Upon seeing that two books I was sent review copies of months ago and haven't touched except to put on my TBR shelf are being released today, I began to feel guilty.  My number of posts has significantly dropped off, and for that I am very sorry.  I wanted to offer up a quick explanation of why this is, because no matter how much I try and make myself post, it doesn't look to be changing any time soon.

Posting a good entry requires brainpower.

I am working harder at my job than I ever have before.  I am investing more energy in it.  My hours are not the longest they've ever been, but during my contact time with students I am using the most energy I ever have.  This is having very positive results in the classroom and with my colleagues.

Unfortunately, it is completely exhausting.  It is exhausting to the point that my recent hobbies have become reading (but not writing), playing video games (mindless but because they give you tasks to do still gives a sense of accomplishment), and complaining (a rather unattractive trait, being a complainer).  I very rarely cook real food anymore.  A year ago, I was cooking myself a nutritious dinner every night.

So I've been doing the bare minimum here - participating in group events, and then making other posts as I have energy.

So when will you see posts from me?

A week from tomorrow on October 17 I'll be writing a feature about illustrator Brie Spangler and her work for Robert's Snow

In November, during the Winter Blog Blast Tour, I'll feature interviews with Kerry Madden and Dia Calhoun.

I have a whole schedule of things through May but I don't want to reveal them as they're all group events that we haven't begun to publicize yet.  In any case, you are guaranteed a post a month from me.  I know that's not a lot, but that will be there for sure.  Beyond that, you will get reviews when the mood strikes me to write one, commentary on days when I have the good fortune to read the other blogs, and participation in memes/regular weekly events when I get a chance to sit down at the computer.

I just wanted to let you know what was going on so you didn't think I'd disappeared entirely.

See you next week if not before!

I've started a new theatre journal:

http://mimula.livejournal.com

I'm not in the habit of writing about picture books, but there are some that still strike my fancy, in addition to the old favorites that hold a place in my heart.  Now it's October, my second favorite month of the year (July is the first because that's when my birthday is), and we kidlit bloggers are celebrating Bradbury Season.  For me this time of year is more marvelous than scary, but I like a tinge of the morbid even in my sparkles, and so I present you my choice for Bradbury Season: Robert D. San Souci's Cinderella Skeleton. 

"Cinderella Skeleton" is a fairytale retold for goths.  Our familiar friend Cindy isn't sweeping up the house anymore.  Now her chores include hanging cobwebs, arranging dead flowers, littering the floor with dust and leaves, and feeding bats.  Her stepmother and stepsisters are still evil, though, and when the marvelously dead Prince Charnel hosts a ball, they do everything they can to keep her away.  

You know this story, though, so you know that it all ends well.  When Prince Charnel finds Cinderella Skeleton he proclaims:

Cinderella Skeleton!
The rarest gem the world has seen!
Your gleaming skull and burnished bones,
Your teeth like polished kidney stones,
Your dampish silks and dankish hair,
There's nothing like you anywhere!
You make each day a Halloween!

That part always makes me cry a little, tears of joy.  I received this book as a gift from my boyfriend (he's so goth he's dead, except he's not really goth at all - just vaguely morbid, like me) and he inscribed it with "You make each day a Halloween!" at the front of the book.  

Where this version of the tale shines is not in the plot itself, which we all know.  It is in the details.  It's in the fact that Cinderella's coach driver is a black cat.  It's in the way San Souci deals with the glass slipper part of the tale.  It's in the fact that this Prince is Prince Charnel ("a building or chamber in which bodies or bones are deposited" - thank you, M-W.com!) instead of Prince Charming.  And it is in the phenomal illustrations provided by David Catrow.

"Cinderella Skeleton" is perfect for fans of The Nightmare Before Christmas and The Corpse Bride (which it pre-dates by five years).  It is the whimsical kind of spooky that perky goths enjoy and morbid but not too serious children adore.  It is wonderful and beautiful, and it is my favorite Halloween book.

For more on Bradbury Season, see Colleen's post at Chasing Ray.

 

If you enjoyed this post, please subscribe to my feed so you will get my other recommendation posts.

Buy a Friend a Book Week is October 1-7 (as well as the first weeks of January, April, and July). During this week, you’re encouraged to buy a friend a book for no good reason. Not for their birthday, not because it’s a holiday, not to cheer them up–just because it’s a book.

What book would you choose to give to a friend and why?

I would buy His Majesty, Queen Hatshepsut for just about any friend of mine.  I’d choose this one because it is the origin of my Hatshepsut-obsession; a female king makes me happy because I’ve always thought I should be one.  Everyone should read it, because it’s fun!

October Project #2 is here: community.livejournal.com/scriptita…

For today's Monday Misdirection, I shall simply point you in the direction of my first October Project Post.  You can find it here: http://community.livejournal.com/scriptitans/568.html

Each Sunday at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast,  jules and eisha ask us to talk about good stuff that happened in our week.

Here’s mine!

1. Work was low stress and high productivity.  It began with a teacher workday, which enabled me to get ahead on lots of planning.  I also made a push to get caught up on grading, and so now I won’t have much grading to do for the next week.

2. It was a musical theatre week.  I went to see two of my students in a production of Les Miserables.

3. And then I went to see Hairspray the movie of the musical based on the movie (it’s like The Producers that way) which was a lot of fun.

4. I got paid.  

5. Banned Book Week started yesterday!

6. In my unsuccessful quest to find a Nintendo Wii, I discovered that my BFF from middle and high school has a livejournal and friended her at my personal journal.  (And was friends with my housemate but not me.  Life is odd sometimes.)

7. Despite or perhaps because of a couple of little-sleep nights, I came up with the idea for my October Project.

In anticipation of NaNoWriMo, I’ve decided to set up a bit of a challenge for myself.

Here’s the deal:

Every day for the entire month of October, I will post some fanfiction over at

.  It can be as short as a 100-word drabble or as long as a serial story.  But it will be there, and it will be me writing.

The basic idea here is that to improve at writing, you need to write.  But I get hung up on all the world-creation parts of things.  This will give me the chance to write without having to worry about that; someone else has made the world and the characters for me.  Now all I have to do is get inside them.

You can expect to see writing in the following fandoms: Pirates of the Caribbean, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Firefly, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Final Fantasy (VII, X, or XII, most likely, though with perhaps some V or VI thrown in), Harry Potter, Star Wars, and perhaps others.  I’m open to requests, provided it’s something I feel fairly grounded in.

Care to join me?  Drop a comment on the entry linked here, and I’ll keep a list of who’s playing.
 

Welcome to Theatre Thursday!  Because plays are books too, I will be featuring each Thursday a play I’ve read that I think you should read.  After all, I got a degree in this stuff and it’s languishing.

So.  That’s the plan for Theatre Thursday.

On this fine Thursday I’m exhausted from too little sleep and a full day of work, so I’ll just give you a selection now and talk about why, later.

You should read William Shakespeare’s HAMLET.  Not just because it’s a classic, though that’s important.  But also because it’s a very SMART play, a very TIGHT play, and way better than most people would have you believe.

If, like many folks, you feel plays were meant to be watched and not read (and indeed this is true), then I strongly recommend the Kenneth Branagh HAMLET.  Because seriously?  All the others cut a lot of stuff out.  This is the only Hamlet movie with the WHOLE SCRIPT in it.  Yeah, it’s over 4 hours long.  But it’s 4 BRILLIANT hours.  And it’s out on DVD now, too.

We’ll talk more about why HAMLET is awesome another time.  For now, just take my word for it.  Here’s a quick snippet for you. 

Enter HAMLET, reading

LORD POLONIUS
O, give me leave:
How does my good Lord Hamlet?

HAMLET 
Well, God-a-mercy.

LORD POLONIUS 
Do you know me, my lord?

HAMLET 
Excellent well; you are a fishmonger.

LORD POLONIUS 
Not I, my lord.

HAMLET 
Then I would you were so honest a man.

LORD POLONIUS 
Honest, my lord!

HAMLET 
Ay, sir; to be honest, as this world goes, is to be
one man picked out of ten thousand.

LORD POLONIUS 
That’s very true, my lord.

HAMLET 
For if the sun breed maggots in a dead dog, being a
god kissing carrion,–Have you a daughter?

LORD POLONIUS 
I have, my lord.

HAMLET 
Let her not walk i’ the sun: conception is a
blessing: but not as your daughter may conceive.
Friend, look to ’t.

LORD POLONIUS 
[Aside] How say you by that? Still harping on my
daughter: yet he knew me not at first; he said I
was a fishmonger: he is far gone, far gone: and
truly in my youth I suffered much extremity for
love; very near this. I’ll speak to him again.
What do you read, my lord?

HAMLET 
Words, words, words.

LORD POLONIUS 
What is the matter, my lord?

HAMLET 
Between who?

LORD POLONIUS 
I mean, the matter that you read, my lord.

HAMLET 
Slanders, sir: for the satirical rogue says here
that old men have grey beards, that their faces are
wrinkled, their eyes purging thick amber and
plum-tree gum and that they have a plentiful lack of
wit, together with most weak hams: all which, sir,
though I most powerfully and potently believe, yet
I hold it not honesty to have it thus set down, for
yourself, sir, should be old as I am, if like a crab
you could go backward.

LORD POLONIUS 
[Aside] Though this be madness, yet there is method
in ’t. Will you walk out of the air, my lord?

HAMLET 
Into my grave.

LORD POLONIUS 
Indeed, that is out o’ the air.

Aside

How pregnant sometimes his replies are! a happiness
that often madness hits on, which reason and sanity
could not so prosperously be delivered of. I will
leave him, and suddenly contrive the means of
meeting between him and my daughter.–My honourable
lord, I will most humbly take my leave of you.

HAMLET 
You cannot, sir, take from me any thing that I will
more willingly part withal: except my life, except
my life, except my life.

Because I’m overly fond of alliteration, I’ve decided that in order to be able to make Thursday “Theatre Thursday,” I will be answering the Booking Through Thursday questions on Tuesdays.

So here’s the lectitans weekly schedule:
Sunday - Seven on Sunday
Monday - Monday Misdirection
Tuesday - Booking Through Thursday Tuesday
Wednesday - Open
Thursday - Theatre Thursday
Friday - Poetry Friday
Saturday - Weekend Wonderings

So today, Booking Through Tuesday:

Imagine that everything is going just swimmingly. The sun is shining, the birds are singing, and all’s right with the world. You’re practically bouncing from health and have money in your pocket. The kids are playing and laughing, the puppy is chewing in the cutest possible manner on an officially-sanctioned chew toy, and in between moments of laughter for pure joy, you pick up a book to read . . .

What is it?

A Piers Anthony book, no question.  (I should note that last week the question was which book is your “comfort food,” to which my answer would also have been a Piers Anthony book.)  For the happier times, I want something Xanth, I think.  Xanth books are phenomenal to read when the weather is good.  If it’s a bad day, then I’m more in a Bio of a Space Tyrant mood.

I’ll explain on Thursday what I’ll be doing for Theatre Thursday.  Still looking for a topic for Wednesday.  Little Willow suggested good ones but I feel they’d be duplicating my Monday Misdirection and Weekend Wonderings posts. 

As I mentioned in my earlier post, I'm hoping to institute a theme for just about every day of the week here at

 . 

Let me show you what the week looks like so far:
Sunday - Seven on Sunday (Thanks, 7-Imp!)
Monday - Misdirection Monday
Tuesday - empty
Wednesday - empty
Thursday - Booking Through Thursday
Friday - Poetry Friday
Saturday - Weekend Wonderings (Remember those?)

Any suggestions for Tuesday or Wednesday?  Alliteration is always fun.  I want to keep reviews a possibility for just about any day, but until I find themes for Tuesday and Wednesday I'll try and be sure to post reviews on those days.