Books To Read In 2012

Hello all!

Back in 2010, I had a list of books that I was planning on reading. I didn’t finish all of them, but it was a good experience none the less. It forced me to read books that I wouldn’t have otherwise, some of which I hated, and a few which I ended up loving.

This year I have a much smaller list. I’m including it in this post, but you can also find it in the righthand sidebar, underneath all the orange buttons. As I go, I will cross out the books in the sidebar menu that I’ve read and post a review of some sort.

I hope you will join me on this adventure! Feel free to share your experiences and opinions related to the titles in the comments section of my posts.

Books To Read In 2012

 

Dark Life 

Falls, Kat M

Mockingbird 

Erskine, Kathryn

Wintergirls 

Anderson, Laurie Halse

St. Augustine’s Confessions 

Little Brother 

 Doctorow, Cory

The Maze Runner 

Dashner, James

Invisible Man 

Ellison,  Ralph

Brave New World 

Huxley,  Aldous

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? 

Dick , Philip K. 

A Chance to Die: The Life and Legacy of Amy Carmichael 

Elliot, Elisabeth

The Book Thief  

Zusak, Markus

I am enthralled with an old dead dude…

For those of you who instantly disapprove of the title of this post:

It could be worse- at least I’m not crushing on a pasty thousand-year-old bloodsucker! (Yes, Edward Cullen, I’m talking about you…)

No, the man I am referring to is Carl Sandburg.

Now, most of you just went “Wha- who?? Is he like a politician or something?” And maybe, a few of you actually scratched your heads and said, “Wait, isn’t that the guy who wrote that lame poem they made us memorize in grade school about fog having little cat feet?”

But… I’m getting ahead of myself…

This past week, I climbed the wide staircase in the beautiful old library I work at, made my way past the grimly staring taxidermied animals from the 1800s, and randomly pulled this book off of the poetry shelf.

I brought it home and began reading it, half-heartedly at first, and then with growing excitement.

I don’t read books of poetry in an orderly fashion, from cover to cover. I take a tentative bite in the middle, then I pick at the edges, rolling them carefully across my tongue. If I like what I taste, I dig in, shoveling luscious mouthfuls as fast as I can. I pretty much pigged out on this book.

My poor husband had to endure me reading multiple verses to him in the car, with me smiling the whole time, like a lovesick teenager.

It is absolutely CRIMINAL that Carl Sandburg’s whole legacy has been reduced to a pathetic poetry fragment he probably scribbled on his napkin, while eating dinner. His “cat-foot” poem doesn’t even SOUND like him!

The poetry contained in his book “Chicago” has grit! It lives and breathes and sweats. It cries, makes love, and dies.

The people he pinned to paper are preserved with the lost art of the ancient Egyptians…. lifelike faces and mummies of souls, caught in crisp black ink.

If you appreciate poetry at all, even a little bit, please go to this website and see for yourself. Warning: he is highly addictive!

A good place to start is with his poem, “Skyscraper“:

“…A young watchman leans at a window and sees the lights
    of barges butting their way across a harbor, nets of
    red and white lanterns in a railroad yard, and a span
    of glooms splashed with lines of white and blurs of
    crosses and clusters over the sleeping city.
By night the skyscraper looms in the smoke and the stars
    and has a soul….”

Or with his sobering portrayal of earth’s long ages, “I Am the People, the Mob“:

“…Sometimes I growl, shake myself and spatter a few red
    drops for history to remember. Then–I forget.
When I, the People, learn to remember, when I, the
    People, use the lessons of yesterday and no longer
    forget who robbed me last year, who played me for
    a fool–then there will be no speaker in all the world…”

 

 

Beowulf Deserves Better

Due to car repairs, I’m having a week of being a bachelorette. My husband is staying in the nearest “big city” and awaiting the arrival of the replacement parts. Thus, I’m reading and watching a lot more movies than usual.

Last night I watched Beowulf. Looking back from the perspective of this morning, it probably wasn’t the best thing to watch in a dark and lonely apartment… but anyhow, I survived.

I remember being about 11 years old and reading a condensed version of the story. I was recovering from being quite ill and in my boredom I ended up reading a whole set of old Children’s Book of Knowledge Encyclopedias. They contained all the old legends and fairytale stories. The thing about Beowulf that originally captured my attention as a child, was the fine balance between barbaric rawness and heroism.

I wasn’t terribly impressed with the film overall. The graphics were about the same as a high-tech video game, which got kind of annoying in parts. Maybe it would look better on a slightly bigger screen. I found it hard to follow visually.

The content was very graphically violent and coarsely sexual. I didn’t expect all the references to sex, spurting blood, people getting ripped in half and heads being chomped off. Granted, Beowulf IS violent. But it was never intended to merely end up as a two-bit horror story.

My main gripe about the movie was not really any of those things. What bothered me the most was how much they changed the whole flavor of the story. In an attempt to make it more barbaric, they made it crude, crass, and gory. In trying to make Beowulf more human, they made him morally weak and greedily grasping. For Hrothgar to fall prey to lust and the desire for power was plausible. But for Beowulf to make the same mistake? It was just plain stupid. Beowulf deserves better representation.