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Poetry Friday: The Bait

I love a good love poem. I wish I could express what my criteria for that is.

So, here, abbreviated, "The Bait" by John Donne.

Come live with me, and be my love,
And we will some new pleasures prove
Of golden sands, and crystal brooks,
With silken lines, and silver hooks.

…

For thee, thou need’st no such deceit,
For thou thyself art thine own bait:
That fish, that is not catch’d thereby,
Alas, is wiser far than I.


Go here for the full poem.

The first stanza reminds me of Catullus’s Poem 5:
Vivamus, mea Lesbia, atque amemus
Rumoresque senum severiorum
Omnes unius aestimemus assis

Let us live, my Lesbia, and let us love,
And let us value the gossip of all
The too-severe old men at only a single coin.  

(That’s my loose translation.  Adapted for modern readers, because they aren’t familiar with ancient currency, generally.)

A Great and Terrible Beauty by Libba Bray

I feel like if I summarize even the first little bit of this book for you, I will spoil some important and suspenseful plot point, so I will give you just some bizarre thematic/scenic details instead. This book is about a teenage girl with supernatural powers. It is also a gothic thriller. It is also a sort of feminist manifesto. It has no perfect characters, which is refreshing. And there is one very cool teacher in it.

I listened to the audio book of A Great and Terrible Beauty, and while I enjoyed it fine for the first seven (of ten) discs, it wasn’t until disc eight that things really got exciting for me. From that point on, though, I was riveted. Please understand: it is a good book all the way through. It just took me that long to get to the point where when I was doing other things I’d think, "Gee, I wish I were listening to A Great and Terrible Beauty."

More exciting to me than the book itself, though, was a bit on the last disc where Libba Bray herself read from her diary of the experience of writing the book. Hearing the enthusiasm in her voice, especially about her research, made me very excited about reading and writing. And hearing about the volume of research she did made me realize that perhaps one of the reasons I consistently have trouble finishing writing something is that I never seem to fully immerse myself in the world of my writing. (Except with fanfiction. This is never a problem for me with fanfiction. I lived in the world of Buffy for four years, and have been in and out of it ever since.)

Anyway, I highly recommend this book for anyone who is fond of gothic thrillers or complex characters.  It does have a steamy bit, so I would say more mature readers are the ones to whom I’d give this book.

Book: A Great and Terrible Beauty [affiliate link]
Author: Libba Bray
Publisher: Delacorte Press
Original Publication Date: March 2005
Pages: 403
Age Range: Young Adult
Source of Book: Library

Books Read in 2008

1. Clear Your Clutter with Feng Shui, Karen Kingston
2. Craft, Inc., Meg Mateo Ilasco
3. Indigara, Tanith Lee
4. The Princess Diaries, Meg Cabot
5. Jessie’s Mountain, Kerry Madden
6. Finding Serenity, Jane Espenson and Glenn Yeffeth, ed.
7. Valiant, Holly Black [Audio CD] 
8. The Twelve Kingdoms - Volume 1: Sea of Shadow, Fuyumi Ono
9. The Lightning Thief, Rick Riordan
10. Fearless, Tim Lott
11. Erec Rex: The Dragon’s Eye, Kaza Kingsley
12. Bronx Masquerade, Nikki Grimes
13. Soon I Will Be Invincible, Austin Grossman
14. It’s All Too Much: An Easy Plan for Living a Richer Life with Less Stuff, Peter Walsh
15. The Gatekeeper Trilogy, Book Two: Ghost Roads, Christopher Golden and Nancy Holder
16. Getting Things Done, David Allen
17. Y: The Last Man - Unmanned, Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra
18. Y: The Last Man - Cycles, Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra
19. Y: The Last Man - One Small Step, Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra
20. Y: The Last Man - Safeword, Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra
21. Y: The Last Man - Ring of Truth, Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra
22. Y: The Last Man - Girl on Girl, Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra
23. The Watchmen, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons
24. V for Vendetta, Alan Moore and David Lloyd
25. 300, Frank Miller and Lynn Varley
26. Organizing from the Inside Out, Julie Morgenstern
27. The Gatekeeper Trilogy, Book Three: Sons of Entropy, Christopher Golden and Nancy Holder 

Books Read in 2008

  1. Clear Your Clutter with Feng Shui, Karen Kingston
    2. Craft, Inc., Meg Mateo Ilasco
    3. Indigara, Tanith Lee
    4. The Princess Diaries, Meg Cabot
    5. Jessie’s Mountain, Kerry Madden
    6. Finding Serenity, Jane Espenson and Glenn Yeffeth, ed.
    7. Valiant, Holly Black [Audio CD] 
    8. The Twelve Kingdoms - Volume 1: Sea of Shadow, Fuyumi Ono
    9. The Lightning Thief, Rick Riordan
    10. Fearless, Tim Lott
    11. Erec Rex: The Dragon’s Eye, Kaza Kingsley
    12. Bronx Masquerade, Nikki Grimes
    13. Soon I Will Be Invincible, Austin Grossman
    14. It’s All Too Much: An Easy Plan for Living a Richer Life with Less Stuff, Peter Walsh
    15. The Gatekeeper Trilogy, Book Two: Ghost Roads, Christopher Golden and Nancy Holder
    16. Getting Things Done, David Allen
    17. Y: The Last Man - Unmanned, Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra
    18. Y: The Last Man - Cycles, Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra
    19. Y: The Last Man - One Small Step, Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra
    20. Y: The Last Man - Safeword, Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra
    21. Y: The Last Man - Ring of Truth, Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra
    22. Y: The Last Man - Girl on Girl, Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra
    23. The Watchmen, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons
    24. V for Vendetta, Alan Moore and David Lloyd

    When I include graphic novels in my reading list, I’m almost caught up to my 4 a month goal.  If I can get through 12 books in September, I’ll be totally caught up.


The Vampire Problem: Betraying the Remarkable Human

I don’t want to go into too much detail here, but I want to talk quickly about something I’ve run into in a couple of books that upsets me. It’s odd because I can’t quite place why, and it seems like such a silly thing to get upset over.

I’ve read more than one book where a vampire encountered a human, and they fell in love, and then the human ended up a vampire.

This upsets me.

Because usually in these books, one of the reasons the vampire loves the human so much is their humanness. At least since Anne Rice started writing about vampires, there’s been a sense that immortality makes you jaded. Life takes on a tarnish when you live it long enough, and the magic seems to go out of the world. But when vampires love humans, I think they regain that magic and vitality that, being undead, they can’t quite get themselves.

I hate it when in a book where this is an essential plotline, they then turn that human into a vampire. And most vampire books I’ve read fall into this trap. In all genres: horror, chicklit/romance, YA.

But it’s such an odd thing to feel. It’s an absolute disgust, and I recognize it in myself and think, “That’s so silly.”

All I can figure is that I identify heavily with remarkable human girls/women, because I like to think that I have a somewhat unique passion and vitality, and I fear it being taken away by becoming jaded and cynical. (It’s funny; I’m very cynical in some ways, but not at all in others.)

Do you have any thoughts on the matter? Pleasing not to spoil New Moon, Eclipse, or Breaking Dawn, as I haven’t read them yet and might ever.

Comments may contain spoilers for Christopher Golden’s Shadow Saga.

Books Read in 2008

  1. Clear Your Clutter with Feng Shui, Karen Kingston
  2. Craft, Inc., Meg Mateo Ilasco
  3. Indigara, Tanith Lee
  4. The Princess Diaries, Meg Cabot
  5. Jessie’s Mountain, Kerry Madden
  6. Finding Serenity, Jane Espenson and Glenn Yeffeth, ed.
  7. Valiant, Holly Black [Audio CD]
  8. The Twelve Kingdoms - Volume 1: Sea of Shadow, Fuyumi Ono
  9. The Lightning Thief, Rick Riordan
  10. Fearless, Tim Lott
  11. Erec Rex: The Dragon’s Eye, Kaza Kingsley
  12. Bronx Masquerade, Nikki Grimes
  13. Soon I Will Be Invincible, Austin Grossman
  14. It’s All Too Much: An Easy Plan for Living a Richer Life with Less Stuff, Peter Walsh
  15. The Gatekeeper Trilogy, Book Two: Ghost Roads, Christopher Golden and Nancy Holder

The Return of Weekend Wonderings

I'm not sure where I came across this link - probably in the Publisher's Weekly newsletter.

Slate.com asks "...do you really want the Hulk teaching your kid to read?"

There's more text in the accompanying slide show than in the page itself; the page sounds rather alarmist but the slideshow is far more reasonable.

What is your answer to their question?

I do want the Hulk teaching my kid to read, though I'd rather have a child with great affection for Spiderman or the X-Men, as those are my heroes of choice.  (In fact, considering my choice of a lifemate, I'd say the kid will be genetically predisposed to like Spiderman and the X-Men.)  I want anyone my kid will enjoy reading about to teach my kid to read.  A kid who is reading anything is, in my opinion, better than a kid who is reading nothing.  Bring on the reductio ad absurdum, three year olds learning to read from bodice-rippers or somesuch.  I'll stand by my feelings.

The slideshow raises a good point though: the easy readers based on some of the films aren't actually very friendly to early readers, lacking in clear visual cues in the illustrations, and containing obscure vocabulary (gamma radiation, anyone?) that kids might not recognize right away.  The solution, in my mind, isn't to banish comic book and movie characters from our children's books.  It's for concerned parties to find a way to coach the writers of these movie tie-ins in the things a good easy reader requires.  Familiar vocabulary.  Words that can be sounded out.  Simple illustrations that clearly indicate what's going on, while at the same time provide a jumping-off point for readers to create their own stories.

Is all literature created equal?  I know that in terms of quality, some writing is stronger than others.  But does it have any inherent moral value, wherein a child reading comic books is somehow less good than a child reading classics?  I don't think so.  

What do you think?

Poetry Friday: Never Never Land

by Betty Comden and Adolph Green

I have a place where dreams are born,
And time is never planned.
It's not on any chart,
You must find it with your heart.
Never Never Land.

It might be miles beyond the moon,
Or right there where you stand.
Just keep an open mind,
And then suddenly you'll find
Never Never Land.