Newsweek's 50 Books for Our Times & Top 100 Books

List Junky Alert: A friend just told me about these Newsweek reading lists. I've only superficially perused them so far, and I'm particularly interested in the "50 Books For Our Times" list. I'll be taking a closer look later, but for others who hadn't seen them, here are links:

Newsweek's 50 Books For Our Times

Newsweek's Top 100 Books: The Meta-List

One Happy Agility Dog!

For those of you who are curious, here is a video of Max and I on one of our agility runs from the other weekend. This is a "Standard" run, meaning we're running a course that has been predetermined by the judge, no making it up as we go along. :-) It's not the smoothest run on the planet. He is a handful sometimes! But no one can deny that Max is a dog who loooooves agility! Just for the record, he ran crazy, but this turned out to be a qualifying run, the latest in our quest for his CPE Agility Trial Champion title:

CALL ME BY YOUR NAME

by Andre Aciman



"Time makes us sentimental. Perhaps, in the end, it is because of time that we suffer." (Call Me by Your Name, p. 232)

Call Me By Your Name is the story of a young Italian man who falls deeply for his parents' summer guest, an American scholar working on a philosophy book. Their turbulent and passionate six weeks together is destined to end, but the emotions that memories evoke linger as each of their lives takes its own path.

Anyone who has ever had any kind of relationship will be able to identify with the angst of uncertainty that your feelings will be returned in kind, the excitement of a new love, the pain of loss, and the bittersweetness of memory. Andre Aciman so beautifully puts into words the confusion and euphoria, the loathing and adoration that I could see images of my own reckless youth in those of Elio and Oliver.

This was only the second book this year that made me cry. Not racking sobs like the first one, but earnest tears for the beauty of the tenderness that remained in the hearts of Elio and Oliver so many years after they parted. We should all be so lucky to have had such a moment in time to look back upon and smile, even if it hurts.

LLP: 2009 Third Quarter Goals

Wow. June has flown by so quickly I nearly forgot I need to set my third quarter goals for my Lifetime Learning Plan! Because these next three months will be spent engaged in outdoor reading as much as possible, I'm going to let the goals be fairly open ended without a lot of "textbooks at the dining room table" time. Here is what I would like to work on between now and September 30, 2009:

1) My main focus will be the Reading Challenges I signed up for. Because the Countdown Challenge will end Sept. 9, I will make that one my primary driver and aim to finish it along with at least seven others.

Decades Reading Challenge **Finished July 2, 2009**

2nds Reading Challenge **Finished July 12, 2009**

Pub Challenge **Finished July 29, 2009**

Support Your Local Library Challenge **Finished August 5, 2009**

1% Well Read Challenge **Finished August 10, 2009**

The Countdown Challenge **Finished September 6, 2009** (Yahoo! Did it!!)

2) Finish up The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative

3) I have at least three Knowledge Blocks in progress, including the one I originally wrote about regarding Art Forgery. I will try to rein in my literary ADD long enough to finish at least one of those blocks and write about it. I'm guessing it will be the one on the Borgias as that is my current obsession. :-) Though I also have one in the works on the Pacific War that I'm finding very interesting also. Decisions, decisions . . .

4) Continue picking away at books and lectures from my Teaching Company Course "Classic Novels: Meeting the Challenge of Great Literature".

I think that should keep me busy for a while. As for monthly goals, I think I'll alter that part of my plan by reporting which parts of these Quarterly Goals I accomplished at the end of each month rather than reporting what I plan to do at the beginning of each month. I tend to change my mind as days roll on, and it's kind of silly overkill for the blog posts. However, I reserve the right to go back to my original plan if I find myself wandering too far astray. Or simply to do whatever I want and quit apologizing to myself like I did something wrong. :-)

I'll link my progress posts as the months continue to fly by far too quickly:

July
August
September

In the meantime, Happy Reading, Everyone!

We Got Him!!

Yes, that would be a Minnesota Timberwolves cap on the head of Ricky Rubio!! All of us at the Draft Party went crazy! Now to cut through all the NBA "business" and actually get him here, which, it turns out, may be problematic. Oh, well. I'll keep my fingers crossed.

I have a show tonight, so I'll be singing instead of reading. But after this, I have a couple of months with no shows and no dog trials, so you all know where I'll be: On the patio with a stack of books. Until then, and in honor of our newest T-Wolf, here are Tony and I playing one of the songs we'll be doing tonight -- "Sweet Child 'O Mine":



Have a great weekend, everyone!

Please, Please, Pretty Please!

Tonight is the NBA Draft, and my Timberwolves are sure making it exciting! We traded Mike Miller and Randy Foye the other night for another great first round draft pick (we now have four total), but I get so attached to our guys that it's always difficult for me to see players leave due to trades, non-renewed contracts, etc. However, rumor has it that this is the man we may be going after:

Wouldn't that just suck to have to watch him play all season long? ;-) I'm thinking court side seats for next season. And I'll sell the plan to Peter under the guise of him needing a better view of the Dance Team. It's not totally a lie. He really would get a better view of the Dance Team. I like it! I think it will work! I mean, after all, if they're going to trade away all my favorite players (please don't trade Craig Smith, please don't trade Craig Smith), the least they can do is give me this Ricky Rubio guy to look at, right? (Holy cow. He's only 18 years old. I feel like a dirty old lady!)

I'll let you know tomorrow if I have to upgrade our seats. Maybe they'll let me be the Gatorade Girl during the games?

MADONNA OF THE SEVEN HILLS

by Jean Plaidy



"In a castle in the mountains outside Rome, Lucrezia Borgia is born into history's most notorious family. Her father, who is to become Pope Alexander VI, receives his daughter warmly, and her brothers, Cesare and Giovanni, are devoted to her. But on the corrupt and violent streets of the capital it is a very different story: the Borgia family is feared, and Lucrezia's father lives up to his reputation as 'the most carnal man of his age'." (From the cover of the Arrow Books edition.)

I was gushing just the other day about the ability to get Jean Plaidy reprints from Book Depository. Madonna of the Seven Hills was my first purchase from there, and I'm so glad I took the plunge! I've read Jean Plaidy a couple of times before, and I still feel that she is great for that dose of "history lite" that I find I so often want. The stories tend to move quickly but highlight the important people and events.

One of the best parts of reading this version of Lucrezia Borgia's life is that my memories of The Borgia Bride by Jeanne Kalogridis are so fresh in my mind. It was fascinating to compare how the two authors took the same set of facts and approached them in vastly different ways. For example, Kalogridis took the Borgia incest rumors head on, while Plaidy chose to portray the family as simply weirdly affectionate. They both agreed on the brutality of Cesare and Giovanni Boria and the corruption of Pope Alexander VI, but Plaidy hinted at it much more than blatantly showing their actions. Lucrezia's first pregnancy is told very differently in each book, but I believe the same man dies for it. (I can't check my Kalogridis book right now because a friend has it. Sorry!) Sanchia of Aragon, the heroine of The Borgia Bride, has a wildly different persona in Madonna of the Seven Hills. Both authors, however, cut Lucrezia some serious slack regarding her evil image. Now I'm wondering if she really was as bad as I've heard! Don't worry. I'll keep seeing what I can find out. :-)

Plaidy has split Lucrezia's story into two books, and I have Light on Lucrezia sitting right here to get to very, very soon. I already know how it ends, but it will be so much fun finding out how Ms. Plaidy gets there!

Happy Birthday, Skye!

Our Skye-man is five years old today! Skye is our rescue Border Collie and the "serious" one of the two. His favorite activities are agility lessons (but only if Daddy is running him), getting squirted with the garden hose, sheep herding, and lying in the grass scoping the neighborhood for anything that may need to be rounded up.





Happy Birthday, Skye!!