My local library got new carpet...

...and it looks like Joanna Gaines got a hold of it.

Yep, definitely getting a

Not that that's a bad thing. Only I do suspect that children will be playing Hot Lava by jumping from brown tile to brown tile on it.  That's my prediction from past personal experience, anyway.

Reading and Other Media

Perhaps ironic for a book review blogger to admit, but I feel rather out of touch when it comes to feeding my love of books with technology and social media. One of my friends keeps urging me to get into BookTube, where she says YouTubers discuss or review books via video. There are also podcasts, websites (such as Sparknotes, Amazon, Google Books, and Goodreads), blogs like this one, forums, and of course the zeitgeist-obligatory Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr pages.

I've seen many of these in passing, usually when searching for more information on a particular book. I'm more likely to delve deeper into things like Facebook or YouTube if a book is particularly obscure and therefore hard to find sources of criticism or reviews on it. While I really would be interested in spending more time surfing literary-related interwebs, I've come to the sad conclusion that I simply don't have enough time. One could, I think, spend all of one's reading time on reading (or listening or watching material) about reading or about books instead of actually reading those books. And, since I've got my own blog, it's more of a priority to read published material. 

Unless I were to pioneer a new trail and become a blogger who blogs about other people's blogs and reviews their book reviews. 

The Chronicles of Prydain: The Covers

Yes, I am still talking about Lloyd Alexander's The Chronicles of Prydain. You're welcome.  

Today I want to show you all the pretty...or not-so-pretty...covers. Most of the problems with the not-so-pretty covers are related to the art being dated, as all five volumes were published in the sixties, and the sixties, seventies, and eighties have not necessarily aged well.  

This is a collection of all five novels, but the image itself is lifted from a climactic scene in 

The High King, which makes it spoilerific. 

 

I've never seen this cover in person, and the details of images online aren't extremely clear. What I like about it: the Horned King (a villain of The Book of Three rearing his black stallion ominously in the background, with Taran and Hen Wen in the foreground. What I don't like about it: all that shafts-of-sunlight-in-a-magical-waterfally-glen is giving me Disney's Bambi vibes for some reason. And it sort of derails the ominousness achieved by having the Horned King in the first place. 

Photo credit: moi

While  I have been on an involuntary sabbatical from my laptop and blogging, I have not been idle in the land of literature.  Here is a photo of my volunteer station at my local library, where as you can see I was putting protective laminate on extremely important classic tomes. 

The Five Stages of Grief Caused By An Awful, Anachronistic Book Cover

My sister saw them first. We were at the used library book sale that we always go to, every year. We even have our own place where we gloat over sort out our finds before we go to the checkout table.  

I didn't see them because I not only have read all the Anne of Green Gables series by L.M. Montgomery, I used to have the complete set. Later in the sad time of weeding my collection, I got rid of all but the first volume. Because, let's face it, charming as all Montgomery's books are, the Anne books get increasingly fillerific as one progresses through the series, in a case of "Author Is Sick of Characters But Needs Money From Popular Franchise."

So I didn't see these monstrosities of covers because I didn't even see the spines. I wasn't looking to buy any Montgomery novels, and was far too distracted by the five matching volumes of Ogden Nash poetry I found at the same table. 

It was the Vintage table, the very table I always make a beeline for when I'm fresh-out-the-gate at a booksale. And while these covers are "vintage"...well, I feel like someone's definition of "vintage" is vastly different from mine.

Witness, if you will, Anne of Green Gables: The Sixties Update of the Beloved Novels, Set in Edwardian-World War I Canada:

The Irresistible Art of Moby Dick

Much as I don’t care for the plot of the book, I will admit that as a piece of literature, Moby Dick is one of the best symbolic works I’ve read. One of the ways I know if a story has good symbolism is if I can imagine visual motifs to illustrate them. If a book’s plot can be conveyed or at least alluded to on a T-shirt, for example, probably has at least one major symbol.

Maybe it’s just a matter of the colors—a white sperm whale on a dark background—that makes for dynamic visuals. Maybe it’s just because I’m a sucker for animal art in general.  Maybe it’s simply that I like sperm whales, and any time I try to anthropomorphize Moby Dick into an epitome of the world’s evil like Captain Ahab does, the unfortunate outcome is not very profound: just the part of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy where a whale materializes in midair over an alien planet and has to come to grips with its existence on the way down to the ground.  

Whatever the reason, part of me wishes that I did love the book, so that I could buy, make, or wear these sorts of artistic renditions of the novel. Since I am more of a begrudging admirer, forced to admit the aesthetic value of Herman Melville’s writing Style, I’ll just leave these links and images here for others with better Taste to enjoy:  

Cover Fail: Anne of Green Gables

Source:

http://abcnews.go.com/images/Entertainment/ht_anne_of_green_gables_ll_130207_vblog.jpg

This is the story of blond, attractive, self-assured, and plaid-bedecked Anne Shirley as she graduates college and moves into a trendy coed dorm after conning her way into the lives of two loser farmers and forming a cheerleader clique with Diana and regularly pushing resident nerd Gilbert Blythe into his locker.

At least that’s what I get from this cover.

Tried-and-True Babysitting Books

The cliché of babysitting is of teen-aged girls who park their charges in front of a TV and then commence raiding the fridge and calling their boyfriends. I always saw babysitting as an opportunity to read picture books, not just because I personally enjoy them, but also because it might share my joy of reading to a younger generation. When I babysit, there are a set of books I habitually take along, which have been tried-and-true to entertain and engage kids in the stories. I would suggest these books not only to babysitters, but to anyone who might have kids come and visit their homes (such as grandparents or other relatives).

Whenever I babysit, my go-to books are the following:

The Illustrious Art of Children’s Picture Books

I’m an adult, I read picture books, and I am not ashamed.* Picture book authors and illustrators not only have to be skilled storytellers (and keep the attention of some very attention-deficit individuals…and sometimes also their children, too), they have to condense that storytelling quality into very few pages. All the character development, relationships, plot points, conflict—in short, all the good storytelling qualities you find in an adult-length novel—have to be established in maybe a few dozen pages at the most. For that, if nothing else, picture books are to be commended.

Pass the Bookplate: Second Helpings

Below are either the images or links to images of bookplates owned by a wide range of world leaders, artists, and celebrities throughout history. 

Pass the Bookplate

For my birthday my mom bought me a collection of six Jules Verne novels with the original illustrations. I already owned three of the books (Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, A Journey to the Centre of the Earth, and From Earth to the Moon), but actually my translation of Journey was the inferior version so I was looking to replace that. Unfortunately when I got home, excited to replace my three thin volumes with a honking thick one, I found that there was one thing that I would be sore pressed to get rid of in those books: I had book-plated them.

Bookplates are the more sophisticated version of those stickers that say “this book belongs to” that you can write your name on and slap onto the flyleaf of your favorite books. They are more sophisticated in that bookplates used to be commissioned by a reader to put in the volumes of their library.  

"The Blue Castle": The Search for Adequate Cover Art

I love The Blue Castle by L.M. Montgomery. The problem is, I don't have a hardcover version of it, and my paperback version is getting beat up. So I used my blog as an excuse to "research" different covers, looking for a replacement. Unfortunately, it looks like the majority of cover artists--like the majority of readers in general--have never read the actual novel. 

"Take a castle, paint it blue!" seemed to be the consensus. Even if the results are psychedelic.

To Each His Own

 



“If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured and far away.”

 

~ Henry David Thoreau, Walden

*

 

Howard Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences postulates a philosophy that different people excel in different areas.

 

As a result, one individual may learn at a different speed from another.

 

 This doesn’t make one individual more or less intelligent.

 

 It only means their method of learning is as unique as their individual character.

 

 When an individual is allowed to “personalize” their education, to “step to the music which he hears,” then he is able to fully realize his potential.

 

 

Yes, I did draw these illustrations for a philosophy presentation I did on Multiple Intelligences.  The shadow at the top of some of the images is because I had to screencap them off of Windows Movie Maker (I would upload the whole video except I hate the sound of my narration).  P.S. No these aren't anorexics.  They're stick figures with clothes. 

* Yes the "belonging" is missing the B.  How embarrassing to find that mistake so many years after I submitted it to my professor for grading! 

"Wind in the Willows": Some Illustrations

Oddly enough, much as I love The Wind in the Willows and a few other books like it, even as a child I found anthropomorphic animals (read: white rabbits in waistcoats) confusing, unnerving, and downright creepy depending on the books they were in. 

Brian Jacques’ popular Redwall series, for instance. It’s about mice…in Britain…in the Dark/Middle Ages…that are monks…. That’s just too many factors for my literal-minded brain to handle. Re-reading The Wind in the Willows this past January brought condundrums afresh!