Thing in the Cupboard: Alas, Poor Yorick!

I'm moving pretty soon and since I've been at my current place for years & years, I have basically accumulated all sorts of stuff.  Even better, a lot of this stuff I simply forgot that I owned.  Therefore for the amusement of self and others (but mostly myself) I'm going to start a regular installment known as "Thing in the Cupboard" which will consist of photos of the weird/random things that I find as I'm cleaning, clearing, and tossing useless junk away.  Maybe this will also make moving more fun since I'm seriously stressed about it, and perhaps will give me motivation to actually look through those cupboards and boxes.

Today's edition: Alas Poor Yorick!

Yep, its a bright pink skull

This gem's origin is unknown, it did however once function as a light-- sadly this feature is no longer functional.  It is made of some rubbery substance and is of a decent size.

The North Country

A couple weekends ago I finally got to take a short trip to Northern WI, stayed in a hotel on Lake Superior so I've now visited two of the five Great Lakes.  My friend said the season was about two weeks behind up there, the trees and grass were a noticeably different color of green that was quite pretty.

Lake Superior, old pier

I love this tree.

 We also went to one of the state parks up there that is known for its waterfalls and the strange color of the river (due to some sort of mineral) which basically resembled iced tea.

Iced tea river

Local fauna, a momma dear and her baby.

This is partly due to the sunlight, but the river really is a crazy color.

Waterfall!

We also went to a county park that was less maintained, which meant that we could get closer to the river (and also that we had to be more careful about poison ivy & such).  The fall here weren't as big, but they seemed louder.  Also, infinitely more difficult to get a good view of.

This photo and the next were taken w/me dangling over the side of the cliff.

This park didn't have guard rails, so you go off the approved track & do silly things like lean over a 50 ft drop.

128 - my friend counted on our way back up, but this was the only path to the river.

So that was my Northern adventure.  This weekend I was in Indiana on a lake w/other friends, I didn't really take pictures, but I did finally watch Avatar.  I'll give you my two cents at some later date.

Yeti Xing

Just a brief note, I had a long and exciting weekend, but I'm too tired to post about it right now, so I thought I would leave you with the most important picture of the past two days:

Yep, that is a Sasquatch crossing sign.

p.s. I do know that a Yeti and a Sasquatch are two different things, but I think Yeti Xing sounds much funnier than Sasquatch or Big Foot Xing. 

2011 LT Reading Challenge

We are now in the 6th month of 2011, which feels wholly unnatural to me.  Time has alternately been dreadfully slow or moving by super fast.  Either way, I can't keep up.  Since the year is nearly half over I thought I would do a quick check-in to let people (someone? anyone?) know how I was doing on my 11 in 11 challenge over at Library Thing.  The idea is to read 11 books in 11 categories for 2011. Now I didn't exactly do that b/c it would be way too many my list is staggered so that category 1 has only 1 book, cat. 8 has 8 books.... you get the picture.  I tried to structure it so that the categories I knew I would be reading more of any (like sci-fi/fantasy) had a higher # of books, whereas my category "Ukrainian" has only one. 

Well, as far as book challenges go, it has always been clear that I never finish them.  I try really hard, but I just end up reading other things, or not finishing books, or getting distracted.  I don't know, there is some perversion in my head that stops me from reading books I say that I will read.  In other words, I have been saying for years I would finish The Brother's Karamazov, but I never touch it.  This does not mean, however, that I'm not reading books, just not the ones I'm "supposed" to read.  Whatever.  Ultimately, compared to my previous attempts at this themed challenge (I tried it for 2008 and 2009), I'm doing ok I think.  Overall though I've read less than half of the books on my list; roughly 30%. 

I've started reading about 10 on the list, not exaggerating.  The problem is that I tend to try to read too many things at once, and then I see a new book someone posted about on some blog and then I want to read that one too, so I get it from the library, but then it sits on my shelf and sometimes I renew them, but usually they just get late fees.  Yeah, you see.  Anyway, the silver lining is that I'm not traveling this summer so theoretically I will have time to read.  However, I'm also supposed to be rewriting grant applications this summer.  (But at least to help motivate me w/that I joined a writing group). 

In case you are curious, the list is below of what I intend to read vs. what I have actually read.  Feel free to point and laugh at me if you want. 

1.      1. Ukrainian

1.

2.      2. Theory/Philosophy

      1.

2. Heidegger (bro.) 

3.   Tomes

      1. War and Peace (own)

      2. Don Quixote (own)

      3. Drood (own)

4.   Books from the Family (own all)

      1. Decolonising the Mind

      2. Wizard of the Crow

      3. Parlor Politics

      4. Planning the Past or the Invasion Within

Bonus: Ashes of Waco

5.   Left Behind

      1. The Brothers Karamazov (own)

      2. Dead Souls (own)

      3. The Windup Girl (own)

      4. Landscape Painted with Tea  (UW)

      5. Lanark (MPL)             

Bonus: Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie (MPL)

6.   Listed

      1. Iron Council (started) (own)

      2. Ash (UW?)

      3. Life of Pi (own)

      4. Gulag Archipelago (own)

      5. Beloved (own)

      6. Old Man’s War (MPL) (Tor’s list)

7.   South

      1. Sound of Building Coffins (MPL)

      2. All the King’s Men (MPL)

      3.  The Missing, Tim Gautreaux (MPL)

      4. A Confederacy of Dunces (MPL)

      5. Antarctica, Robinson

      6. Zeitoun by Dave Eggers (MPL)

      7. The Reavers are the Angels by Alden Bell

      Bonus:  The Strange Career of Jim Crow C Vann Woodward,  Kaleidoscope Odessa

8.   Its New to Me

      1. North and South (MPL)

      2. Light, Harrison

      3. Storm Front, Butcher

      4. Perfume, Suskind

      5. Equations of Life, Morden (MPL)

      6. The Dervish House

      7.

      8.

9.   Science Fiction/Fantasy

      1.Vivia by Tanith Lee

      2. Tomb of the Undergates Sam Sykes

      3. The Half-Made World Felix Gilman

      4. Titus Groan (own)

      5. Habitation of the Blessed Valente

      6. The Cardinal’s Blades

      7. Nights of Villjamur

      8.

      9.

10.  You Tell Me  (MPL)

      1. The Yawning Heights

      2. Pastel City, Harrison

      3.

      4. The Book Thief

      5. World War Z

      6. The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Kundera

      7. 2666, Bolano 

      8. Detective Story by Imre Kertesz

      9. Lady Oracle by Margaret Atwood

      10.

11. Ongoing Faulkner Challenge (Own)

      1. Pylon

      2. Absalom Absalom

      3. The Unvanquished

      4. If I forget Thee Jerusalem

      5. The Hamlet

      6. Go Down Moses

      7. Intruder in the Dust

      8. Requiem for a Nun

      9. A Fable

      10. The Town

      11. The Mansion

Bonus: Collected Short Stories

Review: Absalom, Absalom!

Absalom, Absalom!

            This is the tragic story of Thomas Sutpen’s attempt to establish a dynasty in the 1830s.  He arrives in Jefferson, Yoknapatawpha County, MS as a strange outsider with wild slaves, a mysterious source of seemingly limitless income, and a rigid plan—establish an estate, find a wife, produce a male heir.  While Sutpen does accomplish his life’s goals, his unwavering adherence to an ideal brings out the ruin of him and his family.  The story of Sutpen and his various il/legitimate children is told primarily through the point of view of Quentin Compson (the same as in The Sound & the Fury).  The book, however, is much more than a straightforward narrated life history.  Absalom, Absalom! is layered through multiple points of view.  It is a richly detailed story, but is also complex.

            If you are not a fan of Faulkner’s writing style, I would not recommend this book.  Other works by him, though still distinctly “Faulkner” in style, are much more accessible.  Here Quentin and his roommate Shreve spend a cold winter night at university telling the Sutpen tale to one another.  It is obvious that Shreve has heard much of the history before as he interrupts, embellishes, and at times takes over the narrative.  The story is not only about Sutpen, but also about Quentin’s experiences in Jefferson, about the ways in which he learned bits and pieces of these events over time from a variety of characters such as Aunt Rosa (Sutpen’s wife’s sister) and his father – who himself is retelling it from Quentin’s grandfather.  He experienced other events directly.

            The hearsay third-hand jumbled nature of the transmission is important because the reader experience the plot not as a straightforward narrative, but as a palimpsest of events across nearly a century.  The reader learns details in waves; at the beginning of the book, you get the basic idea and then Faulkner builds upon that foundation by adding details or retelling a section through a different character’s point of view. Unfortunately, many characters are unreliable, so as they passed on their story to Quentin or his grandfather, they edited and/or omitted crucial information.  “’Your father,’ Shreve said. ‘He seems to have got an awful lot of information awful quick, after having waited forty-five years.’… ‘Grandfather didn’t tell him all of it either, like Sutpen never told Grandfather quite all of it.’”  (220).

            Another example that is illustrative of the mangled transmission of key information, involves a tragic incident between Aunt Rosa and Sutpen; specifically, he has told her something, which she never is never able to forgive him for saying.  The reader is left in suspense about what exactly he said for over half the book, and the answer comes embedded within a page long sentence casually thrown into a paragraph on an unrelated topic.  There you finally learn, with little warning, of how Sutpen insulted Rosa.  Faulkner does not make reading easy.

            I could go on for pages about the way the book is written, about foreshadowing (“The day after we—after that night when we—“), and flashbacks, and mind-numbingly long rambling sentences.  I will not.  However, I do think ultimately, Absalom, Absalom! is worth reading.  First, you discover much more about Quentin’s personality and inner turmoil that I think helps clarify his actions in The Sound & The Fury.  He is a fascinating character.  Second, it is a powerful book about important issues—idealism, blind ambition, doomed Romanticism, and the end of an era.  It is also about deep-seated racism, so unwavering that incest is preferred over relationships between people of different color.  Finally, it is also about rigid class differences in the South.  It is a hard read, but worth the effort.

______________________________________________

In case you were keeping up, I have read 9 books by Faulkner at this point:
A Soldier's Pay
Mosquitoes
Sartoris
The Sound & the Fury

As I Lay Dying
Sanctuary 
Light in August
Pylon

Absalom, Absalom!

The reason why there are not reviews for that second collection - As I Lay Dying to Pylon - is because a) I read As I Lay Dying a long time ago and did not re-read it and b) because Pylon is the worst book Faulkner ever wrote, unreadable in fact.  As for the other two, I just didn't get around to reviewing them & now it has been too long.  I will say that so far Light in August is my favorite and I recommend it to any/everyone.