Wednesday, May 13, 2009

I Finished a Book!

Woo hoo! I feel so proud of this accomplishment. This month's book club selection is Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery, which I am supposed to have read in eighth grade English but of which I have no recollection. At that age, I rebelled against reading things I had to read in favor of things I wanted to read (sorry, Dad [my 8th grade English teacher], but there's the cold truth of the matter!). So I suspect I must have skimmed Anne at that time, but I honestly didn't remember a thing about the story. Ok, that's not entirely true, I remembered the ending of it, but that is all, and even then I was supposing I remembered it, versus actually remembering it and when it turned out I was correct, I wasn't necessarily convinced that I wasn't just prescient.

Anyway, I enjoyed it. As I got closer and closer to the end, I got more and more excited that I was actually finishing a book! I've been reading another book club selection for this summer, The Year of Living Biblically, since before Leah was born. It's a great book, but I just haven't been able to plow through it. So three cheers for Anne! Now I won't feel like quite such an idiot at the next 2 meetings, as I've already read the July selection twice--seeing as it's my book choice, this is probably a good thing! (If you haven't read The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, you really, really need to. Like now. I'm planning my escape to Guernsey.)

With Lesley, my reading goddess, due to arrive in LESS THAN TWO WEEKS I feel as if I need to get my reading game on so I don't look like a total putz. :-) My goal is to finish Biblically by the end of June. How quickly my reading goals have fallen, from 100 books per year to 2 per month!

2 pearl(s) of wisdom:

Cindy said...

I read the Year of Living Biblically. It's really interesting to see all the things he had to do - according to the bible. And all the contradictions. People get stuff in the Bible wrong all the time. I learned a few things that I didn't know before.

I don;t know that I'd call it a great book, or one that I would read again, but it was something that peaked my curiosity.

Jasper John R. said...

http://www.itstartedinchurch.com

"CHURCH 10●19●62"

It's published. OK, self-published. A vanity job with Lulu, the Print On Demand site. (That's why there is a delay in getting your copy after you order. This ain't Amazon or Barnes and Noble. This is "cheap". But the quality of the output is what you'd expect of a "real book". In the next few weeks, I'll reformat it as two books so as to meet the Amazon standards, I get it into them.)

It's either a foolish joke or a touching story that I've had in my heart and head since I was an Eight Grader at Good Shepherd School in 1960. As an example of TEOTWAWKI (The End Of The World As We Know It) fiction that I summarize as: "An alternative future history. What might have been? If Nikta hadn't blinked. If children were allowed to "be all that they could be". If adults didn't waste their time and attention on memes and paradigms that are insanity. If I'd known. Shoulda, coulda, and woulda! The human race's millstone -- obsolete thinking. Here's what I think might have been possible."

Suitable as a door stop, bug killer, or fire starter, it is 750+ pages or just under a half a million words directly from the mind of a hormone ravaged fat little kid in Catholic School some fifty years ago. Any way it's a cheap download or "reasonable priced" hardback. (Depending upon how you define "reasonable". It's all about the definitions; like the word "is".) Please bear in mind, I'm just an injineer with a low index. I hope, that should you decide to read it (It is after all just under a half a million words!), you'll laugh, cry, and ponder. (I did! Often.)

Highly recommended. ROFL! Of course, I may be prejudiced.