Best Books for Halloween

The weather's finally turning seasonal down here, just in time for Halloween! All of these recent 70 degree days have had me more in the mood for a trip to the beach, but tonight I'm finally going to go out and purchase pumpkins and candycorns...yum! I have been known to eat a whole bag of them in one sitting, and I'm not embarrassed to admit it!
And what's better on a cool, crisp fall evening than settling down in front of the fireplace with a scary story or two? I don't read a lot of horror stories, nor do I watch a lot of horror movies, although I have been known to scare the bejeezus out of myself with a once a year showing of The Shining! That movie gets me every time!
In the spirit of one of my favorite holidays, here are a few non-horror favorites to check out this weekend.

1. The Witches by Roald Dahl - love his humor so much more as an adult! As a child, I don't really think I understood how creepy his stories really were. If you're looking for some real fun, read the section about Miss Pratchett in his memoir, Boy, then read The Witches and see how he drew inspiration for fantasy from his real life.
2. The Body by Stephen King - I went through a major Steven King phase during my freshman year of high school...not really sure why...I think I was bored and my brother happened to own a bunch of his books. I never want to read It again (and have never looked at clowns the same way!) But I rediscovered King this summer while reading The Body in preparation for a class that I was supposed to teach. The movie Stand By Me is based on this novella, but the story gets into a lot more character development than the movie does.
3. Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury - The dark carnival comes to town and mayhem ensues. There's a dark side in all of us, and Ray Bradbury's out to expose it. Another cool thing about Bradbury - he is a master of constructing incredibly long, complex sentences that help build suspense. If you only know Bradbury for The Illustrated Man and other sci-fi short stories, you'll see a whole new side of him in this novel. Plus, the cool Macbeth reference...
4. Speaking of..., do yourself a favor and go see a professional performance of Macbeth next time you have the opportunity. I truly had forgotten how incredibly messed up this story is until I studied it with my favorite after-school club students last year! Re-reading the play isn't going to do it - grab a few buddies and act out the scenes with the witches or "Out damned spot..." We did some performing of our own, then took an outing to a real production that was the starkest, creepiest show I've ever seen.
5. A Break With Charity or The Witch of Blackbird Pond or The Crucible - When I was eight (and admittedly, I may not have been the most courageous eight year old) my parents took me to The Salem Witch Museum and I didn't sleep for two nights! They turned off all the lights, there was a glowing red circle on the floor filled with diabolical symbols, and a narrator guided us through a series of scenes from Salem's darkest days...the image of Giles Corey being pressed to death was seared into my brain and still makes me shudder. But it also piqued my interest in this event, and I'll still devour any historical fiction about the Salem Witch Trials.

Did I mention that in fifth grade my two best friends and I went through a witch phase...we were pretty convinced that we had (or would someday have) magical powers, but mostly we just hung out in a corner of the playground and pretended to cast spells boys we didn't like...but that's another story altogether...

Happy Halloween everyone!
Rebecca DeWinter

Blast from the Past

Did any of the other madwomen out there read They Cage the Animals at Night? I'm having some serious flashbacks to reading this lovely work by Jennings Michael Burch for summer reading before 8th grade. It's an incredibly heart-warming and heart-breaking autobiography about a boy growing up both in poverty with his family, and in the child welfare system (foster care, group homes, etc).

Between my child welfare class and the book I'm currently working through for pleasure, A Child Called It by David Pelzer, I've been thinking a lot about the aforementioned novel; one of my favorites in middle school. I was wondering if anyone else had read it? If you have and want a similar story (or maybe you just want to get in touch with your inner social worker) I would recommend A Child Called It. It's another autobiography of a boy who is taken from his home, in this case because of extreme abuse and neglect. I'll warn you that it will break your heart to read a lot of his story, but the underlying success, the fact that this boy has become a successful man able to love a family of his own, is really beautiful and hopeful.

Miss. H

Curst be he that moves my bones

The literary laziness continued until this Saturday, when I was compelled to search my library for something to read on my Metro ride to Taste of Georgetown. I needed something paperback (for ease of carrying in my bag all day) and preferred something I hadn’t yet read, which left me with two choices: The Secret Life of Lobsters or Shakespeare: the World as Stage, both of which I picked up on the 50% of table at Barnes and Noble back in June. Not really in the mood for a history of shellfish and shellfishermen, I opted for the Shakespeare.
The book was billed as a biography, but as the author, Bill Bryson, sets out plainly from the start and any English major already knows, there really isn’t much we know about Shakespeare. Instead, he paints an easy-to-read portrait of Elizabethan and Jacobean theater, and traces the history/legitimacy of many of the myths associated with Shakespeare (time spent in Italy, the multi-author conspiracy, etc.) The descriptions of 16th century London were lively and some of the descriptions of Shakespeare conspiracy-theorists over the last two hundred years were too. On the other hand, the book sometimes digressed into a list of names, dates and statistics that led me to skim whole paragraphs.
As a Shakespeare enthusiast, I definitely felt the book was worth the read. I haven’t read any of Bill Bryson’s other books, but based on his style, I’d definitely consider picking one up. He had a well-organized narrative structure to tie together his disparate facts, and I enjoyed the way he played with punctuation. My students and I call it "creative punctuation" - having fun with colons, semi-colons, parentheses and dashes. And speaking of creative punctuation, in case you were wondering, Shakespeare was a master of it. His works contain 138,198 commas, 26,794 colons, and 15,785 question marks. If you’re looking to indulge in your inner English major, the book is worth a look. If you haven’t picked up a copy of Hamlet since high school, this one’s definitely not for you!

Reading for Pleasure, in Miniature

Over the past three weeks, my life has gotten significantly busier. Gone are the summer days of reading on the beach and sneaking in chapters between morning and afternoon sailing classes. Instead, the reading excitement I'm faced with are the joyous works from Journal of Social Service Research and American Journal of Evaluations. These scholarly pursuits may, hopefully, help me to land a job at the end of this long school year, but they make for less than satisfying blog posts.

I've had to adjust my pleasure reading to much shorter doses. Mostly my reading for pleasure has been online blogs, the Sunday Times, and the occasional retail catalog. Novels have all but disappeared from my life. Indeed, the spine I've cracked open most over the past few weeks has been Paula Dean's The Dean Family Cookbook (no matter how much studying, a girl has gotta eat!). I've tried a few new recipes lately. Most notably have been the "Banana Spice Cake with Peanut Butter Icing" (the name says it all -YUM!) and "Shrimp, Tomato, and Feta" (the name leaves out the most essential ingredient - liberal amounts of hot sauce!).

That's all that is new in my literary life. What's up with you madwomen?

Love,

The Pity Party in Boston, aka Miss H

eat.pray.love…..repeat.

This must be the 4th or 5th time I’ve read this book and I still can’t get enough. Each time I read it I have to remind myself to read slowly and enjoy every sentence of each page… even though in my mind I am already excited and anticipating the next part of Elizabeth’s journey. I love how she writes without trying to impress anyone. Nowhere in the book does she try to be politically correct… “Say the right thing” or try to appease any specific audience. In fact, at the beginning she calls out to anyone who might be offended of her use of the word God to close her book, and peacefully put it back on the shelf.
I feel like Elizabeth Gilbert and I are in our favorite coffee shop (you know, the one with art hanging on every wall… the smell of pumpkin spice coffee brewing… my favorite Frank Sinatra style song playing softly in the background…sitting on couches instead of chairs… nobody speaking above a ’12 inch voice’ or talking on their most trendy mobile device.) So there we are, sitting in our lovely little coffee shop and she is telling me about her year abroad. The year she spent on herself…finding herself. The year she spend doing exactly what she wanted to do. It doesn’t matter that we haven’t seen each other in ages… she still tells me every detail. She doesn’t paint herself to be a rosy white angel with wings and bells on. Instead she tells me everything that brought her to where she is now.
As I am listening to my bff Liz tell me her beautiful story, I can’t help but be pulled in and wonder where I would go. What I would do. What would I look for and what would I give up to find it? Would I ever take that leap of faith? I’d like to think I’d be able to, but I’m not so sure. …So back I go, listening to Liz go on about her adventure. And I’m transported to Italy. Ahh… Italy… the land of pasta, pizza, Italian men… and the most wonderful assortment of gelato available in the world. Turns out, gelato is a perfectly acceptable breakfast in Italy! Can I move there yet? Her description of authentic Italian foods will rival any New York Times foodru (that’s foodie and guru put together)… any Paula Dean cooking show, and will come fist to fist with the guy on Diners, Drive In’s and Dives. She keeps talking about visiting different towns in Italy and Rome and instead of museums and shopping and Churches… it’s where to find the best pasta, seafood or dessert. Usually, she is given a piece of paper with an address scribbled on it by a local… leading her to a hole in the wall restaurant that just so happens to have “..the fluffiest ricotta in all of Italy…” *sigh* I want to go there too… my heart keeps saying… Someday… my head says back.
I’m going to go back to listening to this story. India is coming up soon… and then Bali is next. I can’t WAIT to hear what happens in Bali.
Come over to our coffee shop. You’ll love this story. Liz would love to meet you and tell you everything. If you can’t make it, she wrote it all down. I’ll let you borrow my copy.

xoxo, Clementine.

A Luke-Warm Review

I tried to get through Wicked, the novel, before starting the madness of the school year, but just couldn't finish. Although the book brings in an interesting (and very social work appropriate!) view point that one shouldn't make assumptions about a person or a story without knowing the full background, it was bogged down by all sorts of political commentary about Oz. This may have been tolerable if Oz resembled a current nation or government, but, alas, it seemed to be a complete fantasy land. The life of Elphie, (who becomes the Witch of the West), is a bit too detailed, which makes reading slow going. It has some interesting portions, and the dynamic between Elphie and Glinda (the good witch) is great, but only takes place when the two are forced roommates in college.

All in all, I'm not terribly concerned that I probably will never finish the 100 pages or so that I have left.

Final Review: 1/2 a star

Miss H

Skeeter is a madwoman!

A couple of weeks ago I read The Help, by Kathryn Stockett. It was an incredibly powerful book with shades of both To Kill a Mockingbird and The Secret Life of Bees. It occurred to me as I was finishing up, that Skeeter is a modern madwoman. She's strong, powerful and evaluated by her peers as anything from eccentric to downright nuts! She breaks all the conventions, norms and unwritten rules in her society and as a result is cast out.
I know that at least two of the other madwomen have read the book. What do you gals think?