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A large portion of the beginning of The Mysteries of Udolpho is taken up with Emily and her father traveling through the Pyrenees of France. It seems on nearly every page there are comments on the “sublime charms of nature” with long descriptions on the craggy mountains, the deep valleys, rushing torrents, and the quality of the light. In fact, there is so much of this I began to think Radcliffe was up to something. So it wasn’t long before I found myself borrowing a copy of Edmund Burke’s Enquiry into the Sublime and Beautiful. And now this early sentence in the book makes so much more sense:

This landscape with the surrounding alps did, indeed, present a perfect picture of the lovely and the sublime, of ‘beauty sleeping in the lap of horror.’

I have vague recollections of reading Burke back in college as part of a class in literary theory but my memory has been wiped out to save myself from the trauma that was Hegel, Lacan, Derrida, and Kristeva. Poor Burke never had a chance. Since he is associated in my mind with that class I assumed he was going to be hard going and I’d be scratching my head. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that Burke is so very concerned with everyone understanding him that large portions of the essay are given over to explaining his words. I appreciated his precision to a point, after that point I found myself muttering, okay okay, can we just move on? All that to say that if you ever feel inspired to read Burke, you don’t need to worry about not “getting him” because if this essay were a math problem, he’d be getting full credit for showing his work so his readers can follow along with his arguments and not be left in doubt.

If you are like me you equate sublime with beautiful, maybe not every day beautiful but startlingly beautiful, the kind of beauty that moves you to tears. But no, beauty and the sublime have nothing to do with each other. Beauty, you see, inspires pleasure and love in the beholder. It is sunshine and rainbows.

The sublime? It is composed of delight derived from terror, pain, distress and danger. It is a feeling far more intense and elevated than mere beauty. The sublime, according to Burke, is the “strongest emotion the mind is capable of feeling.” This is because pain, the root of the sublime, is more powerful than pleasure.

Now the pain Burke refers to is not necessarily physical pain caused from tumbling over a cliff while hiking in the mountains in search of the sublime. It is a physical pain but more of one caused by extreme emotion than a broken leg. It’s a hurts so good kind of pain caused by an “unnatural tension of the nerves.”

What elements go into producing the sublime? Burke is kind enough to explain each one in great detail but I will spare you and just list out a few for you:

• Obscurity. This is because you can’t see something clearly and so you are thrown into a state of fear and uncertainty. Obscurity can be caused by darkness or fog, or lots of trees.
• Power. Anything powerful is dangerous and potentially destructive and terrifying. Like a king or a bull or flash flood or God.
• Vastness. As in size. This can be a tall mountain or a deep valley or great plain, lake or ocean. Infinity is also a source of the sublime. Think of the size of the universe and your mind will likely be filled with a sort of delightful horror as you try and fail find the edges.
• Magnificence. As in a great profusion of things as in the stars in the night sky or millions of buffalo on the Great Plains before settlers killed them all.
• Color. Pink is not the color of the sublime. The sublime is not cheerful. The color of the sublime is dark and gloomy, a cloudy sky not a clear blue one, dark brown jagged rocks not a gentle verdant slope.

Can you kind of see a little how Emily and her father’s travels through the mountains was so sublime? And why Radcliffe might want all that in a gothic novel? Because the whole point of a gothic novel is horror (and romance) and since the source of the sublime is terror, perfect combination, right? Radcliffe didn’t write a book based in the supernatural so she pulls much of her gothic horror in early on by using the sublime. We don’t feel it like the readers in 1794 would have, but no doubt much of the scenic descriptions would have been terrifying.

Also of note is that Radcliffe uses the sublime to clue us in to who the good and bad characters are. The good ones all experience the sublime at one time or other while out in nature. The bad characters, not one has a sublime experience. They are too small-minded and petty and the sublime scene that moves Emily so produces nothing but boredom to those who are not good.

That is a bit of what Radcliffe is about with so much mention of what is sublime. While it gets a bit repetitive for a modern reader, she wasn’t just rambling on and on to add padding to the story. Instead, the sublime is an integral part of her approach to the gothic, at least in this novel. I’ve not read any of her others so I can’t say whether it holds true for them. Perhaps next RIP Challenge I will read Romance of the Forest and find out.

What a fun book Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe turned out to be! Sure it’s a long book, and sure there is lots of wandering and admiring the sublime scenery, but oh, when I got down to the end and all the secrets and mysteries began to be revealed, what fun! All the revelations at the end could have been handled better. Instead of making them part of the narrative, they end up feeling like Radcliffe knew she had to end the book and disclose all the secrets and she wasn’t sure how so she just tells us in one long rush. She does manage to tie up everything which was good because I was starting to wonder if she was going to remember to say what was behind the black veil at Udolpho. Now I know why there is so much wondering about this very thing by Catherine in Austen’s Northanger Abbey.

The Mysteries of Udolpho was published in 1794 in four volumes. It is a Gothic Romance with love, bad men, castles, hidden passages, ghosts, bandits, murder, coincidences, and secrets galore. But Radcliffe did not write a supernatural gothic novel, for her there is an explanation for everything. And to make extra sure we know we are not to believe in the supernatural, she makes fun of the people in the novel who do.

The story follows Emily St. Aubert who becomes an orphan at the tender age of seventeen. Because she is not yet of age, she is given to the care of her father’s sister, Madame Cheron, a vain, ambitious woman with a mean streak. Not long after Emily goes to live with her aunt, Madame Cheron agrees to marry Count Montoni, a handsome, passionate and agreeable Italian. Almost immediately they set out for Venice. Montoni turns out to be other than he represented himself and his sins, to the horror of the good and pure Emily, begin to mount up fast as soon as they arrive in Venice. After a few months in Venice where Montoni tries to trick Emily into marrying Count Morano, Montoni suddenly packs up his household and hurries his servants and women off to Udolpho, his crumbling and remote castle in the Pyrenees. The only thing that sustains Emily’s spirits throughout her trials at Venice and Udolpho is her love for the Chevalier Valancourt who loves her in return.

Poor Emily’s road is never smooth but in spite of the river of tears she cries, the horrors she must face, the many moments of fainting and insensibility, she remains true and kind and good so is therefore rewarded in the end.

There are many things the book is about but I think the one that stands first in line is, in the words of Emily’s father:

‘A well-informed mind,’ he would say, ‘is the best security against the contagion of folly and of vice. The vacant mind is ever on the watch for relief, and ready to plunge into error, to escape from the languor of idleness. Store it with ideas, teach it the pleasure of thinking; and the temptations of the world without, will be counteracted by the gratifications derived from the world within. Thought, and cultivation, are necessary equally to the happiness of a country and a city life; in the first they prevent the uneasy sensations of indolence, and afford a sublime pleasure in the taste they create for the beautiful, and the grand; in the latter, they make dissipation less an object of necessity, and consequently of interest.’

Of course Emily has a well-informed mind and it is from all this her goodness and many virtues flow. It is also because of this that she is the only one in the book who, while suffering more than anyone, comes through it all unblemished. We are subtly and not so subtly reminded of this throughout the book.

We are also to learn what it means to have good taste as well as gain an appreciation of the sublime. In fact, there is so much sublime this sublime that in the book I was prompted, by the suggestion of Tom, to read Burke’s Enquiry into the Sublime and Beautiful. Which I did, mostly, and about which I will write tomorrow and attempt to relate it to Udolpho without boring you too much.

The completion of this book also concludes my RIP Challenge reading. It has been great fun, as usual, and I even managed to read one more book than I had planned. Yay!

What a good story The Black Spider by Jeremias Gotthelf turned out to be. What’s not to like about a story with the Devil himself and spiders in it? It was even a little creepy at times.

The story begins with a christening. After much eating, the celebrants push themselves away from the table for a little walk to make room for more food. One of them notices an old black post in the window frame of this lovely new house and asks Grandfather about it. And boy, does Grandfather have a tale to tell!

Long ago a powerful knight named Hans von Stoffeln took possession of the land and the peasants of the area. He decided he needed a new castle, bigger and better than the old one, and forced the peasants to build it for him on top of a barren hill. After long and hard labor during which the peasants were forced to neglect their own fields and families and come near to starvation, the castle was finished. But the knights made fun of von Stoffeln and his castle on the barren hill, so von Stoffeln decided he needed an avenue of one hundred trees. He ordered the peasants to uproot trees from miles away and bring them to the castle and plant them in an avenue. This work had to be done within a month’s time. The peasants were beside themselves, worn out and hungry their carts and tools and animals on the verge of falling apart and collapse, what were they to do?

Suddenly in their midst appears a hunter dressed in green with a “beard so red it seemed to crackle and sparkle like fir twigs on the fire.” He offers to help but the peasants, unable to see how a huntsman could help them, refuse. The green man chides them, tells them he can make their work fast and easy for only a small payment: an unbaptized child. Horrified, the peasants refuse again.

The next day they begin their work and it quickly becomes clear that they will not be able to complete the task in the allotted time. But Christine, a “frightfully clever and daring woman” decides that they can beat the Devil at his own game and convinces the men to agree to the offer of help. The Devil seals it with a kiss on Christine’s cheek. Suddenly the work becomes easier and the peasants complete their task so quickly that they have time to start work in their own fields.

But soon the time for the first baby to be born draws near. Christine, who is the midwife, plans on having the priest present at the birth so the baby can be immediately baptized and saved from the Devil’s clutches. The plan works. But then Christine’s cheek where the Devil had kissed her starts burning. A small black mark appears on it. As the time for the birth of the next baby arrives the black mark has grown bigger. As the woman gives birth inside the house with the Priest present, Christine is outside in the midst of her own labor except instead of birthing a baby, she gives birth to one large spider and thousands of tiny ones from the black mark on her face. It is a gruesome scene:

And now Christine felt as if her face was bursting open and glowing coals were being birthed from it, quickening into life and swarming across her face and all her limbs, and everything within her face had sprung to life, a fiery swarming all across her body. In the lightning’s pallid glow she saw, long-legged and venomous, innumerable black spiderlings scurrying down her limbs and out into the night, and as they vanished they were followed, long-legged and venomous, by innumerable others.

These spiders first killed all the peasants’ livestock. And the peasants, placing all the blame on Christine, now start to plan on how to get their hands on the next baby before the priest can baptize it.

Isn’t this a delicious story? You will have to read it yourself to find out what happens and what it has to do with the black post at the beginning of the story. It is safe to say that the Godly win. And, of course, as long as the people in the valley remain Godly they have nothing to fear from the spider. We are reminded that inborn purity, like family honor,

must be upheld day after day, for a single unguarded moment can besmirch it for generations with stains as indelible as bloodstains, which are impervious to whitewash.

Of course it is the clever woman, Christine, who persuades the men to allow evil into the community. And generations later when the spider strikes again it is also women who are at the root of its reappearance. But you know Eve set the precedent in the Garden so the fault is always with the women because men just can’t say no to their persuasive powers. Given that the story was originally written in 1842 the sexism can be noted but tolerated and the story enjoyed for its delicious horrors.

I can chalk this one up as another RIP Challenge read as well as mark it down as my NYRB subscription October read. Woo! Two birds, one stone and all that. The Mysteries of Udolpho is almost done too. Next week for sure. I’d say I am doing really well with my October reading plan but I don’t want to jinx myself. Oops, I think I just did.

For a person like me who has a tendency to get nightmares from supernatural and gory slasher type horror, psychological horror along the lines of Shirley Jackson is more than sufficiently creepy and delicious. So when I learned about Thomas Tryon’s The Other and saw it noted as a worthy descendent of Jackson I suspected I was in for a treat. Boy, was I! In fact, I put it in the top five best books I’ve read for the RIP Challenge ever.

The book begins with an unnamed narrator who is clearly in some sort of institution. It isn’t long before we figure out it is a mental institution. But who is this person? He is forty-eight-years old and has one of those smooth and slippery voices that ask you to trust him but you can’t quite because there is something not right that you just can’t put your finger on. Very soon he addresses us directly as he begins to tell the story of the Perry family. And not long after that we know this is one of the Perry twins, but is it Niles or Holland?

Then we move back in time to when Niles and Holland were twelve and thirteen, living on the family farm in the small Connecticut town of Pequot Landing. Their father was killed in the fall of the previous year in a tragic accident. When he was carrying a bushel of apples down into the apple cellar, the heavy trapdoor in the floor of the barn smashed down on his head, sending him to his death on the concrete floor below. Now the boys’ mother is in such deep grief she hardly leaves her room. The boys are looked after by their grandmother, their aunt and uncle who also have a boy a few years older than Niles and Holland, and the housekeeper. The twins’ pregnant older sister and her husband are also living at the farm.

While the perspective shifts around, much of the story is told from the viewpoint of Niles. He is the younger twin, born on the other side of midnight. He is also the angelic good twin while Holland has a mean streak. Just how mean? Right away we are treated to the story of Holland hanging his grandmother’s cat in the well. And not long after that story we see him kill his cousin’s pet rat by feeding it poison. Good twin, bad twin.

Yet Niles idealizes Holland. Holland inherited the family ring with the peregrine falcon on it from his father but he gave it to Niles who carries it around in an old tobacco tin because no one is supposed to know he has it. Also in the tin is The Thing, wrapped in blue tissue paper.

And then people start dropping like flies, all of them meeting their end in a freak accident of one kind or another. Niles suspects Holland is behind everything but Niles will keep his brother’s secrets.

The story keeps unfurling with things getting worse and worse and now and then we return to the present with the twin in the asylum but still don’t know which twin. It must be Holland, right? But no, maybe not. And the dead pile up and something is not right, something about what we are being told in the story isn’t meshing, but what is it?

And then, about two-thirds of the way through the book you find out and it’s a surprise but not a surprise because, like the adults in the story, you knew but you just couldn’t believe it because the truth is too horrible. But after the revelation you can’t ignore the truth any longer. And the rest of the book carries you along unrelentingly in this horrible thing right to the very end. I found myself muttering as I read, “oh no, oh no, oh no.” And once in awhile I noticed my hands shaking and my heart beating just a little faster. When I read the last page my “oh no” changed to “oh wow” and the hairs on the back of my neck were standing up. It’s that kind of book.

I went back to the Wikipedia article on gothic fiction today and Daniel Radcliffe is no longer Ann Radcliffe’s brother. It was fun while it lasted!

I’m reading Mysteries of Udolpho on my kindle and am about 20% of the way through. Our heroine Emily is about to be whisked away to Italy with her aunt. Of the first 20% of the book I’d say three quarters of it is spent on Emily and her father traveling through the Pyrenees, making the acquaintance of Valancourt, and wandering some more always admiring the sublime scenery. There is so much scenery that I had to wonder what the heck is going on?

Well, it turns out that the book was published just about the time Romantic ideals were starting to percolate. Ah, sublime nature! If one can be moved by it then one is brought closer to the Creator. So Emily, her father and Valancourt are being shown as good people who understand and appreciate the important spiritual, intellectual and authentic life. They are what we should aspire to be.

Then Emily is cast out from this little paradise by the death of her father. She is forced to go live with her aunt in Toulouse. Madame Cheron, soon to be Montoni, presents a tidy contrast. Her life and those with whom she associates is all about money, ostentatious displays of wealth, and artifice. And it is about to become very dangerous for our poor heroine.

Will Emily’s authentic self survive? Oh but this is a gothic novel. She will pass through perils, shed so many more tears that the river she has already created with them will flood, but no doubt she will survive and have a happy ending. I just have a lot of pages before Emily will get there. But it is fun in spite of the river of Emily’s tears, all the sublime scenery, and not much else happening. Though it is beginning to get interesting because of the jealous cruelty of Madame Cheron/Montoni and hints of secrets. It is even starting to feel a bit Wilkie Collins-y.

So it appears that Mysteries of Udolpho has wormed its way into being my wild card RIP book. I am going to save The Others for October. I want it to be cool and gloomy and the leaves off the trees. I want some goosebumps. Until then Udolpho should keep me tripping along.

Back in 2010 I read John Connolly’s YA novel The Gates. Alas, in spite of it being about Satan trying to create a portal from Hell to Earth in order to take over the world, I didn’t read it for RIP. But now I have the sequel, The Infernals, that I have been meaning to read since it came out in 2011 and finally managed to get to it this year for RIP.

This time our intrepid boy, Samuel Johnson and his beloved dog Boswell, are being stalked by Mrs. Abernathy, the demon who had used the power of the Large Hadron Collider to open a portal between Hell and Earth and whom Samuel and the hapless demon Nurd foiled. Mrs. Abernathy is not quite the same after the experience. Once the right hand demon of the Great Malevolence, she has fallen out of favor due to her failure. But, she has discovered that she can now open a portal on her own, she just can’t open a very big one. She does, however, manage to open one big enough to pull Samuel, Boswell, a police car with two police officers in it, an ice cream truck with Dan Dan the Ice Cream Man in it, and four rather rude and cantankerous dwarfs into Hell. Unfortunately her accuracy is off and she must find Samuel before her enemies can.

And so we have Samuel and Boswell wandering through Hell in a not very Dante-like way. Still they manage to get into some close calls and even facilitate the redemption of one inhabitant. Of course Mrs. Abernathy eventually catches Samuel and Hell is on the verge of a great world-rending battle as demon squares off against demon.

The Gates was a wonderful book, clever, laugh-out-loud funny, full of literary references and jokes that adults would get but yet still a good entertaining YA story. It is one of those YA books that could really have been written for adults but somehow got shuffled into the young adult section because the protagonist is only 13. I had high expectations for The Infernals and it started off with a bang and a good laugh. Sadly it was just downhill from there. There was too much wandering around in Hell with nothing happening, too much time jumping around between points of view — Samuel, the dwarfs, Nurd, Mrs. Abernathy, Duke Abigor, and random other inhabitants of Hell. Plus, there was the escape from Hell which left me boggled, that’s it? All the lead up and it was that easy?

Whereas The Gates read like it was for adults, The Infernals really does read like it is for young adults, and pretty young ones at that. Sure there are a few jokes that the kiddies are likely to wonder about, but for the most part it lacked complexity and comes of overly simple and bland. The vital spark that The Gates had was missing from The Infernals. While I was greatly disappointed, it wasn’t all that bad. I did finish it after all. There will soon be a third book, The Creeps. Not sure whether I will read it or not. Maybe I will let Bookman read it first and then depending on his reaction decide if it will make its way onto my RIP list for next year.

This has got to be the funniest opening to all of Austen’s novels:

No one who had ever seen Catherine Morland in her infancy would have supposed her born to be an heroine. Her situation in life, the character of her father and mother, her own person and disposition, were all equally against her. Her father was a clergyman, without being neglected, or poor, and a very respectable man, though his name was Richard—and he had never been handsome. He had a considerable independence besides two good livings—and he was not in the least addicted to locking up his daughters. Her mother was a woman of useful plain sense, with a good temper, and, what is more remarkable, with a good constitution. She had three sons before Catherine was born; and instead of dying in bringing the latter into the world, as anybody might expect, she still lived on—lived to have six children more—to see them growing up around her, and to enjoy excellent health herself. A family of ten children will be always called a fine family, where there are heads and arms and legs enough for the number; but the Morlands had little other right to the word, for they were in general very plain, and Catherine, for many years of her life, as plain as any.

That’s the beginning of Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey and why this doesn’t get more attention, I don’t know. After I read that marvelous beginning I had to stop and read it again and then spend some time giggling before I could go on.

Even though Northanger Abbey wasn’t published until December 1817, six months after Austen died, it is the first book she completed for publication. Written around 1788-99, Austen revised it in 1803 and sold it for £10 to a London bookseller who then decided not to publish it after all. Austen revised it again in 1816 intending to try publishing it again. It was during this revision she changed the name of the main character from Susan to Catherine and changed the title from Memorandum, Susan to Catherine. The title we have was very likely invented by Austen’s brother who had arranged for the book’s publication. I love Jane dearly but I think her brother came up with a better title!

Probably just about everyone knows the story. Our plain heroine Catherine is seventeen and like most ladies her age loves reading gothic novels. She has the pleasure of being invited to Bath by her rich neighbors, the Allens, to be Mrs. Allen’s companion. One day Mrs. Allen runs into an old school friend now the widow Mrs. Thorpe. She is in Bath with her daughter Isabella and her son John. Both children are pretty much fishing for rich spouses and because of Catherine’s association with the Allens, they assume she is wealthy too. John has designs on Catherine and Isabella on Catherine’s brother who happens to know John at Oxford. Much conniving and underhandedness ensues and the innocent Catherine has no idea what is going on because she is too busy falling in love with Henry Tilney.

Catherine becomes friends with Henry’s sister, Eleanor, and gets invited to stay at their home, Northanger Abbey. Catherine imagines all sorts of gothic mystery that leads to much embarrassment on her part when her overactive imagination is discovered and proved wrong.

Of course the gentle satire of gothic novels is great fun and what this book is most known for. Catherine is reading The Mysteries of Udolpho while in Bath and talks about it with whoever will listen. But this book is so much more than that. It is also a sort of coming-of-age novel as Catherine goes from sheltered innocence to a more worldly understanding and grows from a girl with a romantic imagination into one of good mannered practicality.

And then there is the commentary from Austen about the reading and writing of novels:

leave it to the reviewers to abuse such effusions of fancy at their leisure, and over every new novel to talk in threadbare strains of the trash with which the press now groans. Let us not desert one another; we are an injured body. Although our productions have afforded more extensive and unaffected pleasure than those of any other literary corporation in the world, no species of composition has been so much decried.

To be asked what one is reading and to reply “only a novel” is the norm but within that novel one finds on display the “the greatest powers of the mind” revealing the “most thorough knowledge of human nature” and doing it with wit and humor. I could hear Austen tsking, “only a novel! Humph!”

This being a Jane Austen novel our plain heroine gets her fella in spite of herself and the no-good machinations of the good-for-nothing selfish money grubbers. I first read this book so long ago that I had quite forgotten most of it. I seem to recall not being all that impressed by it back then when I was twenty-something. I didn’t know much about real gothic novels, certainly hadn’t read any, and so much of the humor was lost on me. Now, thanks to the RIP Challenge, for which I chose to reread Norhtanger Abbey, I have read quite a few gothic novels and this time around thoroughly enjoyed the humor. And with so much mention of Mysteries of Udolpho in the book, I immediately began reading it when I finished Austen. What fun!

Credit to Hyperbole and a Half for inspiring the “[Verb] ALL the [Nouns] meme. . . . . . . . . by which I mean that, as of the publishing of this post*, I’m not letting myself buy or borrow any new books until I’ve read all** the books I’ve purchased over the years […]

For this month’s Exchange, Book Bloggers International asks:  What’s your favorite reading spot? Is it a comfy chair?  A sweet sofa?  A reading nook by a window?  A place in the park?  A coffee shop?  Your bed?  Your deck or front porch?  Where do you find yourself loving to crack open a book? As with […]

Another post for the From the Bowels of Obscurity Book Club (Hee! Ahem, *cough*, sorry, I promise to settle down now.  Really, I will.) . . . . . . . . In 7th grade, I went through a cat phase.  Since I couldn’t actually have one of my own (family members with allergies), I […]

Back in March, sj tweeted to me about this new informal club that Becoming Cliché was starting:  the From the Bowels of Obscurity Children’s Book Club [pause while we wait for our inner 12-year-olds to stop giggling at “bowels.”  Hee!] Y’all may remember some of my previous posts on nostalgic Juv/YA books (see the “nostalgia” […]

Ok, break’s over! For the Classic Children’s Literature challenge in January, I read Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland and L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (totally original, I know, but this is as good a time as any to catch up on the major classics).  And then I decided to compare them with Catherynne Valente’s The Girl Who [...]

A coworker asked me on Friday who I was rooting for to win the Super Bowl Sunday. I looked at her and said, “The Super Bowl is this Sunday?” Yup, that’s how much I care. I didn’t know when the game was and I have no idea who is even in it. Sorry sports fans.

Something I do care very much about is the United States Postal Service. Seriously. I mean, think about what an amazing system it is. I can post a letter to anywhere in the United States, including Hawaii and the-middle-of-a-glacier Alaska, for forty-six cents. Sure, last week it was forty-five cents, but just stop and consider how gosh darn amazing the whole enterprise is.

After you have thought about the awesomeness that is the postal service, take a gander at an in-depth and fascinating article about the mail at Esquire. It delves into the nitty gritty of how the system works as well as the P.O.’s current fiscal problems and the politics surrounding them. And then when you are really angry at Congress for screwing over the post office, go sign a petition demanding it be saved. Don’t wait on signing the petition, over 90,000 signatures are needed on it by February 18th and it hasn’t broken 3,000 yet.

Then to seal your love for the postal service, read Terry Pratchett’s Going Postal and/or watch the movie version (streaming on Netflix) which is almost as hilarious as the book.

I mentioned earlier in January that I am doing Melwyk’s Postal Reading Challenge. I have finished one book so far towards the challenge (about the letters of William and Henry James) and have begun a second (volume one of Horace Walpole’s letters).

And now I have taken up a second postal challenge: A Month of Letters. This means that I will attempt to send out twenty-three pieces of mail this month. That’s a letter a day excluding Sundays and one federal holiday, days when there is no mail delivery. I am a pretty good correspondent but even sending that much mail in one month is a stretch. I’m going to try though. At the moment I am behind with two mail days and only one piece of mail sent. But I like to send things out in batches rather than one at a time so I am not worried.

Today I spent some time making envelopes and I have some postcards I made up recently too:

Wouldn’t you just love something in your mailbox? If so, feel free to email me your address or add it to my Postable account. If you go the Postable route, don’t worry, all of your information is private, your address won’t be mined and sold. If you give me your address and I send you mail, you are not obligated to return the favor.

Who doesn’t like a card or letter? It’s only February third, still early enough in the month that you can take up the Month of Letters Challenge too. C’mon, what are you waiting for?

the following information appearing on Asia in the Heart, World on My Mind

We are looking for children’s book illustrators from countries around the world to design bookplates for International Book Giving Day 2013! If you are interested in designing a bookplate, please contact Amy Broadmoore at amy dot broadmoore at gmail dot com.

International Book Giving Day is a grassroots, 100% volunteer initiative to encourage people to give books to children on February 14, 2013. To celebrate, people are invited to 1) give a book to a friend or family member, 2) leave a book in a waiting room for children to read, or 3) donate a book to an organization that distributes books to children in need.

Children’s book illustrators are invited to design bookplates that celebrants can attach to books they give to children. We welcome bookplates written in a variety of languages. The bookplates must be 11.4 cm x 6.9 cm (or 4.5 inches x 2.7 inches) in size. We will make the bookplates available for free at the International Book Giving Day website for people to download and print themselves. We will also offer the bookplates for sale as inexpensively as possible at International Book Giving Day’s Zazzle store.

Other ways for children’s book authors and illustrators to support International Book Giving Day:

*Add your name to the list of people giving books for International Book Giving Day. Fill out the very brief form on the home page of the International Book Giving Day website.

*Invite others to celebrate International Book Giving Day.

*Take a photo of yourself leaving a book in a waiting room, giving a book to a child, or otherwise celebrating International Book Giving Day for us to share at our website or Instagram page (#giveabook).

For the Tea with Transcendentalists challenge (I know it’s not an official event anymore, I don’t think, but I’m still going to do a post or two this month just for fun), I offer the following Whitmanian sentiment on Election Day. Thank you Facebook friend for sharing this link, and BookRiot’s Jeff O’Neal for posting it: [...]

It’s time for the annual Readers Imbibing Peril or RIP for short, Carl’s seasonal reading event encouraging all and sundry to enjoy some atmospheric creepy (or scary) gothic horror supernatural goodness. This is year number seven. The event runs from September 1st through one of my favorite holidays, Halloween.

I will be attempting Peril the First which involves reading four books. Last year I went for Victorian gothic goodness. This year I am mixing it up with something old and several new. Here is what I plan on reading in no particular order:

• Dark Matter by Michelle Paver. It hasn’t been published in the US and while I can get used copies online I want new and so will be making my first order from Book Depository. I have so far managed to avoid buying from them feeling like it will be a slippery slope. We’ll see if I start sliding or not. Anyway, the book, which several bloggers have already read and enjoyed, is a ghost story set in the far north.
• The Great God Pan by Arthur Machen. First published as a story in 1890, Machen turned it into a book in 1894. It was declared degenerate and horrific at the time but has since become classic horror. Insanity, sex, the god Pan, a sinister and beautiful woman. What more could anyone want?
• This New & Poisonous Air : Stories by Adam McOmber is a book of short stories that blend historical fiction, fantasy and the macabre. It came to my attention not long ago via Danielle. It seems like it should be fun.
• Finally, Affinity by Sarah Waters. I thought about doing a group read of The Little Stranger with other RIPpers, but decided that I was more in the mood for spiritualism and seances.

So there are my four. I am looking forward to all of them and seeing what others joining in the event that is RIP are reading. A good time is sure to be had by all. Will you be participating?

I think we are over the hump of summer here in Minneapolis and I can’t begin to say what a great relief it is. Today was the kind of day I wish every summer day could be, sunny with a bright blue sky with puffy clouds scuttling across it, a cool breeze and a temperature of 76F (24C). Bookman and I did lots of outside work in the garden and between that and the fact that my end of summer allergies have kicked in and will continue until we get a hard frost sometime the end of September or beginning of October, I am done for today. Pooped, tired, tuckered out, exhausted, weary, zonked, beat, whipped, bushed. You get the idea. Interesting, isn’t it, that there are so many variations on being tired.

To be sure, there are still more hot days ahead in August, days we reach 90 (32) or warmer, but they will be fewer and fewer and days like today will be more and more. Heck, The maple tree in the yard across the street already has a few leaves on it turning red.

Enough rhapsodizing about the weather, though if you ever visit Minnesota, be prepared to talk about the weather a lot. People here love to talk about it especially with visitors. There is a certain pleasure taken in talking up how cold it gets here in the winter. We like to see the looks on visitor’s faces. The people in charge of tourism for the state have tried to tell us we shouldn’t do that because it scares people away. Yes, that’s the point. That way only the truly worthy and brave will venture here in winter and the wimps will go to Florida or California.

Wait, didn’t I say I was going to stop going on about the weather. Right.

So to give you something bookish today, Arti at Ripple Effects is hosting an Anna Karenina read along. I’m usually not one to join read alongs, but Arti caught me at the right time and I’ve been meaning to read Anna K for ages so, why not?

The reading takes place September – October. The goal is to read parts 1-4 by September 30th and parts 5-8 by October 31st. Pretty doable I think even if you are planning to take part in Carl’s annual RIP Challenge, which I am. So if you have been planning on reading Anna K and felt intimidated, need and extra push to get going on it, or just want to read it along with others for the fun of the discussion, consider joining in.

Now to go collapse on the couch and read a little Prisoner of Heaven, Carlos Ruiz Zafon’s latest. Hope you all had a lovely weekend!

After a month-long break, I'm baaaack! Did you miss me, mis amores? Yes, yes. I know you did. I know you cried everyday, missing my charm...my voice...my wit.

No?

Hey a girl can dream, right?

Anyway, the month of June will be my challenges month. I'm challenging myself in three areas: physical, writing, and reading.

Physical: I've been inspired by a close friend of the family. Last month, she challenged herself (and those who wanted to participate) to do 5,000 crunches in one month. Everyday, she did 167 crunches. This month, she's doing 5,000 squats. Since I missed last month's challenge, I'm doing both crunches and squats this month. Everyday, 167 crunches and 167 squats. Lord, help me! My body is already sore. Oh, but when I see the results, it'll all be worth it. And to celebrate my success, I'll be treating myself to the Pitbull concert in Dubai on the 29th. Who am I kidding? I'm going to see Pitbull whether I'm successful or not. But seriously. Failure is not an option. I will be successful. And getting to see Pitbull will just be the icing on my low-fat cake. Hehe!

Writing: I've gotten behind on my writing again. So, for this month, I plan to dedicate an hour everyday to my novel. Right now, I'm back to the planning stages. The actual writing will start sometime this week. I have to be done with this novel before the year ends. I'm talking about finished with draft #1, sent in to a professional editor, and back to draft #2 or 3 by the end of this year. I can do it. There's no doubt in my mind. Especially since my first year as a teacher in Abu Dhabi is practically over. Things will be a bit easier for me. Prayerfully.

Reading: I've gotten behind in my reading, also. Shocking, right? My family would think so since I'm such a book nerd. But alas, tis true. I've only picked up books (or my Nook) sporadically these last few weeks. Soooo, I will catch up on my reading. Ten books. That's how many books I will complete by the end of this month. More if I can swing it. Anyone who truly knows me, knows that I can read waaaaay more than that in one month. If the book is good enough, I can finish it in one reading. But this whole year, I've been too drained (physically, spiritually, emotionally, and mentally) to even think of reading. Or writing. Or anything fun.

So, there you have it. My personal challenges. Of course, cos I know you all are so interested in my life (heehee) I will keep you updated.

Yes, I love you too.

Muah!

title: Weep not, child

author: Ngugi wa Thiong’o

date: Heinemann, 1987 edition

Njoroge is so excited that it will be possible for him to go to school that he cannot wait to tell with his brother, Kamau. One would expect some sort of conflict from this brother who chooses for himself to learn a trade but, there is none. The boys truly believe each of them will be contributing to Kenya’s future. They embody the hope for this new country as it tussles to free itself from the deep-seated vestiges of colonial rule; roots that go too deep for such naïve thinking.

In this slight book of just over 100 pages, Ngugi manages to build our hopes and expectations in somewhat the same way the Kenyan people’s were. Njoroge is smart and has so much support, there is no reason to believe he will not be successful in life. Kenya had a new leader, a strong middle class it had to succeed, didn’t it?

The complexities of history and of people are well layered in this classic story of the downfall of a government as seen from within. The book should be in all school libraries and would be excellent in any world lit curriculum.

This is my second review for the Africa Reading Challenge.

George MacDonald.  The Princess and The Goblin.  New York: William Morrow and Co., Inc., 1986 (a facsimile of the 1920 ed.).  208 pgs. I’m counting this in the Fairytale category of Quest the Second, in the Once Upon a Time VI challenge. Yes, I did think of Labyrinth when I chose this.  But try as [...]

Tempting Persephone‘s newest post has alerted me to the 6th annual Once Upon a Time reading challenge on the Stainless Steel Droppings blog. What’s this?  A challenge that involves reading folklore- and fairy-tale-based works?  Away I fly to learn more! And so, from now until June 19th I shall focus on the following quests within the [...]

I decided a while ago to give up reading challenges because they get away from me too easily. But, I like the way they challenge me! They push me to expand the way I approach genres I already read or they get me to read something I thought I’d rather not. Kinna Read’s Africa Challenge will get me back to reading Africa, something I haven’t done in a while. While I’d love to add a few new books to my shelf, I’ve decided the very best way for me to participate in this challenge which lasts throughout 2012 is to read five books I already own, but have never read. I believe they’ll be the following.

The boy who harnessed the wind: creating currents of electricity and hope by William Kamkwamba and Bryan Mealer; Harper Perennial 2009. An enterprising teenager in Malawi builds a windmill from scraps he finds around his village and brings electricity, and a future, to his family.

Weep not child by Ngũgĩ wa Thiongʼo; Heinemann Press, 1964. “Two small boys stand on a rubbish heap and look into the future. One boy is excited, he is beginning school; the other, his brother, is an apprentice carpetner. Together, they will serve their country–the teacher and the craftsman. But this is Kenya and times are against them. In the forests, the Mau Mau are waging war against the white government, and two brothers, Njoroge and Kamau, and the rest of their family, need to decide where their loyalties lie. For the practical man, the choice is simple, but for Njoroge, the scholar, the dream of progress through learning is a hard one to give up”

The collector of treasures and other Botswana village tales by Bessie Head; Heinemann Educational, 1977;  Collector of Treasures explores the lives of Botswana villagers, both before their colonization by the British and after their independence in 1966. Bessie Head tells tales of ancient leaders, of educated women trying to find their way between city and village life, of women who must suffer while men treat the independence of their country as an opportunity to throw away all restrictions, British or tribal. In these stories, it is the women who suffer most – who bear the children after the men have deserted them, who endure the village gossip, who raise the money for their children’s school fees as their husbands support other women. But though they suffer, these are women of strength and inner beauty. (Amazon)

Out of Eden the peopling of the world by Stephen Oppenheimer; Constable and Robinson, 2004; In a brilliant synthesis of genetic, archaeological, linguistic and climatic data, Oppenheimer challenges current thinking with his claim that there was only one successful migration out of Africa. In 1988, “Newsweek” headlined the startling discovery that everyone alive on the earth today can trace their maternal DNA back to one woman who lived in Africa 150,000 years ago. It was thought that modern humans populated the world through a series of migratory waves from their African homeland

I have to be honest, I thought I could do it, but I just didn’t know that I would be able to pull it off.  Thirty days of writing during my busiest month of the year.  (In case you missed my first post on the 750 Words November Challenge I took on you can click [...]

Today was the fourth day in November that I wrote a piece on 750 Words as part of the November Writing Challenge. What’s motivating me? Well first, the fiction writing I’m doing is a huge motivator. I have stories inside me to tell. In fact, I’ve had some ideas for children’s picture books inside my [...]

No Ulysses update today. Bookman was home with me all weekend, something that, given his variable schedule, doesn’t happen very often so I took the weekend off from Joyce to spend being lazy and enjoying my husband’s company. So today, for Halloween and the last day of the RIP Challenge, I have Jose Saramago’s Death with Interruptions.

It is a slim novel written in Saramago’s trademark style of long paragraphs, long sentences and very little punctuation. However, in spite of entire conversations taking place in one sentence, it was easy to read. But that could also be because I am used to the way her writes. I imagine if I had never read him before it would be a bit trickier until I caught on.

On New Year’s Day in an unnamed country people stop dying. Those who at midnight were close to death, suddenly are in a state of suspended life to the dismay of family. At first everyone was happy that death was no more, well everyone except the religious leaders who held an emergency meeting and worried that now they could not offer life after death in heaven, people would stop attending church.

Soon, the people who make money from the dead, mortuaries and coffin makers, florists, etc, all begin complaining that their livelihoods are threatened and get the government to declare that all pets have to now be buried with their services (the only ones who have stopped dying are people). The life insurance industry also find themselves in a quandary. And end of life facilities that take care of the elderly and near dead are soon filled to capacity and scrambling to find more room. People might not be dying but they are still getting old.

Death has only ceased in this one particular country, everyone else goes on as usual. A new industry springs up, sneaking the dying across the border to they can really die and secretly burying them there.

People grow increasingly unhappy until after months have gone by, a letter in a violet envelope mysteriously appears in the locked office of the director of television. The letter turns out to be from death and she says that she got tired of hearing everyone complain about death so she stopped killing people. Since this has made people even unhappier, she, death, will resume her duties but people will be warned of their impending demise by letter a week in advance to give them time to put their affairs in order and say goodbye to loved ones.

As you can imagine this does not go well. People do not like to know ahead of time the day they are going to die. But death keeps sending out her letters until one day one is returned to sender. Death is perplexed and she must investigate. I will say no more except that both death and the man for whom the letter is intended both get more than they bargained for.

It’s a great story, a parable, or is it an allegory? No matter. It is a highly imaginative approach to examining death and our dependence on it as well as our fear of it and the various ways people cope with the knowledge of their mortality or lack thereof, whichever the case may be. There is humor in the book and satire and sadness, and of course, plenty of room for philosophizing such as when an apprentice philosopher has a conversation with the spirit hovering over the water of the aquarium in which the philosopher’s goldfish lives (spirit likes to hover over water in case you are wondering):

This is what the spirit hovering over the water of the aquarium asked the apprentice philosopher, Have you ever wondered if death is the same for all living beings, be they animals, human beings incl

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