For my inaugural Poetry Friday post, I am using one of my favorite poems.

Shakespeare’s Sonnet 29
When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
featured like him, like him with friends possess’d,
desiring this man’s art and that man’s scope,
with what I most enjoy contented least,
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee and then my state
Like to the lark at break of day arising
Sings hymns at heaven’s gate.
For thy sweet love remember’d such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

(The punctuation is incorrect because I typed it from memory.  I then checked it against the official punctuation but I was so proud of myself for typing it from memory that I couldn’t bear to correct it.)

Why I Love This Poem:
Because it shows that even when life is at its worst, maybe somebody loves you and that makes it better a little.  I find it makes it better a lot.

More Stuff About This Poem:
When I teach my students about meter in poetry, I use this as an example of iambic pentameter aka the natural English meter (as opposed to, say, Latin or Greek meter).  I recite it with ridiculous emphasis on the meter, and then also more naturally.  They vary from frightened to awed.  I guess those two things aren’t that far apart, though, are they?

I hope it’s germane to write at length about one’s choice for Poetry Friday.  If it’s not, I’ll probably keep doing it anyway.  Sorry, internet.

I feel like a jerk. I am not posting the lengthy post I promised just yet.

But here’s a preview of things to come:

• the response to Bookseller Chick’s post
• a post on Elizabeth I, especially my ruminations on what it means to be a Queen, and my own Queen obsession
• a post on Capt. Hook, which I’ve not finished yet, and my pirate obsession

Read in 2007:

1. Nothing But the Truth (and a few white lies), Justina Chen Headley
2. The Royal Diaries - Elizabeth I: The Red Rose of the House of Tudor, Kathryn Lasky

Currently Reading:

1. Capt. Hook: The Adventures of a Notoroious Youth, J. V. Hart and Brett Helquist
2. Virtual Mode, Piers Anthony
3. I, Claudius, Robert Graves

1. The lovely blackholly aka Holly Black, one of the co-authors of the Spiderwick Chronicles, solicited help creating Latin for her book Care and Feeding of Sprites. I caught sight of it while I was on my medicine run at Target today and flipped through.

You see, I’m something of a Latin expert, what with having a Master’s degree in teaching it and a couple years of experience under my belt with the teaching aspect, plus another 10ish years of reading it. At least, my friends tell me it’s okay to consider myself an expert, so I do. So when blackholly put out the call, slayground sent me her way and her mine, or something, and I did indeed provide her with some scientific names for her Sprites. I’m not sure how many of mine she used. I checked my records and I know at least the Glowing Toadfly and the Little Blueberry Sprite have scientific names I found for her. (The process was: she gave me English names. I used my knowledge of grammar, which dictionaries are good, and what specific connations are to come up with the Latin. Then I sent it to her.) I think she used half of the name I gave her for the Dancing Pondneedle, but only the dancing part. I think.

As you can imagine, it was very exciting for me to see in a store a book to which I had, in some way at least, contributed. (I suppose I contributed an interview to Joss Whedon: The Genius Behind Buffy as well. Every time I see that in a store I about have a fit.)

2. A quick plug for Sonja Foust, as well! Sonja has been my friend since we were baby high school freshmen, and the most exciting thing has happened. She’s going to be published! Her e-book romance short story Love in Shadow will be published by the Wild Rose Press. I feel compelled to warn you that this is a romance, with all that entails. I can’t be held responsible for Sonja’s text!

I’m off for a nap, after which I hope to be up to posting the earlier promised post on blogging, writing, reading, and other stuff.

Later - today, I hope - I will be writing a response to Bookseller Chick’s Writer as Blogger, Blogger as Writer post. I will talk about why I started this blog especially, when I had others I could’ve written. I’ll talk about why I chose LJ as my publishing platform. I’ll talk about some other stuff too.

But I want to do that when I’m coherent enough to make sense, and now is not that time.

So I’ll just tell you the tiny revelation I had today while out picking up my medicine: I don’t need to read books in the order they are on my bookshelf, or for the express purpose of cutting down on the number of books I have. That takes all the joy out of it. I need to read books because I want to read them. That is how one should go about reading, especially as a leisure activity. Just as I don’t read books because they’re “good for me,” so I should not read them just to see if I can bear to part with them.

So I’m doing away with the “Upcoming” part of my booklist, because if I make that part? I feel like I have to stick to it.

And that’s silly.

More later!

I’m taking a much needed and deserved sick day tomorrow. I didn’t get to do any reading today, but it is my sincere hope that I can read more of and perhaps even knock out Elizabeth I during my day off.

Thank you to all for the warm welcome to the land of book blogging!

Truth: I’ve been blogging for years. I don’t even know how many. Six maybe? Truth: I have had an LJ for over 5 years. Truth: I don’t spread the URLs for them all over because I’m a teacher. I know nothing is private on the internet, but there are some degrees of anonymity we can preserve. If my students find this journal, I don’t especially mind. Truth: If you want to read about my daily life or my ideas about fashion, I’ll be happy to provide you a link. Just drop me an email - lectitans (at) gmail (dot) com.

(After seeing that Miss Erin has a theatre blog I’m inclined to start one of those, too, but I’ll save it for when I’m doing more than a show a year, because content will be hard to produce, no? Though, hm. I suppose I will be stage managing this summer. Maybe I’ll make one then.)

So, remember how I was going book shopping today?

In the end, there was little time. I needed to go to my parents’ house, because my aging dog is not doing well and it’s important I see him as much as possible. He was feeling better today, so it’s possible he will be with us a while longer. So I only hit Target, where they did not have any of the books I wanted.

But in my mother’s bedroom, what should appear but Clear Your Clutter with Feng Shui by Karen Kingston. Of course she let me borrow it. Booklending is one of a mother’s primary responsibilities.

So now I have that to read! And I didn’t spend any money or have to make a special library trip for it, either. Yay!

This Character Meme was created by Miss Erin.

Character you’d most like to have over for tea? Elinor Dashwood from Sense and Sensibility. I think Elinor and I would get along very well, and could talk about how much we love our families while we sipped our tea and ate scones. Mmm, scones.

Character you’d most like to have as a sibling? Harriet M. Welch from Harriet the Spy. My actual sister was nicknamed Harriet for a long time, because when the movie came out, she and Michelle Trachtenberg looked a lot alike. They don’t really look alike anymore but there were enough similarities between bookHarriet and my sister that it wouldn’t seem an odd addition to the family.

Character you’d most like to be friends with? Lola Cepp from Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen, in whom I see myself entirely, and Cyd Charisse from Gingerbread et al, who is nothing like me. Lola is the sister of my heart, the kind of person you could be friends with for a lifetime. Cyd Charisse is so much wilder than myself, but she’s a little crazy and I think there’s a level on which we’d understand each other very well.

Character you’d most like to have as a cousin? I don’t have any first cousins at all in real life! I’m not really sure what a cousinly relationship entails. I think I would like Claudia Kishi from the Babysitters’ Club as my cousin. She could teach me all the good places to hide junkfood, and also how to dress well.

Character you’d most like to have an adventure with? Sequiro from Piers Anthony’s mode books, because he’s a telepathic horse.

Favorite quirky character? Pippi Longstocking leaps to mind. Do I have to explain?

Favorite love-to-hate character? I don’t love to hate anybody, but I do think The White Witch from The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe is incredible.

Favorite bad guy? Snape, because he’s not. But he is. But he’s not. But he is. Etc.

No one tagged me specifically, so I’m not going to tag anyone else specifically, but if you want to do it, you should.

My goal for last year was a book every two weeks, coming to about two a month. I ended up topping that, reading 30 books in the year.

1. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (re-read) by J. K. Rowling
2. The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper
3. The Te of Piglet by Benjamin Hoff
4. The Restaurant at the End of the Universe by Douglas Adams
5. Crewel Lye by Piers Anthony
6. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
7. The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells
8. Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne
9. Golem in the Gears by Piers Anthony
10. The Paradise Snare (The Han Solo Trilogy: Volume One) by A. C. Crispin
11. Emma by Jane Austen
12. The Hundred Dresses by Eleanor Estes
13. Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman
14. Women pirates and the politics of the Jolly Roger by Ulrike Klausmann, Marion Meinzerin & Gaberiel Kuh
15. The Everything New Teacher Book by Melissa Kelly
16. Cat in a Kiwi Con by Carole Nelson Douglas
17. I, Trissy by Norma Mazer
18. Bridget Jones’s Diary by Helen Fielding
19. Prowlers by Christopher Golden
20. The First Days of School (reread) by Harry and Rosemary Wong
21. My Name is Asher Lev by Chaim Potok
22. Classroom Management That Works by Robert Marzano
23. Ender’s Shadow by Orson Scott Card
24. Welcome to the Dead House by R. L. Stine
25. The New Girl by R. L. Stine
26. Innocence by Jane Mendelsohn
27. Dead End Dating by Kimberly Raye
28. Undead and Unwed by Mary Janice Davidson
29. Tall, Dark and Dead by Tate Hallaway
30. Morrigan’s Cross by Nora Roberts

My goal for this year will be three a month. Only 10% of slayground’s average, but she makes reading books her business. To catch up to this goal, because I do believe Nothing But the Truth is the first book I’ve finished this year, I will need to have read 9 books by the end of March. I did one today.

That leaves 28 days.

A book every 3 days, and I’m all caught up.

Books Read in 2007

1. Nothing But the Truth (and a few white lies) by Justina Chen Headley

Currently Reading

1. The Royal Diaries - Elizabeth I: Red Rose of the House of Tudor by Kathryn Lasky
2. Virtual Mode by Piers Anthony (re-read)
3. I, Claudius by Robert Graves

I want to go to the library ASAP to return Nothing But the Truth (and a few white lies) and pick up Lisa Yee’s Millicent Min, Girl Genius. Sadly, the branch library by my house isn’t open on Sundays and the library downtown is open only exactly during the hours I’m at rehearsal tomorrow. What does this mean?

A trip to the bookstore, naturally.

My bookshelf is overflowing. I’ll take a picture sometime and show you. It’s a bit scary, actually. The shelves bow under the weight of all the books on them.

But as much good as I’ve heard about Lisa Yee, I am wary of buying an author’s books all untried. I only put $30/month in my budget for books, you see. Of late its been spent on “market research” - vampire romance, most recently. (There’s another genre I’m writing in but I already own so many examples of that I don’t need to buy any.)

So my book shopping list for tomorrow: Clear Your Clutter with Feng Shui by Karen Kingston (I’ll admit this purchase is entirely inspired by Nothing But the Truth. I originally intended to pick this one up at the library, but the more I think about it, the more it seems like a reasonable book to own.) Shrimp by Rachel Cohn (but not Cupcake because it’s not out in paperback)

I decided that since I have Gingerbread and won’t be parting with it in my book purge, Shrimp is a safe purchase.

The question is: Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan - library or bookstore? slayground? Anyone? Advice?