Baker Towers

Well, here we go. A new year, a new snark-fest. I’ll try not to disappoint.

Except, disappoint I will, because… well… I got nothin. I mean, really, nothin. This book was okay. There wasn’t much to it. It was sort of interesting, sort of boring, and sort of…long.

I don’t actually know exactly how long it was. It was a couple weeks worth of walks with the dog, as I was listening to it on my iPod instead of reading it on the page. Usually I find listening to books quite stimulating while I’m walking. Often I’ll walk an extra round around the block just because I want to know what’s going to happen next. But this time… meh…

I’m not going to deny it was an okay story. The book documented a couple generations of lives in a coal mining town in Pennsylvania. The theme was predictable- tiny town, no place to work but the mines, everybody tries to get out, nobody really makes it, the mine (the heart of the town, blah, blah, blah) ends up keeping everybody together, but not in ways that are really all that positive. We’ve read this story a million times before, right? Right. Nothing new here.

So here’s the thing that I can’t figure out about authors. They write these long epic tales about these horrible little towns that everybody in their right mind would try to escape because they’re, well, horrible. So authors, my question is: if everybody in your books is trying to leave your rotten little town, what makes you think WE want to go there? Why do we really want to spend days, weeks, whatever, investing our time in all these people that just waste away? October Sky, I get. Good job, Homer, you made your mark. But this- hey, dad dropped dead of black lung and older son skipped out and married a leech and younger son gave up altogether and daughters alternately had to take care of the family remnants, went crazy, and became a nurse that took care of more old men dropping dead of black lung. Grandson became a Hell’s Angel and then married dad’s long-lost love’s daughter, and oh, did I forget to mention mom went blind because she ate too much sugar? I mean… it’s just sort of depressing.

So why did I read it? Well…nothing better to do. Authors may be too lazy to write an original book, but I’m too lazy to go to the library and try to fish out one.

2010... I did it, I really did.

So, I could have been all responsible and whatnot and blogged about all the books I read this year, too. But for some reason that started to sound more like a book report than a blog, and really, who wants to read all of my ramblings on other peoples’ writings? I think we all know the truth- my ranting (and/or raving, but mostly ranting) about what other people have written is nothing but an attempt on my part to disguise the fact that I am jealous as all get out that these people have discovered the secret of publishing their written word whilst I whittle my life away on a virtual farm and moan about the fact that I’ll never amount to anything.

Well, it’s true, sadly, but I’ve come to accept it: I probably never WILL amount to anything. While I will always be grateful for both the gifts and the talents that my Maker has bestowed upon me, I have come to realize that making my once-desired mark upon the world is indeed impossible. Gone are the fantasies of sold-out stadiums and Broadway theaters, no longer do I dream of replacing my paper-mache Pulitzer with the real thing, and I know now in my heart of hearts that I will never be the official Scrabblemaster of the World. (Thanks, Dawn, for cementing that last one for me. ;) ) It’s true, world, hold your screams of horror: I am mediocre. I have come to accept it. You should too.

However, just because I will never mean anything to the rest of the world doesn’t immediately lend itself to the fact that I am completely and utterly useless. You see, I still mean a great deal to myself and to the small circle that surrounds me. It’s possible that that circle includes only my husband (bound to me by law) and my dog (bound to me by his perpetually emptying food-dish), but by golly, that circle is my life and I mean to make the most of it. And as both my husband and my dog are a lot happier when I myself am happy (you’ve all heard the saying), therefore I must take it upon myself to engage in those activities which contribute most effectively to my own happiness. Henceforth- I shall continue to write my ridiculously unimportant but immensely satisfying (to me) thoughts about other people’s books. And those of you who are silly enough to continue clicking onto this blog will therefore subject yourselves to reading them. Lucky you! Whee!!

Make no mistake- I don’t fancy myself in any way a real critic, or someone whose opinion matters in the slightest. I just like to watch my thoughts take wordshape, and since I’m a pretty darn fast typist, this is a fun exercise for me. So keep reading if you like, but don’t be hatin’ on the hater… I’m just having fun. (However, I mean every word I say in this blog. It is up to you to decide whether or not those words drip with sarcasm. But if I’ve taken the time to craft a sarcastic comment, then I REALLY mean it, so either way…)

As for never making my mark upon the world… well, accepting mediocrity is a very liberating experience; I highly recommend it.

Here then, is a list of books that I read in 2010 but couldn’t be bothered to blog about. Doubtless I will visit a couple of these in future posts because they were just too good (or too bad) to not mention… but just because I feel the need for the blogosphere to know that I did (of course) accomplish my 52-in-52 challenge again, here’s my list:

1. Twilight
2. New Moon
3. Eclipse
4. Breaking Dawn

(Yes, that’s right, I started the year off with a vampire bang! Oh, we’ll be hearing about these later…)

5. The Color Purple (finally!)
6. How shall I tell the Dog (This one you HAVE to read, I won’t say any more about it)
7. O Pioneers! (Trying to cover some “classics”)
8. Ash Wednesday (a tasty little novel written by Ethan Hawke, I am a sucker for celebrity writers)
9. One Door Away From Heaven
10. Attack of the Theater People
11. Wake Up, Sir! (I have never read a more sarcastic book in my entire life. Every page begs you to roll your eyes, toss your head, stare daggers, and curl your lip in contempt. I loved it.)
12. Jane Eyre (now I get it…)
13. Heyday (this one’s coming up in a future blog. My, what a suckfest.)
14. jPod
15. Harry Potter and the Sorceror’s Stone
16. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
17. Harry Potter and the Prizoner of Azkaban
18. HP/Goblet of Fire
19. HP/Order of the Phoenix
20. HP/Half-Blood Prince
21. HP/Deathly Hallows

(Yeah, I’ve read them all before, but it still counts! Reading again is just as valuable as reading for the first time! And I had to list them one by one so I have the number 52 at the end… I am very, very anal about reaching my goals. And at this point in the list we’re only into August, so I got a lot of reading to do…)

22. Charlotte’s Web
23. Holes
24. The Twits
25. Boy (Roald Dahl’s “memoir,” highly recommended.)
26. The Fantastic Mr. Fox
27. Nothing But a Smile
28. Now and Then
29. As Simple as Snow
30. One Door Away From Heaven
31. Skeletons at the Feast
32. James and the Giant Peach
33. Anna Karenina
34. Unveiled: Tamar
35. Unashamed: Rahab
36. Unshaken: Ruth
37. Unspoken: Bathsheba
38. Unafraid: Mary

(those were actually five books packed into one binding. It was quite thick.)

39. The Hobbit
40. Tipperary
41. Danny, the Champion of the World
42. George’s Marvelous Medicine
43. The BFG
44. The Hour I First Believed
45. Going Solo (another Roald Dahl memoir, I can barely believe he’s still alive)
46. The Bookwoman’s Last Fling
47. Buck Naked Faith
48. The Wizarding World of Harry Potter
49. Mary’s First Christmas
50. The Secret Garden
51. A Girl From Yamhill (still a sucker for this one)
52. My Own Two Feet (part two of Beverly Cleary’s memoir)

And there you have it! I made it to 52! Actually, I had to work really, really hard on that this year because I didn’t have nearly as much time to read as I normally do. Plus, I started reading a little bit more on my Kindle rather than on actual pages, and all the books I have on that device are free “classics” (read: giant huge books with thousands of pages) that take for-freakin-ever to get through. But all are on the list of the greats that every book lover should read, so in between revisiting all those Judy Blume quickies from the library that allow me to relive my adolescence in deliciously painful style, I fight my way through a Tolstoy or Shakespeare and call myself literate.

Currently I’m in the middle of the Lewis and Clark Diaries. The original ones. Spelling errors and all. So… it might be a while before I post the first finished book of 2011…