Navel Gaze 2

I'm in an introspective phase. Probably, I need more sleep than I'm getting. I've been averaging about 6 hours which is enough to function on, but not enough to thrive on and I've noticed the first sign of being run down is a generally gloomy outlook. So item number one on spring break to do list: sleep more.

Additionally, I shifting off of Richard II and onto something lighter at least until my mood bounces back some. Tomorrow I start my big writing push. Here goes...

Spring Break . . . woo hoo

It is spring break...starting today. I will be excited tomorrow. Right now I just want sleep.

I find myself too brain dead to come up with something more pithy

Shakespeare Project

I've always thought that it was sad that we don't teach the histories much. I read most of them in college and I don't really remember much about them. However, I do remember enjoying them. The big problem with teaching them in high school is that Shakespeare made a couple of assumptions about his audience. First, he assumed they would be British which my students aren't. Second, he assumed his audience had a reasonable grasp of (for him) the relatively recent political history of the English royal succession which my students don't. Without that background knowledge, the histories can be hard to follow.

Not too long ago, my father gave me his copy of Shakespeare's English Kings by Peter Saccio. This is a book that is a fairly common supplement to reading Shakespeare's Histories. Essentially, it covers the kings of Shakespeare's histories in a comprehensive but fairly basic way. While Saccio covers the actual history, he also discusses how the historical figures are different to Shakespeare's portrayals. It's interesting stuff, but it puts me in a bind. On the one hand, I need the historical information, but on the other I haven't read the plays recently enough to register what he's saying about the differences.

So here's my solution. Read a chapter in Saccio's book. Then, read the play.

Bwahahahaha. Brilliant!

Well, maybe not brilliant, but it does let me read each of the 10 histories with a sort of historical crib sheet. I've done the prep on Richard II so now it's time to read the play. We'll see how it goes.

Stymied

I've run into a snag with the March list. To keep my ratio correct, I need to read a non-YA book and there are only three left on my list. While I want to read all three of them...someday, I'm not feeling very motivated at this exact moment. This is the inherent down side of any list, there's always the stuff left at the end that are the least enthusing.

That's not fair. I'm actually getting a lot out of Mini-Lessons for Literature Circles, it's just taking me a healthy minute to get through because it's a pedagogy book. I've also really enjoyed the research that I did to prepare for reading Shakespeare's Richard II. I think I'm going to enjoy my reading of the play. What I've read so far suggests that the language is more approachable than in the tragedies. It seems like the big barrier is that a contemporary American  audience is less likely to have the background that Shakespeare assumes on the turbulent British succession

Probably I'm reacting to the issue of pacing again.

Also, I'm very tired.

Nation by Terry Pratchett

There are three things that I admire about Terry Pratchett. Actually, there are many things I admire about he guy, but there three things that I particularly admire. First, I admire his sense of imagination and snark. I love his ability to weave seemingly disparate ideas together and make something fun out of it. I love that he uses fantasy to comment on reality. It's cool.

Second, the man wrote a bazillion books. Not really, but once he started putting out books, he managed more than one a year for most years up until he died and many of them are quite good. That's impressive. I write these short posts every day and at best they are of variable quality. It's tough trying to be brilliant every day, and to produce books that quickly, Mr. Pratchett must have been brilliant most days.

Third, most personal to me, his first novel came out in 1983 and aside from a short story published in the 60's, that means that he was first published at the not so tender age of 35 (or there about) which means that there is hope for me. Not that I really believe that it's harder the older I get, but one gets a creeping worry when one reads about the breaking authors who are all breaking with they are 20. It gets a little disheartening.

All of this is somewhat aside the point though. Most of the Pratchett books I've read are all in the Discworld series. Nation is one of the few books that I've read of his that isn't. Additionally, it's YA. I didn't really know anything about Nation when I picked it up and bought it on the based on my trust in the author.

There is something about the age of exploration with the big wooden ships sailing the sea at constant risk of pirates, mutiny, and stormy disaster. Also, there's the tropics. There is something compelling in the idea of being lost at sea and cast up on a tropical island. (I blame Daniel Defoe) I suppose it's the idea of the civilized man in the uncivilized world. Or perhaps, it's an issue  of a good survival story. Or a story of discovery. It is a hard thing to pin down, but compelling nonetheless.  

Nation is the story of a castaway British girl named Daphne, but because it is Terry Pratchett, it is also story of a native boy, Mau, who is castaway on his own home island when a massive tidal wave washes through and destroys everything including all the people. These two young people have to figure out how to communicate across language and culture simply to survive as more and more survivors wash up on their shores. Mau struggles with the way things have always been in this new post-wave reality and discovers, with Daphne's help, a long-held secret that challenges everyone's conception of the world and it's history.

Pratchett seems to like taking an iconic plot type and then really messing with the expectations. For example, stick a brit and a native stranded on a tropical island, and I tend to expect some sort of white man leads his guy Friday nonsense from the previous era. In contrast, Pratchett puts his two protagonists on more or less equal footing and makes them interdependent in a more healthy way.   Sure, Daphne has the benefit of  more formalized scientific knowledge that comes in handy, but Mau know how to survive in a practical sense. Different, naturally, but of equal importance.

I was impressed, over all and find this a thought provoking read.

Bookslut R.I.P.

So as it turns out Bookslut.com shut down last May. It had been a while since I last looked in on it, but I really didn't expect it to shut down. It wasn't my cup of tea generally and tended more towards the serious end of literary fiction. Still, it was a fixture and I find myself sad about it.

All things end eventually, but it makes me wonder. How does one start such a successful literature oriented site and why let it end? I wish I could make people love books the way I do, and I'm always struggling to find ways to get my students reading. Sites like bookslut don't really get people reading who weren't already, but they do provide a resource to those who already to.

What does seem to get my students reading is steady relentless exposure. I surround them with books in my room and we all give book talks. Over time, most students find something they like to read. I find it a little ironic that the best way to get people to take on what is essentially a solitary pursuit is to make social.

UnWholly by Neal Shusterman

In the acknowledgements, Shusterman says that he had envisioned UnWind as a stand alone novel. Indeed, it reads as a self-contained story. Most of the narrative lines are tied up in the end and, if the world isn't fixed by the events of the story, there is definite positive change. It doesn't really call for a sequel. In fact, there doesn't seem to be room for a sequel.

I always get a little leery when that is the case and I find that series just continues on when the author hadn't initially planned for it. My fear is always that the succeeding books are just going weaken the narrative and ruin my memory of the first book. If I weren't also plagued by intense curiosity, I'd probably just ignore the extra books. However, I am the proverbial cat and I just have to know.

In this particular case, Shusterman did a good job extending the story. It didn't feel forced or artificial, it just felt like a natural extension of the narrative.

The whole series is an examination of the ethics of organ harvesting taken to an extreme. In this world, no fetus can be aborted and their existence is protected until they reach the age of 13. At that point, they can be "UnWound" or basically taken a part for organs and tissue. The idea is that their lives continue in their hosts.  Of course the kids slated for unwinding don't take a lot of  comfort in that. From the first book, Conner, Risa, and Lev pick up in their own narratives and add chapters from the point of view of Cam, a complete human built out of unwind parts, Nelson, the juvie cop that Conner tranqed in UnWind, and Starkey, a storked kid that ends up in the camp in the airplane graveyard.

If Unwind is about the simple struggle of three kids who just want to survive, UnWholly is about an entire culture resistant to change and how much of the government is owned by the corporations who feed on the system as it already is. Cam is an interesting exploration on the question of what makes a human human. He's built out of pieces of 99 individual unwinds, so no one donor could be said to be dominant. It's an interesting character and the question is left hanging.

There are two more books in the series and I'm planning to read them both.

Well...It Happened

I missed my first post this year. I guess I could go back and fake it, but I'm trying to live with my flaws. feh. I hate flaws.

Although really, it happened because I tired myself out in the garden. It seems like we are probably past any more serious cold snaps and the yard got seriously shaggy. So, I mowed back the grass and started hauling wood chips back to the garden.

I also started cleaning out the strawberry patch. Turns out strawberries go feral in the south. I found little runner off shoots filling in the paths. Gardening in the south is more closely related to bushwhacking than some sort of gentile pursuit. Every time I turn around, there's something new and altogether too enthusiastic trying to colonize my yards. Including dock of all things. I mean its edible...I think, but those suckers come with with massive tap roots.

A Case For the Reread...

There are so many books. I could read a new book every day and still never run out of new things to read. When I was a kid, I had a vague idea that I would read everything out there. It is just impossible. I know plenty of people who, when faced with this realization, develop an idea of never rereading anything. Press ever onward.

I am not one of those people.

Every once and a while I get the urge to reread something. Notably, I reread the Harry Potter books every year as they were coming out. So I read book 1 seven times.  I've reread Mercedes Lackey's Valdamir books several times. I used to reread Alice's Adventures in Wonderland every time I got sick. I reread the original Dune series four times, mostly to irritate my then boyfriend, I think. When there is a long gap in reading between books in a series, I'll often reread the early books before continuing on.

There are a lot of reasons to reread. Here are my favorites:

• For a dense text, rereads allow access to greater meaning. I'm not saying that every book operates on enough levels for this, but as a Brit Lit teacher I end up reading the same twenty odd texts over and over...and over...and...over. Most of them I regularly discover new levels of meaning in.
• Companion reading. When someone I know is reading a book that I know is good, I'll sometimes pick it back up for a reread. The reason is that it is fun to talk about a book with someone else who's read it.  It's a community thing.
• Literature Linking. So the most awesome thing about books is that they are really all part of a big conversation that spans the whole of literary history. Call it monomyth or literary allusion, it doesn't matter. All books borrow ideas and link together in a complex chain. Most of the time, that sort of floats under my awareness. Every once and a while, I spot the conversation. I see how two books connect across time. Once that happens, well, then I gotta reread the book.
• Spending Time With Old Friends. Some books are just like old friends. It's the intellectual equivalent to comfort food...but kinder to the waistline.

In the end, I think it's valuable to do a little rereading. It provides balance and shows us the ways in which we change and the ways we stay the same.

The Fall of Five by Pittacus Lore

It took me several tries to get a good start going on this one. Ryan thinks I'm reading them out of a misplaced sense of obligation. I get why he thinks that, but that's not it. I'm struggling through them because several of my students have read them and talk about them which means other students are interested in reading them. I try to read the things that become popular for whatever reason whether I find them personally motivating or not.

The Fall of Five is the fourth book in the Lorien Legacies and my biggest problem with it is that it came after the third book in the series: The Rise of Nine. (I really did not like that book.)

In this volume, the garde is reunited with each other. They've found Sarah and survived an encounter with the big bad, Setrakus Ra, and they soon run into Sam and his dad. They survive, but it's obvious they aren't ready to face off against the Mogadorian horde.

They retreat to Nine's Chicago penthouse and try to develop a plan. This is complicated by the appearance of Five.

I really like how the book opened with Sam finding his dad. I'd kid of written them both off. I assumed at the beginning of the series that the dad probably died tragically, and when Sam was captured by the Mogs and abandoned by Four and Nine, I was not entirely sure that he wasn't going to show up dead or brainwashed on the other side.

Structurally there are some issues.  The chapters switch between three different points of view: John/Four, Marina, Sam. There is no regular pattern to this, and it is not always clear for several paragraphs whose POV the reader is in. This interrupts the flow of the narrative and makes it feel a little more meandering than it actually is. Additionally, the progression of events feels a little disconnected. Things seem to be happening a little more randomly and it's chapter after chapter of characters reacting.  This seems to be because Lore is exploring the characters more, but it means the feel of narrative shifts.

Oh, and Nine is still a colossal jerk.

Book-Hunting

Once my students get over the awe of how many books I manage to read in a day, the usual next question is...how do you find things to read. I admit that this is a fairly significant issue for me. Most of the time I have plenty on my pile, however the sheer volume means that I must always look for more material. So here it is... my methods.

1. Ask a friend, or in my case a student. As a general rule, if I like the person, chances are high that I will find what they read tolerable at worst, but usually quite excellent. Over time, I've figured out which students and friends have the best taste and in which areas.
2. Never underestimate the value of the random pick-up. I do a lot of browsing in used book stores. I look at the cover art and I read the back blurbs. If the cost is low ($3 or $4), I'll take a risk on an author I've never heard of before. I've found some of my favorite authors this way. Obviously, I rarely do this with new books which is a shame for breaking authors who are struggling to find a fan base, but I just don't have the bankroll to by new books at retail price randomly.
3. By imprint: One of the best things about shelving and organizing my books properly is that the imprint marks are easy to see.  An imprint is a publisher brand or arm of a publisher. One of the dirty secrets is that there are very few independent publishers any more because the big houses tend to buy them up. However they often retain the old imprints name if they've developed a name for themselves. If an imprint has developed their niche well, a reader can trust that picking up their books will yield similar types and qualities of reads. For example:
• In YA I trust:
• Squarefish (for middle to low highschool)
• Speak (For High School - actually owned by Penguin)
• Harper Teen (For High School)
• Hyperion (recently bought out by Disney - I don't universally trust this imprint yet, but it is responsible for some good titles back when Hyperion was it's own property)
• Ember (originally owned by Random House which was bought out by Penguin - so now it is part of the penguin family)
• Candlewick (my only independent imprint - it's a rather sad commentary on things really)
• Razorbill (also owned by Penguin - this imprint tends to be a little edgier than the others)
• In Non-YA:
• Penguin (now penguin is one of the major publishing houses, but I've noted over the years that if I'm interested at all in a Penguin title, it'll be worth the read. I'm not interested, of course, in all they publish, but it really seems like their editors do a good job selecting material)
4. By award: Not everything that wins an award deserves reading. I'll be the first to inject a little cynicism. However some awards I trust implicitly. Pretty much anything sponsored by the American Librarian Association (ALA) is good stuff. Below are the ones I actively troll. Some are ALA sponsored, some are not:
•  Michael L. Printz Award (ALA- Young Adult books many of which are socially aware)
• YALSA's Best Fiction for Young Adults (ALA - not really an award per se, but it's updated every year and generally very good)
• Coretta Scott King Award (ALA managed - This one's been running since the 1970s and gives awards to fiction that advocates for Non-Violent Social Change. This is the list I troll to find books for my male non-reading students)
• Nebula (Big Sci-Fi and Fantasy award - generally solid even if it's not to my taste)
• Hugo (Similar to the Nebula but for some reason I think of the Hugo as being slightly more literary, I don't know why.)
• Mann Booker Prize (The premier British literature award. There are many excellent things to be said about the British but at the top of my list is their highly literate culture.)
• National Book Award (The U.S. version of the Mann Booker Prize. This one is more hit and miss for me, but generally they are good picks)
• The Guardian Book List (Another British one. The Guardian is a news paper that puts out a recommended reading list every year - I've linked to the one for 2017)
5. By author: Once I find a book I like, I usually check out the author's other books. There's a lot of ways to troll for bibliographies. Wikipedia and Amazon are decent sources, but my favorite is Fantastic Fiction which is a massive database of English-language literature
6. Blogs & Websites: There are a lot of good sites out there. There's also a lot of crap. I'm actively on the hunt for more blogs and websites. However I have two that I've been following on and off for years: Bookslut and BookRiot. Despite the names, they have excellent articles on authors and book related topics. Book Slut is perhaps a little more academically oriented and has been around for over a decade. Book Riot is a good source for information on Young Adult literature but covers Non-YA as well

This looks like a lot of work, I realize, but it's not really. I guess it's just what I love.

An Abundance of Katherines by John Green

Ever since my childhood, being stuck home sick meant one thing... reading. I used to read Alice's Adventures in Wonderland over and over when I was sick. Something about reading surreal literature while suffering a fever is pleasurable. I read other things now. Sometimes I manage some really excellent insights. Maybe it's the boredom.

I finished off An Abundance of Katherines today.

Colin Singleton was a child prodigy and has date (and been dumped by) 19 Katherines. After the most recent dumping tosses Colin into a morass of existential despair, his friend Hassan decides the best cure is an aimless road trip. Colin agrees and so off they go.

They leave Chicago and end up in Tennessee, so they didn't get very far. However, they get unlikely jobs recording the stories of the citizens of Gutshot, Tennessee and living in their bosses mansion.

Colin's a strange kid. He's incredibly morose for a main character and obsessed with anagrams and "being somebody." Having been a prodigy, he now wants to be a genius and create something with a lasting value. I can sympathize. However, he's so obsessed that he could easily become an irritation, if it weren't for the footnotes. A lot of the novel's humor is in the footnotes which are entirely in Colin's voice. Apparently, in this book prodigy means font of interesting facts and statistics.

My grand insight for An Abundance of Katherines is that John Green seems to really like the idea of a road trip as a plot device. Both An Abundance of Katherines and Paper Towns feature a road trip of some sort and there's a lot of travel by car in his other books as well. I suppose metaphorically a road trip could represent a break with the status quo or from old patterns. Symbolically, the act of leaving one's home (or childhood) could be a literal trip or voyage. Most of Green's novels can be read as coming of age stories, so perhaps that last one is the most valid.

The Mime Order by Samantha Shannon

Some stories stick with you and live in the memory. They are compelling and, if they are a part of a series, they demand to be finished. The Bone Season series is a little like that for me. The biggest criticism I had of the first book was that it had such a steep learning curve. That is a result of such a densely imagined and layered world. Shannon drops her readers into the middle of her world without preamble or lifeline beyond a chart or two. However, once I got my feet under me (so to speak) it was an entrancing read.

The Mime Order was similarly entrancing, but without the learning curve. Paige is back in London and in hiding from Scion. The escapees from Sheol I have scattered and gone to ground. Paige is also avoiding her old Mime-Lord, Jaxon Hall, who wants her to come back to work as his mollisher.

Paige, however, remains disillusioned with Jaxon and his intentions. She wants to bring down Scion and the Rephaim but has no money and little power to do that. She soon finds herself forced back into working for Jaxon who blocks her every attempt to spread words about the alien corruption of Scion. Amidst her frustration, Paige worries about the enigmatic Warden who she last saw during the break out.

The voyant syndicate (think supernatural mob) has always been corrupt, but something more is going on in the shadows and Paige keeps tripping into it. When the Underlord is slaughtered in his own den, Paige is the first person to discover it making her a prime suspect.

The Bone Season was really an escape story. There was some intrigue involved in laying the plans for escape but overall with was pretty straight forward. The Mime Order operates on a completely different level. There's plenty of action but the story hinges entirely on political intrigue. The whole thing is about trust and betrayal. While I anticipated many of the twists and turns, the last twist took me by surprise.

Excellent read. I'm seriously considering buying the last book new. I'm not sure I have the patience to wait for a used copy.

Creeping Crud

I guess it is my turn to be sick. I have a sneaking suspicion that I might have strep throat. I'm not a doctor, but I had strep a lot as a kid; I am familiar with the symptoms. Or I could just have a cold and be a little tired. Who knows.

In other news, my cat, Ashley, just got diagnosed with diabetes. It's not a surprise, it was one of the possible explanations for why he was going through about 4 cups of water a night and waking me up for more. We are going to try the insulin injections, but I'm not into the idea of traumatizing animals to keep them alive longer. On the other hand, if he doesn't mind the shots, the insulin could keep him going for a while. So cross your fingers for me.

A Swiftly Tilting Planet by Madeleine L'Engle

Rereading these books has been a bizarre experience. I have such a firm memory of having read them, but no specifics. I don't remember a single thing about A Swiftly Tilting Planet. As a result, my reread was slower.

A Swiftly Tilting Planet takes place almost 10 years after the previous book. Charles Wallace is 15. Meg is an adult, married to Calvin, and expecting her first child. Sandy and Denny are training to be a doctor and a lawyer. It's all a very different feel to the previous novels.

The family, minus Calvin but plus his mother, are about to sit down to Thanksgiving supper when the president calls up Mr Murry to let him know that Mad Dog Branzillo, leader of Vespugia, has threatened nuclear war with the U.S. Of course, this dampens the mood. Soon Mrs. O'Keefe, Calvin's mother, busts out with a poem/prayer she calls Patrick's Rune and charges Charles Wallace with the task of averting disaster.

While thinking what to do at the star-gazing rock, Charles Wallace meets a winged unicorn named Gaudior who can transport them through time. It's a good thing to because it turns out that to avert disaster Charles Wallace must travel into the past to change the "might have beens" that led to the conflict.

A Swiftly Tilting Planet, like the first two books in the series, is heavy in Christian allegory which I was slow to identify. Thanks to a long talk with my friend Nathan, I figured out that this is an adaptation of the story of Cain and Abel filtered through the lens of Welsh folklore. It's a complicated plot that moves back in forth in time  and spans several generations.

It was a good book, and one of the better time travel novels I've read.

While I don't generally seek out Christian allegory, I have to admit that I was disturbed when I thought it was absent in this novel. The layering of meaning that allegory provides adds a richness to these books that is at least half of what makes them satisfying.

Civil Disobedience

I'm not sure why people are so afraid of teens.

Today, on the day I'm writing, our school allowed interested students to participate in the nationwide student walk out in protest of gun violence. This wasn't an easy decision for our admin, but it didn't take them long to decide to allow it either. There were a lot of conversations about what it should look like, if the students should face consequences for walking out of classes, and what behaviors were allowable. In the end the decision was to allow them to dress in black and walk in observances of the lost lives, which was a subtle shift from the idea of a protest march. The consequence was having to make up the lost 17 minutes with the teacher walked out on. It was a decent compromise and at least allowed the kids to express their feelings related to the issue.

I view it as a win, and I cheerfully spent 17 minutes with a kid reading his independent reading book which is what he missed in the walk out. No biggie.

Several of the staff criticized the ineffectiveness of it happening during class time. Some even when so far as to discuss options with their students such as events and marches occurring off school time. On the one hand, I do agree that the walk out had little observable effect, but I think some of my coworkers over estimate the ability of most of the kids to get around the city. Most of my students don't have cars and many wouldn't have parents who support that kind of activity for one reason or another. Did it have a lot of effect...maybe not, but at least it was accessible.

Dekalb county schools had a lot of students walking out. Some teachers walked too. Yay Dekalb. Cobb however did not support the walkout. There are some reports of schools being locked to prevent students from leaving. County officials are denying it. I'm not sure what I believe, but I wouldn't be at all surprised to find out it's true.

Kids mostly don't want violence. They want to feel safe. So sure something like this needs to be monitored, but these kids don't want trouble, they want the opposite. Walk outs and peaceful demonstrations are a healthy way to express group views...especially for those who can not engage in the right to vote yet.

In my view, squashing peaceful protest often leads to non-peaceful protest.

The Last Days by Scott Westerfeld

When I find that I've accidentally started a series, I usually try to track the rest of it down. I was surprised to find out Peeps had a sequel; it seemed so self contained. Part of the success of the first book was its unique structure with narrative alternating with mini essays on parasitology. It really worked, but it didn't seem like the kind of thing that could work indefinitely.

The Last Days starts up in New York City some time after the events of Peeps. Cal and Lace show up, but they aren't the main characters. This book is about a group of teens who just want to play music and be famous. Moz and Zahler are two guitarists in search of instrument variety. They are both good musicians but have no direction. All that changes when in a freak coincidence Moz and Pearl meet while rescuing a stratocaster from certain death. Its previous owner was infected by the parasite that causes something like vampirism and was insane at the time.

Pearl is a musician of a different type. She goes to Julliard and understands the theory of music and how to play multiple instruments. She also knows a really good vocalist named Minerva. The only problem here is that Minerva is also infected. Infected and untreated which means she's only a couple steps off of crazy and very dangerous.

Last but not least they need a drummer who they find in an OCD street performer named Alana Ray. With this last addition they are finally a band and create an almost magical sound which is good because the world around them is falling apart. People are disappearing, rats are roaming the streets in hordes, feral cats are ruling the roost. In short, it's all going to hell.

Ok, so there's an ethnographic idea that folk tales have a far back basis in truth. Not literal truth mind you, but some sort of important idea or event that warps over time. So a clever author looks at the idea of a vampire and starts playing the what if game. When I was younger I came up with the idea of vampires being a sort of care-taking race for humanity. It's not a big stretch and that's what this really is. Vampire as magical undead infection, no. However, vampire as parasite. . .sure why not. Then you just got to figure out why nature would need a subset of humanity with incredible strength and aggressiveness.  Voila...story.

This was a fun read. It isn't as good as Peeps, not by a long shot. I missed the micro-essays and the story just didn't move me as much, but it was a fun light read when I needed one. I kinda hope he keeps producing books in this world, but I kind of doubt it will happen.

I Got Them Teaching Blues...

I'm sure every profession is replete with sad or stressful moments, but it sometimes feels like for teachers that they lurk around every corner. Because of what we do, I guess it is easier to take things personally or to view it as a failure. I don't know but I got those old timey teaching blues.

Lost a student today, she's gone away and it's hard to say if she was ever really with us. Nevertheless, I wish her well. Lost another student, I didn't really know him but I worry for him.

I looked at my grading lists today. There always comes a point for English teachers when they look at their grading and realize that they are at the bottom of the hill. Each assignment isn't so much but there are just so many of them. Nothing to do but slog, slog, slog till I get to the top...or at least hit the halfway point.

The whole student body is vibrating. It feels like the air before a storm; all buzzy and full of electric charge. I worry that something is going to happen. Then I feel like a superstitious fool.

I got them teaching blues.

A Wind in the Door by Madeleine L'Engle

This is another case of "I know I read it, but I just don't know when or anything about it." The only solid memory I have of it is of the description of the cherubim, Proginoskes. I remembered something about a big ball of wings and eyes and it might have in fact been an illustration.

A Wind in the Door picks up about a year after the events of A Wrinkle in Time. Meg is in high school and Charles Wallace has started with school. Charles Wallace is, in fact, having as much trouble adjusting to school as Meg did. He's super smart and tiny; it makes him a target for bullying.

Charles Wallace is also suffering from some sort of vague illness. When he greets Meg with a story about dragons in the garden, even Meg gets concerned. If the bullying wasn't enough, now her cherished little brother is seeing things. Nevertheless, she goes to check it out and finds, not a pack of dragons, but rather a single cherubim and a monolithic teacher.

In the larger world, something is causing the stars to disappear. Of course it is all connected and Meg and Calvin must race time to save Charles Wallace.

If A Wrinkle in Time was underpinned with physics, A Wind in the Door is exploring cellular biology. Most of the action has to do with mitochondria which really are quite interesting. Every cell in our body has them and mitochondria have distinct DNA from our own. They are symbiotic prokaryotes which was a new idea at the time that the book was written. The science is a little messed up, but we really do need mitochondria for our cells to function so it's pretty cool stuff.

There is also a stronger religious theme floating through this one probably because of the cherubim. I didn't find it obnoxious, but it was definitely more present.

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle

I read the entire Time Quintet, which is begun with A Wrinkle in Time, when I was a kid. I know that I did, but I can't remember exactly when. I know that most of it was before middle school, because I was surprised when I discovered the fourth book, Many Waters, on a shelf in the middle school library.

Some how the memories linked with A Wrinkle In Time are tied up with my memories of the first grade and Mrs. Brodie's class, but that can't be right because even though I was a little precocious in how I learned to read, I can't have been that advanced. At a guess, I must have been around 8 or 9 which explains some things about my memories of the book. Specifically, I couldn't remember anything about it except that I loved it.

I think I must have been too young for a lot of the concepts to stick despite being drawn in by the characters of Meg and Charles Wallace.

Meg struggles in school. She's smart but she can't seem to do things the way her teachers expect...even though she comes up with the right answers. She gets in trouble and she gets in fights. Many of these fights are in defense of her baby brother, Charles Wallace. Charles Wallace is odd. He's four but he speaks like an adult and seems to be able to read the minds of both Meg and her mother.

Charles Wallace and Meg live with their mother and twin brothers. Dad has disappeared mysteriously which is another cause for friction. One dark and stormy night the mysterious Mrs. Whatsit appears which leads the two kids along with their friend Calvin on a journey to rescue their father from a world consumed by an evil shadow.

This is a supremely cool book for kids. Meg is one of those universal characters. I think every kid, girl or boy, at some point feels out of step with the rest of the world and gets angry. That's probably what drew me in at such a young age, but the narrative encourages young readers to think about things like theoretical physics and what the consequences would be. It's just really cool; there is a reason it's survived with young readers for over 50 years and hasn't somehow become dated.

Hogfather by Terry Pratchett

I've known that this existed for a long time and I've been dreading it a little. It seems like any T.V. show, if it lasts long enough, must do a Christmas episode. Usually this just means that the action happens among tinsel and Christmas carols. The wrap is usually has one of the approved Christmas themes of love or miracles.

The same idea holds true for long book series, but with book series, I find it annoying generally. If a series goes long enough, eventually there will be a Christmasy one...even if set in a fantasy world that doesn't have Christmas properly. Some Christmas analog is created and continue as planned.

*insert annoyed rant about a religious holiday (which stole a solar observance anyway) being secularized in order to turn a profit*

So, the Hogfather is an analog to Father Christmas and Hogswatch is Christmas. He flies around in a sleigh pulled by eight giant pigs dispensing gifts and consuming sherry and pork pies left out by the kiddies. By Jove, I believe we've stumbled across the Discworld Christmas novel. *sigh*


Alright, I should have trusted Pratchett a little more than I did walking in. Yes, it is a Christmas novel. However Pratchett plays with all the things about Christmas that I find annoying so it had some fun points too.

In Hogfather mysterious figures called The Auditors have hired the assassins guild to kill the Hogfather. The assassin Teatime, who's a little batty, develops a plan to kill an imaginary being by invading the realm of the Tooth Fairy. This plan works.

Without the Hogfather, the world is out of whack. Death steps into the sleigh to keep the Hogfather's place open. Household gods start popping into being because of the unused free floating belief which gets the wizards involved. Susan StoHelit (granddaughter of Death) gets involved by trying to figure out what her grandfather is up to.

Over the course of the novel Pratchett not only examines the human tendency to create  monsters and bogeymen but also the general evolution of these myths. It's interesting stuff if looked at from a distance. While there is the occasional gushy Christmas moment, on the whole this is more of a romp. I particularly enjoy Susan who just desperately wants to be normal despite her special death related powers. She works as a governess who can actually see the monsters hiding under the bed and gets them out by pounding them with a poker. I hope there is more of her.

Literary Competition

Too tired to blog. Took the kids to the Literary Competition today. They did well. I'm very proud of them.

Sleep now.

*shhhhhhhhh*

eponyms

I was teaching my students about eponyms today. They are pretty nifty things. An eponym is a word that enters the language because of a particular person either real or fictitious. For example a scrooge is a person who doesn't like sharing his or her money but the word entered the language as the name of Charles Dickens's character, Ebenezer Scrooge, in A Christmas Carol who was a greedy money lender.

Once you start looking for them, they are all over the place in English. Our language must really be a nightmare to learn. Here are some of my favorites:

Adam's apple
Shrapnel (named for a British artillery Sargent: Henry Shrapnel)
Panic (related to Pan the goat legged god)
Narcissism
Aphrodisiac
Watt
Volt
Teddy Bear
Silhouette 
Serendipity (comes from an old version of the name for Sri Lanka)

Wikipedia has a massive list of them, but it isn't hard to spot them. I just think it's nifty

Why is it...?

Why is it that getting sleep after a long stint of sleep troubles makes me more tired and not less? Ever notice that? Maybe it's just me. I love sleep, but I don't always get it. I've gotten pretty good with handling the physical effects of sleep dep.

Mostly, I do ok until the fifth or sixth day of low sleep or the third day of no sleep. By ok, I mean that I function and I'm not miserable. I can work reasonably and as long as I maintain my lists, I don't tend to lose track of things.

However, I get one solid night of sleep and suddenly I'm getting sleepy in classes and forgetting to do things like ... eat.

Surely things should be easier with sleep. Right? That's gotta be the whole point.

Double Whammy by Carl Hiaasen

Carl Hiaasen is one of those authors that Ryan has been trying to get me to read virtually since the day we met. I've picked up his first book, Tourist Season, several times, but haven't been able to get traction on it. Hiaasen's YA material, however, is another story. I love it all. It's fast paced, features engaging characters, and deals with environmental issues in a savvy responsible way. One of those, Skink: No Surrender, features a character that started out in his non-YA books. So, this is backtracking to the first appearance of Skink.

Double Whammy is about bass fishing. No, really. Bass fishing. I know know more about bass fishing than I ever wanted to. R.J. Decker is a down on his luck private eye with an anger issue. He's hired by a sportsman named Gault to catch some cheaters in the act. This isn't an amorous thing, this is about cheating at big fishing tournaments. It's weird, but pretty straightforward. At least it is until dead bodies start showing up.

Decker meets up with Skink as a sort of local guide. Skink is big, hairy, and slightly crazy, but he has a nice smile and a quick mind. As odd-ball as he is, he takes to Decker's case and soon finds reasons of his own to help out.

I've never really understood people who watch fishing shows for entertainment. I get why fishing is appealing, but the idea of watching people fish on T.V. dumbfounds me. This is a view that Hiaasen seems to share. There's a snarky sarcastic angle to all this where the main characters seem to be bemused on some level that anyone would bother this much for sport fishing that appeals to me.

Skink is a draw too. For such a bizarre character, he's fun to watch. It's like watching disaster walking around in human skin. He's a survivalist who seems to live off of fresh road kill and a manic conviction that the world would be better off without humans. I like him.

Obviously, this isn't intended for a young audience, but I can think of plenty of teens that would love this.

Rodale's Basic Organic Gardening: A Beginner's Guide to Starting a Healthy Garden by Deborah Martin

I've been picking at this one for the better part of a month. I realized sometime in January that I needed a better garden reference than I had. I like the idea of gardening, but in practice I'm not very good at it. One doesn't really have to be in order to have a productive garden since in the end the plants want the same thing I do...for them to grow. However, I could get more out of my garden with a little guidance. So, I went looking and came up with Rodale's Basic Organic Gardening.

If I had too little information before, now I feel like I have too much. The guide is full of 'should-do's' and 'keep-in-minds.' It is half primer and half reference guide. It is, in fact, so full of information that I find it all spinning around in my head.

There are chapters on soil care, garden planning, seed starting/transplanting, and basic maintenance. These chapters are easy to read and helpful if a bit overwhelming. There are also chapters of plant indexes, beneficial and harmful insects, and trouble shooting. These chapters are organized more like a reference material and don't lend themselves to easy reading. While full of information, reading them straight through makes much of the information easy to confuse where if I were using it as a reference index for specific info would find it very useful.

Over all, I'm happy with the book and suspect it will be very helpful in the next few years, but I need time to digest it and will probably have to read it again somewhat more selectively while I'm creating specific action plans 

Giving in...A List for March

Ok, I'm giving in. I'm making a list. Mainly, my head space is cluttered and I have too much going on. Things are starting to feel a little overwhelming. The lists really do help with that.

In order to keep in line with my over all reading goals, I need to read 12.5 books each month. For variety's sake, I'll set of list of 21 books. 21 because it is easily divisible by 3. My other over-arching goal is to is to read 50 non-YA books out of my 150 total books. I've internally refined that into maintaining a general ratio of trying to read one non-YA for every two YA. So far, I've been pretty successful with this. As a sort of sub-goal, I'm trying to close out some of the series that I have hanging over my head. So, here's a list for March that consists of 7 non YA and 14 YA books.

Non-YA

1. The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi (The Windup Universe)
2. Mini-Lessons For Literature Circles by Harvey Daniels and Nancy Steineke
3. Double Whammy by Carl Hiaasen (Skink) (Finished 3/5/2018)
4. Rodale's Basic Organic Gardening: A Beginner's Guide to Starting a Healthy Garden by Deborah L. Martin (Finished 3/3/3018)
5. Hogfather by Terry Pratchett (Discworld)  (Finished 3/9/2018)
6. Richard II by William Shakespeare
7. The Mime Order by Samantha Shannon (Bone Season Series) (Finished 3/18/2018)

YA

1. City of Heavenly Fire by Cassandra Clare (The Mortal Instruments)
2. Sever by Lauren DeStefano (The Chemical Garden Series) (Finished 3/3/2018)
3. An Abundance of Katherines by John Green (Finished 3/19/2018)
4. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle (Time Quintet) (Finished 3/10/2018)
5. A Wind in the Door by Madeleine L'Engle (Time Quintet) (Finished 3/10/2018)
6. A Swiftly Tilting Planet by Madeleine L'Engle (Time Quintet) (Finished 3/14/2018)
7. Fall of Five by Pitticus Lore (Lorien Legacies) (Finished 3/21/2018)
8. The Revenge of Seven by Pitticus Lore (Lorian Legacies)
9. A Step from Heaven by An Na
10. Nation by Terry Pratchett (Finished 3/27/2018)
11. UnWholly by Neal Shusterman (UnWind Dystology) (Finished 3/24/2018)
12. Jasper Jones by Craig Silvey
13. Chanda's Secrets by Allan Stratton
14. The Last Days by Scott Westerfeld (The Peeps) (Finished 3/13/2018)

Sever by Lauren DeStefano

Yay! Another series down. I had been about to drop this series, but I'm glad I didn't. This is a clear case of the last book making the whole thing worthwhile because it clarified many of the running themes.

 Sever opens with Rhine in a hospital recovering from her harrowing experiences at the mercy of Housemaster Vaughn's medical experimentation. Linden is finally aware of what his father's been doing and Cecily is well on the way to redeeming her mistakes from earlier in the series when she trusted Vaughn overmuch.

Rhine has a new mission to chase down her twin brother, Rowen, who has turned terrorist by bombing research labs. Linden and Cecily decide to help her and they start the trip back northward. However, with everything more in the open, things are also much more complicated and there is no hiding from Vaughn.

Vaughn is definitely the major antagonist of the series, but in this volume his character is greatly expanded and he becomes less two dimensional which leads into the development of what I see as the major theme of the series.

With this last book, the focus on the ethics of medical research really comes into focus. First, the basic premise of the book is that a generation of genetically modified humans led to a catastrophic malady. While it's initially referred to as a virus in the first two books, it becomes clear in Sever that it's a direct result of the genetic tinkering. The offspring of the modified generation have bodies that simply shut down and die on a consistent time clock.

As a result, medical research happens without the consent of the subjects they are ultimately trying to save. This desperation to fix them is at the core of Vaughn's character and many of his actions. The goal is seen to supersede the rights of the victims. Horrible and dangerous experimentation is conducted without oversight or precaution and at times without the subjects consent. This leads to the brand of terrorism that Rhine's twin is involved in.

So, ultimately this whole series plays with the idea of ends justifying means. In fixing a problem, how much is destroyed? As much as the book is about Rhine's story, the most interesting character to examine is Vaughn as his competing motivations and his effect on those around him come into focus.

I'm glad I stuck with the series.

Danger Mouse

Some things just aren't the same when view through the eyes of an adult. I loved Danger Mouse when I was a kid. I remember sneaking around to watch it because it came on just after bedtime. I have clear memories of this.

Obviously, we bought them for Thomas when we found them. (We also bought Animaniacs and have He Man.) Thomas discovered them earlier in the week and he's frankly obsessed. I, on the other hand, am struggling to remember why I loved the thing. The episodes are a little more than 10 minutes each and they always center around Baron Silas Greenback's nefarious plans and Danger Mouse's attempts to thwart them.

Sounds pretty straight forward, right. It is but Greenbacks plots are bizarre. One plot involves killing world leaders by turning elephants into sugar cubes which turn back into elephants when placed in tea. Thus squishing the world leader.  I'm not kidding. That's the plot.

I suppose on a certain level, I'm impressed with the sheer randomness of it all, but it all starts to wash over me.

Some things just aren't the same.

Fighting the Urge...

I think people are a little too quick to flippantly say, "I'm so OCD" when really they mean "I'm nit picky about that" or "I'm particular". OCD when it's real, is a pretty scary thing. We all have behaviors that we engage in to assert control over our environments or derive comfort. It's a healthy thing in fact, but in OCD those little behaviors become overwhelmingly important and failing to perform them can lead to a crippling dread that something awful will happen.

The scariest thing about it is that it can crop up in people who haven't previously struggled over much with mental health. That's rare though. In practice it seems like people who develop OCD have a predisposition towards anxiety and depression.

I don't have OCD, not even close, but if I did I'd have a form of hypergraphia. People suffering from hypergraphia have an uncontrollable urge to write. A sub-set is those who must write lists. I write a lot of lists. I have organizational lists and reading lists. I have lists of recipes that I would like to try and lists of goals. Some of my lists I keep and work on, some last only a few hours before I toss them in the trash. A person rifling through my desk is likely to uncover dozens of the things.

I mention this because I'm having a really hard time not writing monthly reading lists. They didn't really achieve much and yet I'm sitting here itching to write one. It's bizarre.

I will resist.

For now.