New Year

Already. It is only November, but I have come up with a reading project for next year.

Each month of 2011, I will read that book. You know the one that you were supposed to read in high school or in college and that is referenced and referred to in other classic and modern works of literature, but that just somehow got away from you. Yeah, THAT book. Here are the 12 I have chosen:

Ulysses
Madame Bovary
Uncle Tom's Cabin
Mrs. Dalloway
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Absalom, Absalom!
Moby Dick
Vanity Fair
Invisible Man
Doctor Zhivago
Farewell to Arms

Most of these, by the way, are sitting on my library bookshelf. Two just arrived this week from Amazon.

All of these, except Doctor Zhivago, are on The Novel 100 list, but that is not why I picked them. Interesting to note however, that a number of books that I finished this year are also on the list including, Middlemarch, Great Expectations, Don Quixote, and War and Peace. Some are long time favorites including Huck Finn, Lolita and Pride and Prejudice.

Oh yes, lest I forget, my 11 yo son and I will also be reading The Hobbit. Yet another one that got away!

Hopefully, I will have time to throw in some lighter reading as well. You know, The Atlantic or The Bible? Please tell me you get the sarcasm.

He Can Tell a Story

As we work our way through our "at home" world history curriculum, J. and I are moving through the Middle Ages. We are making our way slowly, ever so slowly, to the Renaissance.

We flew through the Ancients. We loved the stories of the Egyptians and the Greeks and Romans. I haven't found quite as much to love in the stuffy English monarchs and the Plague.

Until this week. When we experienced Henry V.

I have read a little Shakespeare. A little. I remember when I was a girl, someone in my family gave me a beautifully illustrated children's version of some of his plays. His most famous comedies and his tragedies were all there. But there were no histories. There were none of the compelling and beautiful stories of the the great men of England.

So we jumped in this week. Anticipating this chapter and needing to add a little life into our study (the Greeks and Romans had tons of outside material to draw on, I haven't found as much for the Middle Ages), I purchased Henry V in comic book form for J.



and No Fear Shakespeare for myself.



We read them one afternoon, and the watched Kenneth Branagh in the title role in this film adaption.



I'll say it right now. I have missed out on a lot. It was wonderful. It was powerful. It was brilliant.

But we in it shall be remembered--
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he today that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
this day shall gentle his condition;
And gentlemen in England now abed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.

After we finished the movie last night, J. was pretty quiet. You know, it isn't very "cool" in 4th grade to be a fan of the Bard. Then he said before he went to sleep, "That guy really knows how to tell a story." Amen.

Happy Bloomsday!

The 16th of June 1904 is one of the most celebrated dates in literature as it is the day on which most of the action of Jame Joyce's famous novel Ulysses takes place.

From The James Joyce Center

I have begun Ulysses a hundred times. Most recently, I made it through Chapter 4.

I will finish Ulysses.

I will finish Ulysses.

I will finish Ulysses.

Percy, Again

Rick Riordan and Percy Jackson were in the Wall Street Journal this morning.

Rick Riordan

Mount Olympus for Kids

Read an except from The Last Olympian.

or

Visit Rick Riordan's website.

Previous posts:  here and here.

We LOVE Percy

And now the movie is being cast for a 2010 release (can we wait that long?)

What? You haven't read the Rick Riordan series? Are you crazy? Go check the book out from the library or go buy it. You could borrow one of my three copies, but I have pressed them on all of my friends. We are crazy about Percy. We have read the books and listened to the audio book and now we will see the movie.

From the Hollywood Reporter (a website I will say I have never visited before today):

Pierce Brosnan, Uma Thurman, Sean Bean, Kevin McKidd and Melina Kanakaredes are heading to Mount Olympus.

The quintet has been cast in Fox 2000's fantasy-adventure adaptation "Percy Jackson" as classical Greek gods Chiron (Brosnan), Medusa (Thurman), Zeus (Bean), Poseidon (McKidd) and Athena (Kanakaredes). Aries, Hades and Persephone have not yet been cast.

The film, being directed by Chris Columbus, is shooting in Vancouver for a February release.

Hopefully Pierce will redeem himself after his rather "comic" performance in Mamma Mia!

And don't forget, Book 5 will be release on May 5th. Have you reserved your copies?

Fate is the Hunter

From Fate is the Hunterby Ernest K. Gann:

A pilot's capacity for discourse on flying is virtually unlimited; he may drift away from the subject momentarily, but soon, by some device or accident of simile, he is once again locked tightly to his obsession.

There were many obstacles to be conquered before this could be done, and there were as many pessimists who said it could never be done. The visionaries, as always, found they must be their own strength, for the hairs of pomposity prickled upon the skins of the incumbent authorities, warning them to smother this new attack upon the impossible. Fertile imaginations were ridiculed and occasionally thwarted, which was only a repetition of history; yet, likewise, they mainly triumphed in the end.

Put your trust in God and Pratt and Whitney.

For loneliness, I thought, is an opportunity. Only in such a state may ordinary minds, spared comparison with superior minds, emerge victorious from thoughts which might prove perilous to explore in company. Loneliness presents no challengers to undermine by argument and stipulation those comforting theories born of it.... Unless men are transformed into true imbeciles and simply stare at nothing or play with their physical toys, then loneliness can form a magic platform which may transport the meek to thoughts of courage, or even cause the scoundrel to examine the benefits of honesty.

And it seemed to me that men were never intended to play at Gods.

Yet the confidence which lures a man to a life of flight in the first place is almost indestructible. He believes, he must believe absolutely, in his personal fortune and destiny.

Percy Jackson Book 5: The Last Olympian

J and I love the Percy Jackson Series by Rick Riordan. We have read them AND listened to them in the car. Talk about great children's literature. I bought the first one for J when his teacher sent home a Captian Underpants book ... I knew there had to be better stuff out there than that. I was right. I will talk more about our favorite books for boys in another post, but this is for Percy.

The cover for the new book was released on February 18th:



The first Percy Jackson book will soon be made into a movie and the casting choices were announced today. Visit Rick Riordan's blog for more info and photos.

Happy 105th Birthday Dr. Seuss

This morning, the boys and I had green eggs and (plain) ham for breakfast in tribute to Dr. Seuss, The Cat in the Hat and my favorite piece of Dr. Seuss trivia courtesy of Mental Floss Magazine:

Bennett Cerf, Dr. Seuss’ editor, bet him that he couldn’t write a book using 50 words or less. The Cat in the Hat was pretty simple, after all, and it used 225 words. Not one to back down from a challenge, Mr. Geisel started writing and came up with Green Eggs and Ham – which uses exactly 50 words. The 50 words, by the way, are: a, am, and, anywhere, are, be, boat, box, car, could, dark, do, eat, eggs, fox, goat, good, green, ham, here, house, I, if, in, let, like, may, me, mouse, not, on, or, rain, Sam, say, see, so, thank, that, the, them, there, they, train, tree, try, will, with, would, you.

And here is our breakfast ...