Chief Sealth Reads! (& Blogs)

OK, misleading title. That is postmodern. Get used to it.
This starts with Tolkienism, but that is not the meat of the discussion.
Being a ranting Tolkien nerd, I have many times heard the advice to read “The Mists of Avalon.” Recently, I finally got around to it.
It is awesome. Celtic paganism, feminist strength that puts Eowyn’s battle with the Witch King to shame, et cetera. I highly recommend it.
This leads us to the current reading. After reading The Mists… I realized how little I know of Arthurian legend. I looked a little up, and found out that the earliest recordings are from Geoffrey of Monmouth, “The History of the Kings of Britain,” written in Latin. I am currently reading an English translation. It is also awesome.
For those like me who enjoy ancient epics made deeper and more complex by modern intellect, I highly recommend a movie called “Beowulf and Grendel.” Many have been impressed by John Gardner’s book “Grendel” and how it humanizes the epic, and I think this movie even goes a step further.
OK. No more time for ranting. May you all enjoy your books and troll battles.

I finally have a minute (well, I should be evaluating papers) but came across the email from Katie saying get back on the blog, so just a quick note to say that currently I am reading Imperial Woman, a book Ms. R. gave me to read.   It’s about a Dowager Empress in China about the time the English are invading on the previous isolation of China and her people.  It’s entertaining and I would recommend it to anyone who likes (as I do) historical fiction.    Next though, I am going to finally read Abundance…. I have located it at the Beacon Hill Public Library (now I guess I have to get a library card )

Here’s a nice site for teenagers (and their adult counterparts) looking for good books: http://printzpreviews.blogspot.com/
Have fun!

I am an ardent fan of YA literature (YA=young adult) and read lots of it. Hunger Games (and its two follow-ups, Catching Fire and Mockingjay) captivated me and had me enthusiastically recommending them for weeks. To my disappointment, however, Mockingjay, the third and final book of Suzanne Collins’ trilogy (Suzanne Collins of Gregor the Overlander fame – a great series for younger (grades 4-8 ish) readers) simply did not live up to the promise of the first two. (That’s a topic for a different post – or maybe an in-person discussion, particularly if you disagree — I’d love to hear differing opinions to help soothe my disappointment.)

The real topic of this post is the tremendously original, exciting, moving, and thought-provoking trilogy that’s been overshadowed by Ms. Collins and her loyal fans. Patrick Ness is an American-born writer living in London who as of last week has published the third installment of his outstanding fantasy trilogy: The Knife of Never Letting Go, The Ask and the Answer, and Monsters of Men.

Ness has created a world of the future in which people like us have been forced to seek out new planets for colonization. His two protagonists – Tod Hewitt, who several years before was the first settler born on the new planet, and Viola Eade, a recent arrival from a probe sent ahead by a 5000-member convoy – are the teenagers thrust into increasingly dangerous and critical leadership roles as society on the planet becomes corrupted by greed and vanity. The complexity of the moral issues the teens face are rich and thoughtful and completely contemporary despite the fantastic setting, and the just and measured way each character makes their moral choices is deeply satisfying. Tod and Viola have an intensely loyal, caring, and mature relationship with each other and with the adults (and the animals! – Tod’s dog in the first book, and both characters’ horses in the third play key roles) around them.

Teenagers: read these books! Adults: read the books, then give them to the teenagers you love.

The only negative thing I can say about this trilogy is that it’s over now, and I don’t know when Patrick Ness will be writing something new.

Right now I am reading “Nihonjin no Shiranai Nihongo,” or “Japanese Language that Japanese People Don’t Know.” It is a collection of amusing anecdotes from the classroom of a woman who teaches Japanese to newcomers in Japan, such as the hilarious (to fluent speakers) mistakes they make. If you are reading this blog and your Japanese is near native level, you will definitely enjoy this book. However, the odds are low…

This is the title of a popular Bruce Springsteen song, and it is also the title of a book I read recently. It is about “ultramarathons” (when people run crazy distances like 50 miles or 100 miles or 300 miles, etc.). It turns out that we homo sapiens may have evolved just for this kind of activity, and so these distances aren’t so crazy after all.

The book is also about the Tarahumara, a tribe of native people in the Copper Canyons of Northern Mexico, who are the greatest runners in the world.  This book was very well written and I recommend it to anyone regardless of whether you are interested in running or not.

I am reading THE WOMEN by T. C. Boyle.  The character (and HE IS!)  and work of Frank Lloyd Wright has fascinated me for a long time.  Then my girlfriend told me about a book written about him and his first (known) mistress Mamah Cheney (titled Loving Frank).  After I finishing I, Elizabeth I went to a bookstore to use my gift card one of you gave me for Christmas.  Ended up purchasing The Women because I couldn’t find  Abundance a book about Marie Antionette suggested to me by the mother of my current student  Connor Donovan.   Anyway, that’s what’s happening on my reading scene…..is anybody out there who cares??????

Okay, so what are the chances I would l not be able to put down a book subtitled “The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers”? My last reading adventure was a Pulitzer Prize winning dud, so maybe I was just ready for something interesting.   Stiff explores just what happens to our bodies and parts that get donated to science–all those cures and medical breakthroughs have to begin somewhere, right? This was FASCINATING to take a peek under the proverbial sheet and see how science and industry use donated cadavers to further our understanding of life, death, and just how amazing our bodies really are. Not for the the squeamish, Nonfiction can sometimes be a little dry in the wrong hands, but Roach’s writing is witty, smart, and downright hilarious on nearly every page. A great choice for anyone who likes to know how things work.  Really.  Hilarious!  I was laughing out loud in parts–and there are many, um, “parts”!

The list below will reveal my biases, but I should confess outright:
I love young adult novels that have page-turning plots, strong opinionated main characters, and I don’t mind if there’s a little magic or otherworldliness.
I started to name this list “The Best YA Books of 2009,” but stopped when I realized that title wouldn’t be accurate. There were several excellent releases in the past year that I read and admired, but they didn’t truly move me the way these 8 titles did.To save on space, I’m listing here only the titles and authors; the full list plus my summaries and reviews are here.

In no particular order, then, here are my favorites of 2009:

The Hunger Games and Catching Fire (parts 1 &2 of a projected trilogy)
by Suzanne Collins
Graceling and Fire
by Kristin Cashore
Jellicoe Road
by Melina Marchetta
The Knife of Never Letting Go and The Ask and the Answer (parts 1 &2 of a projected trilogy)
by Patrick Ness
Chains
by Laurie Halse Anderson

The book below I’ve not yet read, but I’m confident it will join my favorites of 2009 once I have – every reviewer I trust raves about it.
Marcelo in the Real World
by Francisco X. Stork

(To read my summaries/reviews of these books, please click here.)
(To view the American Library Association’s Best YA Books of 2009, click here.)

Last weekend, I went to Vancouver BC. While there, I went to the Anthropology Museum. Despite its beauty, interesting artifacts, and Buddhist monks making a sand mandala, I couldn’t connect to any of it. As I finished If I Told You Once by Judy Budnitz, I realized I didn’t really like it, but I did feel connected to it. I felt like it was full of my artifacts. Quilts that told stories of a grandmother who lived in a dark, cold place where forests housed magic and women held the world in their pockets. It was a good journey, but I don’t know that anyone else needs to go.