a wolf angel is not a good angel

I’ve decided what I love doing — and miss doing — is falling asleep on the sofa, in front of a fire. It is now just barely cold enough for a fire. It smells lovely.

1. The first poem I remember reading/hearing/reacting to was…

I know I’d read poetry beforehand, but I clearly remember being about 8 and having my mother read to me Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats before we saw Cats. I was disappointed when ‘The Old Gumbie Cat’ left out my favourite verse in song. The reading also ushered in a time where she went back to reading books to me at night — The Wind in the Willows, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Sword in the Stone (I read the rest of the novels myself later), East of Eden, Jane Eyre.

2. I was forced to memorize (name of poem) in school and……..

I was forced to memorise French poetry, but I don’t remember any of it. I was forced to memorise a speech from Macbeth, which I do remember. I was never forced to memorise In Flanders Fields, but I remember it anyhow. I was once allowed to memorise any poem I wanted, and I chose Jabberwocky. I usually mix up whether the Jabberwock’s claws that catch come before the jaws that bite or vice versa.

3. I read/don’t read poetry because….

I read it quite rarely because I don’t often come across it.

4. A poem I’m likely to think about when asked about a favorite poem is …….

Perhaps WS Merwin’s Words from a Totem Animal.

4.5: There are some poets/poems that I don’t like or don’t understand…

Which no doubt says more about me than the poets and poems.

5. I write poetry, but…

I stopped for personal reasons.

6. My experience with reading poetry differs from my experience with reading other types of literature…..

Because poetry is different — my experience reading fiction is different from non-fiction, mystery from fantasy, and so on. I have never considered poetry to be the specialest of the types of literature. (Nor do I think it is less special.)

7. I find poetry…

Usually in magazines.

8. The last time I heard poetry…

I don’t remember when I last heard poetry.

9. I think poetry is…

Too vast a subject to be coverable in a fill in the blank meme sentence.

via Amanda

Why do people seem to be more interested in the title of Harry Potter VII than the release date? It’s not like the last titles have been all that informative, and I’d much prefer a concrete date for an untitled book than a title for an eventual book.

Update: title is now available through a hangman game on JKR’s main site, or approximately 27 million other web pages (as of now, *excluding* Wikipedia), none of which have been indexed on google yet.

Am dumping BSG Seasons 1 & 2 onto my ipod — I am almost halfway through converting season 2. (I also have a few other shows I might put on there, I am not sure how much room I have left. And realistically, I do not need more than my season of Deadwood and two seasons of BSG. But I have quite a number more. I still have not figured out how to get my Buffy DVDs there.) The problem is that, though I watched the miniseries and the first episode, and though they were interesting, they didn’t hook me. (Also, the first bits of Deadwood didn’t, either.) And though people who give good tv recommendations have recommended these, I still feel like I am being silly and forcing myself to watch something I don’t want to. Don’t kill me, BSG fans! I have a 24 hour drive, and though my goal is to exhaust myself enough that I sleep through most of it, I will still have hours of tv watchability.

What I have not done: made good playlists for my music. This means I don’t listen to half the stuff I want to, because it’s such a pain to find it.

Tonight I went for dinner (Indian! preceded by good coffee!), and it was delicious, though we ordered way too much and I am overly full. Still, I was introduced to what must be the best thing ever, chana samosa: a samosa covered with chickpeas, some kind of yogurt sauce and tamarind. Mmm. Except for the fact that the idea of food is really quite unappealing right now because I am so very full. The only problem with this place is that it’s not spicy enough.

Today’s dilemma: someone is feeling lonely — her friends and family are elsewhere, and her husband works opposite hours. Should she just give up and be a loner?

Cary’s ever so useful answer, which totally doesn’t feed into my neuroses:

Go visit your mother, tell your siblings you’re desperate and you need them to visit you, speak to your friends and pretend you’re totally happy but make plans to visit them, as family is loyal no matter what, but friends are only loyal if you’re funny.

Why do I read this crap?

I just made one of my favourite recipes, a chocolate shortbread with toblerone bits. Yum! Except it turned out, well, less yum. I mean, they’re pretty and all, and they’re not *bad*, just not as wonderfully delicious as they ought to be.

I haven’t baked in *weeks*. I cleaned up (partially) my kitchen for these cookies. They should not have turned out so blah. (No fair telling me about unrealistically high expectations.)

On the good side, I bought Turtles ice cream cause it was on sale.

I have no idea what I should blog about. I’ve been reading Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman, but it’s too sad, all about people being alone and lonely. (Some of the stories are brilliant. But sad.)

I have a history, I think, of asking for blogging ideas when I am down and being too down to use them, but maybe this time I’ll really do it. Anyone have any requests? Ideas? Anything? Though in other ways, it wouldn’t be bad if I took a *planned* hiatus. I don’t want to do it quite yet, though.

Is totally not the answer I thought I’d get.

Fairest & The Princess Tales, both by Gail Carson Levine
Ella Enchanted is up there on my favourite books list, so I was really excited for Fairest. And as long as I ignored the totally annoying part of making a secondary character in Ella Enchanted the sister of the main character here (it didn’t add to anything, unlike reusing other characters, which did, and staying in the same world, which made lots of sense). This was, of course, a retelling of Snow White, which (a) is not my favourite fairy tale and (b) was already done so brilliantly by Neil Gaiman (Snow Glass Apples) that there is almost no point in ever reading another retelling. But this one was fine.
The Princess Tales are a collection of retold fairy tales as short stories. I was most fond of the princess and the pea, but most of them are good.

Helen of Troy / by Margaret George
So, The Autobiography of King Henry VIII is up there as one of my favourite books ever. Her other books have been ok (Mary, Queen of Scotland and the Isles), barely ok (Cleopatra), unreadable (Mary, called Magdalene — but she wanted to write about Judas and was told she couldn’t; her chapters on Judas were far and away the best parts of the book), so I was half excited, half trepidacious. I am a fan of Greek mythology, after all.

But in the end, this one won me over. I didn’t always like the people, but I don’t always like non-fictional people, either. And I liked how matter of factly the gods were invoked, rarely doing anything but appearing to people in dreams. I also liked — especially liked — the story of Helen and Menelaus’s life together, after Troy.

I do wonder, though — are there any modern tellings of this story which are not sympathetic primarily to Troy, and which don’t portray Achilles as a sociopath?

The secret river / by Kate Grenville.
I really, really liked this. A lot. About a convict and his family, in London and then sent to Australia. I don’t want to blog much about the main themes of the book, because it will ruin the ending, which, though not a huge shock, is still something you want to be surprised by.

Carry me down / by M.J. Hyland.
This was fine — about a boy who can detect lying, maybe, and his dysfunctional family and inability to understand other people or social interaction. He reminded me a bit of my sister, so it was difficult.