I went to the bimonthly (meaning every other, not 2x per) book club meeting at my local library tonight, having completed the assigned read, The Good Earth, Pearl Buck's classic novel. I read this one three weeks ago, when I was interviewing for a job at her home (I didn't get it, though I made it to the top two, so I guess I can tell y'all where the interview was now). It was a happy coincidence that the interview and the book club selection coincided.
The room was filled, as always, with women over 50. I always feel really out of place at these book clubs. I continue to go because it's virtually the only thing to do around here and because the librarians are so earnest and sincere about their book club that I can't help but want to support it. It's been hit-and-miss. There are times when I've gone and it's been great, and times when I've gone and it just pissed me off (like when they all hated Life of Pi -- too much fish-killing, they said. WTF?) Tonight was one of the good ones.
I did enjoy this book. It wasn't quite what I expected, but I liked how Buck kept us off balance. In the early parts of the book, you're rooting hard for Wang Lung and O-lan to make it. You're pleased when they succeed. Yet, slowly, you turn against Wang Lung. He seems to get selfish and arrogant, and he does some things that are a little creepy. Getting his aunt and uncle hooked on opium. Taking Lotus as a second wife, and basically forgetting O-lan, then forgetting Lotus too, and keeping her locked up in that court while she gets fat and old.
O-lan is harder to get a fix on. People tonight posited that she had just been so abused that her emotions shut down, or never even had a chance to develop, or that she was brainwashed by society. There's that hard practicality there, and not much else in some ways. Still, she got a horribly raw deal, and the part where Wang Lung takes her pearls to give to his second wife is just heartbreaking. We talked about this extensively tonight, since our group was all-female. I thought it was interesting that none of us (including myself) were sympathetic to Lotus, the second wife, although she too was sold into slavery (prostitution) at a young age, and probably abused as well.
Buck has a weird style in this book. I haven't read anything else by her, although I might now, so I don't know if it's always how she writes. But to me, it almost sounds a bit like the Bible. Each sentence sounds like a pronouncement. At this moment, I'm bitterly regretting returning my copy so I can't quote anything. But those who've read this book know what I'm talking about. It had the interesting effect of making the story seem as though it had implications far beyond the tale of Wang Lung, and that you, the reader, were supposed to go off and think about what each sentence means.
I'm a little surprised that this book is read widely in junior high and high schools. I'm curious to know how it's taught, and what kids think of it. Are there any teachers, or students, out there who can answer this for me?
Wednesday, February 7, 2007
Tuesday, February 6, 2007
Your Guide to Weird Shit in the Empire State
Have you ever insisted on eating at a particular place because it had a giant plaster chicken out front? Do you drive out to the middle of nowhere to photograph neon signs when you need to relax? Have you ever rearranged your commute just to drive by the haunted-looking house? If so, then Weird New York by Christ Gethard will help focus your travels through the Empire State. This book is part of the Weird US series. My fellow New Yorkers, you have a lot to be proud of!
This book is good for hours of amuseument. It covers every variety of weird shit. There are people, like the Witch of Wall Street, the Naked Cowboy, the Fox Sisters, and Albert Fish. There are properties with more personality than your average human, like the Doll Death House, the Poor Man's Penthouse (a small house atop a warehouse in Syracuse, hidden by a billboard), and the Land of Broken Dreams. There are roadside oddities like Nipper the Dog in Albany, and the Muffler Men of the Magic Forest amuseument park in Lake George. Haunted cemeteries, clawfoot people, incest villages, UFOs, abandoned mental hospitals -- it's all here, all that and more. This was a Christmas gift from my parents, and they complained of its distinct downstate focus, but there's good stuff all over.
The book is 258 pages long. I sincerely wish it was longer. I don't know much about the rest of the series, but if this book is any indication, it's a must-have for people who just drive around looking for weird nationwide.
This book is good for hours of amuseument. It covers every variety of weird shit. There are people, like the Witch of Wall Street, the Naked Cowboy, the Fox Sisters, and Albert Fish. There are properties with more personality than your average human, like the Doll Death House, the Poor Man's Penthouse (a small house atop a warehouse in Syracuse, hidden by a billboard), and the Land of Broken Dreams. There are roadside oddities like Nipper the Dog in Albany, and the Muffler Men of the Magic Forest amuseument park in Lake George. Haunted cemeteries, clawfoot people, incest villages, UFOs, abandoned mental hospitals -- it's all here, all that and more. This was a Christmas gift from my parents, and they complained of its distinct downstate focus, but there's good stuff all over.
The book is 258 pages long. I sincerely wish it was longer. I don't know much about the rest of the series, but if this book is any indication, it's a must-have for people who just drive around looking for weird nationwide.
Sunday, February 4, 2007
New Stuff on the Sidebar
Ever since I started these blogs, I've struggled with how to get more traffic to them. The only strategy I've been able to come up with is leaving comments on the blogs of others, thereby hopefully letting others know I exist. So once again, I laced up my boots, strapped on my pack, and began traversing the Great Interweb in search of comment-worthy blogs. I'm not going to be one of those "hey d00ds chek out this kewl site" assholes who comments on everything I see.
As always, I had to pan through a lot of silt to get the nuggets of gold. I always skip the blogs written in other languages (if I can't understand them, their readers won't understand me), the boring ones about money and software, the ones that look to be merely Adsense farms and those clearly intended for the poster's friends and family almost exclusively (what am I going to do, say "Hey, cute kids! Looks like you had fun at Disneyworld, strangers!" Ewwwww....creepy.) A lot of times I get pissed off and return to my humble abode. I guess today is no different in a way, but today I return bearing links. I found some good stuff out there, and I put it on the sidebar here and over at my other blog. Enjoy!
As always, I had to pan through a lot of silt to get the nuggets of gold. I always skip the blogs written in other languages (if I can't understand them, their readers won't understand me), the boring ones about money and software, the ones that look to be merely Adsense farms and those clearly intended for the poster's friends and family almost exclusively (what am I going to do, say "Hey, cute kids! Looks like you had fun at Disneyworld, strangers!" Ewwwww....creepy.) A lot of times I get pissed off and return to my humble abode. I guess today is no different in a way, but today I return bearing links. I found some good stuff out there, and I put it on the sidebar here and over at my other blog. Enjoy!
Saturday, February 3, 2007
In happier book news, a release date for HP7
I seriously doubt that any of you are hearing about this for the first time here (it's July of this year, in case you are) but I'm very excited about it! When Half-Blood Prince was released, I was doing my internship in western Massachusetts. I bought my copy at The Book Loft in Great Barrington and I went over at midnight to pick it up. It was a great event. They'd decorated the whole store. They had a picture frame covered in a black cloth, and an employee hid behind it and yelled shit at you when you went past. There was the Mirror of Erised and the seven vials of potion from the first book. There were dried willow branches all around and a sign to "Beware of the Whomping Willow." People came in costume. To get to the register, you had to walk through a black veil, like in the 5th book.
The best part, though, was that they had a dementor working the register. When I bought my book, he gave me a Hershey's kiss! How great is that?! People came in costume and lined up through the whole plaza. It was the best Harry Potter release event I've ever even heard of. I want to go back there this summer with my sister (although she doesn't know it yet) to get my copy. Does anyone else have a tale of a good HP release event?
Pictures from that night:
A family of uber-fans waits in line
At the entrance to the store
Hagrid, a dementor, and a Muggle, working late to get everyone their HP!
Dumbledore appeases the fans
The best part, though, was that they had a dementor working the register. When I bought my book, he gave me a Hershey's kiss! How great is that?! People came in costume and lined up through the whole plaza. It was the best Harry Potter release event I've ever even heard of. I want to go back there this summer with my sister (although she doesn't know it yet) to get my copy. Does anyone else have a tale of a good HP release event?
Pictures from that night:
A family of uber-fans waits in line
At the entrance to the store
Hagrid, a dementor, and a Muggle, working late to get everyone their HP!
Dumbledore appeases the fans
Thursday, February 1, 2007
Rest in Peace, Molly Ivins
A while back, I had been wondering what had happened to my favorite columnist, and why her columns hadn't been on Working For Change much. I've been following Molly Ivins' columns faithfully ever since I was a teenager, so I knew of her struggles with breast cancer. I had feared the worst back then. Today I found out I was right: Molly Ivins passed away today at the age of only 62.
Liberals loved Molly Ivins' columns for her effective juxtaposition of humor and ass-kicking fury. Conservatives probably frothed at the mouth -- I know I've read more than one angry letter to the editor after one of her columns. Ivins lost her fiance during the Vietnam War and has been a virulent opponent of war and violence of all stripes ever since, from Gulf War I to the war on Iraq, even extending to the assault on Waco and the so-called "War on Drugs" (which, as she so astutely pointed out, was really just an extension of the Cold War by people who just couldn't seem to stop fighting the damn thing). In her columns, she envisioned a governement that was less corrupt, that served all people equally, and that was run for the people and not for big business.
Yet she never failed to charge each of her readers with the responsibility of making that happen. She reminded us over and over again that a democracy needs an involved citizenship. She was always encouraging us to get off our asses for one reason or another, whether it was to vote, to protest, to write letters to our elected officials, to run for office ourselves, to get involved with campaigning, or to encourage others to do the same.
In her memory tonight, I'd like to encourage all of my readers to do the same. Even the conservative ones are invited to celebrate the life of a great American voice. Is there something about our government or our society that's been pissing you off? I invite you, for Molly, to do something about it in the next few days. Write an elected official. Write to the newspaper. Join an organization dedicated to fighting the thing that's pissing you off. It doesn't have to be anything huge. If it aggravates the absolute hell out of you that there's no stoplight STILL at the dangerous intersection in town, go out and get a bunch of your neighbors together and show up at a town board meeting. Get involved. Be one of the good ones. And come here and tell me about what you do.
Liberals loved Molly Ivins' columns for her effective juxtaposition of humor and ass-kicking fury. Conservatives probably frothed at the mouth -- I know I've read more than one angry letter to the editor after one of her columns. Ivins lost her fiance during the Vietnam War and has been a virulent opponent of war and violence of all stripes ever since, from Gulf War I to the war on Iraq, even extending to the assault on Waco and the so-called "War on Drugs" (which, as she so astutely pointed out, was really just an extension of the Cold War by people who just couldn't seem to stop fighting the damn thing). In her columns, she envisioned a governement that was less corrupt, that served all people equally, and that was run for the people and not for big business.
Yet she never failed to charge each of her readers with the responsibility of making that happen. She reminded us over and over again that a democracy needs an involved citizenship. She was always encouraging us to get off our asses for one reason or another, whether it was to vote, to protest, to write letters to our elected officials, to run for office ourselves, to get involved with campaigning, or to encourage others to do the same.
In her memory tonight, I'd like to encourage all of my readers to do the same. Even the conservative ones are invited to celebrate the life of a great American voice. Is there something about our government or our society that's been pissing you off? I invite you, for Molly, to do something about it in the next few days. Write an elected official. Write to the newspaper. Join an organization dedicated to fighting the thing that's pissing you off. It doesn't have to be anything huge. If it aggravates the absolute hell out of you that there's no stoplight STILL at the dangerous intersection in town, go out and get a bunch of your neighbors together and show up at a town board meeting. Get involved. Be one of the good ones. And come here and tell me about what you do.
Thursday, January 25, 2007
Wintertime Can Only Mean One Thing...
...as the temperature drops five degrees every hour and the weatherman is actually issuing a windchill warning, there's only one thing to do: get some fuzzy slippers, some nice warm cocoa, and a girly book. That's right, it's Chick Lit time once again! Last year's winter chick lit bender lasted for nearly three months. I read the collected works of Jennifer Weiner, Candace Bushnell, Janet Evanovich, Sandra Dallas and Plum Sykes. I went to the Utica Public Library and tried some ethnic chick lit. If it has shoes and a pink cover, I checked it out. In fact, I think one of the books I got was actually called "Pink".
This year, though, I'm trying to read through some of what I have here. I don't have much chick lit, but I do believe Big Stone Gap by Adriana Trigiani qualifies. The book follows the fortunes of Ave Maria, a 35-year old small-town pharmacist who's never been married and recently lost her mother. She leads a settled life among good friends as a pillar of her community when she receives a shock following her mother's death: the man she always thought was her father was not.
An author like Plum Sykes would have been much less subtle about the effect this has on her main character. She would've done something like make her new father be a multimillionaire, move Ave Maria out of the mountains and into New York, where she meets her half-brother who introduces her to a prince. No shit. But Trigiani explores this in a much more realistic way. Ave Maria's father does not make his appearance until nearly the end of the book. The only direct effect this revelation has on her life is that it forces her to sell off her home and her business (ceremonially, for a dollar) in order to keep them out of the clutches of her scheming aunt. What the revelation really does is force her to take a fresh look at her life, and that of her parents, and assess where she's been and where she wants to end up.
The best part of a book like this is the characters, and they're all here. There's the Crusty Old Broad, the Friendly Wise Slut, the Best Friend, the Prince Charming. She does give several of them a little twist: instead of being a woman, the Best Friend is a man and Ave Maria is in love with him. The Prince Charming acts like an asshole for a good portion of the book and is seeing another woman at the beginning of the book. The Friendly Wise Slut is the town librarian -- a stereotype I definitely enjoyed seeing reversed.
It was also nice to see an unmarried woman relatively content with her choices. Although she does choose marriage by the end of the book, of course, she's hardly sitting home pining. She directs the town pageant, she's on the rescue squad, she owns her own business and mentors a young person. Trigiani makes Ave Maria much more complex than many authors would have.
Apparently, this is a series. I do believe it has me hooked. It's not great literature, but it is great fun. And that's what we Chicks expect out of our Lit.
This year, though, I'm trying to read through some of what I have here. I don't have much chick lit, but I do believe Big Stone Gap by Adriana Trigiani qualifies. The book follows the fortunes of Ave Maria, a 35-year old small-town pharmacist who's never been married and recently lost her mother. She leads a settled life among good friends as a pillar of her community when she receives a shock following her mother's death: the man she always thought was her father was not.
An author like Plum Sykes would have been much less subtle about the effect this has on her main character. She would've done something like make her new father be a multimillionaire, move Ave Maria out of the mountains and into New York, where she meets her half-brother who introduces her to a prince. No shit. But Trigiani explores this in a much more realistic way. Ave Maria's father does not make his appearance until nearly the end of the book. The only direct effect this revelation has on her life is that it forces her to sell off her home and her business (ceremonially, for a dollar) in order to keep them out of the clutches of her scheming aunt. What the revelation really does is force her to take a fresh look at her life, and that of her parents, and assess where she's been and where she wants to end up.
The best part of a book like this is the characters, and they're all here. There's the Crusty Old Broad, the Friendly Wise Slut, the Best Friend, the Prince Charming. She does give several of them a little twist: instead of being a woman, the Best Friend is a man and Ave Maria is in love with him. The Prince Charming acts like an asshole for a good portion of the book and is seeing another woman at the beginning of the book. The Friendly Wise Slut is the town librarian -- a stereotype I definitely enjoyed seeing reversed.
It was also nice to see an unmarried woman relatively content with her choices. Although she does choose marriage by the end of the book, of course, she's hardly sitting home pining. She directs the town pageant, she's on the rescue squad, she owns her own business and mentors a young person. Trigiani makes Ave Maria much more complex than many authors would have.
Apparently, this is a series. I do believe it has me hooked. It's not great literature, but it is great fun. And that's what we Chicks expect out of our Lit.
Wednesday, January 24, 2007
Blog II
Today, I visited Craigslist and was inspired. Surprising, because although I spend a fair amount of time on there, it doesn't usually inspire me to do to much. There was this guy on there who said that he took pictures of stuff on his way to work. I love taking pictures of stuff, and seeing other people's pictures, so I started my own blog which can be found here. Bear with me, as I'm still working on picking the colors, filling out the links section, and just generally making it as kick-ass as this one (HA!). But I hope you like it. Like I said on there, I know I'm not an expert photographer. But I do enjoy it, and I hope you enjoy seeing some of my pictures, too.
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