My Faithful Reader is insistent.
Did you pack yet? Have you finished packing? Why aren’t you packing? Is your suitcase full? Did you remember everything? Go pack some more!
I am relaxed.
Yes. I have shoes and socks and shirts and all sorts of other things, including things I probably don’t need. OK?
Wow! Cat’s Cradle is just as good now as it was all those years ago.
Grade: A+
Cat’s Cradle is a very fast read. I got through it in two nights. I was surprised at how much I remembered, including the fact that one of the secondary characters is a professional indexer who claims to be able to glean character traits of an author just be reading his or her index. She says, “Never index your own book.” I think there’s something in that. I believe you can learn things about people by examining how they categorize the stuff of life. And that’s probably why I remembered her character—I was afraid that she was right!
Kurt Vonnegut is often called a humorist or a satirist, but almost always with either “black” or “dark” as a caveat. Cat’s Cradle is an amusing book, but not a happy one. Of the four I’ve read so far during this marathon, it’s the most downbeat, but it also highlights some of the most interesting quirks of human nature. It suits my sense of humor and it makes me think. It’s a keeper.
I may or may not have fallen into a trap, but I definitely fell into a blue funk. I didn’t cheer up until I thought of a plan that would allow me to avoid 16 hours of solo long-distance driving but still do all of the activities I have planned for the upcoming week. Thank God for airplanes. I hope that spending a week away from home, walking on the beach and doing nothing more taxing than looking for fossilized sharks’ teeth, will dispel any last vestiges of depression. I won’t have Internet access, so I’m cheating time again and arranging for posts to magically appear while I’m gone. During the week after, I’ll regale you with stories of all the fun things that I did on my vacation. Maybe, just maybe, I’ll even have some pictures to post!
This is Chick’s hundredth post.
She has written to you (the world) exactly 100 times. It doesn’t matter that you weren’t listening. The point is that she wrote.
But don’t be fooled—almost anyone who loves reading enough to write about it (like Chick does) probably dreams of being a successful author herself someday. Book-review posts and journal entries and even cute little rhymes are all well and good, but they may be distractions from a greater goal. If she ever questions her lack of writing accomplishments, those posts will provide a very good self-defense, because she has, in fact, written something, if not what she really wanted to write.
Has she fallen into a trap?
I finished The Egypt Game by Zilpha Keatley Snyder last night.
Grade: B+
I bet I would have loved The Egypt Game if I had read it as a child. Coming from a suburb, I enjoyed stories set in more urban areas, which seemed so much more exciting and dangerous. I was also fascinated by Egyptology. This book would have been perfect for me.
Reading it from a strictly adult perspective, I often felt like I could see the cogs of the author’s brain turning, places where she made deliberate choices instead of letting the characters develop naturally. Though it felt contrived in a lot of ways (the balanced racial mix of the characters, for example), it had a solid plot and a satisfactory ending, which is more than I can say for a lot of books. Children who are just looking for a fun story will find it in The Egypt Game.
My copy of the book was already tanned with age and slightly warped when I started to read it. By the time I finished, it was starting to split. I am going to give it away and hope that it stays together long enough to earn a special place in some young reader’s library.
We went to see the new Harry Potter movie (Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix) earlier tonight. I really liked it. I think it’s the best so far. The acting has really improved, and I was particularly impressed by the performances of Radcliffe (Harry) and Grint (Ron).
Everywhere I looked for bees,
Under trees,
Behind my knees.
I only found a tiny few.
How they flew!
But none I knew.
Where be my busy honeybees?
I carefully navigated the clovered lawn this afternoon, recalling keenly the sharp sting of the honeybee and knowing that open-toed shoes were an open invitation to pain. The effort was wasted. Not a single bee did I see. Perhaps they were all napping after a long day’s busy work.
It ain’t summer until the bees buzz. I will look for them tomorrow earlier in the day.
I just finished The Opposite of Fate by Amy Tan. It’s unusual for me to read nonfiction. It’s even more unusual for me to read autobiographical nonfiction. For me to read autobiographical nonfiction by an author whose fiction I’ve never read is unheard of. Yet that’s what I did.
Grade: A
The Opposite of Fate is an interesting look into the head of a modern American writer. Sure, she gets extra points just for singing in a band with Stephen King, but it was really the stories about her mother that won me over. I’m going to add The Joy Luck Club to the list of books that I need to read someday.
I don’t think it’s wise to place your self-esteem in the hands of strangers.—Amy Tan
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