Space Station Mir

Happy Top Ten Tuesday over at the Broke and the Bookish ! 1. The Girl of Fire and Thorns by Rae Carson 2. Beggars and Choosers by Nancy Kress 3. Tarnish by Katherine Longshore 4. Pax by Sara Pennypacker, illustrated by Jon Klassen 5. The Casual Vacancy by J.K. Rowling 6. Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl 7. The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey 8. Tiny Beautiful Things by Cheryl Strayed 9. The Last Boleyn by Karen Harper 10. The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin

12. Peony in Love by Lisa See I thought this was a sequel to  Snowflower and the Secret Fan,  so I started out very confused. It was fitting, however, since the main character, Peony, is perpetually confused. Towards the end,  this grates on the reader, who can clearly see where she's wrong. It was a stark contrast with Princess Elisa of the Girl and Fire Thorn books (which I was reading concurrently), who is pointedly not the typical naive girl character.On the other hand, Peony's naivete extends to such an extreme, she becomes an archetype of her own: The Lovesick Maiden of Hangzhou. Peony is representative of a historical cohort of women who fell in love with a fifteenth century opera,  The Peony Pavilion , and, in imitation of the main character, wasted away from 'lovesickness.' In the sense that both books fictionalize Chinese women's history that is virtually unknown outside China (and I don't have a sense of how well it's known within),  Peony ...

These details I add are in primary colors, one or two washes, not the deep texture like the chair, the centerpiece, the thing that has gravity, presence, deep dimension, that holds the story. The details around it are human delight, charming fluff, transitory nature, like in a memoir the details point to the structure, which is the chair, the driving force, the reason the whole thing is happening. (212) --Natalie Goldberg, The True Secret of Writing , "Blue Chair Creating Texture." Every sentence is worth reading, but this is the moment in the book that most stood out to me. She describes painting a chair, turquoise, red, purple, all the colors beneath the final blue. The details around it are reminiscent of her crowded writing room ("on the floor a cup of hot chocolate and that pink cupcake in the silver paper with a red cherry on top") and the texture of the chair becomes the texture of the writing itself ("over time, you learn to cultivate texture, a ric...

Happy Top Ten Tuesday over at the Broke and the Bookish! All these books are currently in my possession, so I'm setting myself up to finish! 1. Pax by Sara Pennypacker, Jon Klassen 2. The Side of Good/The Side of Evil edited by Danielle Ackley-McPhail 3. The Social Life of DNA by Alondra Nelson 4. The Mirror Empire by Kameron Hurley 5. New Orleans Noir: The Classics edited by Julie Smith 6. A Countess Below Stairs by Eva Ibbotson 7. Empress of the Night by Eva Stachniak 8. Imperial Woman by Pearl S. Buck 9.  The Fifth Queen by Ford Madox Ford 10. Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin

 As a toddler, I literally ate books. It's a trait that characterized the rest of my childhood, figuratively. Each new book was so exciting. Each story became engraved on my consciousness as I read it over and over, the same way I watched Disney movies:  Anne of Green Gables, Little Women, Little Men, A Little Princess, A Wrinkle in Time, Matilda. I still   quote and picture scenes from these books from memory. They formed the landscape of my mind and the context against which I measured my life, and still do. I wasn't as interested in nonfiction. The closest I came was Little House on the Prairie, the autobiography of Rosa Parks, and Anne Frank's diary. Still, I read far more of the American Girl, Royal Diaries, and Dear America series to satisfy my interest in history than I read actual biographies or memoirs. Who wanted to read the truth when I could read about hobbits singing bathtub songs or an imaginary orphan pretending to float down a river as another imaginary ...

7. All Roads Lead to Austen: A Yearlong Journey with Jane by Amy Elizabeth Smith Professor Amy Smith takes a year of sabbatical to travel throughout South America and read Jane Austen novels with local book groups along the way. Her purpose is to determine whether South Americans relate to Austen as much or more than Brits and Americans, due to their current cultural similarities and differences with Austen's time. In my mind, it's a strange proposition in the first place and doesn't seem to make much sociological sense, but Smith cites Azar Nafisi's  Reading Lolita in Tehran  as inspiration, and it's clear she wants an excuse to both read Jane Austen and travel in South America for a year, so she decides to make a book of it. Honestly, the most interesting parts of the book to me were the chances to "travel" to places I've never been. Smith also makes a point of learning about the literature of each country she visits, which was interesting to me....

6. The Casual Vacancy by J.K. Rowling (audiobook) The Casual Vacancy is a gritty adult novel that nakedly depicts the impact of class warfare in a tiny parish in England. It's definitely a slow burn book that rewards those who continue reading. Not recommended to Harry Potter or fantasy fans, unless you're also a fan of heavy-handed adult lit (I am). 7. All Roads Lead to Austen: A Yearlong Journey with Jane by Amy Elizabeth Smith Professor Amy Smith takes a year of sabbatical to travel throughout South America and read Jane Austen novels with local book groups along the way. Her purpose is to determine whether South Americans relate to Austen as much or more than Brits and Americans, due to their current cultural similarities and differences with Austen's time. In my mind, it's a strange proposition in the first place and doesn't seem to make much sociological sense, but Smith cites Azar Nafisi's Reading Lolita in Tehran as inspiration, and it's cle...