"The love of learning, the sequestered nooks, and all the sweet serenity of books."

-- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

I don’t think it would be too far-fetched to say that books make up an overwhelming percentage of who I am. I was very often read to as a child (thanks, Mom!); I spent my summers participating in the library summer reading programs; I spent another summer volunteering at the library; my favorite high school job was in a bookstore; I always have a “free-reading” book with me; I married a fellow book lover; we consequently own more books than shelf space; and I think an enlightened conversation somehow brings in a discussion about books. So, yesterday when Sara requested I compile a list of favorite recent reads, I pretty much jumped on the opportunity. I got a bit carried away, as you can see below. But even so, this list is anything but comprehensive. It includes some recent reads that I’ve enjoyed, as well as a bunch of you-can’t-go-wrong-with-‘em favorites. But I know I’m leaving armfuls of other books I’ve enjoyed off – I guess you have to draw the line somewhere, right? Anyway, thanks, Sara, for the excuse to think about favorite books.

Regional (i.e. Indiana) Favorites:

• A Girl Named Zippy: Growing Up Small in Mooreland, Indiana by Haven Kimmel
• She Got Up Off the Couch: And Other Heroic Acts from Mooreland, Indiana by Haven Kimmel
• In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash by Jean Shepherd
• How Dear to My Heart by Emily Kimbrough
• The Innocents from Indiana by Emily Kimbrough
• Our Hearts Were Young and Gay by Cornelia Otis Skinner and Emily Kimbrough

Poetry I Couldn’t Live Without:

• The Collected Works of Edna St. Vincent Millay
• The Collected Works of e. e. cummings
• The Collected Works of Pablo Neruda
• Joyful Noise: Poems for Two Voices by Paul Fleischman
• Long Ago in Oregon by Claudia Lewis
• Reflections on a Gift of Watermelon Pickle and Other Modern Verse ed. by Stephen Dunning, Edward Lueders, and Hugh Smith
• Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
• The Random House Book of Poetry for Children ed. by Jack Prelutsky and Arnold Lobel

You Can’t Go Wrong With Children’s Fiction:

• I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith
• Out of the Dust by Karen Smith
• The Betsy-Tacy series by Maud Hart Lovelace
• Princess Academy by Shannon Hale
• Walk Two Moons and Love That Dog by Sharon Creech
• The Trouble with Jenny’s Ear by Oliver Butterworth
• The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster
• Anything by Patricia MacLachlan (especially: Sarah, Plain and Tall; Skylark; Journey; and Baby)
• Anything by Beverly Cleary (especially: the Ramona series; the Henry Huggins series; Ellen Tebbits; and Otis Spofford)

Not All Non-Fiction is Boring:

• The Bronte’s: A Life in Letters ed. by Juliet Barker
• A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail by Bill Bryson
• The Radicalism of the American Revolution by Gordon S. Wood
• The Mother Tongue: English and How it Got that Way by Bill Bryson
• The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary by Simon Winchester
• Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls by Mary Pipher
• We Interrupt this Broadcast by Joe Garner

Also, Not All Classic Novels Are Boring:

• Anything by J. D. Salinger (including: Catcher in the Rye; Raise High the Roof Beam Carpenters/Seymour, an Introduction; Franny and Zooey; and Nine Stories)
• Rebecca by Daphne Du Marier
• Anything by a Bronte sister (especially: Jane Eyre (Charlotte); Wuthering Heights (Emily); and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (Anne))
• Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald
• How Green Was My Valley by Richard Llewellyn
• Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury
• East of Eden by John Steinbeck
• A Room with a View by E. M. Forster

But I Don’t Just Enjoy “Old” Books:

• The Von Igelfeld series by Alexander McCall Smith (including: Portuguese Irregular Verbs; The Finer Points of Sausage Dogs; and At the Villa of Reduced Circumstances)
• The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
• The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver

Personal Life-Long Favorites:

• A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and Joy in the Morning by Betty Smith
• To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
• Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh
• The View from Saturday by E. L. Konigsburg
• The Hundred Dresses by Eleanor Estes

Happy Reading!

I've been tagged!

I've been tagged for the first time ever. So, does this mean I'm popular now? Anyway, thanks Sarah!

1. Find the nearest book to you.
2. Name the book and author.
3. Turn to page 123.
4. Go to the fifth sentence on the page.
5. Copy out the next 3 sentences and post to your blog.
6. Tag someone else.

Let's see...

Ida B ... and Her Plans to Maximize Fun, Avoid Disaster, and (Possibly) Save the World
by Katherine Hannigan

I'd rush through my homework and lock myself in my room till dinner, then hurry through dishes and disappear till the next morning. I was working toward nothing less than the righting of wrongs, turning evil to good, and stopping the craziness that was steadily and surely taking over my valley. I was Ida B, Superhero Deluxe, Friend of the Downtrodden, Foe of Cancer, Meanness, Mindless Destruction, and Traditional Schooling.

I just started this book last night, and am not quite yet to page 123 (I'm on 109 of 246). Now, though, I'm intrigued and am looking forward to my lunch hour to find out what's going on. Sarah, I have to say, this book sounds a teensy bit more interesting than the one you were sitting next to. Children's fiction is where it's at. And Ida B is definitely a charming keeper.

Now who to tag? How about...AmyJane.

Very Short Stories

I've never been much of a fan of the writing of Ernest Hemingway. The Old Man and the Sea could have, in my opinion, been summed up in about 10 pages. The Sun Also Rises was clearly full of bullfighting symbolism -- none of which I understood. And I think the only reason I am not completely repulsed by A Farewell to Arms is because I'm rather fond of a "Why did the chicken cross the road?" joke that pokes fun at it (answer: "To die. In the rain."). Hemingway just doesn't do it for me.

But I discovered something this weekend that may have redeemed him (slightly) in my book. Apparently, according to The Internet, Hemingway was once challenged to write a short story, replete with all required story elements, in as few words as possible. This is what he came up with:

"For Sale: Baby shoes, never worn."

This, my friends, is six words of sheer brilliance. Of course, every time I read this six-word story, I get choked up. But maybe that's a sign of its genius. I don't know -- I'm not a literary critic by any means, and can't fully explain why this story is so good. But I can recognize that, wow: this is amazing!

I've long been a fan of short-short stories. I like to read them and I like to write them. When I was at BYU I saw one day, among the trillions of fliers adorning the hallway walls of the JKHB, an advertisement for an English department sponsored Short Short Story Contest. To enter, all you had to do was write a story, making sure to include all story elements, on one or both sides of a 3.5-inch index card. I took up the challenge and entered a 100-word story I called "Paper Snowflakes":

They were making paper snowflakes to decorate the classroom for Christmas. “I want this room covered in snow,” Mrs. Peterson said.

So they set to work with white paper, red paper, green paper, and scissors. They sat four to a table. Angie made beautifully symmetrical snowflakes, but Josh’s didn’t look like snowflakes at all.

“Here, Josh, let me show you how it’s done,” said Angie.

Ignoring Angie, Josh continued to cut his into strangely shaped bits of paper.

“It’s really not that hard,” said Angie.

“I don’t care,” said Josh. He hung them up anyway.

They looked very festive indeed.

To my surprise, I won 3rd place -- and a $10 gift card to Barnes and Noble.

Since then, I've dabbled now and again in this short-short story writing (which is also called "flash fiction," or stories up to 2000 words, and "drabble," or stories that are exactly 100 words). Part of me wants to try my hand at this short-short story writing again. I enjoy this style because it's both simple and challenging to write. It's intensely satisfying to me to feel that surge of energy as I spit out, as succinctly as possible, a complete story. And it's a nice, little writing exercise that can be done with even only a small amount of time. The trouble that I tend to come across is that most of what I come up with seems very insignificant because it really has no point. So maybe someday I'll come up with something profound like Ernest Hemingway did. But in the meantime, I guess I'll just stick with my stories on mundane topics like making paper snowflakes.

Mutual Love

If, as an adult, you ever get the chance to watch the Young Men and the Young Women flirt with each other at a joint mutual activity, I highly suggest you jump on it. Because it's really, really, really funny.

Only then it gets a teeny tiny bit embarrassing as you remember that this was you and the youth in your ward only ten years ago.

But let's not dwell on awkward memories. Let's instead focus on what just might become the awkward memories of my ward's youth of last night's mutual activity.

You might recall that last Wednesday we were trying to dig ourselves out of a blizzard, and because we were all pretty much snow-bound, the Valentine's Day mutual activity the Young Men were planning for the Young Women had to be postponed. So last night all the boys finally got the chance to woo all the girls -- and with their priesthood leader's blessing to boot.

The activity was supposed to be a surprise for the girls. But after the Bishop announced in Young Women's on Sunday that the girls should not eat dinner before coming to said surprise activity, we all kind of had to raise our eyebrows.

And as we gathered in the Relief Society room for opening exercises, we chuckled approvingly as the Young Men marched in wearing suits and ties. And I, for one, laughed outright when the Young Men's President informed the girls that they were to sit at a seat in the cultural hall marked "F" for "Female" and Brady said "You mean, "F" for "Freaking Hot!"

In the dimly-lit cultural hall we were all ceremoniously waited on by the priests, while the teachers saw to it that we had water to drink, and the deacons passed out silverware and napkins. We then dined "romantically" on plates of pasta and sides of salad and garlic bread, and a dessert choice of carrot cake or pink cake a la mode. And meanwhile I watched the myriad of flirtatious comments and high-pitched giggles (which came, I feel the need to add, from the girls and the boys) going on around me. All hormone levels were happily high and smiles and pink cheeks abounded. It was really quite glorious. (Or embarrassing, depending on your point of view.)

As I drove home, I couldn't help but sigh in immense pleasure at the fact that I am no longer a soul-mate searching, twitterpated pubescent. It's reassuring to every once in a while be given a handful of good, solid proof that those days really do come to an end.

Tuesday

If my day yesterday was like Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day, my day today has been rather like Tuesday:



...Only without the flying frogs.

Seriously, though -- it's been a strange day. Unusual. Abnormal. A little odd. But not terrible, horrible, no good, or very bad, thank heavens. And I think it started with the bizarre dream I had last night.

I dreamt that my brother, Riley, who it should be noted is 1) not yet married, and 2) is a BOY, was pregnant and due two days after me. He spent the majority of my dream showing off his expanding mid-section (while sporting his favorite pair of comfortable green scrubs), much to the annoyance of both his fiancee and myself. And it wasn't just his highfalutin tendencies that bothered me. It was the dramatic competition the whole affair naturally developed into. I mean -- whose baby would be born first? It couldn't very well be his because I, after all, am nearly four years older than him!

Anyway, very weird. I think I can safely label this one as a Crazy Pregnancy Dream, and it can go down in the books as the first baby-related one I've had (crazy dreams have never been a rare thing for me). Up 'til now it seemed that everyone else was having the crazy pregnancy dreams: Blake had one, my mom had one. But now I've had one, too. How...fulfilling (?).

So if a dream like that started off my day, it's only to be expected that the rest of my day would be filled with flying frog-like abnormalities. Here are a few:

• It's warm outside. We're supposed to reach a high today of 46 degrees. This, my friends, is what I, after experiencing several consecutive weeks of temperatures well below freezing, like to call "tropical." And tropical weather in Indiana in February is nigh unto unheard of.
  
• I was a solid 10 minutes early to work today. Ten minutes early! Normally, it's a scramble to get out the door each morning, resulting in my sliding into the office at roughly 8:01... or thereabouts.
• We are going to see a play tonight. Jane Eyre, to be precise. This is unusual for two reasons: 1) it's the first play I'll have gone to in, oh, a few years (the only "culture" we tend to associate ourselves with these days can be checked out for free at the library), and 2) the only showing of this play is not on a weekend night, but on a Tuesday night (Muncie must be low priority on the touring schedule).

Anybody else having a Tuesday-like Tuesday?

Bah.

I am having a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.

I think I'll move to Australia.

Three Short Lists

Three Ways in Which Today Feels Very Much Like a Monday:

1. I woke up with a headache. Consequently, I'm finding it harder than usual to concentrate.
2. It's President's Day, but most of Indiana does not observe the holiday with a day off from work.
   
3. My wardrobe options are getting smaller as I get too big for my normal clothes, but am still too small for maternity clothes.

Three Things I Did Over the Weekend:

1. Visited and ate fondue with our friends, the Paulsen's.
2. Made soft pretzels for the first time -- they turned out delicious, especially when dipped in my honey mustard sauce concoction.
   
3. Took a nap. Or two.
   

Three Things that Will Keep Me Busy This Week:

1. Attend the play, Jane Eyre, with Blake.
2. Help chaperon the youth temple trip to Columbus.
3. Go to the dentist.
   

It Moves!

After paying close attention to it for the last few days, I think I've finally been able to pinpoint that oft-recurring little fluttering feeling deep inside my gut.

And judging by the movement felt just this morning, our baby is certainly an active one. No wonder it has such a fast little bird-like heartbeat.

There are no words to describe how amazing this is to me -- and believe me, I've consulted a thesaurus. There just are no words.

Day 2

Here are some photos of the aftermath of our little blizzard. Brace yourselves....there's a lot of snow.

This is what we saw after we forced our door open early this morning:

The front of our apartment. For dramatic effect, see here for the summertime contrast.

Looking out to the parking lot.

The front porch. That snow is about waist deep on us.

Until about 9:00 this morning we didn't own a snow shovel. There was no need for us to own one because our apartment complex management took care of snow removal. Unfortunately, their snow blowers can only do so much in snow this deep, and they also don't dig out parked cars. The university officially closed for the day, canceling all classes and shutting down all unnecessary offices. So, with a little time on our hands, and a dire need to become owners of a snow shovel we walked to a nearby shopping center to buy one.

This field was much more serene-looking before we had to trudge through it.

Here I am, bundled up and happy to have made it to the road.

And here are Blake's frozen solid blue jeans. Seriously...they were hard as rock. Don't let that sun fool you...it's bitterly cold outside today. I think we're expected to reach a high of 11 degrees with wind chills around -10.

Here's another road. So far, in the places we've seen, they've only been able to plow one lane's worth of road. It's better than nothing, though.

Once we got home, we set about to dig out our car. Because if we didn't, it would be going absolutely nowhere pretty fast:

Yikes. It was completely buried.

It took a while to finally free the car. But I'm glad we did it when we did because otherwise the snow would have frozen and then we'd be in trouble.

All told, we received, I heard (and judged by our sidewalk) about 18 inches of actual snow and snow drifts up to 6 feet high. Now we're just celebrating the fact that we can in fact get out of our house by staying inside where it's warm. But I have to say... it's kind of fun to have been able to experience a real Midwestern blizzard during our time living out here. It's been absolutely fascinating to watch and definitely something to marvel at. This doesn't mean, however, that I'm crossing my fingers for another one any time soon. One's enough. Especially if we're going to get that "early Spring" the groundhog predicted.

Happy Valentine's Day everyone!

The Blizzard of '07?

Remember how last Wednesday I said that I considered six inches of snow to be A LOT of snow? Well, I just wanted to let you know that I've changed my mind. And in a minute you'll understand why.

In 1978 an enormous blizzard buried Indiana under an average of 20 inches of snow and brought wind gusts in excess of 35 miles an hour which created snow drifts 10-20 feet high. Even though it was 29 years go, Hoosiers here still talk about "the Blizzard of '78" like it happened yesterday. Everyone has their own version of the storm and memories of how it affected them. It was jotted down in the books as the worst winter storm on record in Indiana history, and since then there apparently haven't been many storms that have come close to competing with it.

Until, perhaps, today.

This morning around 5:30, NPR awoke us with the terrible home-hitting news of the Salt Lake City shooting at Trolley Square. After we came out of our horrified astonishment that something like that could happen anywhere, let alone in SLC, we were aroused out of bed with the exciting news that the winter storm warning placed in effect yesterday had been upgraded to a blizzard warning. In fact, the blizzard had begun about an hour earlier and we were already getting buried underneath several inches of snow. Nearly everything in Muncie and the surrounding areas have been shut down due to the harsh weather -- classes were canceled at the university and even though campus offices were still operating, I decided to play it safe and stay home from work. Which has turned out to be a pretty wise decision. At the last news report we heard, at about 2:00 pm, the snow accumulation had already reached 11 of the predicted 8-14 inches, with snow drifts piling up to 4 feet high. And it's still coming -- with no signs of slowing down. They're telling us now that it won't be too unlikely that by tomorrow morning we'll have around 20 inches of snow and drifts I don't really want to imagine at this point (partly because our car is parked in front of a growing drift).

We've spent a good part of the day glued to the window. The snow and wind gusts are mesmerizing to watch. In fact, I wish you could look out our window right now. It's pretty amazing. Here are a few pictures to give you a glimpse. Most of them were taken about an hour ago:





We're a loooong way away from anything upstate New York has been getting lately. But I personally am wondering just how we're going to get out of our apartment tomorrow.

You should all be pleased to know, though, that I've been fairly productive today. I started and finished a sewing project I've been meaning to get to for a while now. And now we have pillow shams to match the bedspread my mother-in-law gave me for my birthday:

Good Times

A recap of the last few days:

Thursday: Invited to the home of another young married couple in the ward. Ate their pizza. Engaged in pleasant conversation.

Friday: Watched the NBC Thursday night line-up on tape (couldn't watch yesterday; see above). Fast forwarded the commercials. Devoured chocolate oreo malts.

Saturday: Ventured to Edinburgh, Indiana to investigate the factory outlets. Got a little freaked out in the Motherhood Maternity store. Bought from the clearance racks at Gap and Eddie Bauer instead.

Sunday: Took 2 naps and went to bed early. Read a lot. Lounged. Talked to family. Cooked and ate a dinner that required relatively no clean-up. Also ate more chocolate oreo malts.

Big Blizzard Thing

Okay, so it wasn't so much a "blizzard," per say, but it was a lot of snow. A LOT of snow.

Six inches of beautiful, slippery snow falling for nearly 12 straight hours yesterday. People were sliding all over the roads -- enough for officials to close the interstate for several hours -- and our department's assistant dean let everyone go home early to "get ahead of the weather." Only a half an hour early, mind you, but it was something anyway. And, what with it taking nearly 45 minutes to drive what in normal conditions a 10-minute drive, it turned out to be just enough time to get us home at our normal time. It really is a process to drive even short distances in snowy weather -- first you've got to trudge through unshoveled snow to get to the car, then you have to brush all the snow off of the car and scrape the ice off the windows, then drive 10 miles an hour because that's what the car in front of you is doing, then have difficulty getting started again once the light turns green because your traction isn't so good, then you have to get out and brush snow off your window again because you can't see anything. You get the idea. While there's not too much more snow predicted in the coming days, they are telling us to get used to what we've got because, given the fact that the temperatures will not even be close to rising above freezing in the foreseeable future, this snow's not going to melt for a while.

And so we stayed in last night. And we babysat. Which was an adventure like unto driving on snowy, icy roads. All right, so it wasn't that bad, but there was a lot of screaming involved. Turns out little Adeline is a mama's girl and likes to show off her incredible lung capacity for everyone else. So while Blake and I tried calming her with toys, board books, a bottle, fresh diapers, and clean pajamas, she cried and choked on her tears and spit up all over me and screamed. Soon there was nothing more I could do but pull our rocking chair into the bedroom, turn on some music, and just rock her until she wore herself out, found her thumb, and fell asleep. She woke up just before her parents came back to get her, and as soon as she realized they were back, she was all smiles and grins. A little unfair? Maybe. At least Blake and I were both able to come to the solid conclusion that cute babies are indeed capable of inducing headaches, but that even in spite of this, we are still glad to be expecting one of our own.

Heartbeat

At my doctor's appointment yesterday I got to hear the baby's heartbeat again. I love hearing the heartbeat. It's reassuring to know that something is really living and growing in there. Reassuring, but also breathtaking and beautiful. It was much louder this time, I'm assuming because the baby has grown, but it was still just as fast and furious as at previous check-ups. I think my appointments always get scheduled during the baby's play time because, judging by those heartbeats, this is one active kid!

At my next appointment, in a month, we'll talk ultrasound. I am excited for that, and so is Blake. The first time, back in December, that we got to see our little bean of a baby, it was quite the miracle in large part because it was visual proof that the miscarriage I was told to expect wasn't in fact happening. But it was also incredible because we could actually see it. We could watch that heart beating so rapidly as if to tell us, "See? I'm here! And I'm alive!" And it was breathtaking and beautiful.

I'm excited to meet this little person with the heartbeat I love to listen to.

"Okay, campers, rise and shine, and don't forget your booties 'cause it's cooooold out there today."

I'm not sure where this cold weather blew in from -- the Arctic? North Dakota? Well, wherever it came from, it's here, and it's having a heyday. Yesterday the temperatures here hovered right around 0 degrees, but bitter 35 mile an hour winds brought the wind chill temperature down to -15. So, so cold. It certainly made for an interesting time trying to run the Saturday errands.

Today's been no different: This morning when I took Blake to church for bishopric meeting, the thermometer in the car read -2, and by the time I joined him at church, the wind was back. I'm surprised that as many people came to church that did because all the local weather forecasters keep telling us to just stay inside next to our heaters until Tuesday when it's supposed to "warm up" to about 12 degrees.

Never fear, though. We've found plenty to keep us busy inside. For example, yesterday we rearranged the furniture in our bedroom and now there's just room enough for a pack-n-play sized crib for the baby. Which is a good thing. Otherwise, it might have had to just sleep in a dresser drawer. I guess it's a good thing that we'll be moving sometime this summer -- two bedrooms are looking more and more to be a real necessity.

A Post of Absolutely No Consequence

I'm itching to write something today, but nothing brilliant is coming to mind. So instead you will get a list of "Haphazard and Odd Thoughts Which Have Recently Flittered Through My Brain."

So. Let the arbitrariness begin!

• It is difficult to get used to a 60 watt light bulb after basking in the glory of a 100 watt light bulb.
• But it makes the adjustment from night to morning a little less startling.
• My front walk is slippery.
• Even though I am a recent and whole-heartedly devoted fan of Emily Kimbrough, I don't think I'll finish the most recent book of hers I picked up (We Followed Our Hearts to Hollywood). It just isn't captivating me like her others have.
• And there is nothing wrong with not finishing a book.
• But what to read next?
• Because I'm still on the waiting list for our next book club book (Freakonomics).
• The Office is on tonight. And it's not a rerun. This makes me happy.
• I'm well on my way to drinking my daily water quota. Go me!
  
• There are 92 counties in Indiana. Is it just me, or does this seems like a lot?
  
• I made the bed this morning, like I do every morning. Only this morning I was very tempted to just forget about it.
• I secretly like quite a few Alanis Morissette songs. I'm openly crazy about Natalie Merchant's music.
• When I was in junior high and high school, I was one of those nerds who knew nothing about contemporary music, so when people asked me what genre I liked, I faked it and told them Alternative. Only it took me a few years to realize that Alternative is actually the kind of music I typically don't like.
  
• I've learned today that when people are given the opportunity to complain, they usually take it and run all the way up Mt. Everest with it.
• Ball State's botany pond is frozen over, in case you were wondering.
• I am the founder and coordinator of an online poetry club. February's theme is "poems by a poet laureate."
• The plural of poet laureate is poets laureate.
  
• Handwritten correspondence is a dying art form, and that makes me sad. Maybe I'll pick up the practice again.
• Which reminds me...I need to buy postage stamps this weekend.
• You'd be surprised at how many well-educated adults think a lot is one word.
• This picture is hanging on my office wall. Can you guess which one is my PhotoShop-loving brother?

• Would somebody please stop me before this erratic list gets too out of hand and ----------

(Thanks.)