Rebecca Reads

I’ve been saying for months that I would take a blogging break as soon as I finished this-or-that book or when such-and-such month came. But there was always something waiting for me to finish up. There was always Twitter to distract me.

I’ve been stressed with some personal things, one of which is my son’s toilet training (if you are wondering, he’s technically there but oh my I’m tired of accidents). Add to that the fact that he does not nap most days and that he’s at an in-between stage as he adjusts to being a 2½ year old and no longer a baby. I have felt for quite a few months that blogging (reading, blog upkeep, twittering, and other online projects) was distracting me from giving him the attention he needs.

So I decided to drop everything and step away cold turkey for at least a week (I think it ended up about 10 days). The first day was very hard (I missed twitter especially), the second was a little easier, and by now I almost feel I could just stop blogging completely. I could give my son my undivided attention. I could start each day with his smiling face and not checking to see whether my post went up and how many comments do I need to respond to from yesterday?. I could continue my stay-at-home mother life without the distraction of the internet. I COULD QUIT BLOGGING! Read the rest of this entry »

She’ll be visiting A Striped Armchair today. Although I was scheduled for Heyer’s Classics Circuit stop today originally, we’ve since tweaked the schedule, so if you are looking for the updated schedule, make sure to visit the Classics Circuit site.

I have some personal things going right now so I’ll be absent from reading and commenting on blogs, responding to comments, twitter, and otherwise blogging for the next little while. I hope you are well in the mean time.

In his narrative of life in slavery and what led him to escape, Frederick Douglass captured the chief dilemmas that slaves dealt with, including slavery of the mind. Douglass’s slavery in Baltimore and surrounding areas was horrendous, and yet it was, as he admitted, quite tame compared to those experiences that slaves on plantations in the South dealt with.

As I read, I was struck that the main obstacle that Douglass had to overcome was not the freezing weather, the starvation, the humiliations, and the beatings, but rather a broken will. Of course, all of the former abuses directly contributed to the later, but it is his will that allowed him to be himself amidst the horrors of slavery. Read the rest of this entry »

Last week, I finished a few shorter books, as well as my project book, which I’d worked on all month, and The Fellowship of the Ring, which was the February Lord of the Rings book. I enjoyed Woolf’s book, and Douglass’s narrative was a great perspective on what it meant to be a slave. DNA had it’s faults, but I’m glad I kept reading; the ending was better written and less technical than the first parts.

I also picked up a book I own about gender-based genetics (The X in Sex), and it is so easy to read compared to DNA. It’s short, too, so I may finish it. I started skimming Daily Life in Victorian England, and while it’s not spectacularly written and there are no footnotes (a huge pet peeve of mine in nonfiction), I’m still so fascinated by the era, I’d love to keep reading. I didn’t get to any of my Japan books this week but I did read about 150 pages of East of Eden as well.

At any rate, this week, I must finish my Heyer book, which I’ve barely begun. I’d forgotten my tour dates was so soon (it’s Monday)! And I need to work on another house project so I’ll finish my audiobook. East of Eden may become a priority, but I don’t mind if I only make a little progress. Although it’s hard to put it down after just a little, the writing is so beautiful, it’s like a little reward at the end of the day and I like stretching it out.

Of course, it was due yesterday, so maybe I need to work on that…

I started swapping books at PaperbackSwap instead of Bookmooch. PBS has a “condition” requirement that attracted me to it. I’m very tired of getting really old, falling apart books, and I’ve gotten many from Bookmooch. (I still have some books from my “writing-and-highlighting” college days listed at Bookmooch, but I list the condition, so you won’t be surprised.) At any rate, the fact that my copy of The Fellowship of the Ring fell apart as I read was testament to me that it’s about time I owned books that were not in rotten condition. I’m having fun swapping away some of those nice condition books I own that I know I’m never going to read again for nice condition books that I do want to own and read again!

Do you swap books?

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Nobel laureate (1968) Yasunari Kawabata is obviously talented at describing scenes, and there was, in The Old Capital, something refreshing about a slow-paced story of a young woman coming into a realization of herself.

In her free time, Chieko would see the cherry blossoms and visit the cedar forests. It was a celebration of the world around us, and I enjoyed Kawabata’s pace. The world today moves so quickly, it was unusual to slow down and try to imagine this foreign 1950s world. Chieko’s Kyoto seemed on the cusp of embracing  Westernization.

And that was how the book felt to me: on the cusp. I can’t say I didn’t like it: I enjoyed it very much. But as I read, I felt it was on the verge of something beautiful, and I missed it. Only in retrospect does it all fit together for me. (Note that I’ve attempted to avoid major “spoilers,” if those are even possible.)

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I will miss February’s calendar picture. It is just the prettiest picture in the calendar and I find it sad that it happened to be on the shortest month! The days have been filled with well-enjoyed books, though. It was a satisfying month.

March’s picture is not as exciting to me, but I do like the quote at the bottom:

Reading makes immigrants of us all. It takes us away from home, but more important, it finds homes for us everywhere. Hazel Rochman

This month, I was taken around the world in an eye-opening look at the plight of women in the world. I visited Regency England and sigh at Elinor’s and Marianne’s romance. I took a trip to late Victorian England, then I jumped to an alternate 1930s Harlem. I finished my lengthy immersion in the development of English language (which covers a lot of history), took a short excursion to Japan, and then a journey as an escaping slave. I also traveled between England and Paris during the revolution and walked across the lawn, which was forbidden me. Finally, I”ve been immigrating to Salinas Valley, California and recently began immigrating to Middle Earth.

My month certainly was full of lots of different kinds of “homes.” I enjoyed my variety this month. My goal to read lots of Black History Month books didn’t really work out well (I got too distracted), but I’m satisfied with my reading.

In March, my project book will be Edward Hirsch’s How to Read a Poem And Fall in Love with Poetry. I’m hoping it will get me geared up for April’s National Poetry Month.

Where did you visit in your reading this month?

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A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf is an historical essay, so as I began reading, I wondered how relevant it was for me. After all, I don’t feel I’ve been discriminated against because of my gender and I like where I am with my life and the options I have before me. However, I quickly decided that Virginia Woolf was still talking to me as a woman and as an individual. I am a part of her future vision for what women should be able to attain. While I have a lot of opportunities in my life (opportunities that would not have been available to me 100 or even 30 years ago), it’s important to know just how far women have come: and to embrace how much farther we can go in adding to the creative output of the world. Read the rest of this entry »

Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities is full of dark Victorian romance. Muddy roads on a dark night. A secluded house on a corner that echoes footsteps. Cemetaries at night. And, of course, Paris streets that run with wine and then blood because of La Guillotine.  It is a sinister world for the upper class, yet Dickens also manages to capture a sweet side of horror of the French Revolution by giving us some memorable characters that think of others. Truly, his novel is appropriately described in the first phrases:

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”

Why, then, did I struggle so much in reading it?

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Although I’m much more comfortable writing than talking, when it comes to my favorite subject (books), I decided I could give talking about books a try. Thanks to the encouragement of Amanda, Eva, and Jason, here’s my first vlog!

You’ll notice that I’m just as nerdy in person as I am in writing. I made an effort to pretend I was not nervous. And you know what? It wasn’t so bad.

In case you didn’t want to watch it, here’s my current reading in text as well!

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The figure of my study is round, and has no more bare wall than what is taken up by my table and chair; so that the remaining parts of the circle present me a view of all my books at once, set upon five rows of shelves round about me. … ’Tis there that I am in my kingdom, and there I endeavor to make myself an absolute monarch, and to sequester this one corner from all society. …

Michel de Montaigne*

Where is your book-kingdom? What is your dream book-kingdom if you don’t have it yet?

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