Crazy For Her…

Oh wait.  Whale tail is much different these days.  Means something that makes my cheeks red and I embarrased to say I didn’t know what it was until last year sometime when Pilly explained it all.  If you don’t know what whale tale means, check the urban dictionary.  I am sure it is there, pictures and all.

Anyway…Whale Tale.

This pretty much sums up my attitude on reading as of late.  I have every intention of reading some enormous classic and then I totally talk myself out of it with stupid excuses.  At least Mr. Baldwin is hilarious which kind of makes up for his laziness when approaching a new literary experience.  Moby Dick, Day One is my favorite post of the day because it is the first one that I have read and I happen to have a blog crush on him.  Yes I said blog crush but at least I don’t have a My Space account.  Sorry in advance for those of you who do.  Nothing wrong with My Space unless you are Male, 35 and your username is 6gradecutie. 

A novel by Mark Haddon

Excerpt:

Chapter 47

In the bus on the way to school the next morning we passed 4 red cars in a row, which meant that was a Good Day, so I decided not to be sad about Wellington.

Mr. Jeavons, the psychologist at the school, once asked me why 4 cars in a row made it a Good Day, and 3 red cars in a row made it a Quite Good Day, and 5 cars in a row made it a Super Good Day, and why 4 yellow cars in a row made it a Black Day, which is a day when I don’t speak to anyone and I sit on my own reading books and don’t eat my lunch and Take No Risks. He said that I was clearly a very logical person, so he was surprised that I should think like this because it wasn’t very logical.

I said I liked things to be in a nice order. And one way of things being in a nice order was to be logical. Especially if those things were numbers or an argument. But there were other ways of putting things in a nice order. And that is why I had Good Days and Black Days. And I said that some people who worked in an office came out of their house in the morning and saw that the sun was shining and it made them feel happy, or they saw that it was raining and it made them feel sad, but the only difference was the weather and if they worked in an office the weather didn’t have anything to do with whether they had a good day or bad day.

I said that when Father got up in the morning he always put his trousers on before he put his socks on and it wasn’t logical but he always did it that way, because he liked things in a nice order, too. Also whenever he went upstairs he went up two at a time, always starting with his right foot.

Mr. Jeavons said that I was a very clever boy. I said I wasn’t clever. I was just noticing how things were, and that wasn’t clever. That was just being observant. Being clever was when you looked at how things were and used evidence to work out something new. Like the universe expanding, or who committed a murder. Or if you see someone’s name and you give each letter a value from 1 to 26 (a = 1, b=2, etc.) and you add the numbers up in your head and you find that it makes a prime number, like Jesus Christ (151), or Scooby-Doo (113), or Sherlock Holmes (163), or Doctor Watson (167).

Mr. Jeavons asked me whether this made me feel safe, having things always in a nice order, and I said it did.

By Gregory Maguire

The Root of Evil

How did that proverb go, the one that Nanny singsonged to her, years ago, in the nursery?

Born in the morning,
Woe without warning;
Afternoon child
Woeful and wild;
Born in the evening,
Woe ends in grieving.
Night baby borning
Same as the morning.

But she remembered this as a joke, fondly. Woe is the natural end of life, yet we go on having babies.

No, said Nanny, an echo in Melena’s mind (and editorilizing as usual): No, no, you pretty little pampered hussy. We don’t go on having babies, that’s quite apparent. We only have babies when were young enough not to know how grim life turns out. Once we really get the full measure of it–were slow learners, we women–we dry up in disgust and sensibly hault production.

But men don’t dry up, Melena objected; they can father to the death.

Ah, we’re slow learners, Nanny countered. But they can’t learn at all.

I read this book a few years ago and I am starting it again tonight.  I hope that Maddie continues to love books as much as she does right now.  I am looking forward to the day when we can sit down and discuss a good book that we have read together.  This is one to add to the list:

The Posionwood Bible

By Barbara Kingsolver

Maddie and I spent Saturday afternoon with Nana T and Sydney. We went shopping and ended the day with a trip to Barnes and Noble. We were met inside the door by a local author, Byron Von Rosenberg. He read his latest book to Maddie and she seemed amazed that he could read the book without looking at the pages. She smiled and giggled while he read the book and of course Nana T had to buy it for her. He signed the book for Maddie and she had her picture taken. She is keeping her eye on the stuffed llama and was probably expecting it to either kiss her or spit on her.

Judging by the look on her face, I think she was waiting for the llama to spit.

Sydney went home with a “Ripley’s Believe It or Not” book. I remember checking out the same books at the library when I was her age. After Maddie went to bed we stayed up and she read the book to me and pointed out the really gross pictures. She reminds me so much of myself at her age and it makes me happy that she is reading and enjoying it.