Spring Reading Thing Wrap Up

What was the best book you read this spring?
- That is a hard question because I have read a lot of good books this spring. My favourite would have to be 28: Stories of AIDs in Africa by Stephanie Nolen, but I read a lot of good fantasy, historical fiction, and non-fiction this spring. For the Spring Reading Thing, I really enjoyed Never Have Your Dog Stuffed by Alan Alda and Helpless by Barbara Gowdy.

What book could you have done without?
- Sounder, even if it won a Newberry, it did not do a lot for me. Speak, I heard a lot of good things about this book, but when it came time to read it I was not really impressed.

Did you try out a new author this spring? If so, which one, and will you be reading that author again?
- I tried a lot of new authors this spring. The problem with me is that I do not read enough old favourites and they pile up! Some new ones: Tracy Hickman, Jim Butcher, Raymond Feist, Alan Alda, Kelley Armstrong, etc.

If there were books you didn't finish, tell us why. Did you run out of time? Realize those books weren't worth it?
- No DNFs so far this year! I am doing great in that respect!

Did you come across a book or two on other participants' lists that you're planning to add to your own to-be-read pile? Which ones?
- Oh, probably. I am always adding books to my list. I need to start writing down where they come from.

What did you learn -- about anything -- through this challenge? Maybe you learned something about yourself or your reading style, maybe you learned not to pick so many nonfiction books for a challenge, maybe you learned something from a book you read. Whatever it is, share!
- I learned that now that I am not in university reading school books all the time, my level of reading non-fiction books for fun has increased, but my overall reading each month has not changed yet. I am still hopeful...

What was the best part of the Spring Reading Thing?
- Reading five books that have been on the TBR pile for longer than I wanted them to be!

Would you be interested in participating in another reading challenge this fall?
- I am not sure. I would have to see what the challenge was all about and determine if I am joining any others. I cannot seem to do very many at the same time because I get bored and like variety in my reading. If it was as flexible, probably.

Any other thoughts, impressions, or comments.
- Not at the moment. Just, glad that I joined in! If anything I discovered a lot of new blogs through this experience. That's one of the best things about reading challenges.

The Extra Large Medium by Helen Slavin

Books Completed: 55
Completion Date: April 5, 2007
Publication Year: 2006
Pages: 240
Received prior to 2007

In this delightful debut novel, Helen Slavin takes the ghost story into a new dimension. Ever since she was a child, Annie Colville has been talking to the dead. She knows they’re dead because for some reason they’re always dressed in chocolate brown. But Annie’s grown up now, and things are getting serious. Especially after she falls for and marries Evan Bees. It’s hard enough to lose someone you love; but what if you know they could come back to you? And they just . . . don’t? During her long wait for her missing husband to come back to her, in chocolate brown or not, Annie searches through her mother’s vast collection of lovers for the other missing man in her life — her father — and struggles with the questions her gift asks of her. Quirky, irreverent, moving and a little bit spooky, The Extra Large Medium will charm you completely — even as it’s raising the hairs on the back of your neck.

I feel bad that it took me so long to read this book. I received it from a fellow blogger last year for Buy a Friend a Book Week and had the best intentions to read it, but other books kept getting in the way. The Spring Reading Thing offered me the chance to move the book up the reading pile. I was glad I did that because it was an interesting read.

Mediums are something that has interest in society over and over again. There are the skeptics that think that they are crazy and then there are the believers who seek them out to help them out of rough points in their life or because they still have need of their loved ones after they are gone. Anne was an interesting character. She was aware of her power, but she did try to ignore it for a while and lead a normal life, but her true character seemed to follow her no matter how hard she tried to ignore it. The Medium ability appeared to run in the family because one of her relatives was The Extra Large Medium that the title mentions. It is him that she follows in the path of.

One of my favourite parts of this book is when Anne points out the fakes. The "mediums" that are not really communicating with afterlife or anyone in the room, but are just picking common names that suggest to people in the room that it is them that they are speaking to. Overall, it was a very different sort of read. I am not sure that I would have bought myself, so I am glad that I received it from another blogger. I had been looking for something different, and it is the first time that I had read a book where a Medium was the main character.

4/5

Helpless by Barbara Gowdy

Books Completed: 54
Completion Date: April 4, 2007
Publication Year: 2007
Pages: 320
Receieved from Harper Collins in 2007
Counts as both Spring Reading Thing and O'Canada Challenge Read

Helpless is Barbara Gowdy's brilliant new novel, a provocative, gripping story of an unthinkable act and a mother's heroic love for her child.

Rachel is an uncommonly beautiful young girl. With her tawny skin, pale blue eyes and chromium-blond hair, she is a cherished gift to her mother, Celia. Celia is a single parent holding down two jobs. All too aware of her own precarious equilibrium, she worries about Rachel's innocent longing for her unknown father.

When a blackout plunges the city into darkness and confusion, Rachel is snatched away. Celia, numb with terror and guilt about the choices she has made, confronts the reality of every mother's worst nightmare. The media coverage is tremendous. Closely monitoring it is Ron, a small-appliance repairman with a rare collection of vintage vacuums in his basement. Though Rachel is a stranger to him, he feels oddly connected to her, as though she is his responsibility. His feelings for her are, at once, tender, misguided and chillingly possessive.

Tapping into the fear and tension just below the surface of contemporary city life, Gowdy's clear-eyed prose artfully urges us to consider what we dare not look at too closely. With her uncanny ability to lay bare our common soul and to fearlessly explore the intricate complexities of love, Gowdy has created a masterful novel.

This is one of my favourite Canadian authors, so I always try and get her new books when they come out. The first time I read her was a couple years ago when I saw The White Bone in a second hand bookstore. I thought it was interesting that it was about an elephant, with her thoughts and impressions. Not the sort of novel that I usually see, so I thought I would read it for something different. My favourite book by her, though, is The Romantic. I really must reread it one of these days.

Anyways, this book was typical Gowdy writing, but it still did not beat The Romantic for me. It is about a very serious topic, child molestors and pedophiles. This is a topic that is seen in the news again and again, so it was a very real subject matter. Gowdy often writes very realistic child characters in her books, so this was not an exception. It was interesting to see things from the pedophiles point of view, from the childs point of view, and from the mother's point of view. It was very plausible that how the man talked himself into things is how it is done in real society. He made excuses for what he was doing the whole time that he was doing it.

It was nice to see a new novel by Gowdy, and while it was a very quick read, it was very interesting. Ron is creepy, but at the same time I feel a little bad for him. You can feel both disgust and sympathy at the same time. Rachel is a cute kid, and it was interesting to see how she justified everything that was happening to her. Overall, a good new novel from Barbara Gowdy. I look forward to a new one, but I am sure that will be a while yet.

4/5

My thanks to Harper Collins for this wonderful new book.

2007 Spring Reading Thing

As of right now, I have finished all the books that I wanted to read for this challenge. I made a list of 20, and I only had to read 5. If I read more books off the list, fine, if I do not then it does not matter.

The Five Books Were:
1. Never Have Your Dog Stuffed by Alan Alda
2. The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood
3. Mr. Darcy's Diary by Amanda Grange
4. Helpless by Barbara Gowdy
5. The Extra Large Medium by Helen Slavin

The rest of the reviews are forth-coming, but it was nice to clean off the TBR pile even that little bit. I might read more of the books on the original list, we will have to see.

The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood

Books Completed: 46
Completion Date: March 2007
Publication Year: 2006
Pages:
Received from Random House prior to 2007.
Part of The Myths series

This book counts for both The Spring Reading Thing and The O'Canada Challenge.

The internationally acclaimed Myths series brings together some of the finest writers of our time to provide a contemporary take on some of our most enduring stories. Here, the timeless and universal tales that reflect and shape our lives–mirroring our fears and desires, helping us make sense of the world–are revisited, updated, and made new.

Margaret Atwood’s Penelopiad is a sharp, brilliant and tender revision of a story at the heart of our culture: the myths about Penelope and Odysseus. In Homer’s familiar version, The Odyssey, Penelope is portrayed as the quintessential faithful wife. Left alone for twenty years when Odysseus goes to fight in the Trojan Wars, she manages to maintain the kingdom of Ithaca, bring up her wayward son and, in the face of scandalous rumours, keep over a hundred suitors at bay. When Odysseus finally comes home after enduring hardships, overcoming monsters and sleeping with goddesses, he kills Penelope’s suitors and–curiously–twelve of her maids.

In Homer the hanging of the maids merits only a fleeting though poignant mention, but Atwood comments in her introduction that she has always been haunted by those deaths. The Penelopiad, she adds, begins with two questions: what led to the hanging of the maids, and what was Penelope really up to? In the book, these subjects are explored by Penelope herself–telling the story from Hades — the Greek afterworld - in wry, sometimes acid tones. But Penelope’s maids also figure as a singing and dancing chorus (and chorus line), commenting on the action in poems, songs, an anthropology lecture and even a videotaped trial.

The Penelopiad does several dazzling things at once. First, it delves into a moment of casual brutality and reveals all that the act contains: a practice of sexual violence and gender prejudice our society has not outgrown. But it is also a daring interrogation of Homer’s poem, and its counter-narratives — which draw on mythic material not used by Homer - cleverly unbalance the original. This is the case throughout, from the unsettling questions that drive Penelope’s tale forward, to more comic doubts about some of The Odyssey’s most famous episodes. (“Odysseus had been in a fight with a giant one-eyed Cyclops, said some; no, it was only a one-eyed tavern keeper, said another, and the fight was over non-payment of the bill.”)

In fact, The Penelopiad weaves and unweaves the texture of The Odyssey in several searching ways. The Odyssey was originally a set of songs, for example; the new version’s ballads and idylls complement and clash with the original. Thinking more about theme, the maids’ voices add a new and unsettling complex of emotions that is missing from Homer. The Penelopiad takes what was marginal and brings it to the centre, where one can see its full complexity.

The same goes for its heroine. Penelope is an important figure in our literary culture, but we have seldom heard her speak for herself. Her sometimes scathing comments in The Penelopiad (about her cousin, Helen of Troy, for example) make us think of Penelope differently – and the way she talks about the twenty-first century, which she observes from Hades, makes us see ourselves anew too.

Margaret Atwood is an astonishing storyteller, and The Penelopiad is, most of all, a haunting and deeply entertaining story. This book plumbs murder and memory, guilt and deceit, in a wise and passionate manner. At time hilarious and at times deeply thought-provoking, it is very much a Myth for our times.

This is a very short book, and that book description is really long, so I am not sure how much more can be said without telling you the whole book....

Anyways, I am going to be honest, I am not a big Margaret Atwood fan. I know that she is a Canadian icon, but she is just not what I would call my favourite author. For me, she is a hit or miss author that I feel compelled to keep reading because she is a famous, female, Canadian author. I am not so big on the famous, but she is female and Canadian, so those are big pluses for me. So, now I am sure you are wondering what the hits were, well, I will tell you: Oryx and Crake and The Handmaid's Tale. Now, I still have a lot of her books left to read, so that can change, but so far, she is just okay.

On to The Penelopiad. I really liked this book, making it a hit. I like Greek and Roman mythology and books that are centred around it are interesting to me. So, even though I was not interested in Atwood's other newer books, I felt compelled to give this a try. It tell the story of Penelope and Odysseus. It is all about the women, though. Normally mythology tends to pay attention to the warriors and the gods, but this story is told from Penelope's point of view and talks about the injustices that were done to her and to the women that served her that were killed.

So, here we have a book where you can hear Penelope's side of the story. If you are still not convinced, read it because there is a trial set in modern day where Odysseus is brough up for his crimes. That was pretty interesting, I have to tell you. The book is divided into sections, Penelope will talk and then there is a song or story or something told from someone else, and then it is back to Penelope again.

I now have three hits from Atwood, so all is well! My thanks to Random House for sending me this book!

4/5

Never Have Your Dog Stuffed by Alan Alda

Books Completed: 43
Completion Date: March 2007
Publication Year: 2006
Pages: 272
Received from Random House Prior to 2007

He’s one of America’s most recognizable and acclaimed actors–a star on Broadway, an Oscar nominee for The Aviator, and the only person to ever win Emmys for acting, writing, and directing, during his eleven years on M*A*S*H. Now Alan Alda has written a memoir as elegant, funny, and affecting as his greatest performances.

“My mother didn’t try to stab my father until I was six,” begins Alda’s irresistible story. The son of a popular actor and a loving but mentally ill mother, he spent his early childhood backstage in the erotic and comic world of burlesque and went on, after early struggles, to achieve extraordinary success in his profession.

Yet Never Have Your Dog Stuffed is not a memoir of show-business ups and downs. It is a moving and funny story of a boy growing into a man who then realizes he has only just begun to grow.

It is the story of turning points in Alda’s life, events that would make him what he is–if only he could survive them.

From the moment as a boy when his dead dog is returned from the taxidermist’s shop with a hideous expression on his face, and he learns that death can’t be undone, to the decades-long effort to find compassion for the mother he lived with but never knew, to his acceptance of his father, both personally and professionally, Alda learns the hard way that change, uncertainty, and transformation are what life is made of, and true happiness is found in embracing them.

Never Have Your Dog Stuffed, filled with curiosity about nature, good humor, and honesty, is the crowning achievement of an actor, author, and director, but surprisingly, it is the story of a life more filled with turbulence and laughter than any Alda has ever played on the stage or screen.

After reading Joan Didion, I signed up for The Spring Reading Thing, and I put this book on my list. A lot of people were mentioning interest in this book, so I made it my first read for the challenge.

Everyone has memories from their childhood that reflect their parents. Something that their parents did enough that it stuck with you. One of my memories was M*A*S*H. My parents used to watch this show when I was small, I think it would have all ready been in the rerun stage or close to it, and I never forgot it. Nowadays, if I see an episode on I will sit down and watch it myself. Who knows if I even like the show, it just has happy memories for me. Alan Alda was always my favourite, I will never forget when he guest starred on ER, my favourite television show at the time. It was a big deal! I cannot wait until they release that season on DVD.

When I picked this book up, I knew it was going to be a humourous read. It might touch on serious subject matter and have its dark moments, but it is Alan Alda and I like to think that he always has to have at least one laugh, so I knew I was in for some smiles. First up, this book has one of the best first lines I have ever read. I read lots of books, and I never remember the first line, but when a book starts off with “My mother didn’t try to stab my father until I was six", you know that you are going to have those words stuck in your mind for some time to come.

The title of this book is great too, even though it is a very literal title, he really did have one of his dogs stuffed and that horrifies me on many levels. I really do not think anyone should ever have their dog stuffed, even as an attempt to make a child feel like the dog is still around. That is just creepy. The title could also refer to life in general and how you should never let yourself get stuffed, because that means you are doing the same thing over and over again. People need variety in life.

This memoir covers more than just Alda's acting career, it talks about his life from early childhood to near the time that he published this book. It talks about the jobs that he would have and how he suffered to make ends meet when he was just starting out, but it also talks about his life in general. There are the funny scenes, there is how he always felt like he had to compete with his father, and how he never understood his mother. In a very short book, Alda captures his life and makes you laugh along the way.

4/5

2007 Spring Reading Thing

I wasn't going to join in on this challenge because I have been really busy lately and I never seem to have time to read like I would like. But, I changed my mind. I am only going to challenge myself to read five books, though. I am going to make a big list in any case because I am a mood reader, and I seem to grow scared of a list after I make it.

1. Stanley Park by Timothy Taylor
2. Getting Rid of Matthew by Jane Fallon
3. Never Have Your Dog Stuffed by Alan Alda
4. Horse by J. Edward Chamberlain
5. The Ruins by Scott Smith
6. Luck in the Shadows by Lynn Flewelling
7. The Extra Large Medium by Helen Slavin
8. Helpless by Barbara Gowdy
9. The Hatbox Letters by Beth Powning
10.Mental Traps by Andre Kukla
11.Everything You Know by Zoe Heller
12.The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood
13.The Last Town on Earth by Thomas Mullen
14.Accursed by Amber Benson
15.Children of God by Mary Doria Russell
16.Flags of our Fathers by James Bradley
17.The Acadians by James Laxer
18.Mr. Darcy's Diary by Amanda Grange
19.Patriot Hearts by Barbara Hambly
20.A Vision of Light by Judith Merkle Riley

There we are. I am not too concerned if I do not necessarily read what I set out to read. My goal with reading is to discover new authors and clean off the TBR pile so that I can not feel like I am out of control.