BookStack

The Pleasure of the Text

In his beautiful description of reading, The Pleasure of the Text, Roland Barthes writes: "The text produces, in me, the best pleasure if it manages to make itself heard indirectly; if, reading it, I am led to look up often, to listen to something else."

Week Five - Assignments

After a tough month of travel and discombobulation, we're back to The Project.

Tonight, I chose Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird for John (after all, I wrote it and it's about time he read it, don't you think? ;-) and I chose Ron Clark's The Essential 55 for Emma.

First line of Bird by Bird: "The very first thing I tell my new students on the first day of a workshop is that good writing is about telling the truth."

First line of The Essential 55:  Rule 1: When responding to any adult, you must answer by saying 'Yes ma'am' or 'No sir.' Just nodding your head or saying any other form of yes or no is not acceptable."

I'm choosing my own book this week:  The Soft Vengeance of a Freedom Fighter by Albie Sachs, a re-read, a must-read, go. read. it.

Week Four - Assignments

Wow.

Carson McCullers was just 28 years old when she wrote this book.

Now I'm depressed, having not written such a book at such a tender age. Or perhaps not, since her life was so troubled; the deep insight into the human condition so clear in her novels didn't seep into her own living, it seems.

Read it.

Week Two - book dinner and assignments

Tonight at our Book Dinner, it was confession time. We were all tempted to lie, but we all told the truth--we had all only read one-half of our books this week...the discussion was short. We pledged to finish those and also read this week's books:

This week, Emma chose The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon for John to read. She chose Lois Lowry's The Giver for me. And I chose Ellen Foster by Kaye Gibbons for Emma.

Our readings aloud, the first paragraph on page 37 of each book:

"He said, 'Look, son, do you really think you should be going around asking questions like this?'"

"He sank back down into his chair, puzzled. He waved to Father and Lily as they left the dwelling, carrying Gabe in his basket. He watched while Mother tidied the remains of the morning meal and placed the tray by the front door for the Collection Crew."

"I want them to leave because my window is froze shut."

And then we each read aloud the first line of this week's selections:

"It was 7 minutes after midnight."

"It was almost December, and Jonas was beginning to be frightened."

"When I was little I would think of ways to kill my daddy."

Off and running...

Week Two - Assignments

Yee-haw! I got to choose books for both John and Emma for this coming week...and Emma was tapped to choose my book. Here's what we chose:

For John, I chose Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides, a book I wanted to have written myself by page 12.

And I chose Songs of the Gorilla Nation: My Journey through Autism by Dawn Prince-Hughes for Emma. Prince-Hughes writes about her journey through life with autism - and how she found help in working with gorillas. I think the animal lover in Emma will be drawn to the story even though she doesn't like apes; I think her having met some individuals with autism recently will give her an additional perspective on what Prince-Hughes is addressing.

Emma's choice for me? The Wish List by Eoin Colfer. It will be traveling with me this week to Boston and Atlanta and points in between...

We each read the first paragraph of page 37 of our new assignments aloud as well as the first line of each:

"I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in January of 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974."

"This is a book about autism."

"Meg and Belch were doing a job."

And here goes Week Two!

Week One - Book Dinner

Tonight at our anti-TV Book Dinner, we reported on our first week of reading...all of us finished our books and while they weren't books we would have chosen for ourselves, we were all glad for the reading.

John got a glimpse into a fantasy book for youth, Emma ventured into a wordless graphic novel from the 1930s, and I got to see America through the eyes of novelist Erskine Caldwell and photographer Margaret Bourke-White who traveled 10,000 miles to document the America of the late 1930s. I want to follow their trail, go to the same small towns, and see what has changed in the ensuing 70 years.

Tess was jealous of our conversation and ran to get her books.

And we got our Week 2 assignments...

TV dinner from here.

Reading Games

How about reading games?

I just read about a few I'd like to try sometime:

read books based on themes.  for example:

*travel the world by reading a novel about each country
*read authors alphabetically (alternate: read only authors with last names that begin with "S")
*read only red books for one year
*choose one book and read only other books that are connected with it somehow (through citations, or research done on the book, about the author, etc).
*read indexes only
*read page 153 in every book you pick up

I especially like the ideas of traveling the world through novels and choosing one book and reading only other books that are connected with it somehow...

Week One - assignments

We have created quite an elaborate system of book choosing. This week, John chose what books Emma and I will read, and Emma chose John's book. It will all make sense in the end.

And here is what we are reading this week, after those assignments were given...

John chose Say, is this the U.S.A. by Erskine Caldwell & Margaret Bourke-White for me to read.

He gave Emma Destiny: A Novel in Pictures by Otto Nückel.

Emma chose The Bartimaeus Trilogy - Book One: The Amulet of Samarkand by Jonathan Stroud for John's first book.

Let the reading begin!

Books, recommended

Recently on 37days, I asked readers for book recommendations for our reading project. Here are the books they suggested - a fine list and one we will be dipping into liberally during the course of these twelve months of urgent reading:

Book Recommendations from 37days readers:

The Call of the Wild - Jack London
The Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
The Island Within - Richard Nelson
Club of Queer Trades - G. K. Chesterton
I Capture the Castle - Dodie Smith
A Short History of Nearly Everything - Bill Bryson
Cymbeline - William Shakespeare
Parachute Infantry - David Kenyon Webster
Where the Heart Is - Billie Letts
A Wrinkle in Time -Madeleine L’Engle
Anansi Boys -Neil Gaiman
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee -Dee Brown
The Trouble with Jenny's Ear -Oliver Butterworth
The Little Prince -Antoine de Saint Exupery
Places Left Unfinished at the Creation of Time -John Phillip Santos
The Poisonwood Bible -Barbara Kingsolver
Into The Forest -Jean Hegland
Crossing to Safety -Wallace Stegner
Daddy Long-Legs -Jean Webster
A Year in Provence -Peter Mayle
The View from the Center of the Universe: Discovering Our Extraordinary Place in the Cosmos -Joel Primack & Nancy Abrams
The Song of the Lark -Willa Cather
These Is My Words -Nancy Turner
Women's Work: The First 20,000 Years -Elizabeth Wayland Barber
The Whole World Over -Julia Glass
Anil’s Ghost -Michael Ondaatje
Precious Bane -Mary Webb
Persuasion -Jane Austen
A Kingdom Lost for a Drop of Honey -Maung Htin Aung & Helen G. Trager
The New Testament
A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
Drinking the Rain -Alix Kates Shulman.
Prodigal Summer - Barbara Kingsolver
The Secret Life of Bees - Sue Monk Kidd
Object Lessons - Anna Quindlen
My Sister’s Keeper – Jodi Picoult
Vanishing Acts – Jodi Picoult
The Breakdown Lane – Jacqueline Mitchard
Cage of Stars – Jacqueline Mitchard
Something Rising (Light and Swift) - Haven Kimmel
The Solace of Leaving Early – Haven Kimmel
To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee

BookStack 2007

The readers in our family are embarking on a reading challenge for 2007--a challenge to each read one book per week in 2007, using this blog space to record the readings, post the booklists, comment on the readings...

We are compiling our lists - each of us will recommend books to the others for their reading. More after we begin on January 1, 2007.