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| 20 July 2007 |
| New (ish) Blog |
It's taken me nigh on half the month to notice (I'm just not the blog watcher I used to be, I guess), but Meredith over at Basia Me, Catholica Sum has hung up her hat. But, not to fear, she's started a new blog with a focus on poetry. This just warms my heart--we need more intelligent people out there talking out poetry. Real poetry, that is--not the gush your feelings in bland language with no sense of the traditions of rhythm and metre kind that passes for verse these days.
Anyway, because her focus has changed, I'm moving her to The Stacks, but don't think this means the new site is any less worth going to. After all, two of my best friends are in The Stacks--'tis not a bad place to be, even if the name might imply otherwise.
I'll keep Basia Me linked a bit longer for archive viewing purposes, but the new site, happily titled For Keats' Sake!, is here. |
Jelly Pinched Wolf 8:28 AM
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| 19 July 2007 |
| Sorcery and Cecilia |
Before my class started two weeks ago, I managed to do rather a bit of reading during my summer break (especially for the somewhat slow reader that I am). I managed to burn through the last three (or was it four?) Dresden novels, and am merely waiting for White Knight to be released in paperback sometime this year so I can read it. I read the summer reading selection for our school, which I had been dreading, but was particularly surprised by. It's called The Kite Runner, and is one of those books that's on all the critics' lists and would be considered a terribly "important" book. As it turns out, it's also a really good tale. The narrator's hard to like for much of it (though that's the point) and there are some really harsh scenes in it, but I confess to having found it quite moving and a very good read. I also re-read The Scarlet Letter, since I'll be teaching it this year, and am again staggered by the beauty and complexity of Hawthorne's prose. Just a gorgeous book.
The last book I read before taking up Moby Dick (which I get to teach in my AP class) and beginning my summer education class is one I particularly wish to share with those remaining readers I have. It's called Sorcery and Cecilia or The Enchanted Chocolate Pot, and was written by Patricia Wrede and Caroline Stevermer. First, a warning: Should you check out Amazon's page for this book, avoid any review mentioning Harry Potter. As with so many books these days, Sorcery suffers the "comparison-with-some-other-great-work-of-fantasy" issue with unimaginative readers. They'll say, "It's just like Tolkien, but with robots!" or "It's just like Harry Potter except darker!" Blech. I'm so tired of hearing this, especially when it's not really applicable. For example, people keep comparing Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell to Harry Potter, and I can only imagine that these people haven't actually read Strange & Norrell. It has more in common with the writings of both Patrick O'Brian and Jane Austen than Rowling. Not to mention that the book took Clarke over ten years to write (and boy howdy did that make me feel better about my own novel), which means she started it three years before Rowling published Sorcerer's Stone. But oh, how people love to play the "She must have been influenced by" game just because two books happen to be about magic. As the characters in Sorcery might say, it is the outside of enough. Sigh.
Okay, mini-rant over.
If one were to compare Sorcery with other works, Austen would be the best bet. Wrede and Stevermer have written a Regency novel of magic, humour, and romance, and done it epistolary style. It started as a game between the two authors in which they wrote letters to each other in character. The characters, cousins Cecy and Kate, relate their adventures in society via their correspondence, and the result is lively, engaging, and often hilarious. There are now two sequels to the book, The Grand Tour and The Mislaid Magician or Ten Years After. I greatly look forward to reading these, and highly recommend to anyone the first. |
Jelly Pinched Wolf 10:08 PM
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| Voyage to Ruin Update |
| As a follow-up to my previous mention of Voyage to Ruin which was recently published by H.L. Trombley and for which my wife kashi supplied the interiour illustrations, the book is now available on Amazon.com. Unfortunately, they have not seen fit to discount it, so if anyone wished to buy it but was waiting for a cheaper option, I'm sorry to say it's not yet there. They may be waiting to see if it's moving enough volume to be worthwhile--I don't know. Anyway, if anyone was waiting, best to just go ahead and order from Lulu. The book is really worth it, and as a not inconsiderable side note, you'll be supporting kashi's art career, which is a noble thing indeed. Least, I think so. |
Jelly Pinched Wolf 3:23 PM
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| 14 July 2007 |
| In Brief... |
Lots of doings have been afoot, and this is the first chance I've really had to post.
In as few words as possible (which'll be a real challenge for me), here are the highlights:
- We saw Ratatouille on opening night. Absolutely amazing film. Brilliant and beautiful.
- We spent the week of the 4th of July in kashi's hometown, which has become a tradition these last years. It was terrifically refreshing to get out of DFW and relax a bit. Plus, it's just really wonderful spending time with kashi's family--they're good people. Alas, that Kansan town is dying fast. You can see it written on the walls of every building, in the faces of the people. And the few who seem to care can't do a darn thing to stop it. It's sad, and I fear all too common an occurrence in the rural midwest these days.
- While in Kansas, we were beset by an adorable little stray kitten (the town's rife with strays) for a day and a half, at which point we decided he was coming home with us. And that was the point at which he decided to stop coming around. Alas, as we were already committed to the idea, we decided to help out a family from our parish who had recently rescued a passel of kitten whose mother had abandoned them. We'd been resisting, but now felt obligated to give one a home. You know, stewardship an' all. Plus, we're really just big softies. So now, little Anathema (as we call her) is busy being terribly cute and annoying the other two cats, who have yet to warm up to the interloper.
- I've begun my summer class in Instructional Principles. So far, it has done little but confirm that yes, I actually know what I'm doing as a teacher, and am not half bad at it. Happily, it's also not much of a time suck, which leads to the next item.
- Though my novel yet awaits cover art and is thus in a holding pattern, I have finished putting together a collection of poetry, and will have it on Cafepress within a week or so. The final poem, "Interstices," is a poem in nine parts, which I started nigh on a decade ago. It went through some revisions over the last year, and then I finished the last part a week ago. It's nice--gives one a sense of accomplishment. The collection is titled The Unveiled Clepsydra, after, I'd argue, the best poem in the collection. I'll post the link once it's available, and mayhap someone will buy it.
- Saw Order of the Phoenix the other night, thanks to some unloading we did at Half-Price. Highly disappointing movie. You get no review--go read Dr. Swietek's; I rarely agree with him, but here he's spot on.
Right. I reckon that brings us up to speed. There're a few posts I need to write, but they'll have to wait until I'm a bit less scattered. |
Jelly Pinched Wolf 3:46 PM
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