Will you take the dare?

Have you heard about The TBR Dare?  James from Ready When You Are, C.B.  says:

"This is not a reading challenge.  It's a dare. 

I dare you to pledge you will read only the books in your TBR (To Be Read) stack for as long as you dare starting January 1, 2011.   

One hour, one day, one book, one week, one month, or until the dare ends on April 1.  (I never make open-ended New Year's Resolutions.  Every goal should have a end date.)"

I've accepted the dare.  A goal has been set -  read from my shelves until April Fool's Day(!). There are surely enough books to last the entire year, and this is only three months...  I can do that, right?

Exceptions will be made for book club selections (unless I can convince the group to read what's already on my shelf) and I will continue to use credits for audiobooks already purchased from audible.com.

Will you accept the dare?  Details can be found here, then click over here to sign up.

Wordless Wednesday: Oh, the weather outside is frightful...

On this day...

... in 1873, American novelist Willa Cather was born in Back Creek, Virginia. Today's Writer's Almanac featured an interesting piece on her life.

It's the birthday of novelist Willa Cather, (books by this author) born Wilella Cather in the village of Back Creek near Winchester, Virginia (1873). The Cathers had a hired girl named Margie, and when Margie would go home to visit her mother, Mary Ann, she would bring young Willa with her. Mary Ann was illiterate, a "hill woman" from Timber Ridge, a stretch of the Appalachians. Willa soaked in the stories that Mary Ann told — the gossip, family feuds, stories of lovers and murderers and legacies from the Civil War. Many years later, Willa Cather said that this was the beginning of her life in storytelling.

Cather's family had a tense relationship with many of their neighbors. Willa Cather was the fifth generation of Virginian aristocracy. They lived in a large, elegant farmhouse. Even worse, her father's family were known supporters of the Union during the war — her father and uncle had crossed the border into West Virginia to avoid being drafted, and people suspected her grandfather of being a Union spy. The year that Willa was born, her uncle moved to Nebraska to homestead, and her grandparents soon followed their son. Willa's parents wanted to stay in Virginia and keep farming sheep. However, a few years later their four-story sheep barn burned to the ground, and there were rumors that it was an act of arson by resentful neighbors. The Cathers took that as a sign and headed off to join the rest of their family in Nebraska.

So in 1883, Willa, her three brothers and sisters, her parents, Willa's grandma on her mother's side, two of her cousins, their hired girl Margie, and Margie's brother all set off together for Nebraska. They took a train to Red Cloud, then a covered wagon out to the precinct of Catherton, which her relatives had named after themselves. She wrote later, "That shaggy grass country had ripped me with a passion I have never been able to shake. It has been the happiness and the curse of my life."

After a childhood on the prairie, growing up with immigrant pioneers, Cather went off to college at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln, intending to become a doctor. But after one of her professors sent in an essay of hers without her knowledge and it was published, she decided to become a writer instead.

She had a stint working for the Nebraska State Journal, then moved to Pittsburgh and ended up with a job at the Daily Leader. Crawford Peffer was a law student and friends with Edwin Couse, the editor of the Daily Leader. Peffer wrote: "I often went to his office at the close of the day's work, about 4 p.m. One day I found a young lady with flashing blue eyes, sitting opposite him at his large flattop desk, whom he introduced to me as 'Miss Cather, my new assistant.' […] Miss Cather was unconventional in both dress and conversation. She wore skirts much too short for that day and mannish looking shirtwaists. Soon we were calling her 'Bill,' a name she seemed to like. Bill Cather was the most argumentative person I have ever met. She disputed any subject that Couse or I brought up." That was in 1898. In 1906, she moved to New York to work on the editorial staff of McClure's. But the prairie remained her inspiration. She serialized her first novel, Alexander's Bridge, in McClure's in 1912. Her second novel, O Pioneers! (1913), was her first book about Nebraska — it was published when she was almost 40 years old. She wrote to a friend, "I wanted to let the country be the hero."

O Pioneers! begins: "One January day, thirty years ago, the little town of Hanover, anchored on a windy Nebraska tableland, was trying not to be blown away. A mist of fine snowflakes was curling and eddying about the cluster of low drab buildings huddled on the gray prairie, under a gray sky. The dwelling-houses were set about haphazard on the tough prairie sod; some of them looked as if they had been moved in overnight, and others as if they were straying off by themselves, headed straight for the open plain. None of them had any appearance of permanence, and the howling wind blew under them as well as over them.”

She quit her job at McClure's to write full time, and her many novels include The Song of the Lark (1915), My Ántonia (1918), One of Ours (1922), and Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927).

Over the past several years, I've enjoyed two of Cather's novels and a few of her short stories. Three years ago, my book club chose My Antonia as our annual classic selection. It received a unanimous thumbs up. The following year, I read O Pioneers! and loved it. Since then, I've purchased a few more of her novels and consider myself a fan.

The TBR Dare, sponsored by James at Ready When You Are, C.B. begins January 1 and offers me the perfect opportunity to return to Cather's work. I will choose from:

Death Comes For the Archbishop
A Lost Lady
The Professor's House

Have you read Willa Cather? Can you help me decide which book to read next?

"A Christmas Memory" by Truman Capote (reprise)

A month of Christmas Short Story Mondays was planned for December, but my copy of The Virago Book of Christmas has yet to arrive from The Book Depository. Over the weekend, I reread Truman Capote's "A Christmas Memory". It's my favorite Christmas story, and this post is a rerun from last December.


Originally posted 12/6/09:

After a couple of decidedly untraditional stories, Truman Capote's "A Christmas Memory", set in the depression-era rural south, had me sighing with relief at the end of the first paragraph.

"Imagine a morning in late November. A coming of winter morning more than twenty years ago. Consider the kitchen of a spreading old house in a country town. A great black stove is its main feature; but there is also a big round table and a fireplace with two rocking chairs placed in front of it. Just today the fireplace commenced its seasonal roar."

This house is home to several members of a family, including an old woman and a young boy (our narrator) she calls Buddy. The two friends obviously have a very special bond.

"It's always the same: a morning arrives in November, and my friend, as though officially inaugurating the Christmas time of year that exhilarates her imagination and fuels the blaze of her heart, announces: 'It's fruitcake weather! Fetch our buggy. Help me find my hat.' "

The boy's memories of the season follow. On the first day of "fruitcake weather", the two gather 'windfall pecans'. The second day finds them buying the rest of the necessary ingredients, with money that has been carefully saved all year. On the third day, the baking commences.

The fruitcakes (as many as 31) are given to people that matter to the old woman and boy. Some are people the two barely know - like the bus driver that waves as he passes by every other day. One is even sent to President Roosevelt at the White House, and the old woman imagines him enjoying it on Christmas morning.

The boy shares the adventure of cutting down the Christmas tree:

" 'It should be, muses my friend, 'twice as tall as a boy. So a boy can't steal the star.' The one we pick is twice as tall as me. A brave handsome brute that survives thirty hatchet strokes before it keels with a creaking rending cry. Lugging it like a kill, we commence the long trek out. Every few yards we abandon the struggle, sit down and pant. But we have the strength of triumphant huntsmen; that and the tree's virile, icy perfume revive us, goad us on."

The making and giving of homespun gifts is also described. The entire story is beautifully written and a joy to read.

Truman Capote wrote this autobiographical story in 1956. It was first published in Madamoiselle and, later, as a book. It was also made into a movie in 1997 starring Patty Duke and Piper Laurie.

An internet search turned up this You Tube video that has Capote reading the story himself. Enjoy!

Bleak House Wrap-up

Bleak House
by Charles Dickens
first published 1853
Penguin Classics
989 pages

Blackstone Audio,  2000
read by Robert Whitfield
32 hours 56 minutes

Motivation for reading:
Read-along hosted by Amanda, but I started late and never caught up.

Source:
Penguin Classics paperback purchased from B&N. Audio downloaded from audible.com.

In a nutshell:
Often referred to as Dickens' masterpiece, Bleak House features many characters and multiple plot lines, all connected to the interminable Jarndyce and Jarndyce court case. The novel truly defies summation.

Final thoughts:
Charles Dickens can spin a tale like no other ... and in today's world that may be a good thing. Bleak House is huge in scope and addresses nearly every aspect of life in Victorian England - from social class, the legal system, and politics, to love, marriage, and parenthood. Most 21st century readers are not willing to wade through 500 pages before plot lines begin to intersect. They won't wait 750 pages for that "can't put the book down" feeling. But those who do, will be rewarded.

Reading a Dickens novel is not a decision to be undertaken lightly. Patience, time, and perseverance are all prerequisites.  Dickens is wordy. His prose is often described as 'flowery'. Somewhere around page 400, I wondered where Bleak House was going and whether I cared enough to find out. In the end, I trusted Dickens to make it worth my time and was not disappointed.

A note on the audio:
The original plan was to immerse myself in Bleak House by listening in the car and reading at home. As it turned out, the audio was so well done that I rarely picked up the book. Robert Whitfield's perfectly-paced narration and pleasing voice, which varied with the characters, resulted in a totally engaging audio experience.

When it's time for another Dickens novel, I will definitely seek out an audio version.

Bottom line:
Bleak House was an enjoyable novel that provided a great sense of accomplishment upon completion, but I can only recommend it to die hard Dickens fans. Great Expectations is still my favorite Dickens novel.

Literary Blog Hop: Poetry

The Literary Blog Hop is hosted at The Blue Bookcase. Our question this week comes from Gary at Parrish Lantern:

What is your favorite poem and why?

Poetry intimidated me. In fact, I hadn't read poetry since my high school English classes.  That changed earlier this year when I won a copy of Poetry Speaks Who I Am from Bellezza.  Inside, I found this poem about a kitchen table:

Perhaps the World Ends Here

by Joy Harjo

The world begins at a kitchen table. No matter what, we

must eat to live.

The gifts of earth are brought and prepared, set on the table.

So it has been since creation, and it will go on.

We chase chickens or dogs away from it. Babies teethe at the

corners. They scrape their knees under it.

It is here that children are given instructions on what it

means to be human. We make men at it, we make women.

At this table we gossip, recall enemies and the ghosts of lovers.

Our dreams drink coffee with us as they put their arms

around our children. They laugh with us at our poor falling-

down selves and as we put ourselves back together once

again at the table.

This table has been a house in the rain, an umbrella

in the sun.

Wars have begun and ended at this table. It is a

place to hide in the shadow of terror. A place to

celebrate the terrible victory.

We have given birth on this table, and have prepared

our parents for burial here.

At this table we sing with joy, with sorrow. We

pray of suffering and remorse. We give thanks.

Perhaps the world will end at the kitchen table,

while we are laughing and crying, eating of the last

sweet bite.

Finally, a poem that spoke to me! "Perhaps the World Ends Here" is the poem that gave me the courage to give poetry a second chance.

Find my complete review of Poetry Speak Who I Am here.

Visit The Blue Bookcase for links to other participants.

November was...

Applications and interviews... college search process winds down
Bleak House finished!
Cooking, cleaning...
Dark at 5PM
Election Day arrives and political ads end
Farmers Market... over until spring
The Group by Mary McCarthy
Hubby's birthday
I love Thanksgiving!
Jonathan Franzen does it again... reading Freedom
Kicking around reading project ideas for 2011
Lights-on-the-Lake
Madame Bovary, elegant Lydia Davis translation
New ovens finally installed
Outlet mall, wineries ... fun in the Finger Lakes
Pavilion of Women on audio
Quick, snap a Christmas photo while everyone's home!
Royal wedding plans thwart trip to London
Shall we go to Florida and relax instead?
Twenty-five years of marriage
Ultimate graduation gift - girls choose travel over party
Veteran's Day
Where's all the snow?
eXtremely thankful for my wonderful family
Year end blog lists coming soon
Zelda feels much better on thyroid medication

On to December....