Is It Possible...?

to overdose on reading? I've read four books in three days and I feel kind of . . . stuffed. Like overfull in the head space. My emotions are all really close to the surface and I have a bad case of the fidgets. Of course there are signs that I also have another cold creeping up on me, maybe that's what's going on with me. Maybe not.

I guess at a certain point, the brain just shuts down and can't take in any more information. I haven't hit that point yet but I remember it from college. The brain just gets tired and I think I'd have a hard time getting to that point with YA, but then maybe I underestimate it.

I think it's time for a day off reading, clear off the cobwebs and get other things done. Hopefully, I will feel more like myself tomorrow.

Power Reading

There is something satisfying about powering through books. In the last two days I've finished three books. Now these aren't significant works. No one, probably, read these books and said "ah, yes! My life is now changed." Yet, does that matter? Reading leads to more reading. It's a habit that propagates itself.

So, no. It doesn't matter. All reading is good and it doesn't matter the material. I get so sick of people book-shaming themselves and my kids. A book read, even if it is vapid mind candy, is worth more than a book gathering dust on a shelf. That book could be the most heart rending beautiful piece of literature ever written, but if it isn't read - it is still just a hunk of paper. The value is in the reading.

I'm currently working my way through Darren Shan's Zom-B series. This is teen horror. The books are all short (150-180 pages) and features short chapters and plenty of white space on the page. The narratives are straight forward and full of violence and gore. Seems like fluff, right? Sure, it is. However, hidden in there are things like dealing with racism and prejudice, handling loss, and navigating morally grey situations.

This isn't high literature. Not by a long shot, but it is worthwhile and it has one my most difficult to entice readers, reading it. One book read is worth ten sitting on the shelf.

Week 8: 2/23/2020 - 2/29/2020

Hey so it's a leap year this year....that's cool. Leap years always make me think of the Pirates of Penzance. What would it be like to be born on February 29th... probably pretty boring.

It' was a pretty nothing week for goals all around. Writing was a zero and I spent most of the week picking at the Dashner novel. I finally finished it today. So, yeah. Struggling to get back on that horse...so to speak. Oh well, a new week means a new chance to succeed.

I'm giving myself a bigger than usual list with the hope that the added variety will get me on a book a day routine for a catch up week... We'll see. I also need to clear the decks on some things, so either they get read this week or they get shelved.

Here it is:

1. The Rule of Thoughts by James Dashner (Finished 2/23/2020)
2. Riverworld and Other Stories by Philip Jose Farmer
3. The Kappa Child by Hiromi Goto
4. A Time of Angels by Karen Hesse
5. Fantasy Stories Chosen by Diana Wynne Jones
6. A Letter of Mary by Laurie R. King
7. There's Something about Sweetie by Sandhya Menon (Finished 2/25/2020)
8. Zom-B: Angels by Darren Shan (Finished 2/24/2020)
9. Zom-B: Baby by Darren Shan (Finished 2/24/2020)
10. Love Soup by Anna Thomas
11. Where Do you Get Your Ideas? by Fred White

Week 7: 2/16/2020 - 2/22/2020

lol, so for all that I started out well, I followed up my first day by getting slammed with a sinus infection. Yesterday was the first day I woke up feeling completely healthy. It wasn't a good week for goals, but I'm going to cut myself some slack and start in on the writing habits tomorrow. I did manage to keep up on my reading though and finished four books.

Darkest Light by Hiromi Goto - this is the follow up to Half World. After Melanie returns to the normal world with the baby Gee, he grows into a teenager. However, it would be a bit much to expect kid to shed all the effects of a millennia spent as a monster. Eventually, he has to return to Half World to deal with his origin. This is a case where a sequel is stronger than the first book. Gee is an easier protagonist to relate to and his internal struggle felt more real than Melanie's did. While there are still flaws in the plot, and it is still a little heavy on exposition, this is a much more polished work.

The Underdog and Fighting Ruben Wolfe by Markus Zusak - after accidently reading the third book in the series, I had to go back and read the first two. It wasn't a hardship and they are very short. I'm not generally a fan of slice of life stories, but these are really good. All three books are from the POV of Cameron Wolfe, who is the youngest of three boys growing up working class in Australia.

In Underdogs, Ruben and Cameron are sort of these punk kids with no direction and no motivation to find one until Cameron starts working with his dad on Saturdays and meets what appears to be his first real crush. He is instantly smitten and thinks about her obsessively. The book is really about Cameron coming to terms with himself .

Fighting Ruben Wolfe is about slightly older Wolfe boys. A high school hall fight defending his sister's honor brings Ruben to the attention of a shady underground boxing promoter. Both he and Cameron start fighting on Sundays. At first, they tell themselves that they are helping out the family finances, but eventually it becomes something that they are doing with and for each other. There is a beautiful story in here about being brothers and what that means, but with a slice of life narrative, there is obviously much more than just that going on.

I'm really surprised by how much I liked these books. It isn't what I usually go for, but I would easily recommend these books to others.

Spider Man Noir: The Complete Collection - this was next in my read through of the Spiderverse books and much easier going for me than Spider-Ham. This is like a Dashiell Hammett make-over on the Spider Man stories. Set in a gritter pre-WWII world, this Spider Man wields a gun and takes human life. The villains are all speak-easy thugs and crime bosses. I loved it. It's a far cry from the awkward pimply teenaged hero that I'm accustomed to, but it still holds onto some of the odd naive do-good aesthetic.

I'm really not sure how next week is going to go. I've been reading in spurts instead of consistently. I'm not sure if there is a problem with that or not, but it bears watching. So the list:

1. The Rule of Thoughts by James Dashner
2. The Kappa Child by Hiromi Goto
3. A Letter of Mary by Laurie R. King
4. There's Something about Sweetie by Sandhya Menon
5. Love Soup by Anna Thomas
6. Where Do you Get Your Ideas? by Fred White

Day 1: Establishing Habits

Not an awsome day for starting a project. I'm having a hard time kicking my cold and I'm frankly just not feeling it. Nevertheless, here I am...writing. Yup. Writing. Spilling forth the creative powers of my brain on to the page.

Powerful powers.

Creative ones.

Yeah.

Not feeling it.

Anyway. So far so good. I'm not super loving the sequel to Half World. I do like Gee as a protagonist a great deal more than I liked Melanie though. I think he's more relatable, and less self-shaming.

Week 6: 2/9/2020 - 2/15/2020

Well up til I was felled by the cold to end all colds Thursday night, it was a very good week for meeting goals. I managed about four books, completely toasted my reading synapses and then spent two days layed out but the cold. Writing went well too up to that point. I was getting writing done both in the morning and in the evening pretty comfortably. So, now I know it can be done.

They say any habit takes a month to establish. So let's make that the goal. One month: write in the AM, write in the PM, and read at least 100 pages every day.

Let's do this!

Last week's reading was like swimming with the flow; it was easy. At the same time, I found myself captured by some pretty difficult narratives.

Getting the Girl by Markus Zusak was a book I picked up randomly because I knew the author. In case it escapes you, this is the guy who wrote The Book Thief. Turns out Zusak is an Aussie, which surprised me for some reason.  Getting the Girl turns out to be the last book in a trilogy. There is no indication of this anywhere on the cover of the edition I have, and I only found out when I entered it into goodreads. (I have since bought the first two books in the series and will aim to read them this week)

So, ok Cameron Wolfe is the youngest of  four kids (three of which are boys.) He desperately wants to be with a girl. Sex is a part of it, but it's not the whole thing. This is the story of Cameron getting the girl...who happens to be his brother's ex.

This was a surprisingly difficult read to start out because a lot of the terminology was heavy on Aussie jargon. Once I got  used to it, after 20 pages or so) it was fine, but I'll probably have to pull it from my classroom library for that reason. I'll have to see how the first two books go. I should also note that I'm a much bigger fan of this book than The Book Thief.

Goblinproofing One's Chicken Coop by Reginald Bakeley is a faux instruction manual for guarding against the faerie menace. It's presented as a series of articles published originally in Britain and republished as a group in the U.S. The articles are anecdotal in nature and the author, Bakeley, comes across as both angry and bitter. He even goes so far as to discuss cooking and eating the fairies that he captures which seems more than a little sinister. I finished it in a matter of a few hours. While it will never be my favorite things ever, the attention to detail was impressive and it was interesting how it hang together as a sort of narrative without telling a story in the traditional sense.

All the Bright Places by Jennifer Niven was a gut punch that I blasted through in about a day and a half. It was an intense read that left me emotionally spent. I wrote a full review if you are interested.

Peter Porker, The Spectacular Spider Ham: The Complete Collection Vol. 1. Alright, Ryan and Thomas got me this for my birthday after it was clear that I was a big fan of "Into the Spiderverse."  Peter Porker was my least favorite of the spider people. Came to find out that they took some pretty serious liberties with the character when they pulled him from the 1980's comic book. It's like he got a Warner Brothers make-over. The comic books are like reading a pun-riddled version of Spider Man filtered through Archie comics sensibilities. Honestly, that's why it took so long to get through. I liked it just fine, but I couldn't read more than a couple issues at a sitting. I'm really rather looking forward to reading these with Thomas. It's a fun introduction to most of the Marvel properties.

Ok, so next week I'm focusing on finishing a couple of series I started. Here's what's up:

1. Spider-Man Noir: The Complete Collection (Finished 2/13/2020)
2. Darkest Light by Hiromi Goto (Finished 2/12/2020)
3. Fantasy Stories edited by Diana Wynne Jones
4. Where Do You Get Your Ideas? by Fred White 
5. The Underdog by Markus Zusak (Finished 2/12/2020)
6. Fighting Ruben Wolfe by Markus Zusak

All the Bright Places by Jennifer Niven

This book wrecked me. I spent a time period greater than 30 minutes crying my eyes out as I finished reading the last chapters. I didn't really know what this book was about when I picked it up. I bought it for my classroom library because it won a Goodreads Choice award.  I generally trust the Goodread awards when it comes to YA (some of the other categories not so much.)

So, when I stuck it on the list for this week all I really knew was that it was a romance of some sort and that it was probably good.

Both of these things are true.

What I didn't know, though, is pretty important if you are handing it to a teen. This is the story of Violet and Finch who meet one day at school while they both independently consider throwing themselves off of the school's belltower. Violet is pretty normal for a kid who survived a car wreck that killed her older sister. She's pretty messed up, obviously. Finch is something else. Obviously he's got some problems, but it's not immediately clear why he's on that roof. However, he talks Violet down from the ledge and is immediately smitten. Violet not so much, however she is cured of her suicidal tendencies.

Finch pursues Violet and over the course of the novel it becomes clear that he's an undiagnosed bipolar.

The story is told from the point of view of both Violet and Finch. It's pretty raw in many places and it ends tragically. It's a tough read from an emotional point of view, but it's a good one.

This is valuable in my library because it explores bipolar disorder in a compassionate way. I don't know if it is actually like this, but it matches up with what I know. I have/have had bipolar students and much of this felt familiar. This is also valuable because it takes on the issue of suicide in a comprehensive way. Suicide is something that tends to generate some pretty binary and judgemental attitudes. While I would never be in a position of condoning suicide, I also know enough that I realize that it's never a simple choice and that the families left behind need more support even though the tendency is to stigmatise. This book does an excellent job of exploring that.

I will never read this book again.

Maybe you should go read it.

4 for four

ok, that's it. I've finished four books in four days. My brain is feeling kind of toasty and I think I need a break. I followed up my death marathon by finishing Volume 1 of Spider Ham which amounts to a kind of tonal whiplash.

I'm going to take a day off and try to remember what I do when I'm not binge reading. All that's left on my weekly list is a Stephen King novel and a writing book neither of which look to be particularly quick reads.

What is it I do when I'm not reading...

The Cautionary Aspects of the Prodigal Son

I teach the parable of "The Prodigal Son" every year in British Literature. I hate that parable. I get the point of it, but I can't help feeling a great deal of empathy for the older brother.  In the preamble to the parable Jesus says:

"I say unto you, that likewise joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just persons, which need no repentance." (Luke 15:7)

This suggests that the most valuable act, and therefore the harder act, is to admit being wrong and repenting it. However, I think that many times the harder thing is to do the correct thing day in and day out. The older brother does the right thing every day and ends up feeling unvalued. This is always a point of great debate in my classes, which is fun. The seniors get pretty impassioned about it.

So in terms as being a just a person - I sympathise with the older brother. However, when I think about getting my students to read, I find a different perspective. I have plenty of students who come to me already reading on their own. They know what they like already and I enjoy talking to them about their reading. However, what gets me really excited is when a kid who doesn't enjoy reading has a breakthrough moment and finds a book they love. I teach for those moments. Nothing else quite feeds the soul of what I do, like being able to give a kid that experience.

So that's my one soul out of 99. However, what of the ninety-nine? What they are and what they do should be valued, I believe, on the same level even if it isn't as glamorous. It's a puzzle.

I hate that parable. Sometimes I wonder if it isn't more a cautionary tale about valuing the steady ones, than a story about forgiveness.

Leaps and Bounds

Yesterday morning I was six books behind my pacing goal, now I'm only four books behind. I've managed to read two books in two days. I won't be able to keep it up, I know, but it still feels pretty good.

It turns out I've been reading a lot of books heavy on the death. It's not intentional, just the way things have worked out. However, official note to self... find some happy things to read next week.

Week 5: 2/2/2020 - 2/8/2020

On the surface, this looks like another disappointing week. Of the three books I'm going to talk about today, one of them is a hold-over from the previous week. I'm six books behind pace, which feels like a large number at this point in the year. And yet it feels like I've made more progress over the last week than is immediately obvious. For one thing, I'm in the middle of three books which should start wrapping up soon. One of the books (Afterworlds) was just under 600 pages long and I've started gulping down reading again.

This week I will focus on building my writing back in, while holding onto the reading.

Half World by Hiromi Goto - This is something I picked up this year for my Fantasy Lit class, so it falls neatly into my exception about books related to professional life. Truly what I was looking for was a book that blended aspects of Japanese mythology into it's fantasy setting. While it does do that, Half World isn't the best example probably.  However, this is a very good book with an unconventional protagonist and an unusual premise. Melanie Tamaki is a child born of two beings which are strictly speaking what I would consider a type of ghost. In this world, spirits follow a three stage cycle of reincarnation. The human world is the realm of the flesh. When people die, their spirits go to the Half-World which is a kind of purgatory where the souls are purged of their trauma from life. They then go to the Realm of Spirit as pure spirits. When the spirits begin to fade, they are born again as humans. The realms are out of balance and require something impossible to happen to fix it. The characterization was vivid with even minor characters making a strong impression. It's a gritty, grim story with some irksome plot holes, but still very much worth a read. It turns out there is a sequel that I will have to track down.

13 Reasons Why by Jay Asher - this is a book surrounded by notoriety. When Netflix aired a series based on this book, there was a lot of concern. There is always a lot of concern when "the kids" are deeply interested in something with difficult themes. In this case, suicide. I remember sitting in a staff meeting where the discussion had long since gotten out of hand and thinking - nobody writes about suicide as a good thing. Its narrative use is as a tragedy. Which isn't to say that a teen can't commit suicide with the misguided hope of causing tragedy, but that almost certainly wasn't the aim of book or the TV series adapted from it. Nevertheless, everyone was concerned but realized that we couldn't stop them from watching the thing and we all resolved to be super vigilant for the warning signs of a teen contemplating suicide (which as high school teachers we should do anyway.) In time, the hubbub died down and we all moved on. Sometime during all that, I bought a copy of the book for my classroom library with the intent of reading it just in case. I finally got around to it this last week. The entire premise of this book is that after Hannah Baker's suicide, a set of seven audio tapes are slowly making the rounds to the thirteen people who played some particularly important role in the last couple years of her life. We hear these tapes from the perspective of Clay Jensen who is number eight on the list. As he listens to the tapes we hear both her words and Clay's recollections of events while he crisscrosses town to visit the important places on the tape. Clay is a nice kid and he was personally devastated by Hannah's death. This is a good illustration of how the small events and everyday cruelties of highschool weigh a kid down. It was grim, it was gritty, but it ended on a hopeful note.

Afterworlds by Scott Westerfeld - At some point I decided that I would buy any book Scott Westerfeld writes for my classroom library...and because I just like the way his brain works. This is a massive book because it is really two 300 page novels shuffled together in alternating chapters. One book is about Darcy Patel who wrote a novel in a month and sold the draft to publisher for a massive amount. She's 18 and decides to delay college while she moves to New York and tries to be a writer for three years. The other book is the novel Darcy Patel wrote about a girl, Lizzie, who after nearly dying during a terrorist attack, gains the ability to cross over to the afterlife and guide souls on. She falls in love with another such person and discovers that her mother is haunted by the ghost of her childhood friend who was killed by a serial killer. It sounds like it should be a mess and hard to follow, yet strangely it all hangs together well and is an interesting insight to the writer's process of revision. Darcy's section is full of discussion about the Lizzie section. At some point I'm going to have to reread this for structure.

Heading into the next week, I'm still playing catch up and so much of the list is YA or otherwise very short. I'm having a startlingly difficult time getting through the complete volume 1 of Peter Porker.

1. Peter Porker, The Spectacular Spider-Ham: The Complete Collection Vol 1 (Finished 2/5/2020)
2. Goblinproofing One's Chicken Coop by Reginald Bakeley (Finished 2/3/2020)
3. Revival by Stephen King
4. All the Bright Places by Jennifer Niven (Finished 2/4/2020)
5. Where Do You Get Your Ideas? by Fred White
6. Getting the Girl by Markus Zusak (Finished 2/2/2020)

hmmmmm

I've been thinking lately about what takes an idea to the point of a story. See, I've never had a hard time with ideas. I've got ideas out the wazoo. My problem is how to take the next step with them. There's some sort of bizarre alchemy there that I have never figured out.

I also probably give up too easily.