Another Ad

OK. I know I usually post these on Sundays, but it's Dead Week dear readers, and so is my brain.

Vicarious Progress?

Question: I know that some people think that avid readers "read their lives away," living life vicariously through the characters in novels instead of experiencing their own lives, however promising or humdrum they may be. I don't agree.

However, I do notice in myself that, when I read books that might help make my life better, let's say a book about a spiritual practice such as meditation or personal reflection, I can easily read and read and keep reading about the spiritual topic, giving mental assent, and I begin to feel as if I'm growing in that area without actually ever practicing the spiritual discipline I'm reading about. Is it, I wonder, a form of spiritual procrastination? Assumed vicarious spiritual growth?

And more importantly, has anybody else noticed this in themselves? Comments, please.

Stealing from Jennifer

Jennifer posted this on her blog yesterday, and I just couldn't help myself. I had to repost it here. Isn't this just sad?

Anthology II

I'm gonna be a story teller tonight. Come join us, if you'd like:

Anthology Vol. 2
Type: Music/Arts - Listening Party
Date: Tuesday, April 27, 2010
Time: 7:30pm - 9:00pm
Location: The Underground Coffeehouse

Description: Anthology is a night of live storytelling.

Come live vicariously through people instead of computer screens.

The night's lineup includes:
Tyler Jones
Julie Harris
Jonathan McRay
Alex Ritchie
Stephanie Eddleman
Patrick Garner

Booking It--Earth Day

Last Thursday was Earth Day … what are you reading? Are your reading habits changing for the sake of the environment?

Well, I can't say that my reading habits have changed because of Earth Day, and I don't know that I've read anything lately that's applicable to Earth Day, so I guess I don't have much to say today. Sorry, guys. But I do use a reusable water bottle instead of buying all of those plastic ones. Doesn't that count for something?

Another Ad

Yep. That's how I dress when I mow the yard. Except I wear high heels.

Brain Dead

You know what steals creativity? Grading. My brain feels dead, my eyes are strained, and my back hurts up between my shoulder blades. So there.

I hope my brain revives sometime soon. Maybe then I'll have something interesting to say.

I'm trying, folks.

Orange Prize Short List

Here's the short list for this year's Orange Prize.The Orange Prize honors female writers of any nationality for the best full-length novel written in English:

The Very Thought of You, Rosie Alison

The Lacuna, Barbara Kingsolver

Black Water Rising, Attica Locke

Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel (it's already won the National Book Critic Circle Award and Man Booker Prize)

A Gate at the Stairs, Lorrie Moore

The White Woman on the Green Bicycle, Monique Roffey

Marilynne Robinson's Home, her sequel of sorts to her wonderful novel Gilead, was last year's winner.

I've read Gilead, and I've bought Home but haven't gotten around to reading it yet. But summer's coming! I think I may use this list as a guide for upcoming audiobooks, if the novels are available in that format.

What I'm Reading Now

"Wally Lamb's two previous novels, She's Come Undone and I Know This Much Is True, struck a chord with readers. They responded to the intensely introspective nature of the books, and to their lively narrative styles and biting humor. One critic called Wally Lamb a "modern-day Dostoyevsky," whose characters struggle not only with their respective pasts, but with a "mocking, sadistic God" in whom they don't believe but to whom they turn, nevertheless, in times of trouble (New York Times).

In his new novel, The Hour I First Believed, Lamb travels well beyond his earlier work and embodies in his fiction myth, psychology, family history stretching back many generations, and the questions of faith that lie at the heart of everyday life. The result is an extraordinary tour de force, at once a meditation on the human condition and an unflinching yet compassionate evocation of character.

When forty-seven-year-old high school teacher Caelum Quirk and his younger wife, Maureen, a school nurse, move to Littleton, Colorado, they both get jobs at Columbine High School. In April 1999, Caelum returns home to Three Rivers, Connecticut, to be with his aunt who has just had a stroke. But Maureen finds herself in the school library at Columbine, cowering in a cabinet and expecting to be killed, as two vengeful students go on a carefully premeditated, murderous rampage. Miraculously she survives, but at a cost: she is unable to recover from the trauma. Caelum and Maureen flee Colorado and return to an illusion of safety at the Quirk family farm in Three Rivers. But the effects of chaos are not so easily put right, and further tragedy ensues.

While Maureen fights to regain her sanity, Caelum discovers a cache of old diaries, letters, and newspaper clippings in an upstairs bedroom of his family's house. The colorful and intriguing story they recount spans five generations of Quirk family ancestors, from the Civil War era to Caelum's own troubled childhood. Piece by piece, Caelum reconstructs the lives of the women and men whose legacy he bears. Unimaginable secrets emerge; long-buried fear, anger, guilt, and grief rise to the surface.

As Caelum grapples with unexpected and confounding revelations from the past, he also struggles to fashion a future out of the ashes of tragedy. His personal quest for meaning and faith becomes a mythic journey that is at the same time quintessentially contemporary—and American.

The Hour I First Believed is a profound and heart-rending work of fiction. Wally Lamb proves himself a virtuoso storyteller, assembling a variety of voices and an ensemble of characters rich enough to evoke all of humanity."

Face-off

Isn't this an interesting picture? As soon as I saw it, I knew I'd have to post it here. In my Honors Human Situations class this semester, one of the things we've been talking about is the question/problem of the Self and how it's expressed through art. I wish I'd found this picture before I introduced that unit.