Devouring Books

That looks super yummy!

Where do you get a dessert that looks like a book anyway?

Link to where I found this pic

The 13 Steps of Labor

My Labor in 13 Steps

1. This isn't so bad.
2. Yeah, I'm rocking this out. Already 8 centimeters and no biggie with the pain.
3. Oh. Oh. Oh God. Why is she trying to escape out of my back?
4. Hey, where's the epidural I asked for?
5. Holy mother of %$^&&*&^$%##. WTF?
6. Ooooooohhhh epidural. That's nice.
7. Nothing to it baby. What contraction?
8. Wait, what do you mean you are taking my epidural away?
9. Okay, I'll just go fast before all that beautiful medicine is gone.
10. Oh. Ohhhh.. OH. OH. OH MY GOD. ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME? I WANT MY EPIDURAL BACK.
11. STOP TELLING ME TO HOLD MY BREATH. I NEED TO FREAKING BREATHE. HOW DO YOU THINK YOU'LL GET HER OUT IF I'M UNFREAKINGCONSCIOUS?
12. Ewwwww......
13. Wow. Would you look at that? She's awesome.

Madison Paige

7 lbs. 14 oz, 21 1/2 in

Butterbook

I have deemed this the Butterbook image. I like the whimsy of it.

Link to where I found this pic

Culting It

I managed to side-step the "no challenges this year" promise by making Projects instead, and now I feel the need to add one more project to the list. There is quite the handful of cult classic reads that I have had on the TBR list for ages, and since I'm feeling pretty good about the projects I've started, I figured why not slap a new project up there.

Defining a "cult classic" is practically impossible, but we all know it when we encounter it. They range from the horrid and cringeworthy to the brilliant and beautiful. They cross genres and eras and styles. But they all have one thing in common (in my humble opinion) :: They deliver a serious mindf*ck. These are stories designed to rearrange your thinking. With a tendency to challenge the status quo, cult classics veer off the beaten path and offer readers something new. They also change the reader in some way, and many a reader of a cult classic finds him/herself keeping a dog-eared copy on hand, well-read and practically memorized.

Here are some of the top cult classics:

1. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
2. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
3. A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
4. Dianetics by L. Ron Hubbard
5. Dune by Frank Herbert
6. The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe
7. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
8. The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
9. Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon
10. On the Road by Jack Kerouac
11. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson
12. Siddhartha by Herman Hesse
13. The Stranger by Albert Camus
14. Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche
15. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
16. Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein
17. Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs
18. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
19. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey
20. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick
21. The Anarchist Cookbook by William Powell
22. Necromancer by William Gibson
23. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
24. The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton
25. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
26. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
27. I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith
28. The Magus by John Fowles
29. Valley of the Dolls by Jacqueline Susan
30. Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk
31. Labyrinths by Jorge Luis Borges
32. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
33. The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf
34. The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailor
35. Howl by Allen Ginsberg
36. Faust by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
37. A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter Miller
38. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
39. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
40. 
    

I am looking to make this list an even 50, so let me know what I'm missing here!!!

Book Discussion: The Wild Irish Girl

Sydney Owenson, aka Lady Morgan, refused to reveal her birthday. Yep, that's what got me started writing this post.

I decided to pick up The Wild Irish Girl by the aforementioned Sydney Owenson as my next book in my Classics Project in part because I am 90% sure I've read it before and liked it (and honestly I was looking for an "easier" classic to read due to the imminent arrival of The Floppy Alienette). First, I was definitely right about having read it before, specifically for my 19th century Irish Literature course in college. On the other hand, I was completely wrong about it being an easier classic as the language is pretty highfalutin - and ridiculously gorgeous. :) But I digress....

I am only 60 pages into the text, but I simply had to stop reading and gather some info on the author, something I very rarely have done in my life. For some reason, reading the first 60 pages got me wondering what sort of person, what sort of woman, would write an Irish nationalist tale from a English, male point of view. That's when I found out that Owenson's birth day is unknown because she kept it a secret (and a little part of me fell in love with that eccentricity).

Outside of her undisclosed birthday, Owenson is an intriguing character for other reasons as well: She published her first novel when she was 21, and it was successful enough to allow her to continue supporting herself and her family through her writing; The Wild Irish Girl was her second novel, and it was so successful she became a central part of the literary and social worlds of Dublin and London. It was in London, among the upper class, where she met her husband Charles Morgan, the physician for the Marquis who was Owenson's benefactor. I find it amusing that her popularity in London was due to a decidedly Irish nationalist tale, especially since the British Secret Police took a personal interest in her because of the themes present in her novels and actively spied on her and her husband. Of course, they were in fact allowing Irish liberals to meet in their home.

In typical governmental contradictory fashion, the British government not only put Owenson under surveillance, but they also awarded her a pension for her literary achievements and her "services to patriotism", making her the first woman to receive a governmental literary pension and probably the first woman - possibly person - to receive a British pension for Irish patriotism.

And to top it all off, she apparently cashed in on the popularity of her novel (and promoted it simultaneously) by donning traditional Gaelic dress and impersonating Glorvina (the Wild Irish Girl) at parties. Many Irish and English women began to "go native" and adopt parts of the dress and hair stylings of Glorvina as well in a sort of nineteenth century fandom. Love it.

Randomness

I tried to put together a coherent, transitiony post but my brain is just too all over the place for that, so instead here are the random thoughts that keep floating through my mind:

• At my doctor's appointment, last Monday, I found out I was 4 centimeters dilated and 80% effaced, so why the phat have I not gone into labor yet?
• Sydney Owenson's The Wild Irish Girl, which I am currently reading, is alternately fascinating and boring. I love the overly dramatic fascination the narrator has with the titular character, but at times the long, detailed, and specific discussions about what originated in Ireland (not in England or Greece as the narrator believes) are extremely tedious. They may make more sense if I understood all of the allusions, but I just don't have the time to look everything up.

• I am geeking out something fierce over Ready Player One by Ernest Cline (which I am also reading at the moment) and it's getting me really nostalgic for 80s music and video games, especially the video games - which I rarely got to play as a kid because my mother would read my Christmas list and see Atari or Nintendo and she would buy books (I'm not complaining now :) ).
• I recently found out that milk is like super high in sodium which may be why my feet swell up to unnatural proportions from time to time. Prior to the pregnancy, I didn't like milk and never drank it except with cereal. Now I can plow through like three or four glasses a day. Luurrrvvvee it.
• Other foods I now like that I didn't before include eggs, Chinese food, and red meat
• Other foods I love now that I liked before but tried not to eat include vanilla malts, graham crackers smothered in peanut butter with hershey's kisses on top, pretzels and pub cheese, and oreos with aforementioned awesomeness that is milk.
• I haven't dyed my hair since I got pregnant because I am being super freaking careful because of the past miscarriages. So now my hair is my natural, mousy, completely dull, not vibrant brownish color. What color shall I dye it after the baby is born?
• How soon after giving birth can I reasonably leave my newborn child with her grandma so her dad and I can finally go out and get some freaking sushi!!!!????!!!!
• The past two Thursdays - the day on which I teach - the snow's been a'falling. Both days, my mother and grandmother were all "but you can't drive to work in this....you're pregnant." Two things: 1) we are not talking storms here, gentle snow fallings accumulating to 1-4 inches; not a big deal where I live and 2) I'm actually closer to the hospital at work than I am at home. Just saying. :) Love it that they are worried about me, but definitely ready to be treated like normal and not like an invalid.
• On a side note, my 70 year old grandmother keeps trying to "help me walk" when there's snow on the ground - or even if the ground is just wet. She's adorable. If my manatee self goes down, she's not stopping it! She's coming down with me. :)
• And seriously, I'm like practically in labor already, what is taking her so long? Let's get a move on here.

So there's a few of the thoughts that have been percolating in my brain this morning. How's everyone else doing this morning?

173 Books Removed

One of my goals this year was to remove at least 100 books from the shelves. Well ladies, gents, and other little lovelies, I have now removed 173 books and not even one month has passed. I am so proud of myself I could cry. Then again, I could cry because I have to remove books....

The imminent arrival of The Floppy Alienette necessitated some serious reorganization of the house. After all, the hubby and I had done a fine job of filling in every nook and cranny of our tri-level house all by our lonesome. But as you know, those tiny bodies require a great deal of STUFF and their STUFF requires a great deal of space. So for the past two weeks, I and my husband have been on a mission to remove the clutter from our lives (making him - a minimalist - so happy and me - a major hoarder - a nervous wreck....BUT WHAT IF WE NEEEEDD THAT LATER?)

Our garbage man probably thinks we are nuts, and Harbor House (a local charity for abused women) probably thinks we are nuts too, as we have removed bags and bags and boxes and boxes and pieces of this and that. I am ashamed to admit it, but I managed to fill an entire garbage bag with lotions, soaps, hairspray, makeup, and the such not to give to Harbor House. It's amazing how much Bath and Body Works people have given me over the years (I wonder if I smell?). But back to books....

The books have gone to three places: 1) Half-Price Books, so I could get some moolah; 2) the library, because they need it; and 3) a small stack for giveaways here on the blog, because I love you.

I ended up sending 96 books to Half-Price books netting me a whopping 75 bucks (hardly seems right, but I guess it's $75 more than if I donated all of it to the library. I do wish I could have received an itemized list of books with how much they gave me for each though; either way, they are still making a great deal of change off me.

But the important thing here is that I've removed 173 books. Instead of considering my goal complete, I decided to up my goal to 300 books removed this year. I'm over half-way there, so I firmly believe I can do this. I just need to remember to not put every single book I read onto the permanent shelves. It's a habit I need to break, the keeping of all books read regardless of enjoyment.

Book Review: Northanger Abbey

Title: Northanger Abbey
Author: Jane Austen
Publisher/Year: Wordsworth Classics / 1993 / 1803
Source/Format: Mooch / Print
Date Finished: 11 January 2012
Book # 2

Buy | Borrow | Accept | Avoid

The Short and Sweet of It
Catherine Morland, young, innocent, naive, and enamored of Gothic novels, finds herself embroiled in a love story not at all straight out of one of her favorite books. What follows is a sweet, sometimes frustrating, humorous, and entertaining coming of age tale peppered with a bit of romance.

A Bit of a Ramble
When Catherine Morland accompanies her friends and neighbors, the Allens, to Bath, she finds herself in the middle of two quite distinct siblings: the Thorpes and the Tinleys. Isabella Thorpe is outgoing, forward, and self-centered, as is her brother John who has set his sights on Catherine. Eleanor Tinley is constant and sweet as is her brother Henry who has captured Catherine's heart. These two sets really provide the framework for Catherine to move away from her naivete to a more realistic view of the world. While the Thorpes overwhelm Catherine, she does not have the knowledge or experience to recognize their true intentions. They are exciting, flirtatious, over-the-top, and narcissistic. The Tinley's, on the other hand, are much more real, grounded.

This same dichotomy is seen in Catherine's impressionability regarding Gothic tropes. Her imagination causes her to see the world around her as a Gothic novel come to light, especially when she finds herself at Northanger Abbey, the "abbey" of it being so wonderfully Gothic. Her tendency to blur the line between fiction and reality, or reconstruct reality to suit a fiction, is oddly endearing to me, and felt pretty dang perfect for a seventeen-year-old. As is the case with all young people though, Catherine must come to realize the truth of the Thorpes, and so to must she come to realize the mundane quality of the abbey she has found herself in.

Most of the tale revolves around this idea: that Catherine needs to put aside childish fancy and see reality for what it is, much more simple and much less sensational than the stories she reads. I don't want this to come across, though, as a book that finds fault with imagination and flights of fancy. On the contrary, I think Austen has created a book that both stresses the importance of imagination and the necessity of not letting said imagination outweigh common sense.

And it's freaking funny people. Seriously, I already spoke a bit about the narrator in my discussion post on this book, but I really want to stress how funny I found this book. I definitely recommend reading this one, and a big thanks to those of you who suggested this be one of the first classics I read for my goals!

NOTES
This book counts towards Reading Goal #1: Reading Off My Own Shelves and specifically my Classics Reading Project.