Fun Friday: Makes Me Laugh *and* Dance

Sir Mix-a-Lot speaks truth.

Summer Reading List: May the Reading Begin!

Summer reading can be the best reading of the year. Long days, vacation, plenty of sunshine, shade, chlorine, salt water, and ice cubes melting in iced tea. Add books and stir.

Here's a look at what I think I have in store for summer reading. Today. At this very minute. Well, technically, yesterday — I already found two more books today that might have to be jammed into this collection...

Here's a list of what you see:

1. And the Mountains Echoed
2. Arcadia
3. Barn Stripping
4. Chi Running
5. Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter
6. Discovery of Witches
7. Faefever
8. The Family Fang
9. The Gun Seller
10. How They Met and Other Stories
11. The Labrynth  of Dreaming Books
12. The Language of Flowers
13. Let the Great World Spin
14. Life After Life
15. The Light Between the Oceans
16. A Lion Among Men
17. Map of the Sky
18. The Mysterious Benedictine Society
19. The Receptionist
20. Shadow of Night
21. Smut
22. Spook
23. Southern Gods
24. The Twelve Rooms of the Nile
25. Unnatural Acts
26. A Vision of Light
27. Wolf Hall

This doesn't include the novels I simply must read that will be published this summer (such as the newest Neil Gaiman) or others that appear to be quite tasty but haven't quite fallen into my hands yet (I'm looking at you, Joe Hill).

I know this is ambitious. I have faith. Or I am crazy.

I will donate $5 per book I read to Main Street Child Development Center, and I will buy three new books for the Fairfax County Public Library from its Amazon Wish List.

Also, if you want to join this summer reading club, share your "consumed list" with me. The reader who reads the most books will win a new book of her or his choice, courtesy of Hedgehog Lover. 

Are you in? Let me know!

Poetry Wednesday: Chicken Poetry Reading

Summer Reading Suggestion: Let's Pretend This Never Happened

Summer is on the horizon, and maybe — just maybe — you're on the hunt for books for the 2013 Summer Reading Club...

Well, if you want to laugh (and maybe even shed a tear or two), do yourself a favor: read Let's Pretend This Never Happened.

You won't want to put it down.

Okay, there was the time when Jenny Lawson talked about her father shoving his hand up a squirrel's — er, never mind. (I did have to take a break there. I am so not into taxidermy.)

Then there was the chapter about her reproduction that, even though she told us how it would end, still made me tense, so I read it with one eye open while clutching my kitten to my bosom. (I was in bed, so I could use only one hand to hold the book.)

And yet I didn't pause when reading about her dog. Or her first girls' weekend ever. Or —

Okay, that's enough about what's in the book. Now, let's talk about how The Bloggess can write about something that isn't in the least about what she's writing about and yet. And yet. It makes sense. You may not understand how you got from there to here, but what a great trip it was.

And for the record, I love her husband. Honestly, if she's only a fraction like the narrator of this memoir has depicted, he's a saint and a loving, loving man.

Finally, this author has the most precise comic timing and razor-sharp absurdity. I mostly read at night, propped up in bed, convinced that I'd wake up my husband and kitten with my laughter. I laughed until I cried. Then I cried. Then I laughed again.

You know what? Don't take my word for it. Really. Don't read any other reviews. Just read the book. Then buy a copy for a friend because you won't want to part with yours.

It's that good.

And when you're done, but you're not quite ready to let Jenny go (and yes, I'm calling her by her first name, very un-journalistic of me, fire me, okay?), watch this video.

Better yet, watch this one:

Go ahead, buy a third copy for your minister. You know you want to.

Fun Friday: Never Apologize

Poetry Wednesday: Poetry (The Original Version)

Last week, we read a very compact poem Marianne Moore pared down from a longer poem of hers by the same name. As promised, here is the longer version. Which do you prefer?

Poetry

I, too, dislike it: there are things that are important beyond all
this fiddle.
Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it, one
discovers in
it after all, a place for the genuine.
Hands that can grasp, eyes
that can dilate, hair that can rise
if it must, these things are important not because a

high-sounding interpretation can be put upon them but because
they are
useful. When they become so derivative as to become
unintelligible,
the same thing may be said for all of us, that we
do not admire what
we cannot understand: the bat
holding on upside down or in quest of something to

eat, elephants pushing, a wild horse taking a roll, a tireless wolf
under
a tree, the immovable critic twitching his skin like a horse that
feels a
flea, the base-
ball fan, the statistician--
nor is it valid
to discriminate against 'business documents and

school-books'; all these phenomena are important. One must
make a distinction
however: when dragged into prominence by half poets, the
result is not poetry,
nor till the poets among us can be
'literalists of
the imagination'--above
insolence and triviality and can present

for inspection, 'imaginary gardens with real toads in them', shall
we have
it. In the meantime, if you demand on the one hand,
the raw material of poetry in
all its rawness and
that which is on the other hand
genuine, you are interested in poetry.

by Marianne Moore

Personally, I prefer the shorter one. This one always felt like Marianne Moore was trying too hard to make a point. However, she was singular in capturing an image with words. Here are a few more from Poem Hunter: do they help solidify your opinion?

Monday: A Moment, A Memory — Le Galion Beach

Le Galion Beach, St. Maarten

Some Mondays require a moment, a memory...

A sunny day, a light breeze, a morning of butterflies and an afternoon in the clear, warm water and gentle surf.