Bloggiesta Wrap Up

The Bloggiesta, hosted by Natasha at Maw Books, is officially over!  To refresh your (and my) memory, here were my goals for the 48-hour blogfest:

• Catch up on the posts I have ideas for.  Done!  I wrote and posted one of my to-do entries on my personal blog (e-mail me if you want the link).
  
• Do my first author interview!  Done!  My interview with Simone Elkeles is finished and will publishes here soon.
  
• Try to make my blogspot site look nicer than it does now.  I made some changes to blogspot; not sure if it looks that much better, though.
  
• Write up reviews.  I wrote two reviews.
  
• Try to figure out who I'm following on twitter that I'm not following on GR, and vice versa.  This did not get done.
  
• Do an update for my blog challenges.  I wrote one challenge update.
  
• I might get adventurous and experiment with doing a vlog entry, but we'll have to see how it goes.  Nope, didn't happen.
  

I clocked in over 27 hours of blogging during the Bloggiesta.  During that time, I wrote a total of six posts (seven including this one) and completed 9 mini-challenges (I only half-completed 3 mini-challenges, for various reasons).  Here are the ones I managed to completely finish:

• Emily from Emily’s Reading Room - Are you talking about me?
• Deborah from Books, Movies, and Chinese Food - You have a blog?  So tell me about it.
• Lynn from Chronicle of an Infant Bibliophile - Get listed.
• Jen from Devourer of Books - Wow. I wrote that when?  Let’s update.
• Amy from My Friend Amy - I need a friend.
• Michelle from GalleySmith - Anchor text.  You mean there’s a way this *should* be done?
• Andrea from Book Blather - Authorities?  What authorities?
• Ruth from Bookish Ruth - You’re going to analyze what?

Hmm, that's actually only eight, but I'm too tired to figure out where and why my counting is off at this point.  Anyway, the mini-challenges were great!  They were all about improving your blog, blog traffic, and connecting with other bloggers.  My favorite was probably Book Blather's challenge about reading blogging tips.  I not only learned about, but got an idea for a post!  I wanted to do all the challenges, but I simply ran out of time.

Overall the Bloggiesta was successful for me.  I didn't get everything done that I wanted to--there are still reviews to do, reading challenges to update, etc.--but I think I did pretty well overall.  Plus, it was just plain fun!  I loved learning from and talking with the bloggers who were part the challenge.  Thank you everyone for helping, chatting, and talking about ice cream. :)

And huge kudos and thanks to Natasha at Maw Books for hosting this challenge!  It was great experience and I can't wait for the next Bloggiesta!  If you get the chance, definitely join in.

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The Immortals: The Crossing

Immortals: The Crossing by Joy Nash

This is actually the sixth book in The Immortals series, unbeknownst to me when I bought it.  However, I don't think my understanding of the book was impeded too much by the fact that I hadn't read the others.  Sidhe Prince Manannán mac Lir is a Celtic demigod and a world-famous musician who discovers a witch named Artemis Black has been stealing life magic from the fae under his protection.  What makes Artemis strange and unique is that she can cast both death and life magic at once, something that Mac thinks should be impossible; and unfortunately for him, he's very attracted to her.

Who specifically are The Immortals?  The book doesn't really address that question directly, but they appear to be a bunch of kick-ass faeries who killed a demon and now have stains of darkness on their soul.  This leads them to do thing faeries normally wouldn't do, like fall in love with a witch who practices death magic.

This book was enjoyable, if not brilliant, up until Mac follows Artemis in Hell.  Hell is modeled on Dante's Inferno, so you know what that means:  first they cross Styx.  Then they go to Purgatory.  Then they go to level one.  Then they go to level two.  Then they go to omygodsoboringcouldyouhavepleasecomeupwithsomethingmoreoriginalARGH.  Besides the fact that Hell is, well, hellish, at this point in the book I started getting annoyed by certain things. 

For example, there is one demon in Hell who is a cowboy and uses the term y'all.  This would fine if he was actually talking to more than one person.  Instead, he uses it when he's talking to a single person.  What. the hell.  Y'all is short for you all, which means it is a plural--that is not only common knowledge, but painfully obvious.  Addressing a single person as "y'all" makes about as much sense as calling a single bird a flock.  Methinks someone needs to take a Basics of American Coloquism Along with Many Other European Languages That Do the Same Thing class.

Also, Hell is very modern:  the River Styx is actually a freeway, Purgatory is a parking lot, and to get to Hell you take an elevator (which I imagine looks something like this).  I wouldn't mind this vision of Hell if it fit with the rest of the book--if the characters were office drones, for example--but they're a Celtic faerie and a witch.  Why are Pagans even going to a Christian Hell?  And why are faeries using the internet?  Way to suck out all the magic and enchantment out of the story, person who is writing about magic!  I love the fact that modern technology trumps actual magic in books these days.  Why not just kill me now.

But I'm aware that these are just personal pet peeves, and that they likely wouldn't bother anyone else.  What really made the book fail for me was that at some point, Mac's devotion to Artemis becomes ridiculous.  She betrays him at every turn, to his physical and emotional detriment; and he still goes above and beyond to help her, even risking his own life on several occassions.  If the two characters had been given a chance to form an actual emotional attachment--as opposed to just having sex--I might have been able to believe it.  But as it was, Mac just seemed like a guy being led around by his libido.  As for Artemis, I know she is trying to save her kid, but there comes a point where I just started losing respect for her because of the deals she makes with various demons.  I don't think saving your kid gives you a free pass to betray people and make the world a worse place, sorry.  And what was really bothersome was, I knew she would get her kid back and marry mac Lir at the end of the novel--because it's a romance--and I don't think she deserved either. 

Overall I felt this book didn't contain very much in the way romance or enchantment, and I didn't find the relationship between Mac and Artemis convincing.  I probably won't be picking up the other novels in this series, either.

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Rejuvenate and Renew Reading Challenge

I joined mjmbecky's from One Literature Nut Rejuvenate and Renew Reading Challenge a few weeks ago.  Here are the details of the challenge:

Here's the challenge:

• Choose any three non-fiction books that deal with a topic you've wanted to learn more about. This could be money & finance, home decorating, budget tips, weight loss, nutrition, beauty & fashion, writing, religion, philosophy, literary theory, or even a biography. (You get the picture.) Basically, take three how to or self help books that you've been wanting to read, and join in!
• Read these books between June 1st and September 1st.
  
• Sign up by posting a simple comment below. (I didn't want to make things too complicated for this first challenge...for myself, or for anyone else!)
  
• Take the button created above and post in your own blog, with a link back here so that we can all see what everyone is reading.
• Review your books, and once a week I'll put up a post that you can link your own post/review.
  
• Enjoy finding out more about what everyone else is learning this summer!

I'm happy to report that I completed my first book in the challenge last night!  I chose to read Symbol & Magic in Egyptian Art by Richard H. Wilkinson.



This book was recommend to me by Harmony0stars, and it was a great introductory book into the symbolism that's prevalent in Ancient Egyptian Art.

All of Egyptian art is functional--meaning it's never simply decorative.  All statues, paintings, and objects that we know from the art of the Egyptians served a spiritual and religious function.  It also likely had layers upon layers of symbolic meaning.  I'm not going to go into the specifics of how the symbols interact with each other too much, because that would be like rewriting the book (something I definitely don't want to do), but the types of symbols Wilkinson covers are:

• Form--self-explanatory.  What a thing is can take on symbolic meaning--for example, a mirror is not functional as just a mirror, but symbolic of Re Horakhty (god of the sun).
• Size--This essentially refers to hieratic scaling (where the most important people in the image are the largest and the least important are the smallest).  Hieratic scaling is not symbolic; however, in certain instances in Egyptian art, hieratic scaling can take on symbolic overtones.  Monumental statues, like the one of Ramses that inspired "Ozymandias," were likely made so big because things in the afterlife were supposed to be huge.
• Location--To the Egyptians, their land was literally the center of the universe.  The Nile reflected the river in the heavens (or the Milky Way), and the earth itself consisted of a series of worlds or concentric rings (Dante's Inferno, anyone?), with Egypt literally in the middle.  The location of temples and tombs often reflect this world view in a relative or absolute way.
• Materials--Certain materials contain certain symbolic connotations; kind of straight-forward.
• Color--Ditto; certain colors symbolize certain things.  One of the interesting points in this chapter is that colors were often interchangeable--green and black, for example, since black could be the earth and green symbolized fecundity.  Also, nearly all hieroglyphs written in an official capacity were color-coded to give added meaning to what was being written.
• Numbers--Not necessarily numerology, just a general symbolism of numbers that Egyptians thought were auspicious.
• Hieroglyphs--This was by far my favorite chapter in the book.  Hieroglyphs also had symbolic meaning and were pretty much analogous to painting or sculpture.  In fact, Champollion (guy who translated the Rosetta Stone) said "a statue is often 'in reality... only a single glyph, a veritable character of written script.'" (151)  The Egyptians thought the glyphs that decorated their temples came alive and had their own personality and symbolic meaning.  They not only read them phonetically, like we read our script, but ideographically, as a rebus, and as visual analogies and metaphors.  In comparison, our modern script seems pretty lame.
• Actions--Many of the actions pharaohs and others take part in on their tomb walls have symbolic meaning.  The jubilee race, for example, is something nearly every single pharaoh is shown taking part in.  The race was the pharaoh's symbolic claiming of the land of Egypt. 
• Gestures--Just like us (waving hello, shaking hands, flipping someone off), the Ancient Egyptians used symbolic gestures in everyday life which appear on their tombs.  This seems like an truly fascinating topic, but Wilkinson doesn't spend enough time on it, in my opinion.

So, as you can see, symbolism in Egyptian art is a very complex subject, which Wilkinson condenses into an admirably short and readable text.  I wouldn't say this is a good book for people who don't know anything about Egyptian Art to start with--I still think Egyptian Art by Jaromir Malek is the best introduction to the subject that I've come across--but if you do know the basics about it and are interested in the symbols of Egyptian Art, this is definitely a book I would recommend.  In fact, I would consider reading more of Wilkinson's books in the future.

So that's it for my first book in the Rejuvenate and Renew Challenge.  There are still two more to go!  I think I'm going to tackle Buddhism next with a book Rebecca at I'm Lost in Books sent me.  I just want to say thank you to mjmbecky for hosting this challenge and giving me an incentive to read the nonfiction books I wanted to this summer!  I am so happy I read Symbol & Magic in Egyptian Art, and if it hadn't been for this challenge, it would still be sitting in my TBR stack.  So thank you, mjmbecky!

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Beastly

Once upon a time, in a faraway land, a young prince lived in a shining castle.  Although he had everything his heart desired, the prince was spoiled, selfish, and unkind.  But then, one winter's night, an old beggar woman came to the castle and offered him a single rose in return for shelter from the bitter cold.  Repulsed by her haggard appearance, the prince sneered at her gift, and turned the old woman away.  But she warned him not to be deceived by appearances, for beauty is found within.  And when he dismissed her again, the old woman's ugliness melted away, to reveal a beautiful enchantress.  The prince tried to apologize, but it was too late; for she had seen that there was no love in his heart.  And, as punishment, she transformed him into a hideous beast and placed a powerful spell upon the castle, and all who lived there.  Ashamed of his monstrous form, the beast concealed himself inside the castle, with a magic mirror as his only window to the outside world.  The rose she had offered was truly an enchanted rose, which would bloom until his twenty-first year.  If he could learn to love another, and earn her love in return, before the last petal fell, then the spell would be broken.  If not, he would be doomed to remain a beast for all time.  As the years passed, he fell into despair, and lost all hope--for who could ever learn to love a beast?

Sound familiar?  That's the introduction to Disney's Beauty and the Beast, and I used it here because this book is basically exactly like that.  It takes this introduction from the Disney movie, which focuses on the Beast's perspective, and turns it into an entire novel.

I read this book because Ruth from Booktalk & More recommended it; and as I believe I've mentioned, I pretty much do whatever she tells me. :)  I didn't like it as much as she did, though.

Kyle Kingsbury is the most popular and handsome boy at a hoity-toity NYC prep school.  Then he makes the mistake of pissing off a girl with green hair (witch! hel-loooooo!), and she turns him into a beast. 

Don't feel too sorry for Kyle.  His father installs him in a huge brownstone mansion in Brooklyn with a private tutor and internet access.  The guy doesn't even have to go to school!  My parents would have made me go to school--I'm just saying.  And he has two years to find his tru wuv and have her kiss him so he can return to his perfect human form.  Conveniently, he manages to get a girl to stay with him, and she just happens to fall in love with.  How convenient.  And they live happily ever after.

The problems I had with this book mostly stem from the fact that it's told from the Beast's perspective.  There's a reason why the original fairy tale is told from Beauty's point of view--Beauty is the one who is put in peril, who discovers things, and who risks the most by falling in love.  The Beast is a whiny brat.  He sure as heck doesn't deserve to be loved by Beauty--or Lindy, in this case--and I have serious doubts about how much he really loves her.  I mean, she's the only woman in the house, and she's the only chance he has of breaking the curse.  If she was the most terrible bitch on earth he'd probably still want her.  Telling a fairy tale from the prince's perspective can work (I'm thinking of something like The Slipper and the Rose), but I don't think it worked here.

Not that the book didn't have its good points.  I did laugh at Kyle's self-deprecating humor and the borderline-psycho things he does to get Lindy's attention.  By far the most entertaining part of the book were the IM chats between Kyle and several other fairy tale characters--the Little Mermaid, the Frog Prince, and a bear.  I also loved all the literature shout-outs in the book to works like The Phantom of the Opera and The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

Overall Beastly was a light, enjoyable read.  But in the end I just couldn't believe that Kyle, returned to his beautiful human self, would still see the beauty in Lindy and think reading was cool.  I didn't really feel like he suffered for being fugly and that he was fully reformed, or truly in love, and that is a fail of the book's most basic premise.

Buy Beastly by Alex Flinn at Amazon

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What Are Your Favorite Contemporary Romances?

I saw this at Adventures in Katidom and thought it would make an good post:  What are some of your favorite single-title contemporary romances?  I don't read a lot of contemporary romances, but there are definitely a few that I love.  Here they are:



Drive Me Wild by Julie Ortolon

Julie Ortolon is one of my favorite contemporary romance writers.  Drive Me Wild was her first release, and it's still my favorite.  Laura Beth is a shy, small town girl who has always yearned to escape from Beason's Ferry, Texas--just like her best friend from high school, Brett Michaels, who was the town bad boy but is now a big-time TV news anchor.  This book has some of my all-time favorite romance tropes:  uptown girl meets downtown boy; childhood sweethearts (even though they were technically just friends), and a brooding hero.  Also, fast cars--fast cars are always a plus.



Just the Sexiest Man Alive by Julie James

I wasn't sure I was going to like this book, and at first I didn't.  But then I realized it was actually a take on Pride & Prejudice, and one of the cleverest ones I've ever read.  Hard working, no-nonsense Taylor is assigned to babysit movie star Jason, whom ALL the women want because he's handsome and rich.  And he knows it.  I loved the character of Jason and how this book feels like a Preston Sturges romantic comedy.  A totally fun and enjoyable read.



Crazy Hot by Tara Janzen

Have I mentioned I love fast cars?  Well, Janzen's Hot books are full of fast cars.  Quinn Younger is a former car thief who is now working for black ops out of... Denver?  Hrm.  Okay, whatever.  Anyway, former bad boy, yay!  And he's been obsessed with this woman named Regan ever since they were teenagers and he helped her professor father out at a dinosaur dig (part of juvenile offender reform program).  This is another really fun book that's total escapist reading.  And the love scene on the hood of Quinn's car?  Definitely hot.








It Must Be Love by Rachel Gibson

One of the most enjoyable contemporary romances I've read. The hero is a cop (I heart stories with cops), and the heroine is a New Age-y yoga instructor. Will the no-nonsense cop be able to get along with the miss flighty spirituality froo-froo? I just don't know!




The Widow by Anne Stuart

One of the things I love about this book is that the character of Aristide, the dead half of "the widow," is based on Picasso.  Art history shout-out!  Also, the heroine, Charlie, is kick-ass; and the hero, Connor, is really hawt.  Add in a Gothic atmosphere set among the beautiful scenery of Tuscany and this book is a total win.



Charmed, I'm Sure by Liz Ireland

One of my friends told me I should read this book, and I'm glad I did.  A woman named Callie accidentally turns her boss into a golden retriever, and then she falls in love with his nephew.  The set-up sounds lame, but aside from being really funny, this book is actually surprisingly impactful.  The characters are so well-drawn that you can't help but sympathize with them, and despite the fact that one of them has magical powers, they deal with real-world problems.  I was really touched at the end of this book, and it was entertaining.  What more can you ask for?



Baby, Don't Go by Susan Andersen

This is by far my favorite Susan Andersen book.  Nick is a high-society photographer.  He hires Daisy, a security guard, to help protect him from the mafia--or something.  But the twist is, when they were teenagers, Daisy was in love with Nick and he disappeared immediately after the first and only time they had sex.  So she's pretty pissed at him.  I love the twist of having the heroine be the tough cop character, and Nick and Daisy have awesome chemistry together.

What are your favorite contemporary romances?

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True Blood: Art History Shout-Out!

Last night--well, this morning, actually, since I recorded it on the DVR--I watched True Blood for the first time. I enjoyed it. Some parts were a little draggy for me, but over all it was fun to watch. Although--is Sookie going to get angry at Bill every single episode? Because he was born 150 years ago and he's vampire, so I don't get how she could be shocked that he wouldn't tell her that he 1. changed a seventeen-year-old into a vampire, or 2. killed her uncle who apparently did something bad to her.



So, did anyone else notice the art historical shout-out that was in the episode??? When Sam (top pic at right) broke into Maryann Forrester's house when he was seventeen, he picked up an object like the one above, which is an Ancient Egyptian sculpture called The Bird Lady. Scholars think it depicts a goddess because it's so large, and because the features are anthropomorphic (half bird, half woman). Is this a clue as to what Forrester is and where she comes from? Considering Forrester had it in her house, I'd say Sam and Tara better watch out.



Here's a short video of the Egyptian curator at the Brooklyn Museum talking about The Bird Lady:

ETA: The Brooklyn Museum has a blog post about The Bird Lady in True Blood, too. Check it out!

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Unconventional Classics

What would you definite as a "classic"? Is it just something old, or is there more to it? Something that's instantly recognizable, that one is immediately familiar with? Or something that defines a time period or generation? Furthermore, who decides what is and isn't a classic? Art history is very self-reflexive about who decides what is "great art" and what isn't, but what about literature?

I've always wondered about that and about the people who make lists of classic literature. How do you edit that? What are your standards? And most importantly, why should I have to read it?

I started thinking of this when I read a post about how "most bibliophiles would love to read the so-called classics of literature." I considered it even more later in the week because of all the examples of bookish snobbery that have been popping up lately on various blogs.

While I admire the promotion of difficult reading material and challenging others to read outside their comfort zone, I disagree the one should read books just because they're classics. I don't think most bibliophiles--or most anyone--would love to read most classics. Like Proust. You must be kidding me. No, what people who love to read want to read are books that speak to them, entertain them, illuminate them--something they can connect with. A whole different world they can sink into. That's what makes people enjoy reading in the first place. Even English class, which can occasionally feel like an indoctrination machine, is not supposed to be torture or rigmarole or history. It's a class on how to appreciate books and stories, and where you figure out what kind of books you like to read.

In an ideal world, classics would be reads that were guaranteed to involve and inspire readers. But as we all know, no reader is the same, and no two readers--even if they have very similar tastes in books--will necessarily like the same thing. When you don't enjoy a classic, it becomes either a historical curiosity or a torture device--or both. If you don't enjoy a classic book, why would you want to read it? You wouldn't. Yet I, as a lover of books, am supposed to read something just based on the fact that it is a classic?

What I'm trying to say in a roundabout and not entirely effective way is, classic literature is just like regular fiction today. In fact, what is and isn't classic has more to do with us and what we like to read than the past. Classics aren't special, they aren't immutable. Charles Dickens wrote popular fiction. F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote popular fiction--soap opera-esque fiction, if you want to be completely honest about it. Jane Eyre was a trashy romance. So anyone (re: snobby indie bookstore sellers and uptight women in gyms) who looks down at genre fiction and thinks "literature" or classics are more worthwhile of being read than "trashy" paperbacks is not only proving they don't know what they're talking about, but also making a rather ironic ass out of themselves.

To me, the term Classic in relation to literature is completely meaningless. Does "classic" tell me what the book is about, what you appreciated about it, or why I should read it? No. It just tells me some anonymous person I don't know decided it was worthy of the "literature" tag.

Which leads me to my third train of thought (I won't bore you with four and five, I promise). When André Breton was working at a library, he used to get really bored and would read all of the old, neglected books of poetry in the storage section of the library (never underestimate a bored librarian). The poets he discovered there and loved--like Rimbaud--became inspirations to the Surrealists and are now considered classic, must-read French poets. So what if each one of us could create our own corp of classic books and authors? Books that we've actually read, that we feel are must-reads, and that don't--and wouldn't--appear on anyone else's Classic literature lists? Would those books become the classics of the future?

I think they would. And I think they will. Because when it comes right down to it, no matter what kind of books you like, all readers want the same basic thing from them: a good story. Great characters you can believe in. Escapism. Never apologize for a novel that gives you those things, because that's the gift that books are meant to give you.

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