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So, one of the many awesome things about Justina Chen Headley is that she ties philanthropy in with each book. For North of Beautiful she's having a video challenge. All you have to do is make a 90 second video about what's beautiful to you. For every video that's uploaded, Justina will upload $10 to Global Surgical Outreach, which helps third world kids that have cleft palates and cleft lips (2 separate disorders guys!)

Then, there will be winners of such cool prizes like an iPhone.

So, the Global Surgical Outreach makes sense, because Jacob, the awesome guy in North of Beautiful has a cleft lip. But this is super close to my heart, because I have a cleft palate. I have NO UVULA, which is that dangly thing in the back of your throat. Not having one, I know what it's for-- when you swallow, it covers your sinuses. Yes, the uvula is the thing that keeps you from shooting milk out your nose. Anyway, I was born with a big hole instead of a uvula. Now, such things are fairly easy to treat with surgery. So, if you have access to decent health care, you have an annoying tendency to shoot milk out your nose at inopportune moments, and if you have a cleft lip, facial scaring. All in all, not too bad. But, if not treated, it interferes with eating, speech, and hearing. Not to mention the social issues of having a deformed face.

So, anyway, who doesn't like talking about beauty? So, check out the rules here, make your video, upload it, and share your beauty with the world.

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John Updike passed away today.

I haven't read any of his stuff. I'm afraid to. When I was in 6th grade, Updike was doing convocation at Lawrence University, located mere blocks from my elementary school, so the talented and gifted teacher walked us all down to hear him speak. He read a piece in 2nd person, about a middle aged man on a road trip with his family and the cute waitress when they stop for dinner. Since that day, I have NEVER struggled with what 2nd person narrative is.

He also read from one of the Rabbit books (which, at the time, I confused with Watership Down, so I was momentarily confused when he started reading not about Rabbits on a ship, but about neighbors having sex on a pile of laundry.) Let's just say that scene he read to us had a great effect on a bunch of socially awkward 6th graders. It was also an interesting window into the odd world of adults. The adult books I read at the time (and I did read quite a few) didn't deal with the angst of middle age and suburbia. I wasn't entirely convinced that adults had feelings and personal lives at that point.

Hearing Updike read that one scene changed my life in subtle ways, and is an event that has stuck with me greatly, hence my desire, but also great fear, to read the Rabbit books for myself. What if they're not as good as I remember? What if they won't hold the same impact now that I am an adult? Should they just stay in my memory in that huge chapel with streaming sunlight?

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I have 3 reading goals this month.

1. I totally forgot about the New Classics Challenge. It ends on the 31st and I haven't done any reading for it. I've been debating just failing on it, but 4 of my unread classics are also on the scary list of doom, so I'm going to at least try. This means I am trying to read and review the following books by the end of the month:

1. Wind up Bird Chronicle
2. The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down
3. Possession
4. Glass Castle
5. Bonfire of the Vanities
6. High Fidelity

2. I have to read all the MG/YA Non-fiction Cybils finalists. I have a stack already! (Technically, this isn't due at the end of the month, but we have to pick a winner by the 14th of February, so I want to have most, if not all read by the end of the month, so I have 2 weeks to ponder and discuss)

3. One of my goals this year is to have no more than 5 pleasure reading books checked out at a time. I won't tell you how many I have checked out right now, but let's just say it is WAY more than 5. I will give myself to the end of the month to read as many as possible. After that, all but 5 are going back to the library. (Ok, this goes until February 4th though, because I have the first few days of the month off and won't be at the library until the 4th to return my books. Ha!)

And... I've joined another challenge. This is an easy challenge.

My Friend Amy is challenging people to buy 1 book a month and read it. 3 books can be ones you've already owned. This is something that was going to happen anyway, so it's not really a "challenge" but it will be fun! You should join, too.

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Radley's trying to start a meme that I love. He'll never tag me, so I'm just stealing it. I'm also changing it.

The original meme is... "So here’s my challenge: Name the five guiltiest, most embarrassing pleasures on your iPod–the songs you secretly, shamefully enjoy when no
one’s around. It should almost hurt revealing to the world that they’re in your collection."

The reasoning being that in the "Hit Shuffle and list the 10 songs that come up" memes, the list is oddly well balanced and shows a lot of street cred.

My meme is to Honestly do the hit shuffle and list 10 songs, and then also to list your 5 super-guilty songs.

My Honest List:

1. Belleville by Bireli Lagrene, from Gypsy Project

2. Waiting 4 U by Bai Kwong from Shanghai Lounge Divas (The original CD, not the remixes. The remixes suck.)

3. Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain by Willie Nelson from Vintage Country

4. Ektetina of the Prothesis from the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom by Sergei Rachmoaninov performed by Valery Polyansky and the National Academic Choir of Ukraine, from Rachmaninov: Vespers; Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom

5. Lawyers, Guns, and Money by The Wallflowers from Enjoy Every Sandwich: The Songs of Warren Zevon

6. Les cles du Paradis by Jane Birkin from Arabesque

7. L'amour de Moi by Jane Birkin from Arabesque

8. Friend of the Devil by Counting Crows from Films About Ghosts: The Best Of...

9. The First Noel (Attaboy House Party Remix) by Bing Crosby from A Six Degrees Collection: Christmas Remixed - Holiday Classics Re-Grooved

10. Note Olvidire by Pistolera from Siempre Hay Salida

Some comments: I find it really annoying that 2 songs from the same album played right in a row. Especially because I don't really like that album and am not entirely sure why it's on my iPod in the first place. Also, probably 50% of my iPod is from Putumayo CDs. I find it really weird that NONE of the songs played in this 10 song selection.

Now, let the mocking commence.

My guilty pleasures...

1. My iPod has a lot of Wizard Rock. To illustrate, I'm going with Ode to Lav-Lav by Roonil Wazlib. I probably downloaded this from their MySpace page. But some good Wizard Rock Mixes that I have on my iPod are Wizards and Muggles Rock For Social Justice and Wizards and Muggles Rock For Social Justice: Volume Two. Both have their fair share of hits and misses, but... if you like Wrock, check 'em out. I chose this one because of the following lyrics: Oh baby, you know you're pretty fun to snog/But snogging's kinda boring/ And I'm sort of worried that you'll give me an STD... O Lavender Brown, you're going down/ You may be hot, but Hermione's hotter/ I'm the Gryffindor King, you can't share my crown/ Hermione's great and you're just not her... Stop giving me hickeys/ I'm sick of your face and I'm not taking the mickey

2. I Got Nerve by Hannah Montana. This is one of those horrible moments when you're listening to the radio (or, in this case, Pandora) and you hear a song you really like and you get into it and then you find out who sings it and you die a little inside. But the song is your new best friend, just you know, in absolute secret.

3. Rehab Amy Winehouse. I don't know why I'm guilty about this. Maybe because it's so passe. It's so LAST YEAR or something. I still really like it.

4. Girlfriend Avril Lavigne. See Hannah Montana, above on my justification. Amazingly, it took me FOREVER to find that song in English. Apparently Avril has recorded that song in every language imaginable.

5. What I Go To School For Busted. I just like it. We listened to it a lot in Manchester.

Anyway, steal this meme if you feel like admitting your musical shame to the world.

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Yonks ago, I promised pictures of my hair cut...

Last Friday morning, I looked like this:



Yes, I know it's dark and hard to see. Work with me here. Anyway, last Friday afternoon, I looked like this:



Yay for short and cute. I like the gleefully devious look my hairdresser got when she said "are just trimming up today?" and I said "Nope, we're losing length." And she said "Excellent" in a very Monty Burns sort of way. I love her.

And, because I'm posting pictures and this was on my camera as well, have a super cute shot of my dog:

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1. What are you reading right now?

All but Alice Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

2. How many books have you read so far?

3

3. What book are you most looking forward to for the second half of the Read-a-thon?

Dangerously Alice, but I don't know I'll get to it.

4. Did you have to make any special arrangements to free up your whole day?

Well, I did have to work all afternoon, but I am skipping a party tonight, but that also means that I have the house to myself

5. Have you had many interruptions? How did you deal with those?

Nope

6. What surprises you most about the Read-a-thon, so far?

How much time I'm spending on mini-challenges instead of reading! Also, the amount of comments I've been getting-- it's really awesome and fun!

7. Do you have any suggestions for how to improve the Read-a-thon next year?

Not yet.

8. What would you do differently, as a Reader or a Cheerleader, if you were to do this again next year?

Take the day off work! And not get my hair cut the day before-- I haven't figured out a good way to get it out of my eyes when lying down yet...

9. Are you getting tired yet?

It's after 11 here. Yes. But I think that Full Throttle slushie is starting to kick in and I'll brew up some coffee later...

10. Do you have any tips for other Readers or Cheerleaders, something you think is working well for you that others may not have discovered?

Well, I have a really peppy radio station playing on Pandora right now. (I put in Puffy AmiYumi as my artist and this station is AWESOME.) But the happiness of it is helping me stay awake, plus it's giving me something to occasionally jump up and around to. :)

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Did you read the post on Chasing Ray yesterday about building credibility? Very interesting stuff that's worth taking a look at.

Which brings back the question of why do you blog. I'll be straight up honest here. I would like to be a book reviewer and I plan to apply for some reviewing jobs when I graduate in December so I look fully accredited. (This will coincide nicely with my 3rd anniversary in children's services. And the 4th anniversary of this blog.)

This blog reviews books, yes, but not in the same way it would for something more serious. You can tell there's usually a difference in what I write for The Edge of the Forest and what I write here. Why?

Well, I started this blog after being a part of the knitting blog community, which is one big conversation. I was looking at the adaptation of Persuasion to Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason and then how that changed again with the movie. My big complaint being that the movie stripped out all of the book's parallels to the original Austen. I never actually blogged about this, but that was what inspired me. My first blog posts were on my irritation on bad transliteration.

Over the years, it's changed a bit. I decided I wanted to blog every book I read. I found the kidlit community, so now the discussion I was looking for is really happening. People actually read this thing now.

Yes, I harbor secret fantasies of having a bajillion people a day read this thing and somehow make it my sole job. But, I also harbor fantasies of someone spotting me in a coffee shop and asking me to star in a romantic comedy opposite Colin Firth. A girl can dream, right?

I like the fact that this medium means I can write an in-depth review of something. I also like that it gives me the chance to state my opinions on how much I want to smack certain characters (Like JP in Princess on the Brink.) I like that I can just gush about a book. I like that I can be as formal or as informal as my mood strikes me.

Readers know that there aren't a lot of negative reviews on here. Honestly, when it comes to books, I'm pretty easy to please. My positive reviews might not say much, but I like to think my negative reviews do. I don't know.

So, then it comes down to the ARCs. Do I like ARCs? Yes. I like it when people want to send me their book to review. Dude. I like books. The vast, vast, vast majority of the books on this site are books that someone recommended or looked interesting when I ran across them in the library or bookstore. I *always* say where a book came from if it wasn't something I picked up on my own volition.

I don't blog for the ARCs. I blog for me. I blog for the fun of it. I blog so at the end of the year, I remember what I read and what I thought about it. I blog for the community-- I love non-fiction Monday and Poetry Friday and things like the 48 Hour Challenge.

So, yes. That's why I blog. Do I have credibility? I hope so. I strive to be very transparent and up-front about things. I'm not one of the top blogs, I know. I'm cool with that. But hopefully I'm a fun blog to read.

I'll get back to reviewing things soon, I promise.

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Ok, so, Blogger time is about 3 hours previous to Jennie time. Often, I change the time in "post options" to reflect Jennie time. Once in awhile, Blogger decides that it's going to not post my post until it is that time in Blogger time. WTF?! I mean, this would make sense if it happened ON A REGULAR BASIS, but it's totally random! I don't get it! Little help?

Also, do you know how weird it is to be in your late 20s? IT'S WEIRD. Not in a bad way, but in the sense that Dan's birthday was on Wednesday and I couldn't decide if I should get him Grand Theft Auto IV or curtains. He wanted both equally. RockStar games made the decision for me when it decided our PlayStation2 is unworthy and so we don't have a way to play GTA. Oooo curtains...

Also, I'm going to pretend I was tagged for the 5 things about me meme. Enough people tagged "who ever wants to play" so, um, yeah.

The rules of the meme get posted at the beginning. Each person answers the questions about themselves. At the end of the post, the blogger then tags five people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know they’ve been tagged and asking them to read the player’s blog. Let the person who tagged you know when you’ve posted your answer.

What were you doing five years ago?

Living in England, working as a marketing assistant at The Bridgewater Hall. Dan was in grad school. We lived with a bunch of his friends (who became my friends) in a house with 6 people, 5 bedrooms, 1 bathroom, and 1 phone line. By this time, I was preparing to move back home in June to live with my parents before heading out to Michigan in the fall for grad school. I miss Manchester every time I smell curry on a rainy day.

What are five things on your to-do list for today (not in any particular order)?

• Review a ton of books.
  
• Get ready for the Summer Reading promotional school visit on Tuesday morning.
  
• Add my new books to LibraryThing.
  
• Walk the puppy dog.
  
• Clean the guest room.
  

What are five snacks you enjoy?

• Popcorn
• any type of berry
  
• Cheese curds
  
• Goldfish crackers
  
• Gummy bears
  

What five things would you do if you were a billionaire?

• Pay off my student loans. And Dan's. And my sister's.
• Pay off the mortgage.
  
• Make sure my retirement was covered. (And Dan's)
  
• Give my parents enough money that they could retire early.
  
• Spend the rest of my life exploring the book stores and coffee shops of the world.
  

What are five of your bad habits?

• I'm mean.
  
• I don't work out.
  
• I'm really messy.
  
• I have a hard time sticking to my budget.
  
• I do things at the last minute.

What are five places where you have lived?

• Appleton, WI
  
• Grinnell, IA
  
• Nanjing, China
  
• Manchester, England
  
• Ann Arbor, MI
  

What are five jobs you’ve had?

• Travel agent at a call center--night shift
  
• Air-show food stand manager (we sold tacos and hot dogs)
• Knitting teacher
• Theater Department costume shop stitcher
  
• Illegal English teacher (in that I taught illegally, not that my English was illegal)
  

What five people do you want to tag?

Has no one tagged you yet? Are you feeling totally left out like I was? Then this one is for you!!!

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Take a look at the newest member of my family! Will's the young guy in the tux, you know, the one standing next to the bride. Not that he hasn't been a defacto member of the family for years, but, you know. It's all official and everything now.

Plus, how awesome does my sister look? And how beautiful of a place did they pick to get married? On a lake! In the mountains. As much as I loved Iowa, and as much as I love DC, it's really obvious why Abbey never left Asheville after she graduated from college. I mean, DO YOU SEE THE MOUNTAINS?!

I cried throughout the whole thing, but the wedding was wonderful and the reception (also on the lake) was awesome and involved a lot of really tasty barbecue.

Also, I need to give credit to Terry Dawson for taking the photo. I blatantly stole it off his Flickr page because that's the kind of girl I am.

AND! Yesterday I finished another semester of grad school. I have 2 months off before I start up again with YA lit. I graduate in December, assuming I haven't failed anything.

AND! In even bigger news, you know I work full time, right? And am in school half-time? You know how I totally jacked my back a few months ago? Well, I've been in physical therapy since then. It eats about 6 hours of my week because appointments and the fact that my therapist is on the opposite side of the metro area. I got news today that Friday's appointment is my LAST ONE.

So, now I have all this free time! For reading and blogging! (Sorry Dan-- I mean cleaning the guest bedroom.)

Actually, I'm just happy because until mid-July, the only things I have going on in my life are work and well, living my life. Yay!

Reviews coming soon, I promise.

PS-- Vote in my sidebar for what I should read during the 48 hour challenge in a few weeks!

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What a weekend. I totally tried to attend the DC KidLit brunch.

But I overslept. And then when I got there, couldn't find anyone.

This might have been because I had it in my mind that the brunch was THIS morning, but really, it was yesterday. I wore my Kiki Strike shirt and everything.

That's kinda been the story of this whole past week, actually. Oiy.

I'm trying really hard to come up with some writing samples for some stuff. Writing samples ABOUT BOOKS. My brain isn't functioning.

And, when I made my new years resolutions this year, one of the things I promised myself was that I would never be more than a year behind in my reviewing. And here it is, February 3 and I never did get around to reviewing those lonely unreviewed books that I read back in January of 2007, so let's do that today, shall we?

The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Vol. 1: The Pox Party M. T. Anderson

Octavian Nothing is a slave, but he doesn't know that. He's treated like a prince. He and his mother are the subjects of bizarre human experiments by an Enlightenment society in Revolutionary America. It's only when his mother is killed during a Pox Party experiment that he realizes what's going on. It's through this that Anderson explores the duality of slavery while fighting for freedom from England.

Told entirely in eighteenth century English, Octavian Nothing is a technical feat of writing to be sure, but Anderson keeps up an impending sense of doom and Octavian's frequent change of topic in narration leads to extremely short chapters (most are only 2-5 pages long). So, the language doesn't get in the way of the story or bog it down--the narration moves a steady to quick pace.

Powerful and horrifying, the two parts of the story are meant to be one 900 page book, but this first part stands perfectly well on it's own. That said, knowing there's another part coming, I can't wait. It was the one author question I asked at the National Book Fest this year-- when will we see Part 2? Anderson told me next fall.

Wide Awake David Levithan

David Levithan is pissed off about what's happening to his country, that much is obvious.

Here we are in the not-so-distant feature. The country has undergone another War to End All Wars (except that people seem to think that this one actually will) a Greater Depression, and something referred to as the Prada Riots. Christians have split into two major political/cultural groups-- the Decents (think Falwell) and the Jesus Freaks (Jesus loves EVERYONE.) And Duncan cannot believe that the candidate he was campaigning for--gay, Jewish Abe Stein, just got elected President.

Then the governor of Kansas disputes the results in his state and... well... we remember what happened in 2000, right?

Duncan's boyfriend, Jimmy, is super-militant about his politics and he's off to Topeka to protest. Duncan can't go. Because Duncan doesn't want to run away from home to go, Jimmy turns into a jerkwad. So Duncan goes.

Topeka is ugly. Part Florida 2000, part Ukrainian Orange Revolution, both sides have turned out to protest for and against Stein. It gets uglier.

Usually, the one thing that Levithan does so well--sweet love stories, doesn't really work in this case. I wanted to smack Duncan around and tell him that Jimmy wasn't worth it. Where there are several love stories here, it's the politics that drives the plot. Levithan's future gets a little strident and annoying at times as well (we don't believe in consumerism anymore! We go hang out at the mall after school and buy stuff, but we don't actually keep it! The store restocks and all the $$$ we spent goes to charity! If you really need something, you buy it online later! Puke.)

But I like Duncan, who, when in elementary school, thought the Boston Tea Party was a revolutionary cat fight during a sit down Tea Party. And I like the Bleeding Kansas parallel, as well as everyone sitting through the night with their bright green glow sticks...

But his portrayal of the Kansas protests is believable and real and it's all we can do to hope that we don't actually have to do it in November.

Can we please have a fairly clear-cut win this year? Something that is announced BEFORE I fall asleep on the couch? Preferably having the person I'm voting for winning?

I've voted in 2 presidential elections so far. The first being 2000. I lived in Iowa at the time, so my first primary was in Iowa caucus. That's some pretty intense stuff right there. We all crammed into the gym of the local elementary school, and my history prof was standing on a table telling the Gore people to go out on the hall and the Bradley people to get into groups of 10 so they'd be easier to count. (Bradly gave a great speech at campus earlier that year-- ours was the only precinct he won-- and he won us by a landslide...) And then, for the general, I had to vote absentee and watch the results from China. Where most English language news sites are blocked. Except MSNBC, which was reporting 2 different winners on the front page.

Class got out at noon, which was midnight Central time, so we figured all we had to do was bop by the internet cafe on the way to lunch, see who won, and go on about our day.

No. All afternoon, every internet cafe was full of Americans hitting "refresh" every 30 seconds. I was just waiting until 7pm, or 7am where my parents were so I could call and ask what the #%@##%^@#@#$!@#!@ was going on. They didn't know.

Then I had to try and get election results from Chinese Central Television. "Ger-a" and "Xiao Bu-shi" are two vocab words I definitely learned that semester. Every time I heard one, I'd scream for my Chinese roommate to translate for me....

Let's not do that again this year, ok?

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Ok, before we get started, a quick announcement, I'm blogging over at Geek Buffet about YA lit and that an age range is not a genre.

But, now, a story. It's a funny one.

So, January in Wisconsin is cold and snowy and icy. And one January, 5 years ago today, it was really, really cold. Dan and I went to church with my parents. There was a Saturday evening service.

At some point in the service, a Sunday School (Saturday School?) teacher went to the supply cabinet to get some safety pins. Only, when she opened the door, she found Dan and me, making out and sharing a bottle of Johnny Walker.

When she apologized, I said, "Oh no, it's OK. We're getting married in an hour."

And the ceremony was beautiful. At the end, I have to admit, I wasn't really paying attention, and thought the minister was done speaking, and so I went in to get the kiss, only to have everyone laugh at me, because he wasn't done, just takng a breath to finish his last sentence.

And there was good food and good music and good friends and we danced the night away and at the end of the night, my dad and his friends put the ice swan to swim across the frozen pond out front and all our friends stole the left over wine and had an after party that is now legend and is STILL talked about to this day.

I really can't believe it was 5 years ago. It doesn't seem like that long. So, I've used this poem before, but it was one we had read during the ceremony, so I'm using it again.




Why Marry at All?

Why mar what has grown up between the cracks
and flourished like a weed
that discovers itself to bear rugged
spikes of magneta blossoms in August,
ironweed sturdy and bold,
a perennial that endures winters to persist?

Why register with the state?
Why enlist in the legions of the respectable?
Why risk the whole apparatus of roles
and rules, of laws and liabilities?
Why license our bed at the foot
like our Datsun truck: will the mileage improve?

Why encumber our love with patriarchal
word stones, with the old armor
of husband and the corset stays
and the chains of wife? Marriage
meant buying a breeding womb
and sole claim to enforced sexual service.

Marriage has built boxes in which women
have burst their hearts sooner
than those walls; boxes of private
slow murder and the fading of the bloom
in the blood; boxes in which secret
bruises appear like toadstools in the morning.

But we cannot invent a language
of new grunts. We start where we find
ourselves, at this time and place.

Which is always the crossing of roads
that began beyond the earth's curve
but whose destination we can now alter.

This is a public saying to all our friends
that we want to stay together. We want
to share our lives. We mean to pledge
ourselves through times of broken stone
and seasons of rose and ripe plum;
we have found out, we know, we want to continue.

--Marge Piercy

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We've been too busy shopping to take photos. We've been too busy shopping to do much sight-seeing. We've been too busy shopping to ... Well, you get the idea!

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