Seven Books that Have Affected My Life

This was an assignment for Language Arts.

My mother and father for some bizarre unknown reason decided that my schoolwork needs to be “rigorous” and gave me Sonlight Core 600 (I think) which is the equivalent of AP Brit Lit on steroids. This means that, for the first time ever, I actually have to study for everything this year. Grr.

This was supposed to be 25 books…but Mom gave me dispensation to only do five. But I came up with seven.

           

Because really, at fifteen, how am I supposed to know which books are going to affect my life? Goodnight Moon? One of the examples they gave was a book on how to improve your marriage. Like THAT helps me.

           

But anyway.

 

Obviously the Bible has to be on this list.

 

And then I would choose the Hardy Boys, because they made me fall in love with reading from the very beginning and since then I have never put a book down. I remember I used to carry a Hardy Boys book in one hand and put my other hand on the wall so I could read while I walked…but then I fell and Mom said no more.

           

Suzuki comes next. I know they’re not technically books…but the computer dictionary defines “book” as “a bound collection of pages” and Suzuki certainly is that. And they are the books I have used the most and spent a LOT of my free time as well as my school time with. And yes, I know that it is wrong to end a sentence with “with” on account of it is a preposition, which I know because they made me do stupid Easy Grammar in the sixth grade and I still know the prepositions by heart.

Also, I don’t think you’re technically supposed to say “on account of”, you’re supposed to say “because”, except in Latin there is a special word just for “on account of” so I totally think it should be allowed.

           

Then I would say the Harry Potter series…because they deserve to be on any list of modern classics.

 

And 1984 reminded me to live the present and also if I grow up to be an author never to inflict the hideous dream of negative utopia upon thousands of innocent high school students. What IS it with these Utopia people? We’ve got Paradise Lost, and Gulliver’s Travels, and that one by someone called VanAuken (I think) that I’ve got to read later this year…and then 1984 is negative utopia…argh. I don’t want to find meaning! I just want to read!

           

The Grapes of Wrath ALSO goes on here…I don’t think it affected my life in any big way per se, but it certainly left an impression on my poor ten-year-old brain (yes Dad…I was only ten when you made me read this.) with all the vivid, frighteningly accurate descriptions of Oklahoma. Plus I know it’s one of Dad’s favorite books so he should definitely give me extra points for mentioning it.

           

 Last is Bartleby the Scrivener, the best work poor old Herman Melville ever did. This was my favorite book from American Literature in 7th grade, and it provided me with my answer to so many of life’s little questions:

           

I prefer not to.

Randomness

The Friar Chuck Update: Friar Chuck versions 1,2, and 3 have been dispatched. Dad finally bought a Havahart trap to catch them. They promptly figured out how to lift up the trap and get the bait. It’s a constant battle.

In other news, Mom is in the process of staining the armoire, which is a long hard slog. Our kitchen is stain central, and the fumes are going to everybody’s heads.

Last weekend Mom took me to see Mamma Mia, which is a musical based on the songs of ABBA. Mom and Dad went to see it for their anniversary this year, and she liked it so much she took me too. It’s actually a really cute movie. Plus, it has Meryl Streep, and Peirce Brosnan, and Colin Firth* and Julie Walters, so how can you NOT see it? Dad got Mom the soundtrack, so now we are all listening to ABBA nonstop. Mom has even decreed that it’s unamerican not to like ABBA.Take a chance on meeeee….

I have gotten Facebook and become addicted.

I have also started school. Grr. BUT, hopefully I will be able to take December off the way I did last year! A&P is going super so far, and so is Latin. Math is just really really annoying, especially today’s lesson where all Dr. Shorman is was yak on and on about the area of transversal laterals or something. Brit Lit is OK, but Sonlight, so involved. I’m done with Beowulf and onto Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. I just started Logic, and I haven’t begun French yet, although I have a new resolution to work harder at it after being to Taize. It comes easily to me but I haven’t been studying it the way I should. Orchestra and whatever band I end up with starts next week.

More on Taize tomorrow.

Um, that’s all the news from here I guess…boring boring end of summer…

*Incidentally, he has a really high voice. Like in Manly Men, the first verse, only actually very true.

Ethel the Singing Cow Goes to Paris

There is this children’s book called “The Cows are Going to Paris”. So naturally, I had to take our very own Ethel to Paris with me and do pictures of her in front of touristy places!

This is on the first day on the bus, right after we’d gotten off the plane. Yes, my hair is in braids; I know that I never, ever, ever, braid my hair, but I did at Taize. It’s still me, OK? My brother kept squinting at photos and saying, “Which one are you again?”. It’s embarrassing.

We then did about a week’s worth of touring in 2 days with very little sleep, so consequently I have no idea what order these were taken in. This is Ethel in front of Notre Dame.

All the carvings on Notre Dame were amazing. Also, I had no idea that The Hunchback of Notre Dame was written to raise money for the reconstruction of the cathedral! Also, our guide would point to a carved person and say something like, “This is Saint Dennis of so-and-so, who did something famous and then had his head chopped off in Ireland or somewhere and walked 25 miles holding his head in his hands and was canonized in 1873 under the reign of Pope Urban the 16th” and I wished that I was Catholic. But only shortly. (I know that the real phrase is “only briefly” but I met non-American people who said “only shortly” and I found it rather charming. More translation stories to come.)

This is Ethel and my hand on TOP of Notre Dame. We got to climb all the way up, something like 844 stairs on a teeny winding stone staircase, which was very cool but I would not do it again unless there was an elevator. Whatever tour we were on should have been called “The Steps of Paris”. My legs hurt a lot by the time we got to Taize, and then the first afternoon we did a hike involving steps.

But back to Paris.

This is Ethel in front of Sacre Coure. I’m not sure if I’m spelling that right but it’s a cathedral built on the biggest hill in Paris, apparently. They call it a hill, but it’s about 40 times bigger than Mount Sunflower, so that shows you cultural differences right there! We climbed the hill, and then we climbed about 30 million steps to get to the actual cathedral. (hyperbole: gross exaggeration for comic effect) (just in case you are one of those irritatingly technical people who are always saying things like, “well, actually, it’s roughly 437 steps”) (man, that bugs me)

One thing I found interesting about Sacre Coure is that there were breakdancers on the way up, which sounds reasonable, except that they were dancing to Britney Spears. Foreign people like the worst of our music. That comes in later in my post entitled, “Oyak”.

Eiffel Tower Ethel!!!!

This is Ethel (duh) on a boat cruise of the Seine. If you look closely you’ll be able to spot the Bishop’s head in the background!

Contest Winner! and other stuff

I have been slacking in my blogging! Majorly! So here is an update on my general life situation! Yay for exclamation points!

OK, the contest thing didn’t really work….oh well. Next time I’ll have to get a real prize. Thank you to everybody (all three of you ) for your quotes…..they will begin appearing in the header as soon as I get my act together. I put the names on little slips of paper and picked one out of a hat…..and MEAGAN WINS! So I will get those to you next week, Meg!

With blogging comes a little addiction to feedback, I think….and even though I get about 25 unique visitors per day, only about five ever comment. Those select few….I love you best.

 JUST KIDDING!

Father’s Day! Was nice….despite a little meltdown during lunch and the fact that church lasted about sixteen billion hours and it was 90 degrees in the sanctuary. We got Dad an assortment of grill paraphernalia. Here’s a photo of Ben’s present, a watch:

Guess who wrapped that? Ben has the Hanson gene for insane wrapping, I believe. Both he and my grandmother wrap gifts in such a manner that it takes a knife to open them. Some of these packages I’ve gotten could survive a bomb attack. Although my grandmother tends to use more attractive wrapping, while Ben sticks to the 12-year-old boy standby…..newspaper, duct tape, and rope. For my last birthday, he gave me a book that was wrapped in newspaper. And taped up with packing tape. And put in a box, which was not only sealed but literally wrapped in duct tape, which was then covered in more newspaper and tied with string. I must mention though that he thoughtfully arranged the newspaper so that the Students of the Month were on the bottom, the Lucky Few Who Read a Book and Got to Eat Lunch With the Principal were on the front, and the District 10 Chorus Winners were on the top. So the entire package was showing pictures of people I don’t know! It took me at least ten minutes to open it.

The Friar Chuck Update: Ben got one of them in the eye with a pellet gun, so we think that one is probably dead….the other one has not been seen for a while.

The School Update: I am taking the rest of the week off and then starting 10th grade next week. Portfolios are done, reviewed, etc.

The Music Update: Violin is in a slump….for some reason the Suzuki movement that I’ve been practicing for two months sounds awful and the one I just started playing today cause I was bored sounds pretty good. No rational explanation for this. I am trying to polish Fiocco Allegro up for no discernable reason, and teach myself the districts piece. Just in case. I also pulled out our old folk music and have been playing that.

Anyway. Happy Wednesday!

CONTEST! Enter now!

And win! Win big! Or small, in this case! No charge! Only $13.99! Plus tax! Plus shipping and handling! And we reserve the right to send you a rabid weasel in lieu of a real prize!

 

 

Just kidding! This is a real contest, from which there will be one real winner chosen…..and they will get the prize that I am about to describe to you in a moment. But only cause my dad would kill me if I tried to ship a weasel in the mail. Not to mention a rabid weasel.

So, to enter this contest is extremely easy. And the prize is not all that great, but sort of interesting and frankly I have a very small and sometimes sporadic allowance, so it’s the best I could do.

As you may (or is it might?) have noticed, right below the header of my blog, which reads “lapsus calumni”, there is a tagline. And in the tagline there is usually a quote. I am partial to “I prefer not to”, but there have been many up there over the past 8 months. Right now, it contains a line from JK Rowling’s HP prequel, which diehard Potter fans saw and laughed, and the rest of the world wants to know why on earth it says, “Elvendork is unisex” at the top of my blog.

Anyway, I need ideas for quotes. They can be anything—a quote from a book, a TV show, a famous person, whatever. All you have to do is type it in the comments on this post and you will have chance to win! Please include the quote, where it comes from or who said it, even if you made it up, and put an email address in the email address field so I can reach you. Enter as many times as you want. You have an unspecified period of time in which to do so…….KIDDING! You have at least two days.

And the prize: BOOKS! A kind reader sent me a boxful the other day, and my mother has this suggestion that whenever we get new books we get rid of some of the old ones. That rule is the only thing that keeps my dad from completely overflowing our house with books.

So here are the three books I will be giving away, arranged attractively on my bedroom floor with my sister’s new Croc Knockoff:

The shoe has nothing to do with anything. The books are Digital Fortress, by Dan Brown, the author of the controversial DaVinci Code, which is in slightly used condition and large print; Holes, by Louis Sachar, which won a Newbery Medal, and has a cover that does not quite reach all the way across on the front; and The Sufi Path of Love: the Spiritual Teachings of Rumi, but William C. Chittick, which is pretty beat up. Although, the back cover says that it is the most accesssible work in English on the greatest mystical poet of Islam. It has a dedication that reads, Ali Ihsan is one of the spiritual leaders of the Masjid-Al-Farek, representing an intimate aspect of my own mind and heart, and bears responsibilty with the other leaders for spiritual guidance and loving service of the dervish community and its guests. Nim. 

 I love book dedications, and underlining, and stuff people have left as bookmarks and later forgotten such as money and once I found a Sweet-Tart.

 

These are the books arranged in a different manner.

This is the sidewalk at our church, which reads, Jesus Christ is Coming Again.

That has nothing to do with the contest! At all! Ha!

So enter, if only to make me feel better……remember, one quote is all it takes to win a rabid weasel great books!

I’ll end this with a quote, because it seems apt and maybe it will inspire me to get my rear in gear and practice my violin: When you are not practicing, someone somewhere is practicing, and when you meet him, he will win. (anonymous)

Various

Guess why this is named “various”?

 

That’s right! It’s a completely random collection of thoughts and scenes from my day!

Ben and I were messing around in the kitchen, and I asked him a question about a drill bit. Something really inquisitive and thoughtful, such as, “Is that a drill bit?”. To which he replied, “No duh, Taylor!”, so that is my new catchphrase. It stems from the movie Drillbit Taylor, which we haven’t seen, but hey, it’s a change from plain “No duh” or the more-used “No duh, Sherlock”, so what the heck?

Dad taught Ben and I to shoot a pellet gun tonight. (goodbye, Friar Chuck) On my first try I don’t even think I hit the target, but on my last one it was right on the edge of the smallest little yellow circle. Pellet guns require an insane amount of pumping and adjusting of bolts, etc, before you can fire, so if you were in a situation in which you were being attacked and you had to defend yourself with a pellet gun, you had better aim carefully the first time. By the time you reloaded you would be dead. Hey, that’s probably why soldiers don’t use pellet guns, right?

Recital tommorow! Pictures will be coming on Friday, assuming I like the way I look in them. Otherwise, you’ll just have to take my word for it. Friday the Thirteenth is graduation in our town, which seems kind of forboding to me. Friday the thirteenth, I mean, not graduation itself. There were photos of the graduates in the paper today, accompanied by amusing advertisments that say things such as, “Chili’s wishes to extend best wishes to the class of 2008″ and “the Crew at Balch’s Family Fish House Congratulates Jamie, Ryan, Anthony, and the entire Class of 2008″, and a great one from the county electric company urging all graduates to replace their lightbulbs with new energy efficient ones, and best of luck in all future endeavors. Sophie went through all the pictures and assigned animals to various people (if Bob were an animal, he would be a shark, and so on).

This afternoon I was singing the Oscar Mayer Song (yes, I have too much time on my hands). When I got to, “And if you ask me, why I’ll say……” but before I could yell “B-O-L-O-G-N-A” Ben screamed, “BOOYAH!!!”.

And JK Rowling’s prequel came out!!!!! It’s only two pages but you can read it typed here, and in Jo’s handwriting here.

Genius.

 

Go Red Sox!

 

I (heart) Cheap Books

Today was the Friends of the Library Book Sale, which is a semiannual event at which you can buy used books extremely cheaply. I went to the early sale (they charge you $10 to get in an hour before it opens to the public) and got a box and a bag full of books for $26. I now have a stack of mysteries, a stack of sort-of literature, and a stack of random chapter books to work my way through.

Sort-of literature is defined as The Prince, “Peanuts” in French, an English textbook from fifty years ago, a book on the teachings of Rami, etc. Last year Ben got a HUGE unabridged dictionary for $1. It’s great. We also got some assorted videos. When I say “assorted” I mean “assorted”; they are: The Santa Clause, Jurassic Park, the Muppet Movie,  and Lord of the Dance. From puppets to killer dinosaurs to Irish dancing. Please notice that I managed to work both a semicolon and a regular colon into that last sentence.

I find the name “Friends of the Library” funny, partly because there is a large group of people who are apparently on amicable terms with an inanimate object and partly because it has a branch called the “Friends of the Children’s Room”, which could lead to all sorts of spinoffs, until eventually we are befriending the dark closet in the back where they keep the oversized books. Can’t you just see the news releases they would send out? “The Friends of the Dark Closet in the Back that Contains the Martyn Freed Collection would like to announce that their annual Talent Show and Karaoke Contest will be held….”

There were also several books I was tempted to get but did not, such as “An Idiot’s Guide to Ferrets” and the “Official Cookbook of the Detroit Junior Women’s Symphony”. The latter one is intriguing: the official cookbook? Do they often get people publishing unofficial cookbooks? And why “Junior”? Does that refer to their age or their size? Who even knew that there was a Detroit Junior Women’s Symphony? I can’t find it on Google but I swear that’s what it said. Not to mention that it was bright fluorescent pink. I would have bought it but all the recipes were for things like hotdish. And there were an incredible amount of books about a) the Kennedys and b) the Royal Family.

Anyhow, that was my morning.

Top Five Least-Favorite Books of All Time

I love books, ordinarily. And I love to read. But sometimes, there is a book that is so awful or hard to understand that I never go back to re-read it. Especially books for school. This is prompted by my parents getting me a “challenging” literature program for next year. We got it yesterday, complete with 26 books to read in 36 weeks, plus journaling and daily vocabulary stuff. Plus essays and poetry. They tell me I’ll enjoy it. It’s gonna be arduous. So here are my top five least favorite books of all time, and I would love to hear yours.

Also, please don’t throw rotten fruit. 

1. Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy- I loathed this book. It is the only book in the history of Olivia that I didn’t finish. Also, I think that the title is pronounced “Anna Karen-nina” but everybody else on the planet thinks it’s “Anna Karena”.

2. The Red Badge of Courage, by Stephen Crane- I think I’ve mentioned that I don’t like this one. Or anything else by Stephen Crane. Even his poetry is depressing. And the ending is such a disappointment.

3. The Pearl, by John Stinebeck- This was also violent, and I fell into a deep depression after reading it and ate nothing but avocados for two weeks.

I made that up. But it was sad. I liked the Grapes of Wrath, also by Stinebeck, but Tortilla Flat was just about a bunch of Mexican guys getting drunk and setting houses on fire. If you do read Tortilla Flat, grappa makes an excellent vocabulary word. It means Italian brandy.

Back to the subject.

4. The Snake Dreamer, by some author I don’t remember- Bleaaarrrrggghhhhh.

5. Anything by Earnest Hemingway- is it any wonder he committed suicide? I mean, at the end of A Farewell To Arms, the girl dies and the guy walks home in the rain. What kind of letdown is that? Ben saw the title of that one, went to my dad, and told him that the book was so depressing it made him want to cut off his arm. Get it?

Tell me yours! I love comments. Comments are wonnnnnnnderful. You are getting sleeeeeepy. Your eyelids are heavvvvvyyy. Leave a commmmmmment.

And Ethan Frome was not so delightful either.