Still alive!

Not to worry! I have not fallen off the face of the planet, as you might have feared.

In fact, we have just returned from a double whammy of travel: my first ever trip to Hawaii, following immediately (the following day) by a journey to Northern California for a small family reunion. Pictures are to come, if I can figure out how to work the digital camera. It is all new technological territory to me.

Meanwhile my film consumption has fallen off utterly: I have had the same three DVDs out of Netflix for what seems like weeks. I have not made nearly the progress I was hoping to on my June reading, and may have to extend some of my goals and challenges into July. Boo to that. I am stilling reading the delightful (if tome-ish) David Copperfield, and am midway through two short ones: Foundation (the first Isaac Asimov I have ever read) and Grendel (which strikes me as both immensely clever and slightly... dutiful. Or perhaps dutifulness-evoking). And, what's more, I owe you a couple of reviews for Beasts of No Nation and Twilight of the Superheroes, not to mention an update on some of my other challenges.

But this may be delayed a little while longer, because we are heading off this very evening for the east coast for a wedding. Our travels are not yet ended, but when we settle down a bit at the beginning of July I hope to 1) finish up the remaining chapter and a half of my dissertation and 2) return to good-blogger status.

My favorite thing I read today

Oh, David Copperfield is proving to be so good. I haven't made up my mind yet whether it is better than Bleak House, which is certainly more artfully and ornately constructed, but it is filled to the brim with cheerful oddity, and this only makes the injustices visited upon poor Davey more wrenching.

So, I give you a passage from relatively early in the novel (no real spoilers here, I think, although it is a major plot point, so you can choose not to read on, if you wish), when young David meets his ferocious Aunt Betsey (think Miss Havisham, if that disheveled lady had followed a slightly different path in life) for the first time since the day of his birth:

'Oh, Lord!’ said my aunt. And sat flat down in the garden–path.

‘I am David Copperfield, of Blunderstone, in Suffolk — where you came, on the night when I was born, and saw my dear mama. I have been very unhappy since she died. I have been slighted, and taught nothing, and thrown upon myself, and put to work not fit for me. It made me run away to you. I was robbed at first setting out, and have walked all the way, and have never slept in a bed since I began the journey.’ Here my self–support gave way all at once; and with a movement of my hands, intended to show her my ragged state, and call it to witness that I had suffered something, I broke into a passion of crying, which I suppose had been pent up within me all the week.

My aunt, with every sort of expression but wonder discharged from her countenance, sat on the gravel, staring at me, until I began to cry; when she got up in a great hurry, collared me, and took me into the parlour. Her first proceeding there was to unlock a tall press, bring out several bottles, and pour some of the contents of each into my mouth. I think they must have been taken out at random, for I am sure I tasted aniseed water, anchovy sauce, and salad dressing. When she had administered these restoratives, as I was still quite hysterical, and unable to control my sobs, she put me on the sofa, with a shawl under my head, and the handkerchief from her own head under my feet, lest I should sully the cover; and then, sitting herself down behind the green fan or screen I have already mentioned, so that I could not see her face, ejaculated at intervals, ‘Mercy on us!’ letting those exclamations off like minute guns.

Could the prose be any more delightful? After David's long and painful trek through poverty to reach Betsey, we are rewarded by the administration of anchovy sauce and the minute artillery explosions of "Mercy!" I am loving it.

Book Awards Reading Challenge

After at least a month of hardy resistance to the temptations of online reading challenges, I have succumbed again. But who could resist this one, I ask you??

The "Book Awards" challenge that finally broke through my resolve was created by 3M, who explains the rules thus:
1. Read any 12 award-winning books from July 1, 2007 through June 30, 2008. Please look on the sidebar for eligible books from the Pulitzer, Booker, etc. prize lists. Also feel free to pick non-fiction books or other prize winners not listed.

2. Books may be cross-posted with other challenges.
You can find the blog for the challenge (or join it, for that matter) here. At the blog, 3M has posted her provisional list, a longer set of challenge rules (there are prizes!), and a wonderful list of possible awards and works you can choose from.

So, on to my (provisional. VERY provisional.) choices. I have tried to choose a number of Australian works, to fit in with my Year of Down Under Challenge (indicated by an asterisk in the list below). After December, the list may change to take into account the country I will be focusing on in 2008. I have also tried to spread my list of 12 evenly through a number of prizes, choosing at most 2 works from any single prize (although some of the works won more than one prize, and I am tricksy about this). But because I can never be truly strict with myself, I have also included a list of works that can serve either as alternates for my main list (should any book prove unappealing) or as "extra credit" reads. Here is the first draft of the list:

  1. The Bone People by Keri Hulme - BOOKER
  2. Gilead by Marilynne Robinson - NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE
  3. *Oscar and Lucinda by Peter Carey - MILES FRANKLIN
  4. *Dirt Music by Tim Winton - MILES FRANKLIN
  5. *The Secret River by Kate Grenville - COMMONWEALTH
  6. *Gould's Book of Fish by Richard Flanagan - COMMONWEALTH
  7. Small Island by Andrea Levy - ORANGE
  8. Samuel Pepys: the Unequalled Self by Claire Tomalin - WHITBREAD
  9. Citizen Vince by Jess Walter - EDGAR
  10. Hyperion by Dan Simmons - HUGO
  11. Parable of the Talents by Octavia E. Butler - NEBULA
  12. *The Great Fire by Shirley Hazzard - NATIONAL BOOK AWARD
Alternates/Extra Credit:
  1. *Cloudstreet by Tim Winton - MILES FRANKLIN
  2. A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth - COMMONWEALTH
  3. *The True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey - BOOKER
  4. Home Truths by Mavis Gallant - GOV. GENERAL'S
  5. Neuromancer by William Gibson - HUGO/NEBULA
  6. English Passengers by Matthew Kneale - WHITBREAD/MILES FRANKLIN
  7. The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter - NATIONAL BOOK AWARD
  8. The Known World by Edward P. Jones - NBCC/PULITZER
  9. Austerlitz by W.G. Sebald - NBCC
  10. Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem - NBCC
  11. Tehanu by Ursula K. Le Guin - NEBULA
  12. Waiting by Ha Jin - PEN/FAULKNER
  13. March by Geraldine Brooks - PULITZER
  14. Empire Falls by Richard Russo - PULITZER