Books Read in 2012

Books #1-8
Book #9
Books #10-20 (Actually, through 21 - first mathematical error detected. I'm good at reading, not counting.)
Books #22-28
Books #29-32
Books #33-36
Books #37-40
Books #41-44
Books #45-52

On my latest check, I did reach my goal of 52 books this year. I'll go check it one more time, but I think I'm right.

Reading Update

We just got back from a relaxing few days at the beach with our Christmas guests.  Here's the last reading update of the year.  My goal was 52 books.

Book #44 was Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor. This was for my class, and I really enjoyed it, so much that I ordered the sequel when it came out.  So while I didn't really read this next, let's count Days of Blood and Starlight as book #45 of the year.

Book #46 was The New Kids, by Brooke Hauser. This is a journalistic book about a high school for immigrants in New York City, and it was fascinating reading. Highly recommended.

Book #47 was The Language of Flowers, by Vanessa Diffenbaugh. This was another book that I liked a lot. It was the story of a foster child whose most enduring placement was with a foster mother who knew all about flowers and what they meant in Victorian times. The book has a beautiful website complete with a flower dictionary in case you want to try some of the language of flowers.

Book #48 was  Inquiry and the Literary Text: Constructing Discussions in the English Classroom. This was the textbook for the class I took this fall, and I found it useful reading. It contains many helpful suggestions for leading book discussions with students.

Book #49 was  Kingdom Journeys: Rediscovering the Lost Spiritual Discipline, by Seth Barnes. This was a very interesting discussion of how going somewhere new, somewhere uncomfortable, can be a galvanizing force for the spiritual life.

Book #50 was a reread, Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen, always one of my favorites.

Book #51 was the one I read at the beach, To Say Nothing of the Dog, by Connie Willis. This was a time travel story recommended by my daughter, and it was thoroughly entertaining. The title refers to the Victorian book Three Men in a Boat, To Say Nothing of the Dog, by Jerome K. Jerome. I hadn't read it since high school, but this was a fun reminder.

You can see that I didn't quite meet my goal, but I was pretty close.  My reading wasn't terribly cerebral this year but it was enjoyable. I hope my readers will forgive my cursory reviews in my haste to finish up the year's listings.

Poetry Friday: Winter Stars

Winter Stars
by Sara Teasdale

I went out at night alone;
The young blood flowing beyond the sea
Seemed to have drenched my spirit’s wings—
I bore my sorrow heavily.

But when I lifted up my head
From shadows shaken on the snow,
I saw Orion in the east
Burn steadily as long ago.

From windows in my father’s house,
Dreaming my dreams on winter nights,
I watched Orion as a girl
Above another city’s lights.

Years go, dreams go, and youth goes too,
The world’s heart breaks beneath its wars,
All things are changed, save in the east
The faithful beauty of the stars.

Here's today's roundup.

Peace Peace

This song is actually the one I was looking for yesterday, and I couldn't find any renditions on YouTube that I liked. Apparently my friends the Livesays were thinking about the same song, though, and last night they posted this video of their daughter singing it.





Peace Peace
By Sara Groves, Ben Gowell and Aaron Fabbrini

Peace Peace it's hard to find
trouble comes like a wrecking ball
to your peace of mind
and all that worry you can't leave behind you

all your hopes and fears
all your hopes and fears
all your hopes and fears
are met in Him tonight

peace peace it's hard to find
doubt comes like a tiny voice
that's so unkind
and all your fears they conspire to unwind you

all your hopes and fears
all your hopes and fears
all your hopes and fears
are met in Him

And in your dark street shines
an everlasting light
and all your hopes and fears
are met in Him tonight

all your hopes and fears
all your hopes and fears
all your hopes and fears
are met in Him tonight

peace peace
peace peace
peace peace

Poetry Friday: This Peace

So many words to say, but I'm opting for silence
So many days to live
I thinking I'm sitting this one out
Cause something I've been chasing finally stop to let me catch it
Something I've been longing for and dreaming about 

It's a whisper in my ear
It's a shiver up my spine
 It's the gratitude I feel for all that's right 
It's a mystery appeal that's been granted me tonight
This peace

It's something so elusive
Something close but far away
It's the home that I can't live in yet somewhere in outer space 
And sometimes I barely miss it when I walk into the room
The curtains are still swaying and I feel the air move 

And it whispers in my ear and it shivers up my spine 
It's the gratitude I feel for all that's right 
It's a mystery appeal that's been granted me tonight 
This peace

No time to grab a camera
No time to write it down
Just time enough to breathe it in 
And linger 

It's a whisper in my ear 
It's a shiver up my spine
It's the gratitude I feel for all that's right
It's a mystery appeal that's been granted me tonight
This peace 
This peace 

Sara Groves



I had this YouTube page open on my laptop, ready to post it the first chance I got in my hectic day.  Then the news came through about Connecticut and it seemed even more appropriate.  There's so much that is not right in this world, so much suffering and horror.  In this holiday season, and end of school season, when we're all busy and the news is screaming at us about tragedies we can hardly bear to imagine, I wish you a little peace today, a little gratitude for all that's right in your life.

Here's today's Poetry Friday roundup.

No God-forsaken Towns

This past week, a study came out listing the best and worst cities in the world to live in.  I never expect Port-au-Prince to make the "best" list, but I was surprised by just how low our city scored on this index.  Out of 221 cities studied, Port-au-Prince placed 219th.  A new tourist slogan could be: "We're better than Bangui and Baghdad!"

There's worse news, too.  The same study examined the infrastructure in these cities, and on that list, Port-au-Prince came in 221st.  Yes, dead last.

Here's an article about the Mercer study and here's the study itself. And here is a recent UN report on the status of the world's cities.

It's true that in Port-au-Prince, you have to spend a lot more energy on acquiring basic utilities than in most urban settings in this world.  I've whined about that many times on this blog.  And that's for people living in homes.  A statistic I read this week said that 360,000 people continue to live in tents following the earthquake.  We will soon mark the three year anniversary of the earthquake.  Imagine living in a tent for three years, a tent that has by now been disintegrating in the tropical sun and rain for a very long time.  There is deep, intractable poverty here.  The inequalities are severe.  Yes, there is still much that is beautiful (and frankly I'd much rather focus on that), but I can't deny that the quality of life for many people in this city is far from adequate.

Kelley Nikondeha, who lives in Burundi, put it this way, speaking not specifically of Port-au-Prince but of the world in general, the suffering she sees everywhere:

More than anything I feel weighted by unsatisfied longings. Ambushed by word of disrupted adoptions and the demolished marriage of friends, angst replaces the more traditional anticipation. News out of places like Goma and Gaza remind me people live under daily threat, some days cowering in their homes. Slums in Kampala and townships outside Cape Town refuse to be quieted, they scream of layers upon layers, years and years of injustice. These people, these places press all the levity out of me.

  Read the rest of her post about her Advent ache here.

As we celebrate Advent once more, I have to believe that Emmanuel, God with us, is here in this city, that He has not forsaken this city or this world.  He came as a baby, as vulnerable as it is possible to be, to a family who had nowhere to stay the night of His birth and who became refugees soon afterward.

Last night we listened to a concert of the Messiah.  Before the concert, my husband and I got to hold the twin babies of a school employee, as their father beamed and snapped pictures with his phone.  Later, as we sat waiting for the music to start, I noticed a row of drool marks on my husband's shoulder from the tiny boy he had snuggled against him.  Instantly my mind went to the description of the Messiah that we would soon hear sung: "the government shall be upon His shoulder."  He who shoulders the burdens of the world became small enough to be held against the shoulder of fallible human parents.  He entered into the mess of the world, the low quality of life, the lack of infrastructure, and He is still here, bringing life in mysterious and incomprehensible ways.  

But we wait, we long, we work, for things to be better.  Because one way God is in this city is in His people.  Even though we don't know what to do, and we don't know how to help, and we get it wrong so often. 

Poetry Friday: Best of 2012

This week I got an email from the Academy of American Poets giving the results of the voting on the best poems of the year. I've mentioned before that I get a daily email from the AAP (not the American Academy of Pediatrics), whose site is Poets.org. I didn't vote in these elections, but when I looked at the choices, I was surprised and interested to see that of the ten chosen, five were ones I had particularly liked myself. ( I always save the ones I like best and delete the others from my email.) Considering that voters had about 350 poems to choose from, this seemed a high level of agreement. You can look at the list here of which poems were chosen. There are links to all of them.

I had some trouble deciding which one of them to share with you here, but finally decided on this Rafael Campo poem, entitled "Love Song for Love Songs," for a couple of reasons. First, I've been reading a lot of love poetry this week, drafts from my seventh and eighth graders. I'm touched and amused in about equal measure by their take on romantic love, the pain and embarrassment and ecstasy and misery. At this age, at least in our school, they are mostly talking about crushes and adoration from afar, which is no doubt just as it should be. Still, these emotions are real to them, and I'm glad they can write about them. And secondly, isn't all poetry love poetry in its broadest sense? Poets write about our love for people and places and times and living, and even when they are writing of suffering or of topics that seem to have nothing to do with love, they still remind us of our rootedness in this earth, and of the joy and sorrow of being human. This poem is light and funny (and I enjoyed searching out more of Rafael Campo's poems, and his ironic touch), but it also makes me think of the job of poets, to make the oldest ideas and experiences in the world fresh and new. Sometimes they succeed and sometimes not, but I am so thankful that they (and I, in my own way) keep trying.

Love Song for Love Songs

Rafael Campo

A golden age of love songs and we still
can't get it right. Does your kiss really taste
like butter cream? To me, the moon's bright face
was neither like a pizza pie nor full;
the Beguine began, but my eyelid twitched.
"No more I love you's," someone else assured
us, pouring out her heart, in love (of course)—
what bothers me the most is that high-pitched,
undone whine of "Why am I so alone?"

 Here's the rest.

And here's today's roundup.

Advent

Once November and the daily posting commitment was over, I slipped back into my old ways, especially since my class was ending and I had various projects to finish. Now that's done, and my grading is calling instead. But here are a few seasonal pieces I've read lately that resonated.

This one is from last Christmas, but new to me. Addie Zierman tackles the mandate this time of year to "Put the Christ Back in Christmas," and concludes,

"Incarnation means a lot of things, but one of them is this: the earth is wild with God’s love, his beauty, his presence. One silent night he came and now he is here, and because of that, the world is glowing, lit from within by grace."

Here she tackles some more of those Christmas cliches, and once again, reminds me that "Immanuel means that when you can’t find him, he is finding you."

In this post, Sarah Bessey goes all obstetric on us, because Christmas, after all, is about a birth.

"There is something Godly in the waiting, in the mystery, in the fact that we are a part of it, a partner with it but we are not the author of it. How you know that there is life coming and the anticipation is sometimes exciting and other times exhausting, never-ending. How there is a price that you pay for the love love love."

Go on, read the rest.  

Poetry Friday: Window Seat

Yesterday the poem that came in the Poem-A-Day email from the Academy of American Poets was a remarkable one by a poet I'd never heard of before, Jacqueline Osherow.

Here's part from the middle of this poem, "Window Seat: Providence to New York City."

the window
of my train
might be rolling
out a scroll
of meticulous
ancient Chinese
painting: my heart-
beat down its side
in liquid characters:
no tenses, no
conjunctions, just
emphatic strokes
on paper from
the inner bark
of sandalwood: 

You can read the rest here.

I love the way Osherow has turned the view out of a train window into almost an ekphrastic poem, making me think of exquisitely calligraphied Chinese scrolls.  "My heartbeat down its side in liquid characters" - isn't that beautiful?  I kept thinking about this poem all day.

There are lots more beautiful poems to keep you thinking all day  here at the Poem Farm, which is hosting the Poetry Friday roundup.

Almost Over

NaBloPoMo is almost over, to which I say, yay!

Edwidge Danticat on Disaster

On the occasion of a publication of a new anthology about the 2010 Haitian earthquake, entitled So Spoke the Earth, Edwidge Danticat did this interview. I can't wait to get my copy of this trilingual anthology of fiction, non-fiction, and poetry, and not just because I am sure Edwidge Danticat's piece will be amazing, but because of the variety of Haitian women represented, and particularly Nathalie Cerin, one of our alumni.

Stuff I Read Lately

I made it through this day, but I am not feeling very cheerful and don't want to write a post wherein I whine and feel sorry for myself, so here are a few pieces I've read and appreciated lately.

It appears that this island, which has appeared on maps as long as anyone can remember, really doesn't exist at all. It has now officially been undiscovered. Best quote:"It just goes to show the oceans are so underexposed. It's actually really shocking that we haven't not found more islands." It makes you wonder. How did that Manhattan-size island get on the maps in the first place?

In the destruction of Hurricane Sandy, these love letters came to light. It's nice to hear about letters coming to light that aren't scandal-filled; these are sweet memories of a courtship in the forties.

This beautiful article explores the metaphor of teaching English as a second language as a picture of faith. The author finds new joy in her native language through teaching it to others and watching them create new ways of speaking; in the same way, her faith becomes new to her as she shares it with people who haven't heard those stories before. It's also a little bit scary:

Letting go of your ownership of the language of faith can be frightening, unmooring. Instead of being the person with the answers, you become a person with questions.

What is hope? This article has some beautiful answers.

And finally, this "prank" which made someone's day. Watch the video and then go to the Improv Everywhere site for more information.

Excuses

I made it all the way to November 26th before missing a day of NaBloPoMo, in which I was supposed to post something on my blog every day of the month.  Last night my plan was to write after putting my son to bed, but as I reached the top of the stairs in the dark, I slammed my bare foot against a trunk in the hallway, and the pain chased my plan out of my head. 

I took ibuprofen right away, and this morning the school nurse said that she doesn't think I broke anything, but still I am experiencing constant reminders today of my clumsiness and also of how much I should be grateful when nothing hurts. 

I could put yesterday's date on this, but that would be cheating.  But please accept my excuses, anyone in the blog world who is paying attention.

Everything

Winter

When my children and I were living in the United States after the earthquake, and my son complained that his lips hurt, I immediately starting worrying about food allergies. It simply didn't occur to me that his lips were chapped, because I'm not used to living in cold weather. I don't worry about chapped lips.

It's getting cold here now. And by cold, I mean that I'm sitting here in my bedroom, the warmest room in the house, in the hottest of part of the afternoon, and I don't have the fan on. On the street, the merchants are now selling jackets so that people can prepare for the coming winter. It's 79 degrees.

This time of year, I don't like taking cold showers. Most of the time, it's not a problem (though I don't linger - I get in, get clean, get out). But it's too chilly right now.

 I've lived in countries that have real winter. I spent four years in England, and I remember sitting on the radiators in the morning in my classroom to warm up, wearing fingerless gloves indoors, having to force myself to get out of bed in the morning because it was so bone-chillingly cold. I spent many years in the States, and have experienced snow days and other such miseries.

And now, this is as cold as I want to get, a Caribbean winter. It's nice, sleeping under a blanket, wearing a light sweater to work, turning off the air conditioner in my classroom when I'm working in there by myself in the afternoon. At the same time, it gets up to 90 degrees most days, and I can go the beach, and I hardly ever wear closed-toed shoes. My skin doesn't get dry and the only coat I own is in the attic in my parents' house. This is just the way I like it.

Poetry Friday: Pablo Neruda and Coldplay, Together at Last

I like to read and write Odes around Thanksgiving (here's last year's), so for today, the day after Thanksgiving:


Ode to Laziness
by Pablo Neruda
translated by W.S. Merwin

Yesterday it seemed
the ode wouldn't leave the ground.
It was time, it should
at least show a green leaf.
I scratched the earth, 'Get up,
sister ode
- I said to her -
I've promised you,
don't be afraid of me,
I'm not going to chew you up,
ode with four leaves,
ode for four hands,
you'll take tea with me.
Rise,
I'll crown you among the odes,
we'll go out along the shore
of the sea, on a bicycle.'
No use.

Then
high up in the pines
laziness
appeared naked,
I got up in a daze,
half asleep,
on the sand I found
little broken fragments
of oceanic substances,
wood, seaweed, shells,
feathers of sea birds.
I looked for yellow
agates but found none.

The sea
filled the spaces,
wearing away towers,
invading
the coasts of my homeland,
pushing forward
successive catastrophes of foam,
Alone on the sand
a ray opened
a ring of petals.
I saw the silvered petrels
pass, and like black crosses
the cormorants
nailed to the rocks.
I set free
a bee dying in a spider's web,
I put a little stone
in my pocket,
it was smooth, very smooth,
like a bird's egg,
meanwhile on the coast
all afternoon
the sunlight and cloud wrestled.
Sometimes
the cloud was filled
with light
like a topaz,
other times a moist
ray of sunlight fell,
and yellow drops fell after it.

At night
thinking of the duties of my
fugitive ode,
I took off my shoes by the fire,
poured the sand out of them
and almost at once fell
sound asleep.

Somehow the combination of the ocean and yellow and the fugitive ode and the somewhat melancholy mood that is on me today made me think of this song.  I wonder if Coldplay and Pablo Neruda have been combined before.

Here's today's Poetry Friday roundup.

Thank You

Yesterday, I had the girls in my small group share what they were thankful for, and they listed everything from "my new fish" to "my brother" to "school" to "my own room." I added "chocolate" and "books" and "plenty to eat." Others mentioned family members that they are getting to see more of lately, a place to live, a favorite musical group, Google, music, Facebook, good grades.

I'm thankful for all of the above (except I have no new fish, nor do I have my own room). Probably most of all, I'm thankful for the people God has put in my life. I am loved and supported so much, more than I have any right to expect or hope for. I have a wonderful husband, who puts up with me and loves me in spite of myself; funny, loving children; an extended family spread out over many thousands of miles, but close anyway; and loyal, sympathetic, incredibly high quality friends.

I am blessed, and I know it.  Thank You, God.  

Reading Update

Book #40 of 2012 was Article Five: Compliance is Mandatory, by Kristen Simmons.  Ember lives in a post-apocalyptic United States where the Bill of Rights has been replaced by the Moral Statutes.  As the novel begins, Article Five has just been instituted.  It states that children born out of wedlock will be taken for rehabilitation.  The Federal Bureau of Reformation, the FBR, will take care of making everyone conform.  This is a bit heavy-handed, and Ember is a very annoying heroine, sometimes seeming deliberately obtuse and making baffling choices.  We're told she is close to other characters, but we don't really observe their closeness.  There's plenty of action and suspense, but compared with other books I read for my Adolescent Literature class, this dystopic world isn't believable and the characters aren't compelling.

Book #41 was a needed break from all the YA I had been reading.  I picked up Blessings by Anna Quindlen knowing it would not be full of action, heart-thumping plot twists, and post-apocalyptic drama.  I knew this both because of the title and because I've read Anna Quindlen before.  This is the story of Lydia Blessing, aging in her home, Blessings, and the caretaker she has hired, Skip.  In the first chapter, a baby is left at Blessings, and Skip takes charge of her.  Quindlen tells a beautiful, satisfying story, and there's not a chase scene in sight.  Whew.

With book #42, I was right back to dystopia, but this time it was a real-life, historical dystopia.  This harrowing novel is the story of a family arrested in Lithuania in 1941.  Unfortunately, the title is Between Shades of Grey. Surely the author, Ruta Sepetys, regrets this title choice every single day.  She must get so tired of saying, "No, not that Shades of Grey..."  I had a hard time reading this because it was so terribly sad and hopeless.  Based on many true stories of what the Soviets did to Lithuania, the book never lets up on the horrible nightmares experienced by Lina and her family.  Just to give you an idea, there's a scene in the cattle car while the arrested Lithuanians are heading who knows where, and they find out that Hitler has invaded their country.  They are full of excitement because now things will surely get better.  I groaned aloud.  But I am glad that I persevered and finished the book.  It's very much worth reading.

Book #43 was the long-awaited The Casual Vacancy, the new book by J.K. Rowling, her first since Harry Potter.  This one is most decidedly not for children.  It shows us a whole new Rowling.  Her talent for plot is much more on display because she has a much smaller canvas: a small town instead of a cast of thousands.  There's not a single admirable character here, except maybe the one who dies in the first chapter.  Everyone has sordid secrets.  Who knew Rowling had this in her, I thought as I read, and then I thought of Voldemort, Dolores Umbridge, Dobby at his self-hating, self-punishing worst.  This book is darker than the Dark Lord.  It's brilliantly done and I couldn't put it down, but there's nothing remotely uplifting about it, so be warned.  I think I need to cleanse my palate with another Anna Quindlen book now!

Mitali Perkins on Multicultural Stories

I'm working on a project for my adolescent lit class, and here's some interesting insight from Mitali Perkins that I've discovered in the process.

Pride and Prejudice for 2012

I have written here before about how I am a die-hard Jane Austen fan.  I love her books for their caustic characterizations, but also because they are so very familiar to me, like old friends.  I posted here about how Pride and Prejudice was one of the first books I read after the earthquake, when I started to come out of my inability to concentrate or read much beyond news reports.  A friend commented that that isn't a book, it's a member of the family.  That's right - that is how I felt, too. 

I've also written about how I keep trying to read people's attempts to imitate or spin off from Jane Austen, and how I'm always disappointed, because somehow it never quite works.  And yet I'm very much enjoying The Lizzie Bennet Diaries.  If you're a Jane Austen fan like me, I'd love to know what you think of this multimedia adaptation.  Lizzie Bennet posts two video blogs (vlogs) a week on YouTube, and her sister Lydia also has a video blog (which I like much less).  Some of the characters have Facebook pages and post on Pinterest and Twitter.  (I don't do Pinterest or Twitter.  There aren't enough hours in the day for me to get involved on yet another online time-sucker.  Well, except for LBD, of course.)

My daughter is reading P&P in her English class right now, and also following along with the LBD, and she says she likes the characters much better on LBD.  I know, I know, sacrilege, except that I do see that Jane Austen very much writes people off.  Of course Lizzie is wrong about Darcy, and about Wickham, and she gets straightened out, but nobody ever rethinks Mary, or Mr. Collins, or Lady Catherine.  They are all fairly one-dimensional.  And as my daughter points out, Jane Austen really does "tell" a lot, instead of "showing."  ("She interrupts scenes to inundate you with adjectives," as my daughter puts it.)

You can get started here, where you'll find links to the YouTube channel.