Weekly Geeks: Best

This week, Dewey has set us the geekish task of helping to compile a "best" list of books that we've read that were published in 2008. Guess what? Out of 75 books, I haven't read a single one that came out this year!

Annoyed sigh. Part of this I can blame on being an expat, but I also resolved back at the end of last year/the beginning of this year that I'd try to read more books published before the oh-ohs.

I guess I'll be visiting other blogs, enjoying your lists and getting good reading ideas for the future. But not being able to make a list of my own! I feel so unwashed, ungeekish.

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Catchup About The Catchup

I made some plans at the beginning of the week, and this is how it all went:

1. I planned to catch up on my reading. I'm nearly done (100 pages to go) with A Spectacle Of Corruption and although I didn't plan to, I read Plainsong by Kent Haruf this week as well.

2. I took a cold, hard (dare I say glacial?) look at my challenges.

Graphic Novel Challenge: I made a huge mistake right from the get-go by listing GNs that I planned to buy and read. Buying somehow got put on the back burner. After I read The Snowman, I'll be abandoning this challenge with a great deal of sadness and frustration.

@@@ 100 Books Challenge: It's late September and book #75 is nearly done. I still have quite a way to go to reach 100, but the Readathon's coming up, and that concentrated reading time will be helpful. I talk about this challenge so much that I MUST complete it -- even if sleep has to take a backseat.

@@@ Orbis Terrarum Challenge: 9 months, 9 countries, 9 books. I've read 5.

@@@ Canadian Book Challenge 2: I'm going to read JPod by Douglas Coupland next because I have it double-listed for this challenge and the Orbis Terrarum Challenge. Although this challenge runs well into next year, I still feel breathlessly behind in my reading.

@@@ In Their Shoes Challenge: Slow but steady progress, but I don't think I'll finish. Still 7 books to go. Was I too ambitious with my list of 15 books? Although I'm surprised and disappointed with myself, no white flag. I'll keep on keeping on.

 @@@ The Pulitzer Project: This is ongoing, and I'm happy with the progress I've made this year. 5 books and soon 6, when I read The Road by Cormac McCarthy for book group. Can you believe that I first (unknowingly) embarked on this list 30-something years ago with Gone With The Wind?

3. I planned to catch up on my reviews. Gulp. I've got a block about The Omnivore's Dilemma. I loved it too much. The same thing happened to me with How To Cook A Wolf. I'm also trying to write a favorable review of Persuasion, but it's hopelessly entangled with my diss of The Jane Austen Book Club since the members of BOOKLEAVES experienced these together at the last meeting.

4. I planned to make a special shelf for prospective Readathon reads. This is shaping up nicely. So far, I've got a biography of Princess Diana, When You are Engulfed In Flames by David Sedaris, The Innocent Man by John Grisham, Mr. Pip by Lloyd Jones, The Snowman by Milo Manera, Anne Of Windy Poplars by L.M. Montgomery, How Koreans Talk by Sang-Hun Choe and Christopher Torchia, and Books by Larry McMurtry.

Weekly Geeks: Catch-Up Week

This week, Dewey suggests that we catch up on our bookish activity like blogging, challenges, reviews and whatever else might need attention. So here's my plan for the week:

1. Catch up on my reading. I need to read A Spectacle Of Corruption before next week's BOOKLEAVES meeting, and the three New Zealand novels Willie loaned me are staring reproachfully from the New Zealand section of my "Foreign Authors" bookshelf. Also, my Canadian reading has fallen off a bit.

2. Carve out a special section on my bookshelf for books I want to read during the Readathon on October 18th. One of these books will be When You Are Engulfed In Flames by David Sedaris, which I couldn't resist any longer when I visited Kyobo bookstore on Friday. My book-twin, Susan suggested that I read something fun that would make me laugh out loud a lot while Mr. Bybee is peacefully slumbering. Sedaris will do nicely.

3. Catch up on my reviews. I've just finished The Omnivore's Dilemma, and I want to review it here, but I loved it so much, I'm afraid I'll just burble and chitter. Deep, deep breaths.

4. Cast a cool and appraising eye at all my challenges. I've been working at them all year, but haven't completed one yet, and actually contemplated joining another, the one where participants read a book that was made into a movie. My Tough & Cool Inner Bookworm is having a hissy.

I'll report back in a few days to assess and, if necessary, confess.

Weekly Geeks #13 Picture My Authors

While Dewey was moving, her brain was stewing. Our Geekly task is to post photos of authors we love, authors we've been reading, authors we've met, authors we think are hot and authors we're reading right now. To add to the fun, Dewey suggests that we not identify which is which -- instead make a game of it and offer a prize to geekish good guessers:

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1. Which authors are perennial favorites of mine? (4)

2. Which authors do I think are [fanning furiously] hot? (2)

3. Which authors have I met? (2)

4. Which author am I reading right now?

5. Which author did I just finish reading?

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Hint: One author will be an answer twice. I really don't think you need hints, though. This contest is a cakewalk.

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Prize: A copy of A Conspiracy Of Paper by David Liss. This book won the 2000 Edgar Award for Best First Novel.

If there is a tie, I'll tear the book in half and one winner will receive chapters 1-18 and the other winner chapters 19-36, plus the historical note at the end of the novel.

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Kidding. I'll draw names. Congratulations Raidergirl3!

Weekly Geeks #12: Ask Me About My Books

Hooray! I won Free Food For Millionaires by Min Jin Lee in last week's Weekly Geeks giveaway! Thanks, Dewey! I feel a little embarrassed that my desire for the book and my wish to win was so nakedly obvious, but that embarrassment will probably fade without a trace as soon as the book lands in my mailbox.

This week's geekish task is to get some buzz going about each other's books:

1. In your blog, list any books you've read but haven't reviewed yet. If you're all caught up on reviews, maybe you could try this with whatever books you finish this week.

2. As your readers to ask you questions about any of the books in your comments. Most likely, people who will ask questions will be people who have read one of the books or know something about it because they want to read it.

3. Later, take whichever questions you want from these comments and use them in a post about each book. (Dewey suggested an "interview-review"). Link to each blogger whose question you used.

4. Visit other Weekly Geeks and ask them questions.

As usual, I'm behind on reviews, and always have a little trouble getting started with them, so this will help me with procrastination and self-discipline issues. At the same time, as I visit other bookish blogs, the Biblio-Barbarian inside me can run wild, licking her lips wolfishly at lists and lists and LISTS AND LISTS of books and asking questions about everything that catches her tawny eye! Whoooo-hooo!

Okay, here's a list of books I haven't reviewed yet. (Actually, I sort of reviewed The Executioner's Song, but I was much more interested in seeing how clever I could be with a 6-word review. Mailer's novel deserves better than that, so fire away, if you'd like.)

The Executioner's Song - Norman Mailer

The Bone People - Keri Hulme

The Tale Of Despereux - Kate DiCamillo

Self-Consciousness - John Updike

Tete A Tete: The Tumultuous Lives & Loves Of Jean-Paul Sartre & Simone de Beauvoir - Hazel Rowley.

Fifth Business - Robertson Davies

Yo, Geeks! I'll be over to visit your blogs soon! If, in my eagerness, I blunder through the front gate without unlatching it, trample your petunias, rumple the cushions on the chaise-lounge, spill your iced tea or forget to wipe my feet -- it's not me. Blame my Biblio-Barbarian.

Weekly Geeks #11: Book Questions

Dewey's moving! I envy her. Every 3-4 years, I feel that I MUST move. I'm still hearing the rhythms of my childhood as a military brat. Anyway, Dewey needs help getting her books read, so she would like for her beloved geekish community to choose a book from her teetering pile and ask her three questions about it. If she chooses your questions, you could end up with that book, if it's hers to give away.

All of this makes me wild with antici...pation, because Dewey has a novel that I'm coveting to beat the band -- Free Food For Millionaires by Min Jin Lee. Love that title. Love the Korean connection. Now I've got to come up with dazzling questions. Ow. My brain hurts.

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1. The protagonist of Free Food For Millionaires is a Korean-American. Is she part of the "one point five" generation, born in Korea then immigrated with her family at a young age, or is she a first generation American?

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2. Have the protagonist's parents assimilated into American culture, or are they part of a strong Korean community that strives to hold onto their culture?

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3. Does the whole novel take place in the United States, or is some of it set in Korea?

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Wish me luck! Meanwhile, I'll continue to do my part by brainwashing myself into having a dream about a pig tonight, or sometime this week. (Pig dreams are really lucky -- unless a dog appears in the dream as well. A dog in your pig dream cancels your good luck.)

Weekly Geeks #10: Magazines

I buy a magazine every month, but it's not for me, it's for CanadaBoy. He's addicted to Men's Health. He had a subscription when he first came here, but when it expired, they gave him fits about renewing because his billing address (Canada) and mailing address (South Korea) were different. Luckily, it can be easily found at What The Book? Since I'm in there all the time, CB has delegated the task to me. It's damn expensive -- the equivalent of $7.00, but I have seen it as high as $19.00 at Kyobo.

Every now and then I'll succumb and buy a magazine. In 2006, I bought a copy of People that had coverage of the Katrina disaster. Last year, I bought a copy of Bitch, because that issue had an interview with Lisa Edelstein and an article about hoarding. Earlier this year, I bought an issue of The New Yorker, because it had a big feature about Michelle Obama. Lately, I've been circling the latest copy of Mental Floss. It's difficult for me to spend money on magazines because (irrationally, yes, I know!) I consider them "not really reading". (It's not just my Tough & Cool Inner Bookworm talking -- I never count magazines in any kind of reading total. Just doesn't occur to me.) Even though I enjoy magazines, they're read too quickly to justify the purchase on a regular basis. I was like this back in the US as well; I encouraged people to give me magazine subscriptions for gifts.

At work, the Language Center subscribes to Time and Newsweek (editions for Asia), so I fall on them when I see them in the professor's lounge. Often I scan, but I give the Arts & Culture sections a good going-over. If there's a book review, I'm off to the photocopier. I'm a little weary of reading business news that's geared toward Asia, but as a result, I have learned a lot about this part of the world.

My mom often sends care packages -- there are some things that are im-frickin'-possible to get over here; (I don't want to go into detail about that. Trust me. TMI.) Anyway, she always slips in some of her back issues: People, Country Weekly, TV Guide (it's changed size!) and Soap Opera Digest. When it's People or TV Guide, I go into a reading coma until the last page is done. Often, I'll take People to class as yet another example of American culture. They really zone in on the advertisements. If it's Soap Opera Digest I try to bring myself up to date and figure out who the hell all these new characters are on The Young And The Restless. Country Weekly is boring fluff. I don't know who all these new singers are and I don't give a damn, but I mine each issue carefully for the token story about an older star. One time there was a cover story written by John Carter Cash about his famous father; I still have that one.

I didn't know I missed them, but when I was home during the summers of 2006 and 2007, I fell on copies of Woman's Day and Good Housekeeping with a hunger and thoroughness that was surprising.

I pined for Entertainment Weekly for a while, then realized that I could read it online.

Looking at this list, it seems like there's a lot here for something that's "not really reading." LOL. Okay, maybe it is reading, but I've got to stick to my guns about one point: Magazines aren't books. When I worked at Wal-Mart during graduate school, it hurt my ears to hear customers repeatedly refer to The National Enquirer or Family Circle as..."Could you leave that book out of the sack, hon? I'm gonna sit over here and look at it while I'm waiting on my prescription."

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Aaaaaggghhh. Maybe my T&CIB has succeeded in totally taking over a tiny part of me.

Weekly Geeks #9: Challenges

Dewey's challenge for Weekly Geeks #9 gently urges us reflect upon the challenges we've participated in, and where we are now, in terms of progress. I'm glad she thought of this, because I was totally unaware that I had gone completely off-course with my Graphic Novel Challenge.

1. The Canadian Book Challenge, Eh? - This one finishes at the end of this month, but stick a fork in me already -- I'm done. I managed to read books from 6 provinces: Alberta, Manitoba, British Columbia, Quebec, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island. I feel extreme guilt spikes for not getting to Ontario since good friends CanadaBoy and Aaron are from there. Thank goodness for...

2. The 2nd Canadian Book Challenge, Eh? - I was going to say that my compulsion to join these challenges is all John's fault, but upon reflection, I think it all started about 20 years ago when I first became a rabid Jeopardy! fan and Alex Trebek would look so disappointed/disgusted when the contestants wouldn't know.... caribou droppings about whole Canadian categories. Anyway, I'm in. Here's my list.

3. In Their Shoes Reading Challenge - I was so looking forward to this challenge starting. Giddy with excitement, I made and unmade and remade my list several times, but surprisingly, I've only managed 5 books from it so far this year. I blame this lapse on my besotted and blinkered involvement with The Pulitzer Project.

4. The Graphic Novel Challenge - Yikes! I've completely deviated from this list, but I have read some good stuff like Pyongyang, which is now my new favorite graphic novel, and a really well-done graphic novel about Lizzie Borden from Rick Geary's Victorian Murders series. I was less impressed with a well-researched but cluttery-looking graphic biography of anarchist Emma Goldman. The upcoming Readathon (June 28-29) is a perfect chance to get a little more caught up on this particular challenge.

5. Orbis Terrarum Challenge - 9 books, 9 months, 9 countries! My Tough & Cool Inner Bookworm is always beating me over the head with a rolled-up map for not reading more authors from other countries. What the hell...? She didn't act like this before we became expats three-and-a-half years ago!

I'm off to a good start on this one -- US, Argentina and South Korea. I was thinking about substituting The Little Prince for Cousin Bette (my pick for France) because I want to get something out of that whole wretched experience, but my curiosity about Balzac's work has stayed my hand. I need to get back to work on this challenge. You can read my original post, full of naive energy and misty-eyed enthusiasm here.

6. The Pulitzer Project Challenge - This is the one that's been taking all my attention lately, and the challenge I'm enjoying the most. Luckily, my book group read The Known World and Middlesex lately, but I've also completed A Summons To Memphis and The Executioner's Song since joining back on April 9. I don't know why, but this list of prize-winning fiction is my glittering object.

7. The Triple-Digit Challenge - This is my own personal challenge to myself -- I'm actually surprised that it's not a real challenge already out there! Proud bookworm that I am, I've never managed to read 100 books a year. I think my current record is in the low 70s somewhere, so I've got my work cut out for me...I just finished book #48 for 2008.

I got the idea to do this from 200 Books, who is trying for the number in her title. She's nuckingfuts...married, two tiny kids, co-owner of a business and an Everyman's Library reading list! I hope Mandi makes her goal, but I also hope she doesn't lose her sanity in the process. She finished The Aeneid and Sense And Sensibility this week. Damn!!! I feel dull, unwashed and illiterate in comparison. My T&CIB is muttering something about quitting me and going over to live with Mandi permanently.

Weekly Geeks #7: A Large Library-Shaped Hole In My Heart

I really miss my hometown library -- both of them, the city and the county libraries. The county library was the one that I was free to use, but I gladly paid my yearly fee to the city so I could use their library as well. Happily, they are right across the street from one another. Unhappily, they're both pretty far from me now. Would I have become an expat if I had known what my Library Situation would be like?


This is the city library. It's a Carnegie library -- the first in Missouri and one of the first west of the Mississippi to be built using funds from the Andrew Carnegie Foundation. The library was dedicated in 1901.

This is the county library -- the building was previously a car dealership.

Here I am at the county library back in the summer of 2006, doing what I do best.

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Here I am earlier this year, actively mourning The Library Situation. ..notice the two kinds of tissue that I'm keeping at the ready?

Weekly Geeks #6: Pickle Relish, Mustard, Catchup!

This week's Weekly Geeks comes exactly at the right time. Our task is to catch up on our reviews. Last month, I let my reviews for April slide so far into May you probably thought they were greased. Not this month, sports fans!

7 books this month. I tried to finish Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides, which I'm enjoying immensely, but it'll have to go on the June tally. The year's half over and my dream of triple digits for 2008 is starting to seem improbable. My Tough & Cool Inner Bookworm is huddled in a corner, gnawing on her knuckles. Pipe down, T&CIB. Here are my reviews:

Oil! - Upton Sinclair. [A fine sprawling novel about the oil business, government and religion and how they're all inextricably entwined and surprisingly dependent on each other. It's also the story of how a Socialist is made. The odd juxtaposition of Sinclair's shrewd and lucid explanations of the machinations of these institutions coupled with his boisterous exclamation-riddled narrative style make him seem like that professor in college who made you absolutely love your chosen subject or major, and who you idolized.

Oil! acted as a springboard for getting me interested in reading other things: Dragon's Teeth (1943), Upton Sinclair's Pulitzer prizewinner about Nazism; I'd like to reread The Jungle (1906?), also by Sinclair and the novel he's best known for; In Dubious Battle by John Steinbeck because of the labor disputes mentioned in Oil!;and, because of the religion angle, I'm fired up to reread Elmer Gantry (1927) by Sinclair Lewis, who, coincidentally, spent some time early in his career hanging with Upton Sinclair. (Bet that got confusing at times.) Many thanks to Kookiejar for bringing this novel to my attention.]

Anne Of Avonlea - L.M. Montgomery. [I reviewed this book in my previous post.]

Ex Libris - Anne Fadiman. [I love this book. Love. Love. Love. Did you ever want to just stand and give an author and her book an enthusiastic ovation? Fadiman discusses her life, love and relationship with books and how her parents, (both writers) shaped and influenced her life. If you haven't read this book yet, seek it out. Speaking of her parents, I have a problem now. There's a chapter in which Fadiman relates how her mother's writing was plagiarized by John Hersey, and apparently, he went around doing this kind of thing all the time. After I read that, I was indignant and now I don't want to read any of his stuff, but unfortunately, A Bell For Adano is on my Pulitzer pile. Musings Of A Bookish Kitty did an excellent review of this book -- Literary Feline discussed each chapter in depth over three consecutive Sunday Salons. Go and find them and enjoy them -- read her whole blog while you're there; it's time well-spent.]

Sunshine -Norma Klein. (re-read) [1973 weepie about Kate, a free-spirited young mother who was diagnosed with bone cancer-- the same kind Terry Fox had. Kate is adamant that she doesn't want her leg cut off -- it's not a sure thing that it will save her life -- and also decides to halt chemo and radiation so that she can fully appreciate the time that she does have left, instead of living a little longer but being too weak and sick from the treatments' side effects to interact with her family. Since her daughter, Jill, (age 2) is too young to remember her, Kate starts recording some tapes for Jill. Meanwhile, Kate's husband, Sam is angry with her for refusing to do everything possible to save her own life. Chock-full of references to John Denver's music and making love up in the mountains, Sunshine has a really strong 1970s feel to it. This novel is based on the true story of Jacquelyn Helton. The edition I read of this novel is part of a well-known series published here in Korea in which popular English-language novels are printed with English on one side of the page and Korean on the other. Notice that the book was written by NORMAN Klein!]

The Coldest Place On Earth - Tony Vicary. [This is a graded reader that tells about the Amundsen-Scott race to the South Pole back in the early 1910s. I wasn't familiar with the story, but became captivated with Amundsen's dogged resourcefulness as well as having the deepest sympathy for the hapless dreamer-adventurer Scott. The account I read was brief and illustrated with photos taken by both teams. I'm eager to read a longer, more in-depth book about the episode now. Any suggestions?]

Diane Arbus - Patricia Bosworth. [Diane Arbus (1923-1971) was an avant-garde photographer who was best known for her portraits of people who were unconventional in some way. She also had a gift for making normal seem freakish, an example being her famous photo of the twin girls. She even made baby Anderson Cooper look ghoulish. Her life story is less interesting than her art, (biographer Bosworth struggles valiantly, but there's only so many ways you can say that your subject is odd or enigmatic) and the neurotic artsy fashion scene in1950s and 1960s New York City got a little old after a while.

The book is illustrated with photos from Arbus' life, but the book would've been better if there had been photos of her photos since they're discussed in so much detail. Unfortunately, Bosworth was restricted because Arbus' estate controls her images strictly. (I did find a few on the web. At first glance, I felt slightly discomfited, even hostile towards her work, but then it grew on me with repeated viewings. Her photo of Eddie Carmen, "The Jewish Giant" and his parents is so bizarre, it's almost funny.)

Patricia Bosworth is a talented biographer, and I really appreciated the in-depth looks at two of the people who were heavily involved in Arbus' life: Her ex-husband, Allan Arbus, who is best known for his portrayal of Dr. Sidney Friedman on M*A*S*H, and her brother, Howard Nemerov, a respected American poet and critic.]

I Have The Right To Destroy Myself - Young-Ha Kim. [I have the right to gouge my eyes out. The best thing about this 1996 Korean novel is the title. Kim seems to be going more for a mood than plot and types rather than actual character development. Not my cup of soju.]

Unfinished Business: It pains like hell me admit this (stop keening and smiting your forehead, T&CIB!), but I also have a DNF for the month: Love In The Time Of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I like the book and want to finish it, but life's been a little herky-jerky lately, and doesn't blend well with GGM's beautiful, flowing, leisurely style. Misery loves company, though -- coincidentally, my buddy and bookworm extraordinaire Pablo is stalled with Living To Tell The Tale, GGM's memoir.

Weekly Geeks #5: I've Got A Story

This week, Weekly Geeks asks what other forms of storytelling we enjoy. I'm all over bruises because my Tough & Cool Inner Bookworm, who's a real snob, tried to block my every keystroke on this post. Whose effing blog is this, anyway? Mellow out, T&CIB. I've got a story:

I really don't remember much about 1983. That was the year my first husband and I moved to Broken Arrow, Oklahoma and we got cable television. For the time, there was a nice selection of programming, but as far as we were concerned there was only one channel: MTV! Seeing our songs performed or acted out was wonderful stuff; no matter how many times our favorites came on, we stared just as slack jawed as the first time. Maybe it was my imagination, but my husband seemed to sit up a little straighter and smooth his unruly hair when VJ Martha Quinn was onscreen.

1983: Madonna's lime-green socks in Borderline. Cyndi Lauper arguing with that wrestler that played her father in Girls Just Want To Have Fun. Waifish Eileen running around in overalls in Come On Eileen. The chorus line of janitresses with mops at the end of the Kinks' Come Dancing. Tracey Ullman's boyfriend Paul becoming Paul McCartney at the end of They Don't Know. The beautiful animal video of Talk Talk's It's My Life. The extreme joy we both felt when ANY Elvis Costello video was played. One time, the Waitresses' I Know What Boys Like came on, and I screamed and jumped up and down so much I gave myself a nosebleed.

Some days I wanted to be a Go-Go. Usually I wanted to be Chrissie Hynde looking so cool and tough while telling some guy to Stop Your Sobbing. And my husband...well, he had Martha Quinn to sigh over. My own sighing would come a few years later in 1987, when I watched Madonna's La Isla Bonita over and over and dreamed aloud of being hair-whipped by the guitar player. Then there was Bono. Oh, dear.

I don't know who invented youtube, but I like to think that the Universe sat down one day, chin in hand and asked itself: What can I come up with that would make Susan Jackson Bybee deliriously happy? Nice job, Universe...My thank-you note's in the cosmic mail.

What videos do I watch these days? Banned commercials. Every Arrogant Worms video I can find, because they're so much fun. Hey Ya and Ms. Jackson, both by Outkast. Fever by Peggy Lee. Istanbul Not Constantinople by They Might Be Giants. A bunch of Dylan stuff, old and new. A LOT of Johnny Cash videos. A bit of Dwight Yoakam. Tom Petty. I Touch Myself by The DiVinyls, because Mr. Bybee finds the song unseemly and it's fun to embarrass him.

Let's see...what else? Samson, Fidelity, and Apres Moi all by Regina Spektor. I really like Fidelity with that delectably crisp all-black-and-white setting, Regina's black fingernails and that life-sized rag-doll suitor that becomes A Real Boy towards the end and helps Regina scatter a rainbow of powdered paints all over themselves and the set. My very favorite right now is Kickin' It In Geumchon by EV Boyz, a good-natured Beastie Boys-type song about the expat experience in Korea.

Oh hell. Maybe I should re-title this blog. Call it Naked Without Music Videos!

Weekly Geeks #3: Childhood Reads -- The Long Winter - Laura Ingalls Wilder

This week, our theme is discussing favorite childhood books. I've discussed several of my favorites in this blog, but I haven't talked much about the "Little House" series, which I still love without reservation. A couple of years ago, for "Merry Birthday", Mr. Bybee gave me a complete set with Garth Williams' illustrations in color, and I have them proudly displayed on the shelf over my desk at Dorm Sweet Dorm.

My overwhelming favorite in the series is The Long Winter. It's the best one, for a couple of different reasons. The cheerful cover picture of young teenaged Laura and her younger sister, Carrie romping in the pretty white snow with their school friends belies the story within -- a gritty tale full of drama and tension of a whole town nearly starving to death during a cruel winter (1880-81) in Dakota Territory that went on for more than half a year.

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This seems to be the only book in the series in which not everything is seen from Laura's viewpoint. Usually, if something happens outside of Laura's sight or hearing, Pa comes back to Ma and the girls and relates the information to them. Although switching viewpoints is a departure, Wilder (and Rose Wilder Lane, possibly?) made a wise decision, since Pa is the only one who leaves the house for most of The Long Winter. This also signals to the reader that things are deadly serious and mirrors the tension the characters are feeling.

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A scene in which angry, frightened and hungry townspeople go up against an opportunistic merchant who has decided to raise prices is chillingly effective, as is the reality check Pa gives the merchant: He's free to raise prices if he wishes, but the long winter can't last forever, and when it's over, people will remember those who were helpful as well as those who made a miserable situation even more difficult. That scene would've been sadly diluted if the reader had gotten it secondhand with Laura.

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In addition, the harrowing trek made by Almanzo Wilder and Cap Garland to get supplies and food for a desperate town wouldn't be as dramatic as a story repeated to other characters. No, the reader's place is out there with Cap and Almanzo, nearly blinded by the blizzard, trying to find the farm where they can get the supplies, trying to keep the horses from being smothered by their own freezing breath, their feet painfully numb and their eyelids cracked and bleeding from the force of the cold, driving snow.

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Things are just as dramatic back home in the Ingalls household. Ma and Pa are experts at knowing how to "contrive" to get through hard times, but this winter is testing their powers to the limit. The coal and wood ran out months ago, so Laura and Pa spend most of their waking hours twisting hay (originally meant to feed the livestock) into little bundles to be burned in the stove for heating and cooking. Ma comes up with several creative ways to counteract the dwindling food supply, but as the winter drags on, there's only so much she can do with the achingly few provisions they have left. When she's not twisting hay, Laura spends her days grinding wheat through a coffee mill so that Ma can bake up a coarse brown bread that they eat for each meal.

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Several chapters have a monotonous and dulling repetition to them, and the reader can feel what it must have been like to endure the freezing cold darkness day after day. When Laura feels "never fully awake", she's experiencing one of the classic symptoms of starvation.

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If you choose to read only one book in the "Little House" series, read The Long Winter.

Weekly Geeks #2: Do You Read What I Read?

Dewey strikes again! This week, the Weekly Geeks are being challenged to link up with each other when we discover that we've blogged about the same books. That way, other people who are interested in reading the book can check out all the opinions easily. So, if you've discussed a book that I've also discussed, please send me an email at suz1961 (at) yahoo (dot) com and I'll be happy to link your review post to my review post. Simultaneously, I'll be emailing you and letting you know about my literary meanderings.

Weekly Geeks: Discovering New Blogs

Is Dewey a genius, or what? She gave the usual reading challenge stuff a neat half-twist and has challenged our community to get our blogging butts in gear as well with the creation of Weekly Geeks. Every week will bring a new challenge for us to do something freaky and creative with our blogs. She even threw in a chocolate monkey bribe. I'm there! Dewey, you SO have got the skills!

Our first challenge is to discuss new blogs we've discovered lately. This is great timing [again with the brilliance, Dewey; hold up while I go fetch my sunglasses!] because I found a blog yesterday that knocks my socks off: Here In Korea by Sandra, who is an American living in Korea with her husband and 2 children. I haven't read through her whole blog yet, but I think they've been here since the early 2000s.

Sandra makes expats look good, because she's really worked on assimilating into the culture. I am particularly impressed with her diligence in attending classes to learn how to speak Korean. But she's not a totally goody-goody expat. In her wonderfully lucid and readable blog posts, she also details the frustrations of living in this REALLY DIFFERENT culture, but serves it all up with good humor. Her powers of observation are astounding as well. I found myself laughing, nodding in recognition but also saying "Cool! I didn't know that!"

What? You're still here? Get off my blog this instant and go check out Here In Korea! Sandra's post about the pigs and the garbage won my heart and made me an instant fan.