Category: books

  • sleepless

    having a bit of insomnia. not a rare occurrence for me, but one that’s not so common anymore, either.

    i am a night owl, prowling around the house and poking around. all is quiet and i feel a kind of wicked delight in being awake while i know i really should be in bed. like those nights when i was a kid and i would stay up reading long beyond my bedtime…

    speaking of reading, here’s a 3 question literary quiz from Rafe Esquith. he says this quiz would do away with all of the standardized testing that plagues education today:

    1) Have you ever secretly read under your desk in school because the teacher was boring and you were dying to finish the book you were reading?

    2) Have you ever been scolded for reading at the dinner table?

    3) Have you ever read secretly under the covers after being told to go to bed?

    *My bonus question: Have you ever been teased by your parents for reading your books instead of touring the Eiffel Tower?

    so…did you pass or fail my little quiz? and tell me, what books are on your nightstand right now?

  • bookish

    H/T for photo above of Trinity Library

    This past week I’ve spent a bunch of time at the Huntington Library. I’ll be back again next week (and the week after that and the week after that….)

    If I’m lucky, I’ll be garnering a Fellowship so I can research there nearly full-time. But even without the Fellowship I’ll certainly be there on a regular basis.

    I’ve learned a few things in the past week:
    1) The library’s cataloging system is only so-so. Key words and search terms are often nonsensical/illogical.
    2) The old paper card catalog has items not listed in the online catalog.
    3) Many of the items don’t appear to be listed anywhere at all–not on the computers and not on the bitty little cards in the drawers (which drawers, I still don’t seem to be able to pull out of the cabinet properly, so doing the research is a bit painful as I contort myself to see the cards)
    4) The trick to knowing what’s in the library is to talk to the curators. They know all.
    5) The other trick is to ask lots of questions and request items that may not even exist (e.g. “A finding aid for that collection?…No, there doesn’t appear to be one…”)

    Even with all of the confusions and run-arounds of this week’s work at the H, I’m just loving it. Really. I am so very lucky to be close enough to such a place for my research. And it is a beautiful space to spend one’s days….
    (IOW, people, more flower pictures from the grounds will be forthcoming…I’m hoping to step foot outside of the inner-sanctum on at least one of my visits next week!)

  • the meeting


    GameBoy and Brian Jacques., originally uploaded by mind on fire.

    A pic of GameBoy with Brian Jacques, the author of the Redwall series of books.

    What a joy it is for us to attend booksignings and for our kids to be inspired by the writers of their most beloved stories! Brian Jacques did not disappoint–a salty old Brit, his storytelling had the whole plaza outside the bookshoppe reverberating as he yelled the battle cry, “Eulalia.”

  • one small step…

    Some of you may have noticed that I have a new identity now. I’m no longer pilgrimgirl. Well, at least my blog isn’t. :)

    I’ve opted for a blog name that’s less about my own identity and is more about my life journey: my ‘pilgrimage.’ So the new name is ‘pilgrimsteps.’ This name, at least for me, is more reflective of who I am right now. Still a girl, but even more than that, I am a traveler. I am moving and changing. I am not in the same place today as I was yesterday, or last week, or last year. So from now on, you can type pilgrimsteps.com into your browser to find my site.

    Wow, that was huge. Really. And so exciting!!

    So to shift gears a bit:

    My favorite book when I was little: The Poky Little Puppy! That, and The Saggy Baggy Elephant. Classics. Can you believe that the writer only got $75 for writing this, the bestselling children’s book of all time?

    Okay, so those MesoAmericans, they knew what they were doing! They started drinking chocolate somewhere between 1400 and 1100 BCE. Now why can’t I remember any chocolate references in The Book of Mormon??? Because of this?

  • books


    books, originally uploaded by pilgrimgirl.

    This is just one section of one of the bookshelves that we have in our home. You can see from this picture how we’ve tagged all of our books (like a library). Tagging and cataloging our books is my secret weapon.

    We have thousands of books. There is no better way to know exactly where each of them belongs. Before organizing our books I couldn’t find them when I needed them, and John & I had unecessary duplicate copies of many of our books.

    I know it’s geeky to do stuff like this. But I’m okay with that.

  • the influence of women

    A list of the 100 most influential books written by women from Wendy via Alison. Of course we could debate about whether these books really are the 100 most influential (as in where the hell are Austen and the Brontes and Lady Murasaki? or in other words are influential books only those written in English in the 20th century?)

    But this is a fun exercise anyways. Which ones have you read? Mine are in bold…

    1. Margaret Mitchell, Gone With the Wind
    2. Anne Rice, Interview With the Vampire
    3. Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse
    4. Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway
    5. Virginia Woolf, The Waves
    6. Virginia Woolf, Orlando
    7. Djuna Barnes, Nightwood
    8. Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth
    9. Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence
    10. Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome
    11. Radclyffe Hall, The Well of Loneliness
    12. Nadine Gordimer, Burger’s Daughter
    13. Harriette Simpson Arnow, The Dollmaker
    14. Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale
    15. Willa Cather, My Ántonia
    16. Erica Jong, Fear of Flying
    17. Erica Jong, Fanny
    18. Joy Kogawa, Obasan
    19. Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook
    20. Doris Lessing, The Fifth Child
    21. Doris Lessing, The Grass Is Singing
    22. Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
    23. Marge Piercy, Woman on the Edge of Time
    24. Jane Smiley, A Thousand Acres
    25. Lore Segal, Her First American
    26. Alice Walker, The Color Purple
    27. Alice Walker, The Third Life of Grange Copeland
    28. Marion Zimmer Bradley, The Mists of Avalon
    29. Muriel Spark, Memento Mori
    30. Muriel Spark, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
    31. Dorothy Allison, Bastard Out of Carolina
    32. Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea
    33. Susan Fromberg Shaeffer, Anya
    34. Cynthia Ozick, Trust
    35. Amy Tan, The Joy Luck Club
    36. Amy Tan, The Kitchen God’s Wife
    37. Ann Beattie, Chilly Scenes of Winter
    38. Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God
    39. Joan Didion, A Book of Common Prayer
    40. Joan Didion, Play It as It Lays
    41. Mary McCarthy, The Group
    42. Mary McCarthy, The Company She Keeps
    43. Grace Paley, The Little Disturbances of Man
    44. Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar
    45. Carson McCullers, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter
    46. Elizabeth Bowen, The Death of the Heart
    47. Flannery O’Connor, Wise Blood
    48. Mona Simpson, Anywhere But Here
    49. Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon
    50. Toni Morrison, Beloved
    51. Stella Gibbons, Cold Comfort Farm
    52. Sylvia Townsend Warner, Mr. Fortune’s Maggot
    53. Katherine Anne Porter, Ship of Fools
    54. Laura Riding, Progress of Stories
    55. Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Heat and Dust
    56. Penelope Fitzgerald, The Blue Flower
    57. Isabel Allende, The House of the Spirits
    58. A.S. Byatt, Possession
    59. Pat Barker, The Ghost Road
    60. Rita Mae Brown, Rubyfruit Jungle (tried this one, never finished it)
    61. Anita Brookner, Hotel du Lac
    62. Angela Carter, Nights at the Circus
    63. Daphne Du Maurier, Rebecca
    64. Katherine Dunn, Geek Love
    65. Shirley Jackson, We Have Always Lived in the Castle
    66. Barbara Pym, Excellent Women
    67. Leslie Marmon Silko, Ceremony
    68. Anne Tyler, Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant
    69. Anne Tyler, The Accidental Tourist
    70. Nancy Willard, Things Invisible to See
    71. Jeanette Winterson, Sexing the Cherry
    72. Lynne Sharon Schwartz, Disturbances in the Field
    73. Rosellen Brown, Civil Wars
    74. Harriet Doerr, Stones for Ibarra
    75. Harriet Doerr, The Mountain Lion
    76. Stevie Smith, Novel on Yellow Paper
    77. E. Annie Proulx, The Shipping News
    78. Rebecca Goldstein, The Mind-Body Problem
    79. P.D. James, The Children of Men
    80. Ursula Hegi, Stones From the River
    81. Fay Weldon, The Life and Loves of a She-Devil
    82. Katherine Mansfield, Collected Stories
    83. Rebecca Harding Davis, Life in the Iron Mills
    84. Louise Erdrich, The Beet Queen
    85. Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness
    86. Edna O’Brien, The Country Girls Trilogy
    87. Margaret Drabble, Realms of Gold
    88. Margaret Drabble, The Waterfall
    89. Dawn Powell, The Locusts Have No King
    90. Marilyn French, The Women’s Room
    91. Eudora Welty, The Optimist’s Daughter
    92. Carol Shields, The Stone Diaries
    93. Jamaica Kincaid, Annie John
    94. Tillie Olsen, Tell Me a Riddle
    95. Gertrude Stein, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas
    96. Iris Murdoch, A Severed Head
    97. Anita Desai, Clear Light of Day
    98. Alice Hoffman, The Drowning Season
    99. Sue Townsend, The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole
    100. Penelope Mortimer, The Pumpkin Eater

  • queen


    Lap of Luxury., originally uploaded by mind on fire.

    Because EllyCat is THE QUEEN around here, and she knows it oh-so-well.

    I am reading Assassination Vacation right now. Can I just say that I feel like I’ve made a new friend who loves the ghoulish bits of the past maybe even as much as I do? Her visit to the Army Medical Museum (or whatever it’s called nowadays) made me so jealous that I had to physically restrain myself from not scrawling on the copy of this book that my Friend loaned to me. That is MY MUSEUM–even thought I’ve never been there and have just fantasized intensely about the day I’ll actually get to visit.

    People, Sarah Vowell is one of my people. And it’s so comforting to know that I’m not alone in this big, dark, history-apathetic world….

    And to Johnw/H: you rock. Thank you for loaning me just the right books at just the right times….

  • Little Women


    rudebeckia at Alcott’s, originally uploaded by pilgrimgirl.

    One of my favorite visits was to the Orchard House in Concord, the home where the Alcotts lived during the era depicted in Little Women.

    The guide told many charming stories about the family and major funding has restored the house to its former glory. The best part were the paintings all over the walls done by the artistic sister, May (or Amy). I especially loved the little angelic doodles around the window frames in her bedroom.

    Can I just say how much I wanted to be Jo when I was growing up? I’m just sure I would’ve cut my hair to feed the family and would’ve been as headstrong and would’ve married Prof Bhaer. Did you feel this, too, when you first read Little Women?

    I took the photo above the small flower garden in front of the house. In the guidebook it explains that the garden around the house was primarily fruits & veggies back in the day, but now it’s all flowers. Though I loved the flowers, I think I liked Thoreau’s vegetable garden at the Emerson/Hawthorne house much better. But more on that garden later….

    “If in Emerson’s study perpetual twilight reigns,” wrote a visitor to Orchard House in 1874,” in Alcott’s it is always noon. The great sun shines in it all day, the great fireplace roars, and the warm crimson hangings temper the sunlight and reflect the firelight. Quaint mottoes and pictures hang on the walls.”

  • reading….


    the first few words, originally uploaded by pilgrimgirl.

    What page are you on?
    Note: click on the photo above to see more photos from the party!

    UPDATE: I’m done (10:39 pm)! Whew!

  • library


    This photo makes me want to reorganize our library. Sooooo tempting…..

  • plug

    Allright, so the second book with a chapter by moi is in print now. Never mind that its Sales Rank is #2,116,676. My previous book is selling much better (rank #433,808). FWIW, both books have the very same interview with author Terry Tempest Williams.

    One of these days I need to get something else published. :)

    For those of you who haven’t yet read this particular interview, here’s an excerpt that you might enjoy…

    Jana: Some theorists have suggested that the body is perhaps a better source of language and understanding than the mind. What do you think about these ideas and how do you think an LDS writer could use them to overcome something like the use of religious cliches or institutional thinking?

    Terry: The body does not lie. Therefore, if we write out of the body, we are writing out of the truth of our lives. This creates a language that is organic and whole. Original. We listen to what is coursing through our veins, what is held within our hearts, what is registered in our bones. Call it cellular knowledge. Something akin to instinct. It is here, perhaps, were we write muscular prose that lifts our ideas to both a higher and deeper place where the full range of our intelligence can be found.
    If we are simply writing out of our heads, there is no weight to our words. They become abstractions that dissipate into the air. This is the realm of rhetoric. The body is the realm of the story. And it is in story that we bypass rhetoric and pierce the heart. We feel it first and understand it later. Memory resides in the body. Memorization resides in the mind.
    I think we fall into religious cliches when we become afraid of the deep reflective work that organic writing requires. Cliches follow answers and almost always leads us to sentimentality. Nothing surprises or delights. Original prose that breathes and bleeds follows the questions, the mysteries, the place where we dare to say I don’t know where I am going on the page. It is the place of discovery and revelation. This is where we can begin to trust the body. The body carries the physical reality of our spirits like a river. Institutional thinking is fearful of rivers because rivers inevitably follow their own path and that channel may change from day to day, even though the muscle of the river, the property of water remains consistent, life sustaining, fierce and compassionate, at once.
    To write out of the body is to write ourselves into a freedom. It is here we can let go of fear and trust the joy that is held in each movement of the hand, word by word by word.

  • what women really want…


    Is this, perhaps, what women really want?

    Me, I want it all–a clean kitchen, a hunky husband, and the thrill of curling up in clean sheets with said hunk every night. :)