Dust and Spores

Titles of book read in this span:

• Stone of Farewell / Tad Williams -- p. 566-575 (set aside)
• Fray / Joss Whedon -- p. 1-216 (finished)

Pages read in this span: 226, mostly graphic novel pages.

Running total of pages read since started: 410

Books finished since the start:

• The Trouble with Chickens / Doreen Cronin
• Fray / Joss Whedon

Thoughts on current read: Fray is an excellent graphic novel, but I'm a Buffy geek, so it has less work to do to impress me. I read it 4 years ago, and I just reread it for a book club meeting I have next week. It always makes me cry in the middle. Always.

Memes and Mini-Challenges completed:

• Introduction meme
• Where in the World Are YOU?

Other activities this span:

• The scanning of some reader blogs.
• The first of the Bathroom Breaks.

Titles of book read in this span:

• The Trouble with Chickens / Doreen Cronin -- p. 1-119 (finished)
• Stone of Farewell / Tad Williams -- p. 501-565

Pages read in this span: 184, though most of these were in a kids' book.

Running total of pages read since started: 184

Books finished since the start:

• The Trouble with Chickens / Doreen Cronin

Thoughts on current read: I've been reading this book for a couple weeks. It's a silly epic fantasy novel, nothing to write home about. I just needed a break from some heavy stuff.

Memes and Mini-Challenges completed:

• Introduction meme
• Where in the World Are YOU?

Other activities this span:

• The drinking of morning coffee.
• The eating of a breakfast sandwich.

Hi! I'll make this quick because I've already started reading a book, and it's adorable.

Here's a bit about myself:

Where are you reading from today? New York, NY
Three random facts about me… I'm a librarian, I'm really excited to be old and grumpy, and I only go to book expos for the free tote bags.
How many books do you have in your TBR pile for the next 24 hours? 21. It's a lot, but I'm finicky and never know what I'll be in the mood for, so it's best to have a variety than to have to go searching through my collection.
Do you have any goals for the read-a-thon (i.e. number of books, number of pages, number of hours, or number of comments on blogs)? Not really. I just want to make it through, which is something I wasn't able to do last time.
If you’re a veteran read-a-thoner, any advice for people doing this for the first time? Eat light meals throughout the day, and stay away from meat. Also the moderate caffeine you get from light tea is better than tons of coffee or 5-Hour-Energy because those things will cause to to crash eventually. Also, try to read short things occasionally. The sense of momentum you get from finishing something can be refreshing.

Alright, happy reading everyone!

So, as usual, I have been terrible about updating this blog. I've read a few books in the past month of so, but I've not wanted to talk about any of them. I'm not sure why, since they were good.

But today's the Read-a-Thon (1.5 hours and counting), and beyond just participating for the fun of it, I'm using the event to get back in touch with "writing about reading." The forced terseness of bihourly updates should help since part of my problem is "But I don't WANNA update, it's too HARD!" I'm hoping to remind myself: a) I'm happier when I'm creating content (even if it's just internet content nobody reads) and b) sometimes you guys find me amusing.

So I've already got an ambitious pile of books next to my couch... though, hmm, I just realized I should add something spooky to the pile... I bet a spooky book will help me keep awake later. ANYWAY, I'm gonna go shower. And then I'm gonna to get some coffee and a Naked juice. And then I'm gonna start. And that's my grand plan.

So good luck to everyone participating! Have a fabulous time, and may you not crash until 25 and a half hours from now. I certainly can't; I've got brunch plans in the morning, and if I sleep through them, I will be chastised by my Snarky Friend.

Dr. Horrible and Other Horrible Stories / Zach Whedon.
New York : Dark Horse, 2010
Art by Joelle Jones, Jim Rugg, Farel Dalrymple, Eric Canete.
80 p.

I have extremely ambivalent feelings about this book. On the one hand, more Dr. Horrible is always (100% of the time) better than not more Dr. Horrible. On the other... I mean it's cute and funny, but there's not a lot to it. What I always appreciated about the Whedonverse is that behind all of the humor and strangeness, there's a depth of feeling that sneaks out and stabs you. While the Dr. Horrible web series was no Buffy or Firefly, it still captured that spirit. But for a collection of preludes and backstories, I don't feel like this book illuminated any of the characters. It just provided an amusing diversion.

...which isn't to say that discredits it entirely. What it does do it does right. It's quirky and colorful and very funny. So if you like Dr. Horrible and want to pass an amusing quarter of an hour, definitely give this a read. But if you don't know the characters, this won't give you much to go on.

I've decided to set myself a goal this year. I'm an avid opera-fan, but I've never done a good job at investigating the source material for the librettos of some of my favorite pieces. I want to change that. I decided to read 5 novels that were turned into operas I like.

So I started looking around for books upon which operas have been based. Turns out, most of the pieces I know come from source material are actually from mythology or plays. So I expanded, and now it's a big goal: 5 novels, 5 plays, and 5 mythological sources (plays or poems). I think it's a good project.

Here's what I'm looking at:

Novels

• Bride of the Lammermoors / Walter Scott (Lucia di Lammermoor / Donizetti)
• Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District / Nikolai Leskov (Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District / Shostakovich)
• Manon Lescaut / Abbé Prévost (Manon / Massenet)
• Eugene Onegin / Alexander Pushkin (Eugene Onegin / Tchaikovsky)
• Le Mariage de Loti / Pierre Loti (Lakmé / Delibes)

Plays

• Othello / William Shakespeare (Otello / Verdi)
• Les mamelles de Tirésias / Apollinaire (Les mamelles de Tirésias / Poulenc)
• Le Viol de Lucrèce / André Obey (The Rape of Lucretia / Britten)
• The Figaro Trilogy / Pierre Beaumarchais (The Barber of Seville / Rossini ; The Marriage of Figaro / Mozart ; La Mère Coupable / Milhaud ; The Ghosts of Versailles / Corigliano)
• The Merry Wives of Windsor / William Shakespeare (Falstaff / Verdi)

Mythology

• Daphnis and Chloe / Longus (Daphnis et Chloé / Offenbach)
• Iphigenia in Tauris / Euripedes (Iphigénie en Tauride / Gluck)
• Oedipus Rex / Sophocles (Oedipus Rex / Stravinsky)
• Metamorphoses / Ovid (a ton of stuff)
• Electra / Sophocles (Elektra / Strauss)

Since this exploded, I'm not looking at an end date or anything.... but hopefully I'll make a big dent in it this year. And then I can make a new list! Whee.

Xenocide / Orson Scott Card
New York : Tor, 1992
538 p.
Orig. published: 1991

Haha so followers of my blog (all zero of you) will notice that I haven't written in 5 months. Know why? Because that's how long it took me to read this book! I wish I were kidding, but this is the only thing I have read from October when my boyfriend told me to (I have a boyfriend now) until last night when I finally trudged through the last 10 pages.

he novel takes place in two locations: the Chinese world of Path and Lusitania where Ender and his stilted plot line live. It became obvious early on that the Path novel held Card's strongest concept, and the Ender stuff was there because -- I dunno -- he knew he could monetize it?

Every character in Ender's world has one personality trait that dictates their arc, and nothing they do seems human at all. Every believable moment is smothered by the zealous application of LIFE QUESTIONS! People with staunch opinions for hundreds of pages have their minds changed in one paragraph. The same happens with scientific breakthroughs. You can bookmark all the turning points in this novel because it divides it into discrete sections: "Here's the part where they figure out the soul." "This is where they magically solve a millennium-old problem and talk about it for 50 pages."

If Card had kept this story as a 250-page novel on Path, it would have worked, but he crammed so much in here that he splintered his vision, lost control, and could only rein it in with a novel where the blocking and outline are too obvious. It damaged both his Path story, filled with potential, and the Ender saga that was off to such a great start.