The Hi-Bear-Nation Read-Along and What I'm Reading in 2021 #BookHiBearNation

Banned books boxers via Out of Print

Joining a read-a-long via SavidgeReads.  And may I say, one good thing about 2020 was discovering a number of terrific bookish YouTube Channels.  (Hashtag BookTube?  I'm all for it.)

Read-Along runs from Friday 22nd - Sunday 31st of January 2021   [Ha.  Reading these books is going to take me all year, but it was fun putting this list together based on the prompts.]

Winter Book HiBearNation Prompts 

Basic Bear Prompts (and Blue Gal's personal selections)  

A book with an alliterative title.  

I'm currently reading Moonflower Murders by Anthony Horowitz and I will still be reading it in twelve days.  It's got a full-on mystery book (the book that is a CLUE to a woman's disappearance) inserted in the middle of this mystery book.  Hefty!  

 

A book with an icy blue cover (or part of its cover) 

A book with a feather on the cover.   I noticed my adult stepdaughter's Instagram showed she was reading Hamnet so I started it -- hard to read because in it, children die of the plague.  They are kids in Shakespeare's immediate family, but STILL.  But the book is beautifully written so I will persist.  PS the British edition of this book does NOT have a feather on the cover, but that edition was SavidgeReads Favorite Novel of 2020.  

A backlist book of an author you’ve read before and want to go back to   (I've read Bel Canto.)  

OR read an author you’ve never read before.  This is a first novel:

Daddy Bear Prompts 

Read Bellman & Black by Diane Setterfield (covers all the basic prompts)  Yes it even covers, for me, the "author you've read before" as I just finished her Once Upon a River.

Read a book with winter/snow/ice in the title.   (Highly recommend Winter's Tale by Mark Helperin)(Not Halperin)

 Read a wintery poem.   Perhaps one of these.  

Not meeting the prompts but on my list, and both by women of color:  Such a Fun Age by Kiely Reid and The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett.   

#BookHiBearNation

I love reading @MargaretAtwood

Finally started Year of the Flood this week. I have to catch up because the third book in her trilogy comes out in September. (BTW I recommend the audio book version of book one: Oryx and Crake. Campbell Scott's narration is really good.)

 I came to this paragraph:

   She relocates several slugs and snails and pulls out some weeds, leaving the purslane: she can steam that later. On the delicate carrot fronds she finds two bright-blue kudzu moth caterpillars. Though developed as a biological control for invasive kudzu, they seem to prefer garden vegetables. In one of those jokey moves so common in the first years of gene-splicing, their designer gave them a baby face at the front end, with big eyes and a happy smile, which makes them remarkably difficult to kill. She pulls them off the carrots, their mandibles chewing ravenously beneath their cutie-pie masks, lifts the edge of the netting, and tosses them outside the fence. No doubt they'll be back.

 And I just had to do a photoshop:

 

 What are you reading this summer?

 I have several paperbacks by John Green on my list. The Fault in Our Stars was a lovely read. And I finished Three Junes  by Julia Glass (yes, I am catching up, as I said). Hard time getting used to the character "Fern," but in the end she fit into the story.

 Share your summer reads in comments. Thanks.



 P.S. For more Margaret Atwood from my archives, click here.

UPDATE:  This made my whole summer:

The importance of turning off one's internet prejudices, and clicking where thou wilt....

...because, Citizens, I cannot tell you which link would, by my conscious brain, be most likely to block the use of my fingers on the mouse: "Margaret Carlson" or "Daily Beast." The two are, on the scale of 'Forsooth I do have better things to do with my time,' roughly equivalent. Imagine my surprise to find my screen lighting upon this article, then, where we consider taxes on sugary drinks and dare I say it without blanching, softer than average (and environmentally unfriendly) toilet paper.

Of course I was immediately transported to my days of undergraduate study of humanities, which, alas, is seen by our willfully ignorant age as being beyond luxury, to the reading of Gargantua and Pantagruel, where the scientific study of arse wiping settled the issue of luxurious bum cleaning to the present day. It saddens me that we have made few improvements to the discourse since that time, because, of course, Rabelais was writing during the mother fucking (oh do not think I use that term as a swear rather than a literal interpretation of Chapter 1.III) Renaissance.

Afterwards I wiped my tail with a hen, with a cock, with a pullet, with a calf's skin, with a hare, with a pigeon, with a cormorant, with an attorney's bag, with a montero, with a coif, with a falconer's lure. But, to conclude, I say and maintain, that of all torcheculs, arsewisps, bumfodders, tail-napkins, bunghole cleansers, and wipe-breeches, there is none in the world comparable to the neck of a goose, that is well downed, if you hold her head betwixt your legs. And believe me therein upon mine honour, for you will thereby feel in your nockhole a most wonderful pleasure, both in regard of the softness of the said down and of the temporate heat of the goose, which is easily communicated to the bum-gut and the rest of the inwards, in so far as to come even to the regions of the heart and brains. And think not that the felicity of the heroes and demigods in the Elysian fields consisteth either in their asphodel, ambrosia, or nectar, as our old women here used to say; but in this, according to my judgment, that they wipe their tails with the neck of a goose, holding her head betwixt their legs, and such is the opinion of Master John of Scotland, alias Scotus.

I for one would take great pleasure in any account of white American Teabaggers protesting a luxury toilet paper Obama-tax by populating their manicured sub-division front lawns with shitty-necked geese.

What I'm Reading

The Monk Upstairs by Tim Farrington

I've wanted to blog more about books, let alone find time to read books more often. One thing I've found is, if I am able to read even for ten minutes before I get kids ready for school, the process of getting kids ready is easier. It may be having a moment for myself first, or it may just be the meditative process of reading, but whatever it is, it's become part of my morning routine.

The Monk Upstairs by Tim Farrington is not for the hardcore atheist. One character is a former monk, and his wife is a lapsed Catholic with a bit of resentment for her upbringing. When the wife's daughter insists on going to Mass with her kind and gentle-to-a-fault stepdad, the mom is a bit put out--she wants to find a "nun with a stick" and show her daughter the kind of Catholicism she grew up with.

This is a domestic story, with grandma and mom and daughter and this strong yet weak guy who bears all and forgives all and yet seems very human. He's not Jesus, there's enough sex in this book to avoid that comparison, but he faces challenges with introspection that has meaning and makes the story more than just a plot driven ride to the end. I'm enjoying it.

Plenty of copies available at Abebooks for a buck plus shipping.

PS I understand the big blog I write for from time to time (like, nightly) will be having a fundraiser soon. Posting will be shorter/lighter while I work on some videos for Mr. Amato. He's a peach.

In addition to Blogroll Amnesty Day...

It seems everybody's doing this "what book are you" quiz thingy. I like it 'cause there's no tagging:

You're Babar the King!

by Jean de Brunhoff

Though your life has been filled with struggle and sadness of late, you're personally doing quite well for yourself. All this success brings responsibility, though, and should not be taken lightly. Life has turned from war to peace, from damage to reconstruction, and this brings a bright new hope for everyone you know. These hopeful people look to you for guidance, and your best advice to them is to watch out for snakes. You're quite fond of the name "Celeste".


Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.

Before I go to bed, the end of the world as we know it.

OMG. Some publisher is producing ABRIDGED versions of DICKENS, THACKERAY AND GEORGE ELIOT!?!?

...in the first series of Compact Editions Anna Karenina, Moby-Dick along with David Copperfield, The Mill on the Floss, Vanity Fair and Wives and Daughters will be 'sympathetically edited' down to fewer than 400 pages.

WTF? I mean, Eisenhower always said if you can't say it in a page don't say it and I always said if you can't say it in 475 pages don't say it. Especially if you're saying it in a nineteenth century novel, for Crispy Kreme sakes.

But I gotta say while I love me some George Eliot, Mill on the Floss needs some serious editing. It's like she got tired all of a sudden and spent the last fifty pages saying "and then everyone died in a flood the end." Hey don't listen to me the Guardian Unlimited lit blog says the same damn thing:

The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot is a case in point. While the first two thirds of the book is a wonderful, if leisurely, evocation of a small English market town at the beginning of the nineteenth century, the last part is a rushed, breathless, melodramatic affair with an entirely unlikely tying up of plotlines.

In other words, everyone dies in a flood the end.

Give that one the Eisenhower treatment.

Eisenhower in his days as President (not of the George Eliot Fan Club).

I loooove buyin' me some books.

And gotta say something about the shell. Shells cheer me up and I sense protection and a calming influence from them sometimes, especially when I worry the universe is talking directly to me. It's the Cancerian in me, no doubt.

I also have to apologize that my webcam kept wanting to look upwards. Yeah there's big meaning on that too, namely darn gravity.

On a plane all day Thursday to get back to Alabama. Have a good one.

I got the pink one.

I linked to the amazing website promo for this book a while ago and just wanted everybody to know it's out this week. You HAVE to click that link and follow the arrows. Too. Much.

Other books I plan to read this summer are

The Children, the civil rights book by the late David Halberstam

Piety & Politics: The Right-Wing Assault on Religious Freedom by Barry Lynn (We love Barry Lynn in part because Pat Robertson called him a "left-wing thug.")

Burning Bright by Tracy Chevalier (a fave author)

all families are psychotic by Douglas Coupland (another fave)

Here's the deal times two:

1. If anyone would like to co-host a skype reading group to discuss any of these books in chat after the summer, email me (see sidebar for addy). We can have many co-hosts but there would need to be at least two of us who have read the book. Rumor mill has it we might get Barry Lynn to join us in chat. Us Blog against Theocracy organizers have connections, doncha know.

2. In comments here, leave what you plan to read for the summer, so we can all have ideas, etc. Thanks.