A toast,” he said, “to Clement and Coral: May their days be long and their loads be light, with peaceful days and fruitful nights!”

Everyone agreed to this toast by leaning over and sipping in a delicate feline way at their champagne.
Supposed to ride my bike to work tomorrow, as I resolved to do once a week for the PSU Bike to Work Challenge that’s happening all this month. Last time, I tried using only one gear to see if I’d like a single-speed bike. I got off and walked uphill twice on my way home. This time, I will try using three gears. I think Portland has a club for riders of three-speeds.
Basically, I act like I should get a medal for riding to work: I am willing to do it if there is lots of praise and prize drawings and preferably a free breakfast involved. After this month I’ll be reading my book on the bus again.

Intentions

Every year at St. Patrick’s Day, I’m like, “This soda bread is so good! I should make it more than once a year.” And we eat it all up and don’t make it again until a year later when it’s St. Patrick’s Day again.

Now, thanks to buttermilk having been sold out in every size but the half-gallon when we bought our St. Patrick’s Day groceries, I have used some of the leftover to MAKE ANOTHER BATCH of soda bread. It’s in the oven right now!

Conversely, this past Saturday was Canyon Day at Reed, when students and alumni and neighbors get together to pull invasives, plant natives, and improve trails. I was with Sanguinity when I saw the announcement and said, “I should go this year.” She pointed out that I have said that for about 25 years now, @ twice per annum. I don’t think I once said it without expecting I’d go. It’s often written in on my calendar. But I’ve never gone and I didn’t go this time either. I will now stop thinking of myself as someone who goes to Canyon Day.