What is it about memes that's so irresistible? And I'm always a sucker for book lists--so fun to check off all the ones I've read... This one's from Voracious Reader.

Consider yourself tagged if you are reading this. When you post your list on your blog, please track back to mine (or leave a comment) so that I can read your lists too.

The rules:
Bold what you have read, italicize books you’ve started but couldn’t finish, and strike through books you hated. Add an asterisk* to those you’ve read more than once. Underline those on your tbr list [I could not get Blogger to underline, so I've put quotation marks instead].


Jonathan Strange & M. Norrell
Anna Karenina*
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights*
The Silmarillion*
Life of Pi: a novel
The Name of the Rose*
Don Quixote *
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary*
The Odyssey*
Pride and Prejudice*
Jane Eyre*
A Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel
War and Peace
Vanity Fair*
The Time Traveller’s Wife
The Iliad*
Emma*
"The Blind Assassin"
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway*
Great Expectations*
American Gods
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked : The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West
The Canterbury Tales [Although I may not have read them all yet...I'm not sure]
The Historian
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man*
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World*
The Fountainhead
Foucault’s Pendulum
Middlemarch*
Frankenstein*
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula*
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible*
1984
Angels & Demons
The Inferno
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility*
The Picture of Dorian Gray*
Mansfield Park*
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
To the Lighthouse*
Tess of the D’Urbervilles*
Oliver Twist*
Gulliver’s Travels*
Les Misérables
The Corrections
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The curious incident of the dog in the night-time
Dune
The Prince*
The Sound and the Fury
Angela’s Ashes
The God of Small Things
A People’s History of the United States : 1492-present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-Five
The Scarlet Letter*
"Eats, Shoots & Leaves"
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake : a novel
Collapse : How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita*
Persuasion*
Northanger Abbey*
The Catcher in the Rye*
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
The Aeneid*
Watership Down*
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit*
"In Cold Blood"
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield*
The Three Musketeers*

What a weird list! Most of the ones I haven't read I've never even heard of--Cloud Atlas?!?

Realizing the other day that it's none too soon to start thinking about and planning for homeschooling, I decided to read a book that's been on my list for a while now--The Well-Trained Mind, by Jessie Wise and Susan Wise Bauer. It's a guide to classical education at home, and is laid out chronologically, with detailed chapters for each subject. One could follow their program to the letter, as pretty much everything is covered; or use it as a guide in developing one's own curriculum.

Already it's clear that the method Odious and I will use will tend more towards the unschooling movement--we both greatly enjoy watching Sam learn on his own and discover things for himself without unnecessary teaching on our part. But still I'm finding the Wises' book useful, both for things we probably will do and things we probably won't. They follow the classical method, using the trivium and quadrivium, so that reading, writing, and math are of highest importance. However, in my opinion, their curriculum separates subjects too sharply, and requires more scheduling and formality than I could handle. I've always felt that education tends to be formalized far more than necessary, giving it a tinge of both elitism and tedium. As infants we learn from life, from the ordinary hustle bustle and domesticity around us, and there's no reason why this should change so drastically as we grow older.

I do agree that a formal math program is essential--even Odious, I don't think, could manage to teach math entirely without books and worksheets--but it needn't be tiresome if approached properly. Likewise grammar textbooks that teach the rules of the English language so that children are prepared to write well. But writing programs? I don't think so. They may teach one HOW to write, but they don't make it much fun. If I'd had to write an outline and composition for every reading assignment during my schooling years, I'd've gone crazy--what a waste of time. My sisters and I have been commended for our writing throughout our entire lives; I attribute our skills to all the reading we did as children and our familiarity with books, and, perhaps most importantly, the years and years of bedtime stories. Until I went to college (and I believe it continued for some time after that as well), our family would gather nearly every evening before bed and listen while my mother read aloud from Laura Ingalls Wilder, L.M. Montgomery, Dickens, Richard Adams, C.S. Lewis, Tolkien, Jane Austen, Frances Hodgson Burnett, Alexandre Dumas, A.A. Milne, Mary Norton, and dozens of others. Not only was it a wonderful family time that we all looked forward to, but it meant that the English language in all its elegance was constantly sounding in our ears. My sisters and I know what good prose looks like and sounds like from all those excellent books, and because of that we have no problem putting together a well-written, well-structured essay with a sound argument. In fact, it's so easy that there have been some feelings of guilt about turning in papers that have taken so little effort.

The Wises divide childhood learning into three stages: Grammar (ages 6-9), Logic (10-13), and Rhetoric (14-17). The Grammar stage is also called the poll-parrot stage, where children are gathering information from everything around them and repeating it back without completely understanding it. This, they claim, is the time for memorizing all sorts of facts without worrying about comprehension. Questions and connections come later, during the Logic stage, as children's brains mature and broaden. In the Rhetoric stage, they are able to present and defend (through composition, elocution, art, etc.) original thoughts and opinions. This division also allows for a chronological study of history, from ancient to modern in each stage, at appropriate levels of complexity.

I like this system because the expectations for ability are age-appropriate, something that public schools completely ignore. However, the Wises do follow an unfortunate public school method in which they schedule separate subjects for set time periods (i.e., Math for 1 hour, Grammar for 1/2 hour, etc.). For one thing, many "subjects" can be integrated (History/Reading, for example), and time periods are not necessary. When an assigned task is completed satisfactorily, the child should move on to the next, regardless of time spent.

Again, this is an excellent though pedantic guide to homeschooling in the classical method. Be inspired, think hard, and rearrange to suit your fancy.

If Sam turns out like this boy, I will be so happy.

Irresistible indeed, Steve. And so satisfying when the nearest book is an impressive one (AND one that I was reading, not Odious, as is more usually the case by the computer)!

Lord. The King and Queen and all are coming down.
Hamlet. In happy time.
Lord. The Queen desires you to use some gentle entertainment to Laertes before you fall to play.

--The Kittredge Shakespeares Hamlet, edited and with notes by G.L. Kittredge

We just spent a lovely sunny week in California visiting relatives, and my dear sister took us to a charming little oldtown shopping area where we went crazy in a couple of antique stores. I found all these delicious old books--so much fun! I was hoping the titles would show up better in the picture, but I guess I'll have to list them. There are only a couple of replacements (Rose In Bloom and White Fang); the rest are just wonderful little finds.

Vinzi, Johanna Spyri: Heidi is the best, of course, but all her books are charming; couldn't pass it up.
Shelley's Poetical Works: Because it was pretty?
The Bobbsey Twins Keeping House, Laura Lee Hope: A walk down Memory Lane--I think this is one of the few I never read as a child. Incredibly dorky, but fun.
Roads of Destiny, O. Henry: There was a whole beautiful set that I WANTED, but the stack was too big already.
The Son of Porthos,The Vicomte de Bragelonne, Louise de la Valliere, Alexandre Dumas: For Odious--he was very pleased.
A Good Place To Hide, Louis Slobodkin: A cute little story.
Elsie's Holidays, Martha Finley: NOT to keep--urgh. But a young friend enjoys these books, and I thought she'd like a nice old edition for her upcoming birthday.
Millbank, Mary J. Holmes: I hope someone else out there will know why I bought this one! Neither my sister nor Odious guessed it--the book Laura "reads" to Ma to avoid going to school in On The Banks of Plum Creek. Had to have it!
Scenes of Clerical Life and Silas Marner, George Eliot: I got Scenes for Christmas, but I never pass up a lovely old hardback just because I already own a shiny new paperback.
The Winning of Barbara Worth, Harold Bell Wright: No reason, really, other than it looked like a fun read and is set on a Colorado ranch.
Camilla, Elizabeth Robins: Ditto, except for the ranch.
My Book House, vols 7 (The Magic Garden) & 8 (Through Fairy Halls), Olive Beaupre Miller, ed.: Beautiful Victorian illustrations and lots of delightful stories. There were more volumes, but these were the best.

I could have bought them all...

My latest phase of potato-chip reads is over, and I'm back to Victorian novels as inspired by the wonderful book Inside the Victorian Home, by Judith Flanders.

Miss Marjoribanks, Margaret Oliphant: Lucilla Marjoribanks is my hero! She's the Dolly Levi of Victorian novels--I loved her sensible, level-headed approach to life and to arranging everyone in it. So far I haven't had any luck finding further Chronicles of Carlingford, but shall keep looking assiduously.

Period Piece, Gwen Raverat: Not a novel but a cheery memoir of a young girl's life around the turn of the century. Light and amusing and utterly without angst.

Ruth, Elizabeth Gaskell: More interesting than North and South, but still my least favorite of Mrs Gaskell's books. Ruth is a good character, in that her faults are clear but she works hard to overcome them, but she's just not my kind of gal. I prefer heroines with a little more backbone. The most interesting thing about this book is how appalling the treatment of seduced women and their illegitimate offspring was. I'm no fan of having children out of wedlock, but thank goodness our society no longer views such situations so harshly.

New Grub Street, George Gissing: More than slightly autobiographical, this novel looks with a icily realistic eye at the plight of those who venture into the writing life. Those who wish only to be "men of letters" or write purely from their hearts end up dying of starvation in a freezing garret, while those who are willing to make social connections and fulfill any writing assignment that comes their way are rewarded handsomely. Strangely, I found it inspiring... And while I didn't much care for any of the characters, it was quite a compelling story.

The Filigree Ball, Anna-Katherine Green: My sister found this book in an antique shop--it's a highly sensational detective novel that amused me greatly. Complete with mistaken identities, mysterious deaths, secret panels, family curses, tragic love affairs, and a mystery complicated beyond words--delicious!

Now I'm happily absorbed in Anne Bronte's Tenant of Wildfell Hall. What a writer she was! Somewhere in Heaven there's a library filled with her unwritten works...

Lots of good books the past couple of weeks--I've been reading more than getting things done...

Dragonhaven, Robin McKinley: I probably should've read some Jane Austen after this, to protect my own writing style; as with Sunshine, McKinley gives her narrator (in this case, a teenage boy) a very specific voice. It works, but is a little wearing after a while--too many likes and totallys and you knows and run-on sentences. It's the sort of style that gets into one's head, and that's not a good thing. But the story is excellent; her perspective on dragons reminds me a bit of the Enchanted Forest Chronicles. Jake lives in a privately-owned preserve for dragons, but few of the people there have ever actually seen a dragon until Jake apprentices with the Rangers and goes on a solo trip into the wilderness. What he finds there is only the first of many surprises.

The Woods Were Full of Men, Irma Lee Emmerson: The kind of memoir people used to write before everybody got all angsty and revealed their childhood traumas. A fun light tale of a woman's experience cooking for sixty hungry loggers in an Oregon camp.

She Got Up Off the Couch, Haven Kimmel: See above; angsty memoir. This sequel to A Girl Named Zippy grows more depressing as Haven gets older and begins to realize how incredibly dysfunctional her family is. It's hard to believe that anyone could live as she did, in a condemned house full of mice and rats, with a mother who spent many years of her life sitting on the couch with a book and a bag of pork rinds; and even harder to believe that she could manage to write about it. It is funny, though, in a I-probably-shouldn't-laugh-at-this kind of way, and she has a particularly wry sense of humor (fortunately for her survival).

The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls: I can't actually include this in the "good books" list for the week, but I got on a memoir roll and figured I'd mention this one as well. Angsty does not even begin to cover it. With a ne'er-do-well drunken gambler for a father and an unbalanced artist for a mother, the four Walls children were forced to take care of themselves as soon as they could walk. At last they hit what has to be rock-bottom--they're living in a coal-mining town in Appalachia, and they are the poorest family there. Poor white trash kids throw rocks at them. It's appalling, and horribly depressing, and I kind of wish I hadn't read it. At least the ending is sort of happy, or at least positive.

Renegade's Magic, Robin Hobb: The final book in the Soldier Son trilogy. This was certainly not a predictable story! Everything was a surprise, although not necessarily a good one, and I got really tired of the protagonist's incessant and repetitive whining. Interesting, fascinating, and, of course, well-written, but not as good as some of her previous trilogies.