Poem #2

When do you know you give up too much?
"Sharing is caring" and "giving is good" -

it isn't logical to starve and such,
but you starve because you know that you should.

If hunger is an indication, then

do you steal out of your loved one's mouth?
Should you have to steal at all when
you ask and receive "I don't know" due south?
There's nothing left. That is all you have.
In the end, it just was never enough.
They wanted the impossible - cut you in halve
and take all the raw red stuff.

2013 (c) Summer Fenwick

Reaction - Best Book of the Decade: 1910-1919

Today, I am reviewing the list : Best Books of the Decade 1910. That means all the books on this list were first published between the years 1910 through 1919.

They picked : The Secret Garden

My reaction --- What? This seems like another one of those nostalgia picks. I've read this one and although thoroughly entertaining and a great youth book to be sure, does it define a whole decade? - does it beat out everything that stands against it? No, it certainly doesn't. I don't see anything particularly deep or meaningful about this story; I mean, apart from, 'you should be nice to your sick cousin even though he's a dick'  .... I could be jaded after seeing the 1993 Secret Garden a bajillion or more times because my sister liked it so much. If you have some deep, meaningful insight into the symbolism or imagery or allegory or anything literary having to do with this book, feel free to contact me. It has baffled me for years why people revere this book.

I pick... Dubliners

Why this one? --- You know what's awesome about this book? James Joyce. You know what makes this book beat up all of the other books in this decades? This book has balls. This book has balls because it dares to write about something that nobody else would at the time. The entire playful anthology is a giant allegory for the infamous Great Famine of Ireland (< there's a wikipedia link if you know nothing about it) That's right, folks. Dubliners is a book of short stories with symbolism, allegory, imagery, that very very vaguely veils the happenings of this time period. The worst part is that most of the short stories are hilarious. Dubliners wins the Swick Award for Best Book of the Decade : 1910s

Dickish sick cousins got nothing on James Joyce.

Reaction - Best Book of the Decade: 1900-1909

Okay, this is a beginning of a new series of blog posts for me. There is a feature on Goodreads.com where you can make lists of what you think are the best books in certain genres. I've been perusing these lists and picking my personal favorites out of each list made, and some of the results I am just a little surprised by what is one there. So! - I am writing down the reaction I have for the ones voters number one by readers and giving you my two cents as to why its' there or what should be there instead. Anyway, it should be fun.

Today, I am reviewing the list : Best Books of the Decade 1900. That means all the books on this list were first published between the years 1900 through 1909.

They picked : Anne of Green Gables

My reaction --- What? Okay, I have never personally read any of these books; although they have been long on my to-read list since I'm an assistant out at the youth desk. I'm just not sure how out of everything that this book is competing against why this one won. Yeah, it's a growing-up story and we tend to be very fond of those ... see other growing-up classics : Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Little Women, David Copperfield, etc. But why does this one take the cake? I have no idea. I think the only reason it is on the top of the list at all is because people have fuzzy warm feelings when they think about it. The same fuzzy feeling I get whenever I read something like The Poky Little Puppy. It's not ohmygoshthebestbookintheworld but it's one from my childhood that I remember reading and liking and reading with my parents, etc. Sure, it brings back good memories for a lot of people, but that doesn't make it the best in my opinion.

I pick... The Jungle

Why this one? ---  If you notice, I didn't rate this book very highly. I don't like the novel itself, but I do love, and I'm sure you all will once I'm through, the huge public outcry this book made about the food-processing industry - in particular, meat. While the book was really supposed to enlighten folks about the horrid working conditions of the poor immigrants that worked in these meat-packing plants, everyone became enraged and disgusted about the process and neglect in the meat-processing as it was. We're talking about vermin and feces commonly mixing with meat and inhumane butchering of animals. All sorts of health code violations. In fact, this book is one of the reasons that the health code exists at all. People were so alarmed by these things that end up in their meat that it sparked a revolution in America's food industry. While the conditions that the immigrants were working in were certainly cleaning, they remained just as miserable and hazardous. To think that the book made such an impact makes me have to, despite the fact I don't like a lot about it, give it the Swick Award for Best Book of 1900 Decade.



Just Too Many ....

I love the 'want to read' list option available on Goodreads.com. The only problem is that while I am surfing the site there are just too many books that I really get excited about and really want to read. They aren't always easy for me to get a hold of but thankfully, I work for a large library system with an interlibrary loan service, so all the books I could dream of are nearly at my fingertips.

About six months ago, I purged my 'to-read' list of everything on it, and I vowed that I would be very good at keeping up with the items on it- never having more than 10 or 12 on it at a time that way I felt like I was really reading the books I said I would. Well, 10 or 12 turned into 20 or 30, and now its' nearly at 50 books again. I was worried and scolding myself at first, but after a little thought and positive thinking, I have come to grips with the fact that... it's okay to want to read so many books, and I don't have to get through them all. There will be more books published that I want to read and many more that I haven't discovered yet; I will not possibly read all the books I know I would want to in a single lifetime....

So maybe that last statement sounds a little pessimistic, but I don't think so. It is almost a comfort knowing that there will be so many exciting books; I will never stop going on fantastic adventures throughout my whole life! I'm going to add dozens more books to my to-reads list. To hell with keeping up with it, I just want to read!

I've had friends, family, and strangers ask me why in the world my life's goal is to become a true blue librarian, and my answer is always 'for selfish reasons, I love books' - some laugh, some just nod, some tell me it isn't selfish at all to do what you love... and some think that me settling in this cozy vat of knowledge is all of my 'many other talents' going to waste. I really don't care what they think; I am happiest where I am. It's being happy what we all strive for?

All this unlimited reading the past few years has made me learn some things about myself I knew but never really acted upon so much.... I think my 6 year old self definitely knew more about me than my 16 year old self, and now that I'm nearly 26 the cycle has come back to knowing and to being more honest... isn't that funny? Here's a few examples ....

6 YRS SWICK : I'm going to be a marinebiologist one day!
16 YRS SWICK : I'm no good at math and science or swimming. I don't want to study marine life.
26 YRS SWICK : I wish the library had a larger nonfiction collection of marine life to read.

6 YRS SWICK : Comic books are really cool!
16 YRS SWICK : Only dorks read comics.
26 YRS SWICK :  Comic books are total legit forms of reading for all ages, and so much fun.

6 YRS SWICK : I like books like Brian Jacques's Redwall and books about dragons and spaceships.
16 YRS SWICK : Sophisticated adults read classics, politics, and philosophy.
26 YRS SWICK : I like reading a little bit of everything, but kids' books are the most fun for me :)

6 YRS SWICK : Let's play pretend. You be Gandalf and I'll be Bilbo and we're going to Misty Mountain!
16 YRS SWICK : Fan characters and fanfiction are so juvenille.
26 YRS SWICK : I like writing Pokemon fanfiction and I often wonder how books would be different if the characters did something else.

6 YRS SWICK : Who cares what you think? I happen to like what I read. I don't need to impress you.
16 YRS SWICK : Look at how versed in classics and poetry and philosophy and politics I am! I'm sure my professors will be really impressed. They'll think I'm really smart and pay attention to me in class.
26 YRS SWICK : The only person I'm interesting in impressing with my reading is myself.

.... yeah, I've really grown up. I wonder why I fell into such a peer pressure trap at that age. I guess because I've always been the shy quiet odd-one-out type.

How have your reading habits grown and changed since you were young?

1000 BOOKS

I finally did it. I hit 1000 rated books on Goodreads.com :)

While I'm sure that I have read way more than 1000 books in my lifetime, just documenting that many and rating them, I think, is a great achievement. That's more books than a lot of people can claim that they have read.

Granted, a lot of people could look at the list of things I've rated and tell me that over 1/2 of them "aren't real books" because nearly 400 of them are graphic novels of some sort and about 100 of them are picture books. I say boo on them - they see me readin'; they hatin'.

Want to know why they be hatin' me? Check out this....

That's 116950 pages, guys. ( not counting the 17 audiobooks, I have listened to. )

Over 90% of the books on that list have been from 2010 up to today( that means I didn't get to 1000 just by listing ALL my required reading in school )

The 1000 doesn't include the 8 books I lost interest in halfway through or the 7 I've started reading but haven't finished yet.( all 1000 I have read from cover to cover )

Here's a list of the longest books I've read in the past 5 years :

In 2009, The Language Instinct by Steven Pinker , 544 pages

In 2010, Ulysses by James Joyce , 816 pages

In 2011, Les Miserables by Victor Hugo , 1463 pages
(technically, a re-read)

 

In 2012, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams , 815 pages
(1 book, all 5 in the series)

So far in 2013, Marvel Comics's XMEN: Age of Apocalypse collection , 1072 pages

I am awesome.

Poem #1

Stuck.
Don't know
Which way up.
I thought I knew;
I guess that I don't,
and the breadcrumbs just ran out.
I would go back if I could,
but the hole is dark and deep.
Cold and wet, can't climb and can't even sleep.
I can't escape and this I can't cope.
Someone to throw down a nice thick rope!
I do not mind rope burns
At least they are warm
compared to this
dark deep muddy
hole in my mind.
The worst part is
I can't
scream.

2013 (c) Summer Fenwick

A Little Ramble About Writing.

I am really really enjoying this creative writing every day thing that I've been doing for the past week or so. I don't think I've sat down and written so much of a story since... well... Pokemon fanfiction aside.... since high-school.

I've read a couple reviews on Goodreads.com for some really awful books like Marked by P.C. Cast and Halo by Alexandra Adornetto where people have dumped on them because they sound like Twilight fanfiction (having read both, I agree that they do) and then dump on the authors themselves for publishing that crap. Well, I agree that perhaps editors and publishing companies were not in their right minds whenever they bought said manuscripts for the authors, I don't see what is so fearful or pathetic about writing fanfiction...

Fanfiction is writing for the self, I think. More than it satisfies a niche in other people's lives, it satisfies a niche in yours whether you wanted a particular story to flow a different way or you wanted different characters to end up together - fanfiction is self-satisfying. I used to be a self-righteous reader, reviewer, and writer of fanfiction where I fall into traps like "OMGhowcanyouwritesuchanawfulHarryPotterMarySue?!" and "thisdoesn'trelatebacktothestoryatall" and "everyoneissooutofcharacter;howdareyou!" .... but the older I get, I don't know if I've grown up and said "You know, it's only fiction. Everyone's going to write what they wanna write and if it makes them happy, then fine. I don't have to like it." or if my give-a-shit meter is broken.

I am much more harsh with original fiction, of course. But fanfiction, I can overlook all sorts of awfulness.

... now that I am writing my own original creative writing again, I'm not always sure if I want to share it or not. I try not to make anyone Sue-ish, I try not to writing totally out of bounds, I am genuinely trying to write a good story, but I don't aim to profit from it (in the near future?) I am writing strictly for myself and my own satisfaction.

It's kind of nice not having any pressure from anyone to write. When I first REALLY started writing creative fiction, I was doing a piece that based each character from someone I knew in real life, and events in the story were fanciful but somewhat true. When my friends figured it out, everybody got in on the story and the characters and how they should act and I never finished the thing because everything got so convoluted and weird. I couldn't tell what was going on anymore. Nevertheless, I still had a lot of fun writing and rewriting, and I have fond memories of bus rides where we would work out plot points and character dialogue. My greatest regret though was that I never finished it. Now that I have the time, I'm writing it again, but things are going to go my way. I am more than happy to let old friends read it; although they likely won't recognize the characters anymore. As I grew up, they grew up too.

Maybe it's selfish that I'm writing just because I can with no editing or commentary whatsoever, and maybe that doesn't make me much better than my seventh or eighth grade self. Perhaps I will never really grown up out of that fan-character and writing about fan-characters phase...

... no harm in that.