So in browsing Kat and Paula‘s blogs, I learned about the From the Stacks Reading Challenge, being sponsored by Overdue Books. The idea is, between Nov. 1 and Jan. 30, to read five books that have been languishing in your collection collecting dust.

Readers and knitters alike enjoy adding to their stash, so the hardest part of the challenge is merely winnowing the list down to five. I personally am a huge fan of buying books at library book sales, particularly those that let you fill up a whole bag for $1.

I already convinced Jenn to join, so I guess I’d better get my butt in gear and post my own list:

1. King Lear, by William Shakespeare. I know, I know. It’s shameful that an English major managed to receive a B.A. without reading this classic. But I did read A Thousand Acres, Jane Smiley’s feminist retelling of the story, so my degree isn’t totally without merit. But this is my greatest English major guilt, so it’s time to assuage it.
2. Robinson Crusoe, by Daniel Defoe. Nope. Never read this one either. (For the record, while I was assigned Defoe’s Moll Flanders in college, I didn’t finish it. I don’t remember caring for it much, so my guess is that I sold it back to the college bookstore after the semester ended.)
3. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams. I meant to read it this summer but instead found other things more immediately compelling. (It may have something to do with the fact that our copy of the book is in a mostly-complete compendium of Adams’ work, which is tough to carry with me on the Metro.)
4. Silas Marner, by George Eliot. I’ve tried to read it before and just haven’t managed to get past a certain point. It’s such a short book that I really don’t think it should be as hard as I’ve made it out to be.
5. White Teeth, by Zadie Smith. This is another book that I’ve begun and put down a couple times over the past five years. It’s considered a modern classic, so I think it’s time to finish it off.

This endeavor will be made more challenging by the fact that I’m not doing a whole lot of reading during November or December as NaNoWriMo and holiday knitting are going to take up a lot of my time over the next six weeks.

I have a post-Election hangover (not at all related to extreme jubilation, immense amounts of candy corn, and a post 3 a.m. bedtime, I’m sure), so I’m going with a meme today.

Via Book Moot:

Do this…
1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the next four sentences on your blog along with these instructions.
5. Don’t you dare dig around for that “cool” or “intellectual” book on your shelves. (I know you were thinking about it.) Just pick up whatever is closest.

Even in the feeble streetlights, I could see, up and through that glorious haze, that I had never seen that woman before in my life. “Ain’t you Bertha’s boy? Got a brother name Freddy that married Dolley and Pritchard’s girl? You Bertha’s boy what went to Korea? Ain’t yall’s pastor Reverend Dr. Miller over at Shiloh Baptist?”

Taken from the title story of All Aunt Hagar’s Children: Stories, by Edward P. Jones. Jones is a Pulitzer Prize-winning author who lives and places his stories in D.C.

If you feel like playing, please do.

I don’t know how some people do it. They post every day and they include photos. How do you do it? I love how the photos look, but boy do I find prepping them tedious!

I’ve been sitting on a number of updates just because I couldn’t face the photo tweaking that accompanied them.

But laziness aside, I need to get this post out of draft format and move along. So here you go….

(more…)

I am late, late, late in posting about September reads. And really I have no excuses. Just laziness. And the fact that I can’t read, knit, watch baseball, and type simultaneously…

The Horse and His Boy, by C.S. Lewis

From the book jacket: “How a talking horse and a boy prince saved Narnia from invasion”

Why this book? The next book in the Narnia series.

My take: It becomes harder and harder to ignore Lewis’ biases as the books go on. In this one, he doesn’t like people of Middle Eastern descent. There’s a reason why the first one is so well known and the rest aren’t read as frequently. And I can see why I lost interest in them before this point when I was growing up.

Putting that aside for the moment, however, it was a stronger story than The Silver Chair, which preceded it in the series.

Pages: 217

The Lightning Thief, by Rick Riordan

From the book jacket: “Twelve-year-old Percy Jackson is about to be kicked out of boarding school . . . again. No matter how hard he tries, he can’t seem to stay out of trouble. But can he really stand by and watch while a bully picks on his scrawny best friend? Or not defend himself against his pre-algebra teacher when she turns into a monster and tries to kill him? Of course, no one believes Percy about the monster incident; he’s not even sure he believes it himself. Until the Minotaur chases him to summer camp….”

Why this book? I’d read great things about it all over the place, but particularly and repeatedly from Camille at Book Moot.

My take: Percy Jackson is a compelling Everyboy kind of character. He’s always in trouble. He and his step-father don’t get along. He doesn’t get good grades. He suffers from ADD. And then, after surviving a couple of harrowing attacks, he finds out (as every child hopes to one day) that he is more extraordinary than he ever could have hoped. And his real adventures begin.

Compelling, exciting, and both character- and plot-driven — exactly what a young adult novel should be. Exactly what any novel should be. I couldn’t put it down and can’t wait to read the next one. It deserved every bit of praise it received — and then some. Definitely a top-10 book for the year.

Pages: 377

The Magicians of Caprona, by Diana Wynne Jones

From the book jacket: “Tonino Montana often wished he had been born with an instinct for magic like his brother Paolo. Paolo had no trouble learning spells, or ordinary lessons for that matter, but Tonino was dismally slow at both…. Not that his family minded in the leeast; they had too many other worries anyway, because lately none of their spells seemed to have the old power. Something — or someone — was definitely sapping the strength of even the mighty charms set to defend the city, and if they gave, there would almost certainly be war.”

Why this book? Jenn suggested I might like the earlier books in this series. Since the library didn’t have them, I chose this one instead.

My take: How do the apparently non-magical function in a magical world? The answer would seem to be through strength of character and observances, although it’s never as simple as that, of course.

The book features warring magical clans, communicative cats, and an overabundance of Punch and Judy. If any of that sounds interesting, I’d recommend the book. And I was sufficiently intrigued by the wizard Chrestomanci, that I will seek out the other books featuring him that Jenn recomended.

Pages: 269

Knitting Rules! The Yarn Harlot’s Bag of Knitting Tricks, by Stephanie Pearl-McPhee

From the book jacket: “The Yarn Harlot spills her bag of knitting tricks. Essential survival skills, insider secrets, and undercover revelations for yarn enthusiasts of all levels and persuasions…”

Why this book? I read Stephanie’s blog every day and heartily enjoy her trials and tribulations in the knitting universe. I saw her last month and picked up a copy of the book for her to sign for me.

My take: Her book is just like her blog — witty, entertaining, and real. She relates funny stories, offers up basic “recipes” for how to create scarves, hats, shawls, and socks, and provides incentive for taking on that next scary project. And she makes you laugh while you’re reading, which is key.

Pages: 224

Total pages for the month of September: 1087

I know today is Wednesday. Which means tomorrow is Thursday. But I keep thinking that it will be Friday, which means it’s time to look ahead to the weekend, right?

Friday night, we head to RFK Stadium to see the Nationals take on the Mets. The Mets have been sucking it up recently, while the Nats seem to be on a bit of a tear. My Mets may have managed (eventually!) to clinch the NL East (which was one of those three beautiful things I knew I meant to include last Thursday, but couldn’t think of), but they seem to be concluding the regular season in a bit of a slump. My hope is that the Mets are just getting the rest of the season’s losing out of the way now so that we can enter the postseason ready to rock. I’m looking forward to the game.

Saturday is the National Book Festival. Lots of cool authors are going to be attending, from Doris Kearns Goodwin (a favorite!) to Poet Laureate Donald Hall, from Alexander McCall Smith to Kevin Clash (Elmo), and from Julia Glass to Louis Sachar. Each author has some main stage time — to read, to answer questions, to speak at large — as well as some time put aside to sign books. (It should be noted that poets get the raw end of the deal because unlike the rest of the authors, they are only allotted 30 minutes to sign their works.) So I figure I’ll be spending the day down at the Mall. Maybe I’ll lunch at the American Indian Museum. They have an excellent cafeteria.

Sunday is the farmers’ market, of course. But it also brings the annual Crafty Bastards fair to Adams Morgan. This is a festival sponsored by our alternative news weekly, The City Paper, and encourages the artistic amongst us to create … stuff … and sell it. Everyone there is very creative. But it’s a matter of finding the ones that you go, “Wow! That’s amazing. I wish I could make something similar. But lacking time/commitment/talent, let me give this person $20-$200 of my money instead in exchange for it.” There are plenty of crafters that make you think, “Wow! Why on God’s earth would you make that? And who would give you $20 for it? I’m not sure that I’d take it home even if you gave me $20.” The festival is supplemented by local food vendors and local musical acts. It’ll be a fun day and I’m looking forward to hitting up Woolarina‘s booth to buy some yarn for my Yarn Aboard II pal. I just have to get there before Lolly arrives. Since she is once again hosting Socktoberfest, I’m afraid she’s going to buy up everything I want.

Okay, I admit it. D.C. does offer a wealth of activities within a very constrained amount of space. I won’t have to drive to any of these events and that definitely wouldn’t have been true in Connecticut.

I’ll be away through the weekend and since Rudi’s mom doesn’t have a computer or Internet access, postings will be sporadic and dependent on finding public kiosks and spare time.

In the meantime, I leave you with three beautiful things from the last week:

1. The rain broke the heat and the weather has been beautiful. Today dawned sunny, with weather in the 70s.

2. Rudi has class on Wednesdays this fall, so I went to a political meeting alone last night. But because I was there by myself, our friend John offered me a ride home in his two-seater convertible.

3. Sunday night after Rudi went to bed, I picked up one of the library books I’d borrowed Saturday and started reading. At 4 a.m., I forced myself to put the book down and go to bed. Once I woke up (just shy of noon!), I started reading again. A bike ride to the zoo interrupted the reading for a while, but I came home and finished the book off before supper. It’s been a while since I found a book so compelling it required finishing in one fell swoop. (The book, you ask? The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan. It really did live up to the hype.)