(no subject)

[which_chick]

I got meme-tagged by fooliv, who has a blog located at blogfonte.blogspot.com and well, hell, everyone's doing it.



Number of Books I Own:

Assloads. I have a room devoted to books. Probably I have between one and two thousand books in my house, which is a lot of books for one person. Most of them are cheap paperbacks.

Last Book I Bought:

Burr by Gore Vidal (a present for my grandmother, who had asked for a copy of this very volume). For myself, I last bought the three liveship books by Robin Hobb (fantasy epic stuff involving pirates). They got here last week. I'm plowing through those and I expect to wind the last book up sometime this evening.

Five Books that mean a lot to me:

Small Gods by Terry Pratchett. This is one of my very favorite books of all time. I reread it every six months or so because I like it so well. I've listened to it on audio book. I've read better than half of it aloud to others. This is a book that I adore and pimp at every opportunity. Consider yourself pimped. It's got turtles in it.

Fox in Socks by Dr. Seuss. I like reading this book aloud. It's catchy. I am not the only person who has thought that Fox in Socks is a text with much to offer. IMHO, Seuss is underappreciated as a writer. Go. Read it aloud.

Essay on Criticism by Alexander Pope. This is not technically a book, but it's delightful. I like reading it for snickery goodness. I think the bits where the form supports the content are some of the most hysterically funny writing on the fucking planet, but most other people don't think this is anywhere near as funny as I do. Also, I think a lot more people quote Pope than know they are quoting Pope, and this could be fixed if they'd just read the man. Also, it's got quite snazzy heroic couplets. What's not to like?

Holes by Louis Sacher. This is a modern juvenile novel that I am assuredly too old to be reading. It's aimed at people in fourth or fifth grade, I'd guess. It's the sort of thing I would have adored back then, had it been written when I was that age. This is such a delightful read because all the parts, each and every one of them, fall together in ways that the adult mind usually finds entirely too pat... but he sold it well enough that I didn't mind buying. The lizards, the onions, the warden, the mountain, the sneakers, the gypsy curse -- I bought it all. The (very improbable) elements in the tale were like a handful of brightly colored confetti thrown into the air that landed to form a mosaic picture of my face. It was improbable as all hell... but it could, in theory, happen. Sacher didn't make me believe that it DID happen (I'm a little more grounded in reality than that.) but he made me want to believe that it could have happened. One of the more depressing parts of being what a friend of mine once called a groan-up is that it gets a little harder, with every passing year, to believe. That's sad. Worse yet, it gets a little harder, every year, to want to believe... and that's a fucking tragedy.

David Copperfield by Charles Dickens. This was the first book I stopped reading and never went back to finish. I don't give a damn how it comes out and I'm pretty sure, at this point, that the reading police will not ever arrest me for failing to finish the damn thing. There have been other books I've failed to finish since then, but this one was the first. From it, I learned that I didn't have to continue to slog through dense and unamusing prose if I didn't feel the need to do so. That's a valuable thing for any reader to know, I think, and this was the book that encouraged me to learn that lesson.

Comments

Holes

[ardvaark99999.livejournal.com]

Holes was made into an A-1 movie that my wife subjected me to. It reminded me of the Rescuers, sort of. Put the girl to work digging the pirate treasure out of the partially submerged sea cave. That's the sort of thing young-uns are made for!

FWIW, when I saw "Holes" on the pay per view menu, I wasn't sure exactly what it was about. Needless to say, I immediately went to look at the description, only to be sorely disappointed.

Re: Holes

[which-chick.livejournal.com]

I've seen the movie, which follows the book admirably. It was actually one of the better book-to-movie adaptations I've seen in lo these many years. I was particularly impressed with the waif-like gypsy boy, who was astoundingly pretty.

Also, as an FYI for holiday shopping, I bought a DVD of The Pirate Movie. It's as astoundingly bad as I remembered. I love it.

[cousin-sue.livejournal.com]

This is cool!

Holes is supposedly for 6th grade, and has been banned in some spots. I haven't read it. I'm just not a big Sachar fan, although I liked some of his earlier books. He struck it big with Sideways Stories from Wayside school, which I understand will be made into a movie.

I've never read David Copperfield. My Matt's parents gave me Oliver Twist when I was an early teen, and I loved it. I re-read it frequently (well, once every year or two). I have yet to find a Dickens story (other than a Christmas Carol) that I love as much as Oliver Twist, though I can quote pages from Tale of Two Cities, because that's my Mom's favorite.

Fox in Sox is excellent. Karl used to read it to the girls, my Mom read it to me, and I've read it to countless children. Our favorite quote is "I can't say such blibber blubber! My tongue is not made of rubber!"

Sadly, I have not counted my books since I inventoried when Cora was born. It was 5,000 back then, and I've contributed to the pile considerably since then.

My suggestion for everyone to own is a copy of the Oxford English Dictionary (I inherited it from my F.I.L.), which is great for Scrabble Games with my M.I.L. buwahahahahahaha!

[cousin-sue.livejournal.com]

Oh, the Sachar book I really like is "There's a boy in the girls' bathroom" . I , of course, remembered it when I hit "post comment"

[fooliv.livejournal.com]

For me, the burdensome Dickens novel was Great Expectations, except I had to finish it because otherwise our English teacher would beat me and put nasty things in my perminent record. I'm weak.

Holes, eh?

[which-chick.livejournal.com]

Amazingly, nobody has ever asked me about my permanent record from high school since I graduated from college. I rather wonder what would happen if I went to my high school and ASKED after my permanent record. Would they still have it? What's in there? Can I get a copy? (While this sounds like fun, I expect it's one of those things that is more fun to contemplate than to actually do. I'll keep you posted, though, should I decide to yank the school system's chain some seventeen years after I graduated... but time shouldn't matter if it's a PERMANENT RECORD, right?)

Holes is a quick read, shouldn't take anyone more than a couple of hours. The movie, as noted above, is also quite nice.

Your permanent record

[ardvaark99999.livejournal.com]

I wrote and asked for a copy of my permanent record last year. As a summary, it has a number of things. To wit:

1. Seven pages
2. Scholastic Achievement: final report cards from K-12, class rank, cum. av. from 10-12, also the TELLS test results
3. Standardized test scores (Iowa test, in my case)
4. Henmon-Nelson test (including my famed "perfect score" result obtained in part due to my figuring out how the test was graded so I could cheat and not miss a question)
5. Pictures from grades 2, 4, 6, 9, & 12 (hoo-boy!)
6. Address, parents' names and employment, siblings
7. Basic health info (allergies, etc.)
8. Extra-curricular activities list
9. Birth certificate copy, including the notice at the top saying that "It is illegal to duplicate this copy by photostat or photograph"
10. Permission to transfer records (to my institution of higher learning)
11. Permission to transfer records to the Westinghouse Science Talent Search
12. SAT test results, plus the SAT Achievement tests (FWIW, they didn't get my second SAT test results -- just the first)

Nothing at all related to my numerous disciplinary events.

[dmmaus.livejournal.com]

Yay, Fox in Socks! Woo!

I'm glad you like my Fox in Socks, Prince of Denmark. :-)