Tales of the Whales – May Reading List

"Whaling Voyage Round the World" c. 1848 by Benjamin Russell and Caleb P. Purrington

This month Book Phantom will be reading about whales and seafaring.  How did I come to this subject?  It’s nearly summer, and time to start thinking about seaside vacations.  However, little synchronicities in my life have been pointing me towards “whale lit”.  First, when I was browsing Books of the Month at Amazon, I came across a recommendation for Galore by Canadian author Michael Crummey.  I was pulled in by the blurb about a strange, pale man cut from the body of a beached whale.  My next sign came as I was reading Swamplandia!.  In the chapters that took place at The World of Darkness theme park, Karen Russell described a ride called the Leviathan in which tourists could slide down into the innards of a great fake whale.  The third sign came when I took my daughter on a field trip to Shackleford Banks last week.  This island was the site of a small whaling community in the 1800’s called Diamond City.  It was abandoned in 1899 after a great hurricane flattened most of the town.  I learned on this trip that North Carolina was the only state south of New Jersey that had a whaling industry of any note. 

My final reason for choosing whale tales is that whaling is in my family history.  My husband’s great-grandfather left the Azores at the age of fourteen upon a whaler and eventually settled in Erie, Pennsylvania in the late 1860s.  In order to give my kids a better understanding of their ancestry, I thought it would be helpful to read some literature about it.

So, the universe was giving me a nudge, and the notion to read about whales emerged from the depths of my subconscious as clear as a tail fin or a spout from a blowhole.  Here are my “Tales of the Whales” reading selections:

Spring Break Reading List - Swamp Things

"Books – the best antidote against the marsh-gas of boredom and vacuity."

 – George Steiner

The Book Phantom is leaving for vacation this week-end, and I will be in the marshy low-country of Georgia, partying with alligators in a “drinking town with a fishing problem”.  That’s right – I’ll be in Tybee Island for a little R & R, with plans to jaunt into Savannah for some culture and good food.  Because I’m going to be in the “swamp”, my New Book pick is Swamplandia! by Karen Russell.  Hopefully, Russell will cure me of the aforementioned marsh-gas of boredom, but since I’ll be on vacation, I can deal with at least a little vacuity.

In fact, my reading list will be a little fluffy this go ‘round.  After Shakespearean tragedies, my mind craves some lighter fare.  I’m leaving out my usual professional development book selection, just because I don’t want to think about working.  Instead, I’m adding a contemporary “chick lit” title for leisurely reading on the beach.  So here is my non-boring yet non-taxing reading list inspired by Swamps, Savannah, and the Seashore.

1. Swamplandia! by Karen Russell (New Release).  I've had this book for a little over a month, saving it for the vacay, and it hasn’t been easy not to peek.  It’s about a girl and her carnival-type family who run a gator-wrestling theme park in the Florida Everglades (I know, I know – the Georgia low-country isn’t exactly the Everglades, but did you read about that grandma that was eaten by an alligator in Savannah? I'm a little scared I’ll encounter one on the beach, too!  Maybe Russell will have some “gator wrastlin’” tips in her book - just in case.)  Anyway, the character descriptions on the book flap totally sucked me in: Ava Bigtree, the thirteen year old heroine, must save the family theme park from a competitor called The World of Darkness; Ossie, the sister, falls in love with Dredgeman who is probably a ghost; Kiwi, the scholarly brother, betrays the family by joining The World of Darkness; and Chief Bigtree, the father, is missing.  Oh, and there’s a cast of 98 gators in little Ava’s charge.  You can’t get more original than this.
2. Wise Blood  by Flannery O’Connor (Classic).  As a Southerner, I admit with some chagrin that I have never read Flannery O’Connor (although I have a foggy notion that at least one of her short stories crossed my path in high school English class).  O’Connor was born and raised in Savannah, so I will make the pilgrimage to her childhood home.  She only wrote two novels – Wise Blood is one of them.
3. Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt (Non-Fiction).  I read this title in the mid-90s when it was released, and I loved it.  I plan to thumb through it again to refamiliarize myself with the Savannah locales mentioned in the story.  It seems de rigueur for one touring Savannah.
4. Fallen by Lauren Kate (Young Adult).  This is the first in a paranormal series about fallen angels.  It takes place in a boarding school in Savannah.  The second book is called Torrent, and the third, due for release June 14^th, is called Passion.  I perused this a few times at Target but didn’t buy it because I thought it might be a bit Twilight-y (not that there’s anything wrong with that – I just like variety).  If I want to go out and immediately buy the rest of the series, you’ll know it’s a winner. 
5. Savannah Breeze by Mary Kay Andrews (Contemporary).  This is chick-lit beach reading.  Here's a quick synopsis:  BeBe Loudermilk is in a relationship with a con-man who said he was an investment counselor.  He absconds with all her money, and all she has left is a run-down motel on Tybee Island.  BeBe and her friends fix up the motel, saving her from financial ruin.  When she locates the crooked boyfriend in Florida, BeBe heads south to get her money and perhaps some sweet revenge.  I’ll be enjoying this in lieu of a writer’s reference this week.
6. Walking on Alligators: A Book of Meditations for Writers by Susan Shaughnessy (Writers’ Reference).  Even though I won’t be doing any professional development reading, I'm at least suggesting a writer’s reference book.  This title seemed appropriate for my "Swamp Things" reading list. 

I'll be posting my reading adventures next week from Savannah (unless the gators eat me before I can eat them!)  Stay tuned…

Weird Sisters Bookmark

The Weird Sisters? (bookmark front)

The Book Phantom is wrapping up her “Fun with Shakespeare” reading experience.  Now it’s time to “close the book” on this reading module by sneaking a bookmark into my library book returns (did you know Shakespeare coined the term "to sneak"?).  It all started with Eleanor Brown’s new release The Weird Sisters (the title is a reference to the three witches in Shakespeare’s Macbeth).  The front of my bookmark is a vintage photograph of three wizened old gals.  It came from an old family album, but no one knows for sure who they are.  I call them the Weird Sisters because they look like they could stir up some “toil and trouble”. 

On the back of these Weird Sisters, I put a copy of the first scene from Macbeth, where the three witches meet and say the famous line: “Fair is foul, and foul is fair,” before taking off.

Act I Scene I from Macbeth (bookmark back)

In case anyone is interested in the titles from “Fun with Shakespeare”, I've included some "speed reviews":

April Reading List – Fun with Shakespeare

"My library was dukedom large enough."  - William Shakespeare, The Tempest 

I’m not really sure why I got a sudden yen to read Shakespeare.  Perhaps it’s because Eleanor Brown’s new novel, The Weird Sisters, is on my Spring to-read list.  Maybe it’s because I haven’t read any Shakespeare since college.  Whatever the reason, this month I’m getting my Bard on with selections that include Lear, Greer, and a few things weird.

New Release:  The Weird Sisters, by Eleanor Brown.  Three sisters return to their childhood home to be with their mother who’s dying of cancer, and their academic father who speaks in Shakespearean verse.  The names of the daughters?  Rosalind, Bianca, and Cordelia, of course.

Classic:  King Lear by well, you know who.  Three sisters compete for the affections of their aging father, the king.  Lear bequeaths his kingdom to his two eldest and silver-tongued daughters, whom he perceives love him most.  The third daughter, who loves him but refuses to flatter him, is cast out with no dowry.  Lear’s poor choice is the undoing of the whole family, as well as the state of Britain. 

Nonfiction:   Shakespeare’s Wife by Germaine Greer.  A controversial history that defends Shakespeare’s estranged wife, Ann Hathaway.  The link is to a YouTube lecture by Greer, who is quite funny in her scholarly way.

Juvenile:  Stage Fright on a Summer’s Night by Mary Pope Osborne.  My son is all about the Magic Tree House books right now.  What better way to introduce him to Shakespeare?

Inspiration:  Shakespeare’s Wordcraft by Scott Kaiser.  An outline of conventions and language devices in Shakespeare’s verse.

Spring Reading Thing 2011

I just found a reading challenge called Spring Reading Thing 2011.  Here's a list of things I'll be reading between March 20th and June 20th:

• Swamplandia by Karen Russell
• The Weird Sisters by Eleanor Brown
• Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
• A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
• A Light in August by William Faulkner

This is a little peek into what my book lists will look like over the next few months.  These titles will likely springboard into other reading inspired by whatever crazy is going on in my life.

March Reading List - Defining Your Space

While February’s reading list was about finding one’s direction, March’s reading list is about defining one’s space.  This selection of topic was inspired by my inability to knuckle down and work on my manuscript.  My energy was stagnant from constantly reworking my story in my head.  To get the energy moving again, I looked thoughtfully toward my home office, which is my creative space.

Here is a picture of my home office, and what I perceive to be wrong with it.  (I’m a bit of an amateur Feng Shui enthusiast, and I applied principles of this art to the space.)

The primary problem was that the office was in the bedroom in the first place.  Although my bedroom is large enough to easily accommodate my desk, it is not the ideal place for it.  Every morning when I wake up, the desk taunts me, telling me to get to work (not always a bad thing).  Every night when I put my head to the pillow, I worry that my word counts weren’t enough to get me through twenty more chapters by summer.  The pressure just shut me down completely.  It is no longer an inviting place to sit and create.

What to Read? Part 3: How to Make a Reading List

Last post, I introduced the Reader’s Formula for Selecting Books.  It looked like this:

Values ((Assets + x) – (Desires + y) – Liabilities – Requirements) = Optimal Reading List

This post, I am going to give an example from my reading life to demonstrate how to use this formula.  The first part of the formula is “values”, which I said are variable.  They determine what experiences we deem important or not, and influence our judgment and behaviors.  For simplicity, and to avoid sounding like a Sociology 101 text, I call this “life acting upon us”, because essentially, our life circumstances give rise to our values.

            So, what do I value these days?  What filter is life applying to me to influence which experiences I let in and which ones I release?  Lately, I have been feeling adrift, directionless.  After two years of working regularly to revise my manuscript, I find myself ready to give up on the project.  My mind resists quitting, but my behaviors tell me I already have.  I can’t make myself work on it anymore, yet nothing has replaced this piece of work in my mind.  No new ideas.  No desire to do anything else.  I am adrift on a plain of apathy.  How to find my way?

            I decide to read to take my mind off my failure.  I browse the stacks in the library, hoping to be inspired by something.  My eye lands upon the cover of a book, featured by the library staff.  It is called The Selected Works by T. S. Spivet by Reif Larsen.  I have seen this book many times, and although intrigued by it, I never took it home.  This particular day, feeling lost and in need of a map to navigate my professional aspirations, I thought, “What better way to reorient myself than to read a book about a boy cartographer?”  If being lost was what life was giving me, then finding my way was what I valued.  Therefore, in my reader’s formula, v = Finding my way.