Just how nerdy am I?

I took the Star Trek character quiz! And I can't believe I'm posting this. I'm blaming it on sleep-depreviation. I'll write about something worth reading tomorrow....

...I would have so wanted to be like Jean-Luc Picard, even if it meant shaving my head.

...I would have much rather been Beverly Crusher or Lt. Uhura over Deanna Troi in just about any sector of the galaxy!

...Would I have been most like James T Kirk if I said I made out with lots of pretty girls?

But a RED SHIRT???? I'm taking my phaser off stunned!

Your results:
You are An Expendable Character (Redshirt)
Since your accomplishments are seldom noticed, and you are rarely thought of, you are expendable. That doesn't mean your job isn't important but if you were in Star Trek you would be killed off in the first episode you appeared in.
An Expendable Character (Redshirt) 85%

Jean-Luc Picard 80%
Deanna Troi 75%
Will Riker 75%
Chekov 65%
James T. Kirk (Captain) 60%
Spock 57%
Uhura 55%
Geordi LaForge 55%
Mr. Scott 55%
Beverly Crusher 55%
Mr. Sulu 45%
Data 35%
Leonard McCoy (Bones) 30%
Worf 25%

Click here to take the "Which Star Trek character am I?" quiz...

Movies and Meta Fiction and Death and Taxes and Sugar Cookies.....

....and a whole lot more: that's what the delightful Stranger than Fiction is about.

If you've seen the trailer to Will Ferrell's latest movie, you know that it is about an IRS auditor who suddenly hears the voiceover narration of his dull life, an omniscient narrator heard saying "Little did he know, Harold was about to die...". I was skeptical that this would be anything more than a clever Hollywood gimmick, a setup used for the usual frat-boy comedy that Ferrell is known for. So it seemed like the perfect movie choice for a cold, rainy November afternoon -- not too heavy, kind of funny, and probably forgettable. But it wasn't the laugh-out-loud funny Ferrell antics one would expect, and it isn't so lighthearted that it is forgettable in the distance between the theatre door and your parked car.

Ferrell's character, Harold Crick, tries to find answers to the sudden narration of his life, but refuses the medical diagnosis of schizophrenia and instead turns to help of a literary nature from literature professor Jules Hilbert, played by Dustin Hoffman. At the professor's urging, Harold, in his slightly compulsive way, tries to determine if his life is a comedy or a tragedy. His efforts are suggestive of both. But, by assessing his life, Harold begins to take action to do something other than his usual calculated (sometimes literally) life, especially when he begins to fall in love with the tax-protesting, socially conscious baker Ana, played by Maggie Gyllenhaal. Meanwhile, writer Kay Eiffel (Emma Thompson) struggles with writer's block as she tries to imagine Harold's imminent death.

I don't want to give anything away, but the movie not only pokes fun at the nature of novels, but also at the little quirks of one's life. Is there only one ending to a book -- or to life? Do we actually choose our fates? Is fiction more 'real' than real life? Is there more than just death and taxes? (Hint to the last question: Sugar Cookies).

I loved how the narration gimmick worked in this movie. A movie that deals with meta-fiction may sound weird, but is it really any stranger than in written form? At least in the movie it is accessible and humorous. The movie recognizes that the viewer will understand the use of an omniscient narrator in fiction -- and then turns it on it's ear in a playful way. Is life a comedy? Is it a tragedy? How omniscient can a narrator really be? A reader understands the issues with narration while reading a novel, but can overlook the inherent problems with narrative technique during reading. In the same way, the movie-goer is both aware that the idea of a narrator intruding and directing the life of a real character is ridiculous, but is part of the plot. In the end Stranger Than Fiction is not about fiction, or writing technique, or writer's block. But it is about life and, in some ways, about how fiction can so adeptly describe the truthfulness of life.

Too tough a puzzle...and a poem

I should have broken the rules and chosen another book when I did the "What am I Reading" post last week. I don't think that I would have guessed it either. I am so bad at remembering quotes.

Google would actually have given you the answer to the first poem, but I know that none of my fine readers would cheat. That poem is: "I Wander'd Lonely as a Cloud" by William Wordsworth. It is on page 123 in Rules for the Dance: A Handbook for Writing and Reading Metrical Verse, by .....DING!DING!DING!DING! .... Dorothy was right when she guessed Mary Oliver in the comments. This book is, as the secondary title suggests, a handbook on poetry, with an anthology of poems which demonstrate the techniques that Oliver discusses in the book. The title (since I gave a clue to it in the previous post) comes from the following quote by Alexander Pope:

True ease in writing comes from art, not chance,
As those move easiest who have learned to dance.

I bought the Oliver book, along with two others (Why I Wake Early: New Poems, and Winter Hours: Prose, Prose Poems, and Poems) at a reading that Mary Oliver gave at Butler University last week. It was a joy to listen to Ms. Oliver read a selection of her work. Some funny, some politically jabbing, many insightful: all gave the listener a sense of beauty and awe in life around us. Oliver's keen sense of observation of the natural world forces you to be aware not only of the world of the poem, but also of the world around you. I found it fitting, therefore, when a sudden windy storm blew through town in the middle of her reading, so loud that it could have drowned out the microphone. Oliver did not try to talk over it. Rather, she stood silently, almost reverently, and let the storm sing its own poem (a lament, I think) for a minute or so before continuing.

As I left the auditorium, the cooled air caused steam to rise from the warmer streets and lawns. As I walked the few blocks to my car, I composed a poem in my head. It seemed so perfect as I composed it. Although I tried to write it down as soon as I was in the car & had a pen, I'm sure that most of it immediately left my brain and was consumed by the foggy night. Even after I finish reading Oliver's handbook, I think it is unlikely that I'll ever master the artful dance of metrical poetry. Nevertheless, here is the less perfect form that I managed to record, still very much in stumbling, trip-on-your-own-toes, draft mode:

Leaving the Poetry Reading

The poet sings her poem
breathing metrically,
breaking just in time
for a thunderous rolling boom.
The rain came,
barreling out of the west,
pounding across the roof
shaming the perfect acoustics
into a resounding silence,
no one wanting to spoil
the wind's incantation.

After: stepping outside,
the moist air smacks my face,
no barrier preventing
mist's entry through my pores.
Fog curls up from the ground,
summer's warmth, not wanting
to give it up to the frost,
clings to the remaining blades.
The mist dampens
the harsh lights of the lot,
each drop a refraction of
ever-present, seldom-seem leaf light:
Amber air all around.

Breathe. Breathe.
Absorb. Imbue your spirit.
Nature bears
witness to the whole.

Guess the book (I can never play by the rules even when I try....)

Dorothy did this meme today & since I had just finished cataloging my newly acquired books into LibraryThing and they were sitting nearby the keyboard, I had to do this. And I hated the results on page 123, but here they are. But, you'll have to guess the poem rather than the book (at least without any hints, but I've got that challenge for you too further down the post).

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the next 4 sentences on your blog along with these instructions.
5. Don't you dare dig for that "cool" or "intellectual" book in your closet! I know you were thinking about it! Just pick up whatever is closest.

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the Milky Way,
They stretched in never-ending line

Yeah, pretty easy and you could probably google it if you didn't know. But since this could be in any one of several anthologies, your challenge is to figure out what book it is in. Here are your clues regarding the book this appeared in.

1. American female poet who often writes about nature and spirituality.
2. Book is on craft, is not strictly an anthology, and its title is derived from a famous line by Pope.
3. Percy Bysshe Shelley is one of her favorites.
4. She gave a lecture this evening in city where I live.
5. Neither of the other two volumes I bought have 123 pages, so I added page total of 2nd book to 3rd book to find the page (e.g., 123-109=page 14) to get this from one of her own poems:

I see it still;
and there was once, oh wonderful,
a new horse in the pasture,
a tall, slim being -- a neighbor was keeping her there --

Make your guesses Friday. I'll want to post my answer soon, as well as writing about the reading!

One School's Reading Blog Project

I came across a link to The Guerrilla Season Book Blog a few weeks ago & put it in Bloglines so I wouldn't forget about it when the project started (10/23). It is a project at South Valley Jr. High, in Liberty Missouri. 300 8th grade students will read the book The Guerrilla Season by Pat Hughes and will participate in discussions via the blog. The book is about the Civil War in Missouri, so there is a local connection as well. In addition to posting questions regarding each assigned reading, the blog moderators will also have the author participate.

I think this is such an innovative idea for teaching both reading and history. I like the variation on the One City/One Book idea (everyone reading the same book) and I think that the participative nature of the blog is a great way to get kids to connect with a work. There are schools in California and Louisiana participating too. I will not be able to read this book at this time, but I intend to check in on the blog from time to time to see how the project is going.

Current reading....

Although I haven't been doing much blogging for the last week or so, I have been reading. I'm making steady progress through Willa Cather's My Antonia. It was my reading group's pick this month. Although we already met to discuss it, I still intend on finishing it.

At the same time, I'm reading Marilynne Robinson's Gilead for another book discussion group. I have about 80 pages left before tomorrow's discussion, so I hope I get it finished.

Although it is coincidental that I'm reading these two books at the same time, I'm enjoying that the locale for both is the Great Plains. It's interesting to see how each writer describes the land.

Gilead captured my attention in the first few sentences. Here is an excerpt from the first paragraph, as the aging and dying narrator begins drafting a letter to his young son to be read when he reaches adulthood:

You reached up and put your fingers on my lips and gave me that look I never in my life saw on any other face besides your mother's. It's a kind of furious pride, very passionate and stern. I'm always a little surprised to find my eyebrows unsinged after I've suffered one of those looks. I will miss them.

What gorgeous writing! I'm sure I'll have a lot to say about this after I've finished reading. Now, a little more than 1/2 through the book I'm perplexed as to why Robinson set it in 1956. Other than the easy ability for the narrator to write about his grandfather and the Civil War, setting the book in the mid-50's doesn't seem necessary. However, maybe there is something in the plot yet to be revealed that would only work in the 1950's. Another thing that I like about the book is that while the letter is often prosaic, there is a quality that indicates that it was written by an old person, especially when the narrator seemingly repeats things.