"Song of One of the Girls" by Dorothy Parker

Here in my heart I am Helen;
I'm Aspasia and Hero, at least.
I'm Judith and Jael and Madame de Staël;
I'm Salomé, moon of the East.

Here in my soul I am Sappho;
Lady Hamilton am I, as well.
In me Récamier vies with Kitty O'Shea,
With Dido, and Eve, and poor Nell.

I'm of the glamorous ladies
At whose beckoning history shook.
But you are a man, and see only my pan,
So I stay at home with a book.

I love this poem. Dorothy, who is kind of a bad girl and totally fun and wry, picked a lot of courtesans and bright, learned women who were people's mistresses. I find that interesting yet totally see why she would identify with them. "Pan" in this case means "face", in case you were wondering.

I don't feel like doing a proper book review

I have finished the following books:
-The Ancient Myths by Norma Lorre Goodrich
-Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger
-Enough Rope by Dorothy Parker

The Ancient Myths was a'ight. It's just such a product of its times. It did help remind me of myths I'd read long ago and introduced me to ones I hadn't yet, such as Rama and the Monkeys. There were way less Eastern myths compared to the standard Classical ones; I detect a bias, mainly because I didn't really like this book or its style of writing. I did like the summarization of The Aeneid, mainly because of its usefulness in letting the reader know what happened in which book. The geneological charts and maps were helpful, although not located very practically. The drawings were crude, as if the publishers had contracted third-graders to attempt to copy classical Greek drawings. The whole thing was so male-centric. There's no getting away from that in ancient myths, to be sure, but it just struck me as odd that the female writer of the book would plunge into it headfirst, while relating it in such a hilariously euphemistic style for the naughty parts. This book is probably out of print, and that's a good thing. A more faithful, unobjective, modern approach would be better. A resounding Meh from me. C or C+, maybe.

I loved Franny and Zooey. It had plenty of Salinger's trademark curses and jerky, flawed characters' dislike of phoniness, but it was just so religious and spiritual and lovely. That sounds like an odd thing to say about a book, especially one by J.D. "King of Disaffected Youths and Hipsters, RIP" Salinger, but it's true. The nervously breaking down Franny is searching, yearning, desperate for something and thinks that perhaps in saying a specific prayer ("Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me") over and over again, she can achieve "Christ conscienceness" and peace in her life. Zooey, her brother, tries to help her by getting to the root of her problem and explaining it to her. These characters are often jerks, especially Zooey, but there's just this underlying current of the search for truth, for meaning, for spiritual light. The only thing I didn't like about the book (other than Zooey being such a jerk to his mom, who just takes it in stride) was that there were no chapter breaks. There's "Franny", which was originally a short story and shows us Franny's collapse when out with her boyfriend, and "Zooey", which is a novella that shows us how Zooey interacts with his mother and sister and how he helps her. I just really liked this book. B+ or A-, perhaps.

Enough Rope has established Dorothy Parker as one of my favorite poets. She's a scream and everything I like in a poet: funny, relatable, rhyming and metered poems, etc. She writes mainly about boys and her lot in life. Dorothy is the one who came up with "Men seldom make passes/At girls who wear glasses." I love her and I loved this book. I may share poems from it, if I feel like it. A or A-.

Book Review -- Artemis Fowl: The Atlantis Complex

Spoilers will be in white from now on and will have to be highlighted to be read.

In the seventh AF book, Artemis comes up with a plan to save the world. Those closest to him are worried, however, because he's displaying symptoms of a mental disorder unique to fairies who are wracked with guilt. As it always does with Artemis and co., disaster and danger for the fairy world occur, but this time Artemis is deterred by his number fear/obsession and a personality named Orion who is the complete opposite of him and keeps professing his love for Holly, the LEPrecon captain.

I've found the last couple books, ever since the fifth which might be my favorite, to be on a decline. I somewhat disliked the sixth book (which is akin to my mild approval of any other book) and felt about the same with this one. I cannot for the life of me see why **SPOILERS** Eoin Colfer acquiesed to the horrifying and creepy Artemis x Holly subplot that exists among the sick, older fans of the series. I wish it had stayed that way, and now it is canon. Why, Eoin. Why. They're not even the same species! Artemis is fifteen and Holly is like in her eighties, which is like being in one's twenties as a human! Ugh. Oh, and I know, the villain fairy guy had a human wife. How? Humans are much bigger than fairies; what about mechanical barriers (yuck. Thanks, biology)? There is just no way this is a good thing. It's awful twisted for a kids' series.  **END SPOILERS**

Bellyaching aside, I do feel like most book series run out of steam around the fifth book. That's when the Princess Diaries books started to suck, for example. There's not much that's new about this, other than Artemis's mental issues. I found the depiction of OCD to be well done, although I'm no expert in anything medical. I could feel why he was afraid and fixated on the numbers. As always, I wish the series had shown us more of Artemis's home/domestic/family life; there's not much to make us care about his family (mildish spoilers: and his baby brother twins sound like such a riot, too. Why are we not hearing more about them?  MORE TWINS!) It's just always same old, same old. Some vengeful fairy mastermind or greedy rich human tries to take over the world/expose that fairies exist and Artemis, Holly, the Butlers, Mulch Diggems, and Foaly have to stop them; there are tons of near-death experiences and wacky banter, etcetera and so forth. Something so delightful should not become commonplace, and yet it sort of has. IDK. It's good there's only one more book, since I don't really see where else these could go.
I'd give this book a B.

"Chanson D'Adventure" by C.S. Lewis

I heard in Addison's Walk a bird sing clear
'This year the summer will come true. This year. This year.

'Winds will not strip the blossom from the apple trees
This year, nor want of rain destroy the peas.

'This year time's nature will no more defeat you,
Nor all the promised moments in their passing cheat you.

'This summer will not lead you round and back
To autumn, one year older, by the well-worn track.

'Often deceived, yet open once again your heart,
The gates of good adventure swing apart.

'This time, this time, as all these flowers foretell,
We shall escape the circle and undo the spell.'

I said, 'This might prove truer than a bird can know;
And yet your singing will not make it so.'

This is one of my favorite poems by my favorite author, C.S. Lewis. Not many people know that he wrote poetry. I love this poem because of the sense of hope and expectancy and magic it has; it's perfect for the beginning of summer, and by the time autumn begins I am always one year older (my birthday is August 29). I'm going to try to memorize this poem. Source: The Inklings blog.

Book Review: The Magician's Elephant by Kate DiCamillo

Peter Augustus Duchene wants to know if his sister lives. "She lives... an elephant will lead you there," a fortuneteller says, and the boy is not sure whether to hope, to believe differently than what he has been told all his life. In another part of the city, a magician summons an elephant instead of a bouquet of lilies for a noblewoman, and the lives of the boy, the magician, the noblewoman, and some others are forever changed.

I read this book for a paper I wrote on the author, and read it for a second time last night. Like most of DiCamillo's other books, it is sad and beautiful, full of simple and insightful truths about the world and about life, extremely quotable and a bit difficult to properly blurb without giving away the ending. I liked this book very much, although not as much as The Tale of Despereaux or The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane, two of my all-time favorites. Everything ended as it should, but my one complaint is that all the fuss was unnecessary: **SPOILER** if they had just thought to ask the midwife where she took Adele, then they could have found her right away. There was not even a proper reason given for not doing so; the midwife wasn't dead or missing, she was just entirely forgotten about except for the fact she took the baby away. Even if they had lost contact with her, any policeman worth his salt would have gotten the idea of looking in all the city's orphanages until a girl whose name and general age was known would be found. The elephant, I am sorry to say, wasn't necessary. The story would have been way less interesting, but it hurt my heart to read of what happened to the elephant and to the poor woman she landed on, and I feel I would have rather they not gone through that and the policeman just think of the practical way of finding a missing child. But then I am not the storyteller, and I suppose the magician and the beggar's dog and the ex-stonecutter wouldn't have gotten to do their heart's desires. So there's that. **END SPOILER**

I would recommend this book and would give it an A-, perhaps. I'm bad at grading books.

Book Review: E.L. Konigsburg's Silent to the Bone

Thirteen year old Conner's best friend Branwell is in a correctional facility because everyone thinks Branwell injured his baby half-sister. The situation is more tangled than it seems, with fractured parental relationships and a seductive au pair. The only one who knows what really happened is Branwell, but he's not talking... It's as if he can't. Inspired by the story of the paralyzed author who communicated by blinking, Conner tries to help Branwell tell him the truth and sets off to solve the mystery.

I've read a couple of E.L. Konigsburg's books before, From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler (excellent, one of my favorites since I read it in elementary school) and The View From Saturday (also very good; I read it for a children's literature class in college). This one was also excellently written, and the characters, even minor ones (with the exception of the villain) were well-rounded. They didn't quite feel like real people, except for Connor and Branwell, probably because Connor is our narrator and he and Branwell are the people he knows the best. Silent to the Bone was a bit of a page-turner, but the villain was rather obvious and felt somewhat flat. I pretty much knew how it was going to end, but Konigsburg at least doesn't let you know quite how she's going to get there. A good read, and recommended. I'd give it a B+, perhaps.
p.s. This is random, but I find this sort of thing important: the cover was just perfect for this book.

Lists for this summer

Actual, concrete things I need to do, preferably tomorrow or within days:
–mail a book someone Mooched from me
–go to the bank to cash a check (refund from trying a new Kellogg's cereal, holla. I am cheap and a broke college student besides)
–go to the library and fill out a volunteering form Done! Halfway through composing this post my brother decided to go to the library, so I went and filled out the form (yayyy, public library experience. That place is practically a second home to me)
–go to a different library at a nearby university and try to volunteer there as well (have never been there before. If I have, it was years ago. I'd like to rack up some academic/special libraries experience as well)

More abstract list of things I want to do this summer:
–read all the books I haven't gotten to yet that are in my LibraryThing to-read list. There are currently forty-two. Heyyy, the meaning of Life, the Universe, and Everything!
–finish the YA books series I started ages ago: Artemis Fowl (I just bought my little brother the latest one for his birthday and he's almost done with it), Princess Diaries (I have to reread the ninth and read the tenth), Georgia Nicolson (ninth and tenth), Queen's Thief/Attolia (maybe reread them all, then read the last one). Initially I had wanted to read all the Anne of Green Gables books but with everything else I'm planning to do that would be impossible
–read The Hunger Games books (my brother bought and read all three of them. I've been specifically waiting until summer)
–Clean my room, get rid of stuff (between my sister and me it looks like we were robbed. Clothes are everywhere and it will only get worse when I bring all my stuff home from my apartment)
–Bring all my stuff home from my apartment. I have to figure out when they can inspect it. Also I have to clean the kitchen and my room and stuff
–go shopping. I want to buy white sandals and a silver purse, among many other things
–visit/hang out with my best friend and see her baby
–movie night with bosom friend
–figure out how to join a ballroom dance club or something with her
–get my drivers license (aparently they are vertical now. Mind blown)
etcetera...

I do love a good pun

Which is not to say my blog's title is one. I'm just way more tolerant of the puns I make than of the ones made by others. As are we all, I'm sure. The tagline ("Random thoughts from my mental hard drive") comes from a book my grandma gave me some years ago. It was the title of one of the chapters and just perfect, I felt, for what my writing usually is.

I've been wanting to start a Blogger account for a while, but I waited until I was on summer break. I have this compulsion to write things down, and while I do have a Tumblr (I haven't figured out how to link to that yet in my Meta post), I find it's best for pictures and other such snapshots of a person's life instead of long rambling text passages, which is what I often feel like writing. I have many thoughts that weigh heavy on my head. (This is the sort of thing I will sometimes write. Consider yourself warned, possibly nonexistant reader.) Writing is one of the best ways, I find, to explain things to myself and to figure out what I really feel or think about something. Thinking long and hard about something is the best/main way I do so, but what I think so often changes; writing it down in words creates some distance that one can use for better examination or analysis. Writing organizes my miscellaneous, random thoughts.