bookshelves of doom

Slush Reading, Seuss Style.

From Jim C. Hines' Slush I Read:

Do you like fanfic with vamps?

I do not like them Mary Sue.
Why do these vamps all worship you?

Go!  Go!  Go read the entire thing, it all its hilarious glory!

(via OUP)

A bit more on the Ellen Hopkins challenge.

According to this article, the parent "requested an official review" of Glass.  Which I assume means that the book has been officially challenged.

So the superintendent felt that as the book was under review, it wasn't appropriate for the visit to continue.  As per district policy, the books will remain in the school library until a decision is made.

I rather think he should have treated her visit the same way -- until a decision is made, the book stays on the shelves, so it follows (in my mind) that her visit should have continued as planned as well, and according to him, the district policy states that parents can exclude their children from events, so it isn't like there wasn't already an out for the parents who are uncomfortable with the book -- but it's always easy to be a backseat driver in situations like this.

Anyway, I'm glad that Karin Perry (the librarian) was able to schedule an off-campus event -- regardless of what happens at the school, Ellen Hopkins will speak at the Hillsboro Free Baptist College at 7:30 tonight.

____________________________________________________________________

Previously:

Just in time for Banned Books Week...

Just in time for Banned Books Week...

...Ellen Hopkins' planned visit to an OK middle school has been canceled due to a complaint from one parent.

Oh, and also?  Her books were pulled from the school library.

From her LiveJournal:

Because the school superintendent not only pulled the books for review, he CANCELED my author visit. Wouldn't even allow me to move to the high school. Seriously? What did that parent and he expect me to do? Go in with a live demonstration? Use the f-word? Talk about sex? I mean, you've got to be kidding. I've done hundreds of school visits. Pretty positive I've never corrupted a student. In fact, my talks inspire them. Arm them. Inform them.

(via LISNews)

Michael Rosen @ the Guardian.

From the interview:

What's the greatest threat to poetry today?

Comprehension questions in schools. Kids don't get the chance to get up and perform poetry, and enjoy it, because they're too busy counting adjectives and spotting metaphors.

Has poetry not always been taught like that?  (I'm asking seriously, not sarcastically.  I really would like to know.  I don't know anything about the history of poetry education.)

National Poetry Month.

Head over to Wild Rose Reader -- she's got some excellent roundups:

Week Two
Week Three

Also...

...I really want to read this book.

Wergle Flomp Humor Poetry Contest.

I love it.

(discovered via Kristopher's excellent post on writing scams at Guys Lit Wire)

I Heart You, You Haunt Me -- Lisa Schroeder

After the sudden death of Jackson, the boy she thought she'd spend the rest of her life with, Ava realizes that he isn't really gone.  He's with her.  Not just in her heart or in her memory or some other platitude-sounding version of "with her".  No, he's actually there.  In her house:

As I stand in the bathroom,
carefully lining my eyelids
bronze,
I feel a splash
of cool air.

I shiver.

I feel something.
Something behind me.
Something familiar.
Hauntingly familiar.

I glance behind me,
but I don't see
anything.
Or anyone.

And then,
when I look in the mirror
again,
I see,
for just a split second,
not just me,
but someone else.

Jackson.

What follows is kind of the YA verse novel version of Truly, Madly, Deeply, minus Alan Rickman's amazingly obnoxious ghost buddies.  Ava and Jackson both need to let go -- Ava of Jacksonand of her own guilt about his death, and Jackson, more simply, of Ava. 

Ava needs to find a way to embrace life again.  But how is that possible when her dead boyfriend comes to her every night in her dreams?

For the most part, I enjoyed I Heart You.  It didn't hold any surprises, and it occasionally felt VERY Stereotypical Teenage Girl Poet*, but the lack of surprises didn't particularly bother me and the STGP aspect makes sense as the narrator is, um, a teenage girl.

_______________________________________________________________

*Remember the Veronica Mars episode where she infiltrated what she thought was a cult by writing Angsty Poetry with a purple pen?  Yeah, poetry like that.

Happy Halloween!

This made my day.

Scroll down to listen to 'Quaaludes Again'.

Album here and here.

(Thanks to Fuse for the link!)

See? Book trailers can be good!

Christopher Myers does Jabberwocky.

I haven't been up on the picture books for a long, long time, but this one sounds fantastically fantabulous -- I'm sure you'll feel the same way if you give Jules' review at Guys Lit Wire a read.

Children's Poetry & Limerick Visualizations

This is extremely cool, but it would be ever so much more so if we could play with it.

(via Bookslut)

Playground song study.

From the Guardian:

The new lottery scheme will be organised by Malcolm Taylor, an expert in colloquial rhyme from the English Folkdance and Song Society, founded in 1911 by folklore revivalist Cecil Sharp. The project aims to encourage creativity and monitor the way in which songs have altered down the ages. Next year Taylor plans to return some of the society's archive recordings to the areas of Britain where they were originally made.

How cool would it be to be an "expert in colloquial rhyme"?  Pretty dang cool.

Still searching for my copy of Greasy Grimy Gopher Guts.  It's got to be around here somewhere.

Heaven Looks a Lot Like the Mall -- Wendy Mass

After being hit in the head during a gym class game of dodgeball, 16-year-old Tessa finds herself soaring towards Heaven... and ends up at the mall.

After being lead to the the Lost and Found, she is left to confront her memories and relive significant moments in her life, which will hopefully lead her to a Big Answer -- except that she's not really sure what the question is.

Heaven Looks a Lot Like the Mall is a verse novel.  It begins:

For fifty cents and a Gobstopper
I lifted my shirt for the neighborhood boys.
My older brother Matt caught us
and chased the boys with a Wiffle bat.
Word got around, and at nine years old
I became the girl
other girls' moms
didn't want them to play with.

Like some other verse novels I've read, this book felt less like poetry to me and more like prose with a lot of extra line breaks.  That isn't to say that I didn't enjoy it -- but I felt it was worth mentioning.  I could imagine the book working just as well as a connected sequence of short stories or even vignettes.

I really enjoyed Tessa as a character.  She's far from perfect, but that makes her more real, and I do think that most teens will find that they identify with at least a part of her.  I also felt that Tessa's memory sequences were strong.  (Especially those involving Ben -- the moment under the bleachers and the scene in the elevator both really worked for me.)  They ranged from momentarily joyful to downright heartbreaking:

Just because Mom had, like a million
friends when she was my age
because she competed in pageants
(a concept that makes me shiver
just thinking about it) she thinks
there's something wrong with me
because I only have three real friends,
and they each have more
important friends than me.

I found myself less interested, less involved and less invested with the actual Heaven part of the book.  Once the "Is it all a dream?  Am I dead or aren't I?" questions started, I felt that I knew exactly where that angle of the story was going and just... lost interest.  For me, that made her revelations anticlimactic, because, well, I've already read A Christmas Carol and I've already seen It's a Wonderful Life.  I knew where it was going.  I think, though, that the same aspect of the book that didn't work for me might make it a comfort read for others.

Again, her life story always held me and kept me curious -- and that makes up the majority of the book.  My feelings about it as a whole are mixed, but more positive than negative. 

Get ready to swoon.

Seriously.

I almost fainted.

(via Ed)

LitRock.

Lyrics here.

Edwin Arlington Robinson poem here.

What My Girlfriend Doesn't Know -- Sonya Sones

This is the sequel to What My Mother Doesn't Know.  I'm not going to give you a synopsis of the first book because, honestly, you should just read it.  It's one of my faves.

Like its predecessor, What My Girlfriend Doesn't Know is a verse novel.  It picks up during the cafeteria scene, just before the first book ended, and, as you may have deduced from the title, this time we get Robin's perspective. 

When Sophie made her choice to publicly date the school outcast, she also made a choice to become a school outcast.  While Robin is deliriously happy about his relationship with Sophie, he does wonder if it's all worth it.  Especially when he sees how miserable she is when her friends dump her. 

Then, when Robin begins an art class at Harvard, where no one knows his reputation (or his age), he discovers that he has his own choice to make:  Stay with his beloved Sophie and deal with all of the strife that comes with their relationship, or end it and spend his time outside of high school with friendly, smart, cool college kids -- including a very attractive redhead named Tessa.

My reaction to the book is an immature one:  I liked it better when Robin Murphy was perfect.

I can't help it.  I'm a big baby, possibly overly romantic and newly anti-realism*, but it's true.  I loved Robin and Sophie's perfect winter vacation, and the first book made me so very happy.  Having to deal with the repercussions of The Big Moment at the end of the first book was almost too hard for me.

That isn't to say that it wasn't good -- if it hadn't been, it sure wouldn't have evoked that kind of reaction in me.  And I still love Robin and Sophie.

Oh, hell.  I'm going to go and re-read the first book again.

*I blame my newfound love of Georgette Heyer's romance novels.

Poetry Friday.

Staff Meetings.

Repetitive and
unhelpful:  I want to stab
myself with a fork.

Feel free to jump in here -- write a haiku about something work related that you HATE.

Poetry Friday.

I don't usually participate in Poetry Friday because:

A) I always forget and
B) I'm a big loser.

But this week, I am, because:

A) I don't have it in me to write up a book today, even though I have a huge pile of just-reads and
B) I feel like being a joiner this week and
C) I was inspired by the subject of this week's t-shirt.

So, my Leave it to Psmith haiku is:

flowerpot missiles
lemon yellow pajamas
monocled dreamboat

It might be time to bring back the haiku contest, if only occasionally.

Fragile Things -- Neil Gaiman

The highlights (for me):

The Introduction -- normally, I'm not a big fan of introductions.  I like to just dive in.  This one, however, gave a bit of background about the writing of each piece (where, why, when) and I found myself turning back to it again and again.

"A Study in Emerald" -- A Sherlock Holmes story set in the world of H. P. Lovecraft.  Loved it so much I've been babbling about it to everyone who will listen regardless of whether they A) are interested or B) know who H. P. Lovecraft is.  Loved it so much I immediately ILLed Shadows over Baker Street, the collection it originally appeared in.  I'm waiting with bated breath.  (Or I would be, if I wasn't busy obsessively playing Okami.)

"October in the Chair" -- Neil Gaiman dedicated this one to Ray Bradbury for a reason.

"Forbidden Brides of the Faceless Slaves in the Secret House of the Night of Dread Desire" -- It just made me laugh a whole lot.

"Closing Time" -- I'd read this one before, and I knew I'd read it before, but I happily read it again.  There's a recommendation for ya.

"Bitter Grounds" -- Creepy.  Zombies.  Good.

"Other People" -- Made me think of Fredric Brown.

"Keepsakes and Treasures" -- Had a noir-y, crime-y feel.  I dug it.  And one of the characters popped up in a later story, which I always enjoy.

"Harlequin Valentine" -- This one just made me happy.

"The Problem of Susan" -- Neil Gaiman on Narnia.  This one's a must read for anyone who enjoys the occasional Pullman-rant re: C. S. Lewis.  It'd also be a good one for those who think Pullman maybe should calm down a little bit.  And it's a good one for people who are interested in All Things Narnia.  It's just good, period, okay?

"Feeders and Eaters" -- Another one that made me think of Bradbury.

"Sunbird" -- An epicurean club and the Phoenix.  Rad.

"The Monarch of the Glen" -- A story about Shadow, two years after the events chronicled in American Gods.  It made me miss him.  Also, Grendel's mom is cool.

Poetry Friday.

From The Cremation of Sam McGee:

There are strange things done
in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights
have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee.

Full text here.

And in case you weren't aware, Kids Can Press recently released a 20th anniversary edition of The Cremation of Sam McGee with Ted Harrison's paintings*.  I've had it for about a week and I've paged through it at least once a day.  It's well worth a look, both for the fabulously vibrant artwork of Ted Harrison and as an introduction to Service (if you aren't already acquainted).  Love it.

*Check this out.  Rad, right?

The Raven -- Edgar Allan Poe, illustrations by Ryan Price

Okay.  Everyone has at least one grown-up friend who was over the moon about Tony DiTerlizzi's unbelievably fantastic illustrations for The Spider and the Fly, right?*

Well, I just did you a favor and found them the perfect gift.

Ryan Price's illustrations are dark and creepy and Gothic and FUNNY.  Framed pictures of shovels and holes hang on the wall.  Skulls abound. 

Visually, Ryan Price suggests that the narrator was somehow responsible for Lenore's death.  His limbs are elongated and his shadow is distinctly bird-like.  The collar-and-tie-wearing, umbrella-carrying raven is a manifestation of his own guilt.

Brilliant.  Fab.  Love it so much I've emailed people about it.  I've been showing it to patrons, who always want to check it out and are sad and disappointed (and probably somewhat taken aback) when I cackle wildly and say, "NO. It's MINE."

*If not, you need a few more friends.  Work on that.

Poetry Friday.

This is a tad creepy.

But that's fitting, as it's Shel Silverstein related.

Robert Frost poem discovered.

From the Guardian:

Robert Stilling, a graduate student at the University of Virginia, was browsing through correspondence relating to Frost in the university library when he came across a 1947 letter from another of the writer's close friends, Frederick Melcher. It referred to an "unpublished poem about the war" which Frost had written on an inside page of a book held by Melcher.

A haiku contest with an ACTUAL PRIZE.

Of course, it isn't HERE.

(via Bookglutton)

Hugging the Rock -- Susan Taylor Brown

Hugging the Rock is a nice little story that deals with a mother leaving, mental illness and family dynamics.

You think I'm being sarcastic, but I'm really not.  It really IS a nice little story.

While Susan Taylor Brown certainly explores Rachel's feelings about being deserted by her mother, the real focus is on her relationship with her father.  As their connection grows and strengthens, it turns into a warmfuzzy book.  (Without being mushy, which is KEY.)

It's a verse novel, and while I do think it falls into the category of verse-novels-that-really-are-mostly-just-prose-with-lots-of-line-breaks, it's still a good one for the 8-12-year-old set.

Summer Reading Haiku Results & New Topic.

I've been kicking myself all morning because I'd meant to write a haiku about the soul-destroying Grapes of Wrath, but I procrastinated.  Too late now.  Sad.

Anyhoo, the winners:

MotherReader and CC got me with their Haiku Conversation about The Book Thief (Glad to know I'm not alone -- I haven't read it yet either, MR):

Five hundred pages
That is some big commitment
Is Book Thief worth it?

For MotherReader:
how many yeses are five
plus seven? oh, rats.

And Carrie Jones' Danielle Steele mention just cracked me up:

No, Mom. I cannot
Read one more Danielle Steele book.
I'm sick of lusting.

As I spent the better part of an hour gleefully jumping around the library after reading this news (more about the news that there's going to be another movie than the whole Heath Ledger thing, but whatever), your new topic is:  Batman. 

Mine is:

Hated George Clooney
for Batman and Robin, but
not really his fault.

Poetry Friday.

Edward Lear never fails to make me laugh:

There was a Young Person of Smyrna,
Whose Grandmother threatened to burn her;
But she seized on the cat,
And said, 'Granny, burn that!
You incongruous Old Woman of Smyrna!'

Poetry Friday.

They're baaaack:

It is your trump,
It is your hateful little trump,
You pointed fiend,
Which shakes my sudden blood to hatred of you:
It is your small, high, hateful bugle in my ear.

A Bad Boy Can Be Good for a Girl -- Tanya Lee Stone

You know those parents who get all freaked out by the very, very (veryveryvery) gentle and nice sensuality in What My Mother Doesn't Know?  Yeah, don't give them this one.

Whew.  A Bad Boy Can Be Good for a Girl is STEAMY.  Steamy and excellent.

It's a verse novel, told from the perspective of three different girls who are duped by the same Bad Boy.  The girls, Josie, Nicolette and Aviva, all make very different choices in regards to how they handle the unnamed senior. 

A copy of Judy Blume's Forever figures in heavily:

If would be nice
if there was some manual
some little book where a girl could look up
what to do
what not to do
and who not to do it with.

I'm not sure how Stone managed to seamlessly blend a celebration of young love and sexuality with a warning about the dangers of Bad Boys -- but she did it, and did it well.  Highly recommended for fans of verse novels, teen romances and high school stories.

Poetry Friday.

Not a poem, but a POET.  And Elmo.

Also, Google Shakespeare was unveiled yesterday.  It's rather cool.

Metamorphoses -- Ovid, Translation by Charles MartinIntroduction/Translator’s Note/Book One

I supposedly read Ovid’s Metamorphoses in college, but the truth is that I just read bits and pieces and skated by on my memories of Roman mythology from 6th grade.  (I did just fine, which says something a little sad about the class.)  After reading The Lightning Thief and Sea of Monsters, I decided it was time to Go Back.

It’s a big-ish book, and I don’t want to spew about it all in one go, so I’m going to space out my posts.  This will probably end up reading more like notes than a review, so feel free to skip the whole thing.  (Not that you all feel obligated to read anything I blather about, I’m sure, but you know what I mean.)

Introduction:

I usually make it through introductions, but not without my eyeballs glazing over a few times.  This time, that didn’t happen. 

Bernard Knox’s introduction was engaging and readable – his comparison of three different translations (Ted Hughes, David Slavitt and Charles Martin) of the same passage was especially interesting.  (It was the passage about Diana turning Actaeon into a stag – I’m sorry, but I’ve never liked Diana. She’s just such a BITCH. He saw her by mistake! And don’t even get me started on her treatment of poor Callisto. Beware: My tendency to treat classic works as episodes of Days will probably be in full effect throughout.)

Note on the Translation:

Martin includes three of his own versions of the same passage discussed in the introduction, showing his own personal progression and how different the same few lines can be, even translated by the same person.  This is where my inherent nerdiness really starts shining through, because I found the whole thing fascinating.  And again, accessible and readable to someone without any Classics training.  So, Yay, You! Charles Martin.  Good job.

Book One:

Martin breaks the first book down into sections -- Proem; The creation; The four ages; War with the Giants; Lycaon’s feast; The great flood; Deucalion and Pyrrha; The second creation; Apollo and the Python; Apollo and Daphne; Jove and Io (1); Pan and Syrinx; Jove and Io (2); Phaethon

• I’ve always liked creation stories (maybe because they’re all so different but also kind of the same).  The first time (pre-Jove’s-flood), either “the framer of all things” created us “out of his own divine substance” OR Prometheus took up a “clod”, mixed it with water and molded it into the shape of the gods.  (Later, a race of men was created by Mother Earth out of the “gore” left over from the War with the Giants, but that was somewhat minor.)  The second time around, after everyone but Deucalion (Isn’t that Scales' real name in Dark Lord of Derkholm?) and Pyrrha bite it in the Flood, Themis tells them to chuck rocks behind them, so they do and the rocks transform into people.

This bit is from the first go-round:

And even though all other animals
lean forward and look down toward the ground
he gave to man a face that is uplifted,
and ordered him to stand erect and look
directly up into the vaulted heavens
and turn his countenance to meet the stars;
the earth, that saw so lately rude and formless,
was changed by taking on the shapes of men. (118-125)

• Pre-Jove’s-flood, man is described as “securely indolent” (140), which I especially liked.

• Again, very accessible to the layperson.  Ovid makes a lot of references to politics in his time -- which I know NOTHING about, I only know that because Knox mentioned it in his introduction -- but Metamorphoses can be read without any knowledge of them.  At least, this version can.  I don’t know about other translations, but it seems like the references would just act as inside joke on another level for people who know the history -- kind of like how Shakespeare in Love is hysterically funny for people who are very well-versed in their Shakespeare history.

• The gods are always excellent at prioritizing -- this is in response to Jove’s plan to wipe humans out and start over again:

Nevertheless, all of them were saddened
by the proposed destruction of the human race
and wondered what the future form of earth
could possibly be like, without men on it:
why, who would bring the incense to their altars? (339-343)

• In my notes, my only comment on the next passage was “Apollo = Jerk”:

“What are you doing with such manly arms,
lascivious boy?  That bow befits our brawn,
wherewith we deal out wounds to savage beasts
and other mortal foes, unerringly:
just now with our innumerable arrows
we managed to lay low the mighty Python,
whose pestilential belly covered acres!
Content yourself with kindling love affairs
With your wee torch—and don’t claim our glory! (634-642)

Dude.

A) Don’t mess with Cupid, because he’ll just make you miserable -- as evidenced by what happens next with Daphne -- although, as usual, the human involved had nothing to do with any of it and was just a victim in the whole thing. (But really, if I mention that every single time it happens, I’ll never stop typing.  So just assume that the human is getting a raw deal in pretty much every story.)

B) Jove doesn’t even (at least so far) talk about himself in the third person.  If Apollo was in a John Hughes movie, he would totally be James Spader’s character in Pretty in Pink.

• Again, I don’t know about other translations, but it seems like Martin is really playing Jove for laughs -- which is fine with me. His interaction with Io (up until he rapes her) is really funny -- he starts bragging about himself, trying to convince her to “come find some shade”, and he has to cut off his speech because she runs away in the middle of it.  Then, later, when he’s trying to convince Juno to turn Io back into a woman (she turned her into a cow – you know, because it was HER fault that Jove raped her, but whatever, I said I wasn’t going to do that anymore…), he says:

“In future,” he said, “put your fears aside:
never again will you have cause to worry—
about this one.” (1017-1019)

Poetry Friday.

I'd like to share some of Noel Bastable's brilliant poetry featured in E. Nesbit's The Story of the Treasure Seekers.  If you haven't read the book, you're missing out in a big, big way.  It's hysterically funny.

O Eloquence and what art thou?
    Ay what art thou? because we cried
    And everybody cried inside
    When they came out their eyes were red--
    And it was your doing Father said.

...

O Beetle how I weep to see
       Thee lying on thy poor back!
    It is so very sad indeed.
       You were so shiny and black.
    I wish you were alive again
    But Eliza says wishing it is nonsense and a shame.

More on the Grolier's new owner.

Just from the quotes from the new owner in the article, it sounds like the Grolier might be much more... inviting than it used to be.  The old owner terrified me.

Poetry Friday.

In honor of this week's debate about The Looking Glass Wars, obviously I had to go for Lewis Carroll's Jabberwocky: 

        'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
              Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
            All mimsy were the borogoves,
              And the mome raths outgrabe.

            'Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
              The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
            Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
              The frumious Bandersnatch!'

            He took his vorpal sword in hand:
              Long time the manxome foe he sought--
            So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
              And stood awhile in thought.

            And as in uffish thought he stood,
              The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
            Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
              And burbled as it came!

            One, two!  One, two!  And through and through
              The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
            He left it dead, and with its head
              He went galumphing back.

            'And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
              Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
            O frabjous day!  Callooh!  Callay!'
              He chortled in his joy.

            'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
              Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
            All mimsy were the borogoves,
              And the mome raths outgrabe.

Poetry Friday.

Okay, okay.  I'm in. 

To honor (dubiously, of course) the eight gazillion days of rain we've just had:

Rain

I opened my eyes
And looked up at the rain,
And it dripped in my head
And flowed into my brain,
And all that I hear as I lie in my bed
Is the slishity-slosh of the rain in my head.

I step very softly,
I walk very slow,
I can't do a handstand--
I might overflow,
So pardon the wild crazy thing I just said--
I'm just not the same since there's rain in my head.

Shel Silverstein

Rush Hour, Volume Three: Face -- Ed. Michael Cart

You'll find more of an explanation of Rush Hour here.

I was going to wait until I'd tracked down Volume Two... But I caved. 

Volume Three is much stronger than the first one -- obviously, I have no idea what V2 is like, but they've really hit their stride in this one:

David Yoo's "Turning Japanese":  His temp boss assumes that because he's Asian, he must be Japanese, he doesn't correct her, it turns into a whole big thing where she expects him to teach her Japanese:

Sharon was in her late forties.  She was extremely thin, with buggy eyes that made her resemble a grasshopper.  She was friendly in a way that was undeniably authentic but still sounded artificial.  It was probably her southern accent.  The fact that she assumed I was Japanese didn't help my impression of her.  I didn't bother clarifying that I was a Korean (albeit one born and raised in the States who can't speak Korean) the first time because at that moment it felt like less of a hassle to just let it slide.  She'd made only a few passing references to my "Japanese" heritage since then, and I figured her thinking this wasn't hurting anybody.  It had now been five months, and far too much time had passed for me to correct her because it would make me the asshole for leading her on the whole time. 

Lara M. Zeises' "Me and the Bean":  I've been meaning to read her for some time now.  This story pushed me right over the edge.  I must track her books down.

K. L. Going's "Samuel":  This one was rough.  But very, very good.  Made me realize that I need to bone up on my Bible knowledge, though.

Adrian Chamber's "The Scientific Approach":  Super short -- 4 pages -- loved it.  I will now finally read Postcards From No Man's Land.

There was also an excerpt from Grand & Humble, an essay about transsexuals called "The Wrong Body", an excerpt from a German novel that I MUST read, photos and drawings and a bunch of other pieces.  I'm so into this series.  Eclectic is an understatement.

They really should set up some kind of subscription package.  If that doesn't work due to changing release dates or whatever, maybe a standing order set-up: Sign-up and when a new one comes out, your credit card gets charged and the new volume is automatically shipped.  Or something. 

Volume Four, Reckless, is due out in June.  I'm especially looking forward to Bennett Madison's short story:  "Little Sisters Steal the Best Shit".

Mock The Giving Tree, I'll be your friend for life.

Everybody's been chattering about Fibs, but I prefer the Oddaptations.

Rush Hour, Volume One: Sin -- Ed. Michael Cart

Have any of you stumbled across Rush Hour?  Frankly, I'm a little horrified that it's taken me this long to find it.

From the Introduction:

Welcome to the first issue of Rush Hour, something new in publishing.  Neither a magazine nor a book, we're the best of both: a cutting-edge literary journal of contemporary voices that will be published twice each year.  Our contents are intended to be at once artful and risk-taking, innovative and--always--eclectic.  In this inaugural issue, for example, you'll find original art, stories, essays, poetry, and excerpts from forthcoming novels.  Though varied in form, each entry deals with a common theme: "Sin."

Like most multiple-author collections, this one is pretty uneven.  The age range bounces around considerably -- from, say, young teen to adult.  Granted, the Young Adult realm does encompass that age range, but it was a little jarring to find a pretty tame Joan Bauer story in the same book as a horrifically violent war story by Terry Davis.  It didn't bother me, particularly, but I'd imagine that it would make the audience hard to gauge for librarians and booksellers.  And parents.

Standouts:

Brock Cole's "A Life of Crime":  As it's a story by Brock Cole, I wasn't surprised to find that it made me feel squeamish and icky -- but he does it in such an understated way.  It is, after all, as story about some pretty serious repression.  Excellent.

Emma Donahue's "Good Deed":  A sort-of retelling of the Good Samaritan tale about a pretty self-absorbed Canadian businessman-yuppie-type.  I might have liked it particularly because I pictured the protagonist as someone I know (not very flattering for him), but I think it's a good one nonetheless.

Sonya Sones' "Massage":  It's Sonya Sones.  Need I say more?  It's much more... physical than most of her other work.

Gary Miller's "Gone Lonesome":  Brutal, but it made me want to read the rest of the book.

Elizabeth Lorde-Rollins' "The Terror Class":  A Harlem elementary school.

Alex Flinn's "Intrinsic Value":  Purely fantastic.  If I had to pick just one, this would probably be it.

There was also an excerpt from Chris Lynch's perfect Inexcusable. (This 'issue' of Rush Hour was published before the novel.) 

Regardless of my quibbles/worries about the series, I'm very definitely going to track down the other back issues, and I'm looking forward to Volume Four, due out in June.  It's just such a great idea.  I hope it'll be around for a long, long time.

Bronx Masquerade -- Nikki Grimes

A few pages in, I realized that I'd already read this.  But it's a good one, so I re-read it.

This passage will describe the book better than I can at this early (and sugar-deprived) hour:

Tyrone

The brotha's right.  I look around this class and nobody I see fits into the box I used to put them in.  Startin' with Mr. Ward.  I figured him for a lightweight do-gooder who would last about five minutes in this neighborhood.  But he stuck, and he got this poetry thing going.  He even reads his own stuff sometimes.  He's okay.

Devon's okay too.  I don't know how bright the other jocks are, but there's nothing dumb about this brotha.  Mr. Ward says you have to take people one at a time, check out what's in their head and heart before you judge.

Word.

I'm sure I've mentioned this before:  In college, I was going through a bunch of college-aged-angst-crap and had a heart-to-heart with a professor.  She said that sometimes she'd just look out at the classroom and wonder what was going on behind all of those faces.  (I think that was one of the things that made her such a great professor, actually.  She was big on empathy.  Also big on Chaucer.  It's a great combination.  God, I loved that class.  Anyway.) 

That's what Bronx Masquerade is all about.  A classroom of students dropping their daily masks through poetry.  It's a good one. 

The Haiku Year -- Tom Gilroy, Anna Grace, Jim McKay, Douglas A. Martin, Grant Lee Phillips, Rick Roth, Michael Stipe

Obviously I couldn't let the book just pass through my hands without commenting on it, right?

It's a fun little book.  As the poems are written by seven different people, they range from kind of emo/tortured (or maybe just matter-of-fact):

conversation hearts
i eat them without even
reading the words

to sweet (or again, maybe just matter-of-fact):

she scoops the popcorn
off her palm
with her tongue

to pissed off but funny:

Suspicious parents--
I'm just smiling at your kid
Fuck this shitty world

Like any other collection, some of the poems are better than others--but when they hit, they hit.  Some of them (the popcorn one really got me for some reason) made me see a perfect, brief picture.  There are a lot of urban images--not traditional, but still effective.  It isn't really a book to sit down and read straight though.  I just pick it up and flip through, stopping randomly and reading a page or two.

Customer reviews at Amazon seem to either love it or hate it:  Most of the people that disliked it either didn't like the fact that the haiku was 'Western Haiku' (Jeremy, you have company!) or the fact that some of the authors were celebrities.  Neither of those things bothered me.  I liked the different form.  If the book had been published by some huge company, I might have been annoyed about the rock star aspect.  (Crappy Jerry Seinfeld children's book, anyone?)  But it was put out by a small press, which made it seem more like a labor of love to me.  Or maybe I'm not being cynical enough.  Either way, I liked it.

More than the actual poems in the book, though, it was the idea that captured me.  The idea of seven friends getting together and sending each other a poem a day, on postcards, for an entire year.  That's what the book is made up of--the best of the thousands that they wrote.  The idea gets me, not just because it sounds like so much fun, but because it's just... nice.  It's a nice idea.  Finding good vintage postcards, using really tacky touristy ones, making your own.  Using the actual USPS instead of email, sending daily three line updates about your life.  For whatever reason (and however god awfully cheesy it sounds), it just captured my imagination.

Shakespeare Bats Cleanup -- Ron Koertge

Kevin Boland is a fantastic 14-year-old baseball player.  Until he gets mono.  His father, a writer, has always supported Kevin's sporty ways, but when the mono hits, he gives Kevin a notebook.  And look what happens:

Inquiring Minds Want to Know

Why am I writing down the middle
of the page?

It kind of looks like poetry, but no way
is it poetry.  It's just stuff.

So I tiptoe into the den and cop this book
of Dad's.

It feels weird smuggling something about
poetry up to my room like it's the new
Penthouse.

But I don't want Dad to know what I'm
doing yet.  Even though I'm not doing
anything.  Not really.

I'm just going to fool around a little,
see what's what poetry-wise.

It has the basic same theme as Love that Dog--a boy learning to appreciate poetry--but geared towards older boys.  I liked it more than anything else I've read by Koertge.  The book just seemed more genuine, less forced, than Koertge's other books.  Kevin's growth as a poet and his revelations about poetry felt real.  I especially liked this:

Poetry is richer, kind of, like chocolate
milk versus skim milk.  They're both
nourishing, but chocolate milk
is just better. 

heartbeat -- Sharon Creech

Eh.  It was worth the twenty minutes it took to read, but Love That Dog was still a million times better.

I liked parts of it.  Like Annie talking about her future sibling as "the alien" baby, but in an affectionate way.  I liked the parts about running, for the most part.  I liked the differentiation between running because you love to run vs. running to win.  Annie runs because she loves it--her friend Max runs because he wants to escape.

But overall, it was too sappy for me.  Also, it did that thing where the new life coming counteracts the Grandfather getting older and entering into dementia.  I'm just so OVER that as a theme. 

I miss poop-ku.

So here's one I thought of this morning:

Sad little brown log
All alone in the white bowl.
Oblivion awaits.

Lauren?  Steve?  Anyone?

On this day in 1956.

Sylvia Plath first met Ted Hughes in a London bar.  Of the meeting, she wrote:

"And then he kissed me bang smash on the mouth and ripped my hair band off, my lovely red hair band scarf which had weathered the sun and much love, and whose like I shall never again find, and my favorite silver earrings: hah, I shall keep, he barked. And when he kissed my neck I bit him long and hard on the cheek, and when we came out of the room, blood was running down his face."

Yikes.