My Reading Challenge, an update

Inspired by Darla D, who is participating in several book challenges this year, I decided to create my own: read 10 books from my own collection which I've either started and not finished, have been sitting there waiting to be read, or frankly would probably continue to sit waiting to be read in favor of loaners from friends and the library. As I'm not a fast reader - generally, a book a month, give or take - I figured 10 sounded about right.

Since the year is about 2/3 over, this seemed like a good time to check in on my progress. (Incidentally, I am including audiobooks, since Darla does and since I am experiencing the story verbatim.) Here are the books I've cleared so far:

1. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time - Mark Haddon. Was really interesting to see the world through the eyes of an austistic kid. Also made me hope I never have a child who is severly autistic. The main character hated touch so much that his version of a "hug" was simply touching fingertips. I'm a big hugger. I thrive on touch in the worst way. The idea of a loved one, much less a child that grew in me, recoiling from the most basic expression of love would kill me. Very good read; just broke my heart. I did love that the chapters were numbered in prime numbers. Wicked awesome!

2. Ender's Game - Orson Scott Card. I'd been meaning to read this for years. I'd begun it a few times, but never made it past chapter 4. (I have a couple of milestones: page 30 or chapter 4 always seem to be the make or break point in relation to my interest.) It's one of Honey's favorites and I figured reading it would give me further insight into who he is. I think that would've been the case had I finished reading it in the first year or two of our relationship when I originally tried. Having read it (or rather listened to it) a dozen years into our relationship I knew immediately why he connected with this book because whatever insight it would've given me, life has already revealed. Nonetheless, it was good to finally become acquainted with his friend.

3. I Am America and So Can You - Stephen Colbert. Ahhh, candy!

4. Number One Ladies Detective Agency - Alexander McCall Smith. Eh. I wanted to like it. I liked the main character well enough, but the story was too disjointed for me. I'm hoping I'll get more out of the movie. Sometimes a filmmaker can see more in text than I did, or bring more life to a story than the original text. I'm not blaspheming; it's just true.

5. Wigfield: The Can Do Town That Just Might Not - Stephen Colbert, Amy Sedaris, Paul Dinello. Read this on our vacation over Memorial Day week. Half of it on the runway during the hours upon hours long delayed flight. Fun fluff. Not as hysterical as I'd been hoping for, but it kept me entertained.

Currently reading: A Short History of Nearly Everything - Bill Bryson. ... wow. I read Bryson's Mother Tongue a few years back and, though it was nice, it was not what I had hoped it would be. I felt it was English linguistics made too pedestrian. However, as this book is physical science made pedestrian, I appreciate Mother Tongue more. Bryson has made the daunting accessible.

Tried reading: Little Women - Louisa May Alcott. Again, for probably the 3rd or 4th time in my life. I think I made it further than the previous attempts; maybe chapter 5 or 6. However, I just am not that interested in these sisters. Their lives are just not that compelling to me. Jo is kind of interesting, but I couldn't give a crap about the rest of the sisters. And frankly even Jo doesn't seduce me enough to warrant avidly consuming every word. Marmee's story would probably interest me most, but she seems kind of ancillary so far. ... eh. I'll probably finish it at some point. This is one of those books that I know I should read because of its importance in literary history, and because I can't be a good feminist without loving this book like my own sister, yadda, yadda, yadda ... but, ugh. It's just not happening for me. Not now, anyway. (Not in my life to this point, come to that.)

There you have it: my half-way point review. Other books in my collection I'm thinking about knocking out after Bryson's: The Gnostic Gospels and Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas, both by Elaine Pagels; Paula by Isabelle Allende; Catch 22 by Joseph Heller that Honey got me for Christmas years back; oh! Born to Buy by Juliet Schor, which I read about half of one year and then got distracted by my thesis. I loved her Overspent American. Maybe one of Neal Stephenson's books from Honey's shelf. We'll see. I'll post here when I've completed my quest

3BT: winged beasts and feathered skies

Been working like a madwoman, lately. Exhausted as all sin. Was even smited late this week with some nasty allergic reaction all over my frakkin' body! I blame garlic.

Nonetheless, the pain receded and I took Babydog for a walk this evening that allowed me time to pause and soak in the beauty of the evening. It was lovely. Humid and hot, but peaceful. Felt lucky to be alive and witness the simple wonders around me.

So here's another nod to Clare's mission, and three beautiful things I noticed this evening:

1. The song of the cicadas. It is eaily the sound of summer for me. I love their drawn out trill of weeeee-oooo, weeee-oooo, weeee-oooo. Lots of people hate cicadas, but I hear their chorus and it fills me with joy: it's persistent and only comes once a year. It's like a hymn of praise that swells up amidst the heat. A reminder of impermance and the need to live in the now. When I hear them, I think, "Enjoy this now. Summer will end soon. When they stop, school will start again and all your summer freedom will be over." They sing of the present.

2. A high sheet of thick cirro-cummulus clouds spanning over the sky like a vast silvery, bluey-white bridal train. They looked almost like the tips of peackock feathers, only white. Often, those kinds of clouds precede thunderheads. I could see a line off in the distance behind the sheet, but whether we'll have storms tonight, I don't know. These clouds this evening were pure icing, though.

3. Spotting a hawk on a neighbor's fence. I did a double take. It was about 30 feet from us, calmly perched on the chain link fence, glancing around. I inched us closer to it - maybe another 5 feet - slowly and quietly and just watched him for a bit. Even though we live in a solidly urbanized part of the metro area, he was a reminder that wildlife will not be denied. Sprawl be-damned. These are our neighbors, too.

Pup-cake

Sonnjea, over at Koji's Kitchen, always ends her posts with WMML, or "what made me laugh." Often, it's some antic that her dog Koji did during the day. Last night, we had a moment that made me think I should add a WMML tagline to my posts.

We have lots of reasons to eat cake in our house. Mine and Honey's birthdays and wedding anniversary, as well as Memorial Day and 4th of July all fall within roughly a 10 - week period. Plus, cake is a good thing and sometimes you just need cake*. We had cake last night and we indulged ourselves with a second helping late in the evening as we settled in to watch a movie in the den. Babydog, who often licks our plates clean if she's been good, was treated to Honey's leftovers. I took my time with the second piece. An entire second piece was just too much for me, so I scraped about half the icing to the edge of my plate, ate a bit of the cake and ate the other half of the icing. Babydog watched this all eagerly. I put her on a down-stay and then released her. She eagerly lapped up as much of the icing as she could and ate some of the cake. I took the plate away from her, so she wouldn't overdo it, and left her smiling.

Then, we watched something we'd never seen in our dog. Babydog had a sugar-high. She was grinning from pointy ear to pointy ear, panting. Her eyes were wide. She trotted over to Honey, sitting in his recliner, then over to me on the sofa. She'd jump up on the sofa with me and pace the length and come and pant and smile in my face. Then she'd jump off and then on again. Several times, she jumped up and climbed over the pillows to peer over the back of the sofa, like a kid who climbs monkey bars. She'd look over the edge and smile at us widely then jump off the way she came. Then she'd jump back up to peer over the back of the sofa again, pondering whether she could jump from a place so high - akin to a 10 or 12-foot jump to you and me, I suppose. She never did it. But she was so smiley and fidgety that Honey and I had to stop the movie to laugh at her. I half expected her to start saying, "you know what? you know what? you know what? you know what? I can curl my tongue." Or even better, " you know what? you know what? you know what? I can count to 200 by 5s; wanna hear?" I wouldn't have been surprised if she'd have climbed to the arm of the sofa and started belly flopping into the middle of the cushions or if she'd have started playing "the floor is lava."

That is what made me laugh.

*Cake is a large part of the reason we are married to begin with.

**note: The image above is not, in fact, Babydog. I just grabbed a picture off the "series of tubes" of a corgi eating cake. I accidentally left my camera at a friend's house during 4th of July festivities, so I didn't get to capture Babydog's mania. My friend promised I should receive my camera again, soon, with a few jokey pictures included. The last time I entrusted her with my camera, I found she'd taken a snapshot of hers and another mutual friend's cleavage.

A Question of "Character"

This past Wednesday, one of my best friends from college popped in for a visit. She and her family were elsewhere on the East Coast and drove to spend half a day with us. However, the half-day turned into a few hours for dinner. They figured the "4-5 hour drive" between destinations would be like that between DFW and Houston, which she and I can both do in our sleep, and undoubtedly have. They didn't count on the toll-roads, the crowded freeways, the lack of access roads, and the poorly labeled exits and exit-warnings. It was good to see them, though. We see them about once every year, or year and half when visiting friends and family in DFW. As we pulled out to grab dinner for her hungry toddler, she said something that struck me as odd. She loved our neighborhood and commented on how much "character" it had and then said Texas neighborhoods didn't have character.

I took the compliment for what it was, but was kind of amused by her observation. To begin with, I think there are plenty of people in our metro area who would look at our neighborhood and would think that it lacks "character." We live in a development built about 40 years ago in a style inspired by the older architecture of the area, but definitely in a style fitting to the late 60s, early 70s. Plenty of folks around here complain about the architecture that goes up in neighborhoods that are being "revitalized" because it looks too similar to that of everywhere America. (While I agree about the architectural conformity, I think the bigger issue is the "chainization" of decaying neighborhoods than the sameness of style. Frankly, though, "revitalization" is a topic for a whole other musing.) If she drove another 15 or 30 miles out from our neighborhood - if even that far - she'd find suburban neighborhoods and developments populated with houses that look almost exactly like hers, in her neighborhood planted between Dallas and Fort Worth. (Not Arlington; there are a bajillion bedroom communities between the two.)

I commented to my friend that the "character" is only a function of the oldness of the settlements on the East Coast. Texas, by and large, was settled much later than New York, Philly or Charleston. But, that got me thinking: what is "character" in a neighborhood? Or in architecture? Is it really about age?

Back when McMansions started cropping up in the late 80s, I remember thinking those were full of character. When we visited Mom's baby brother in a Dallas suburb and saw the two-story, high-ceilinged, attached two-car garage manse he and his wife had, I remember thinking that was the pinnacle of success. That was a unique house - one with character. But that was because in our small town, I only knew the Levittown-style shoebox houses that I, and virtually everyone around me, lived in. But now, every new house within a pretty broad price range, looks like that. Now, at least where we live, those tiny shoebox houses that felt so stifling to me growing up, are the ones with "character." And what of Santa Fe? Every building in that city is traditionally made of adobe, in keeping with its Pueblo Indian heritage. I believe there is an ordinance requiring it. Does that mean that an adobe McDonald's has "character?" Certainly, a McDonald's that is in the architectural style of a Pueblo building is less shrill amongst like buildings than a typical white box with a red roof and yellow stripes. But isn't it like slapping lipstick on a pig?

Of course, there are some communities that don't allow the proverbial pigs in in the first place. A friend of ours from Maine likes to brag that Maine doesn't have a Wal-Mart, because the locals won't permit it. Vermont also has laws that make it difficult for chains to settle in. It certainly is easier to preserve the architectural tradition of a community by disallowing the eyesore giants to enter in the first place. (Not to mention it's a great way to preserve local small businesses.) But again, is "tradition" really "character?" New Orleans has an architectural tradition, as does Brooklyn and Santa Fe. But maybe that tradition only has "character" outside of its home. America, in general, is still pretty new to have a clearly-defined architectural tradition, compared with most of Europe and Asia. We're still developing accents; our language may not be settled for a few more hundred years. ... rambling off, now ...

A house with "character," as described by a realtor, generally means one that is older, needs work and one upon which the new resident could imagine a past story (or glory?) and can write his or her own story. Really, every edifice has character of some sort. A mobile home has character as much as the White House. Just because it isn't stately with an imagined past history doesn't mean it doesn't have character. It still communicates and reflects a lifestyle. It just may not be the kind of lifestyle most of us are conditioned to aspiring toward, or the kind of lifestyle most of us would desire or envy. Just because brand new cookie-cutter houses in suburbia are the norm for a wide swath doesn't mean they aren't places where people can't write their own stories. The same holds true for condos atop Bally's gyms in "revitalized" communities. Just because they're the Trapper-Keeper notebooks of residential architecture, doesn't mean the stories that can and will be written in them won't be any less interesting or valid than those written on the pages of parchment.

... now I miss my Trapper-Keepers.