You are currently browsing the monthly archive for April 2010.
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the joys of a south-facing wall
With Rainer gone for the week, I’m craving the company of words. I’m reading more, writing more, listening more. I have a few good words to share, as eclectic in subject as always.
- Two new podcasts I’m enjoying: Stuff you Missed in History Class and Stuff you Should Know. Both are from the How Stuff Works website and feature two hosts. I like podcasts with two hosts, it sounds so much more companionable.
- Want to wear flattering garments? Amy’s got an incredible 10-part series of blog posts on the go: Fit To Flatter. Great photos and sketches and multiple body types. (The blog posts are free, but you can also buy the pdf for a minimal fee.)
- 100% Non-Lame, Awesome Workbooks from NaNoWriMo Young Writers. Got a budding writer in your house? Incredible resources for elementary, middle and high school kids. Heck, I’m finding the one I’ve printed out for Sandra is helping me. These are meant to get authors thinking through all the ideas of plot, character, etc., so that participating in a November writing marathon would be simpler, but writing is writing no matter when you do it.
- On a whim, I grabbed Out of Line: Growing Up Soviet off a display as I headed out of the library last week. I was hooked by the back cover that describes the crush the author had on a statue of Young Lenin. It’s a memoir of a childhood in the USSR written for children and teens, and I highly recommend it even to adults. I read it in a day, even standing and stirring the tomato sauce while reading. Sweet and funny and clear.
- Sandra and I were both gripped by the audio version of “Beka Cooper: Terrier”. A rich, detailed setting, a determined young woman, a bit of magic, and crimes that need solving.
Those are enough words for a while. The wind is wild, the clouds are moving in, and the forecast is for rain and melancholy weather. I’m off to do something tactile with a little bit of captured summer.
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“Streets are businesslike and only expected things happen on them, but roads have moods and mysteries and secrets to tell and promises to make around every corner.”
Jean Fritz, “The Cabin Faced West”
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Are you on a street? Can you get to a road?
In the midst of a life abundant with intangibles, progress that I can touch is sanity-saving.
Stitch by stitch I have something to show for my time.
Rhythm and flow, moving forward.
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Laundered clothes get dirty. Full bellies become hungry. Swept floors gather dust and hair and a thousand tiny pieces of paper from busy scissors.
But a stitch is a stitch and it stays that way.
Tangible.
Permanent.
Reassuring.
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Aestlight Shawl in Dream in Color Smooshy, cloud jungle
For those of you wondering.
For those of you with small children that need so much. That have intensity and passion undiluted with patience or reason.
For those of you uncertain about all this work, all this pouring of our passion into them, all this time spent on a lifestyle choice that seems to fly in the face of society’s reason.
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They do grow up.
They do spend a day in companionable learning.
They do think of the future and set their own goals.
They do make lunch while you’re out running and smile at you when you return.
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We have had a most wonderful Thursday together: reading “Johnny Tremain” aloud at breakfast, beginning algebra, watching “From Monet to Van Gogh: A History of Impressionism” after lunch while knitting side-by-side on the couch, editing her report on raccoons, and drinking tea. She’s an incredible young woman, and a good friend, and I’m happy to be someone she leans on.
Do you ever find reading about books to be as enticing as watching the Food Channel? You haven’t got the book or the dish in front of you to enjoy but, oh, the tantalization…
I thought I’d share some of the lists I have been salivating over.
I so enjoy reading the Book Lust series. What a feat to be able to entice readers with one-sentence summaries!
Evolution books – a great list from Charlie’s Playhouse. Finally they’re writing these. Where were they 8 years ago when Sandra started trying to figure out the story of humans?
Oodles of fun for me these past few days – the Top 100 Children’s Novels poll at the blog of School Library Journal. So many good titles. Such a list. Click on a title and you’re linked to an intoxicating mix of reader reviews from the poll, synopses, and pictures of the various cover designs each title has had. I’m finding reading them to be as sensuously spine-tingling as a plate of appetizers.
Lately I have been yearning to begin all sorts of obsessions – reading biographies of famous couples (Henry VIII and then Anne Boleyn, Napoleon and then Josephine); I haven’t done my nearly yearly re-read of all 8 Anne of Green Gables books in a while (I only managed it until the kids were both preschoolers) and I haven’t read the New Moon books in a long time and so an L.M. Montgomery binge seems overdue; I want to read all of the “Dear Canada” books of historical fiction in chronological order; there’s an urge to read various novelizations of fairy tales and compare them; and now I also want to read all the 100 books on the SJL list. After all, I’ve been enjoying YA books like The Sherwood Ring (thanks to Here in the Bonny Glen) and Sorcery and Cecilia (Jane Austen meets Harry Potter! What a delight. What a charmer.).
In keeping with my campaign of compassion towards myself, I’ve resisted committing to any of these goals. I have been acknowledging the urges, treasuring the delightful possibility each entails, and then reminding myself I can follow an urge without making rules.
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“There are no right answers. But there is a right question. It’s the one that rubs up against our self-righteousness, resistence, and fears….When you ask yourself, ‘Why not?’ you may find yourself in motion, across a vivid and unpredictable landscape, over impossible mountains and beyond the water’s edge, where you surprise yourself, once and for all, by getting wet.”
Karen Maezen Miller
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Have you?
Books, books, books. Lovely lists of books. Is there anything that conveys a sense of companionship and adventure better than a list of books?
Oh, of course: a stack of books.
I’m knee-deep in book lists as I’m thinking through the next school year. Here’s my plan: for each trimester, I’m going to make small catalogs of books, complete with a picture of the cover and synopsis. Then the kids will ‘order’ their books to read for the trimester. This way I have a lot of control, but they have a feeling of choice. I’ve tried to vary the settings and styles of books so that I’m not working from assumptions about what they’ll enjoy.
For example, Sandra is going to get a catalog of about 8 books for the Sept-Christmas season*, and I think I’ll ask her to choose 5. I’m still debating how many to require, especially since they vary in length and that will affect how quickly she can go through them. My goal for Sandra will be to get her reading not only at grade level (which she now does) but also reading at speed at grade level. So I’ll start with slightly easier books and then make each following trimester a little more complex. That way when I ask her to read more chapters per day than she’s used to, she’s starting on an on-ramp and not the Autobahn itself.
This means that I am reading all sorts of reviews and descriptions of books these days. And, oh, don’t they just make me weak at the knees. I have visions of myself surrounded by stacks of these books near a shady hammock, a summer vacation stretching before me like an endless stretch of white beach. Oh, to have child’s mind about the summer holidays again…I want to read every one of the books I’m offering Sandra.
Recently, I’ve stepped out of my non-fiction/classics/biographies/genre fiction tendencies and started reading Young Adult fiction. I’m not the only one, either. An article on the popularity of YA fiction in the L.A. Times put it well:
“‘I think part of the reason we’re seeing adults reading YA is that often there’s no bones made about the fact that a YA book is explicitly intended to entertain,” said Lizzie Skurnick, 36, author of “Shelf Discovery,” a collection of essays about young adult literature from the 1960s and 1970s.
‘YA authors are able to take themselves less seriously. They’re able to have a little more fun, and they’re less confined by this idea of themselves as Very Important Artists. That paradoxically leads them to create far better work than people who are trying to win awards.’”
I have a problem with Literature. It boils down to this: I don’t like most modern literature because I find it dull, grim, or nasty. Or all three. I also don’t believe in reading fiction to make myself a better person; I don’t buy into the idea that art’s role is to change the world. Given who goes to art shows or reads modern literature, it’s a little more of ‘preaching to the choir’ than changing the world. No, I believe that art should be beautiful or fascinating and books should be well-told stories. If I want to be a better person, I read non-fiction.
If I’m reaching for a novel, I’m reaching for a mental vacation or an adventure. I’ll time-travel and read classics. I’ll keep myself a-tingle with genre fiction. Modern” Literature”, especially the kind that wins awards in Canada, is too full of importance and grim details and too skimpy on reasons to keep reading other than being able to partake in pretentious conversations at dinner parties. Not that I haven’t tried. At 13 I was reading Atwood, Findlay, Potok, and a host of other heavy-hitters. But I started to feel that all of my optimism, my faith in human spirit, and my enjoyment of reading were fading away. I do have a good go at modern literature every now and then. But I always seem to wonder why everything is so grim and so dull. Is this the only way these authors can feel like they’re ‘doing real literature’?
The next few novels I want to read are all YA: The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate, A Wrinkle in Time, Dear Canada: Alone in an Untamed Land, Emily of New Moon, Fairest….to name a few.
And yet, rather laughingly, I am at the moment reading the best work of modern literature I’ve read in a dog’s age: Wolf Hall by Mantel. (It’s even a prize winner: the Mann Booker Prize. Perhaps they aren’t like Canadians over there and allow their authors to write good stories and still win awards.) I can’t put it down. At first a few of the style choices made the reading a bit more like work, but I’ve slipped into them now and find it a very pleasant yet gripping read. I stayed up 2 hours past bedtime for the first time in months and months reading it. I feel like I know Cromwell and yet that he is closed to me. How has the author done this? How can I feel intimately part of a stranger?Now that is craftsmanship.
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*Interested in the first draft of her catalog?
The Hobbit, Tolkein
Misty of Chincoteague, Henry
Ella Enchanted, Levine
Behind Rebel Lines, Reit
From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankenweiler, Konigsberg
Christmas Carol, Dickens
Treasure Island, Stevenson
All-of-a-Kind Family, Sydney Taylor
Dear Canada: Alone in an Untamed Land, Maxine Trottier
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Sometimes it’s hard to homeschool. Sometimes you wonder why you’ve chosen a life that’s about getting other people to jump through hoops rather than having the satisfaction of jumping through your own hoops. Sometimes being the boss of everyone (as it sometimes feels) is just a weight dragging at you.
Sometimes it’s hard to mother. Sometimes you wonder why he’s yelling at you. Sometimes you wonder why you hear, “Just a minute,” four hundred and nineteen times per day. Sometimes you wish they knew how good they have it and would be grateful. Sometimes you wonder what it would be like to be a Taoist monk pondering the essential flow of the universe rather than convincing someone to brush their teeth/do physio/wipe the table/turn off the TV.
Sometimes it’s hard to be. Sometimes you make lists in your head and your body can’t keep up. Sometimes you wish you had a thousand wishes. Sometimes you wish you were young again and believed in a thousand wishes. Sometimes you just think about other times.
Sometimes you wish someone had a solution. You wish you had a solution. Sometimes you wish you knew which problem needed attention. Chickens and eggs dance in your mind and neither wants to take the lead, they just circle round.
Sometimes. This time. But not all times.
The latest Carnival of Homeschooling is up. Lots to read and enjoy.
Meanwhile, life continues at a breakneck speed of life, in-laws, and everything.
