Challenges: 1 percent well-read, Southern Reading and a meme

According to the challenge site (click on banner at left), the goal of this challenge is to read 10 books in 10 months from the 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die list. The challenge will run from May 1, 2008 through February 28, 2009. The list can be found here.

My 10 books: Two from each time period, starting with pre-1700s to 2000s

• Metamorphoses by Ovid
• The Thousand and One Nights
• Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Dafoe
• The Mysteries of Udolpho by Anne Radcliffe — I had never heard of this one, but it looked interesting
• Great Expectations by Charles Dickens — surprisingly, I’ve never read any Dickens
• The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky — I began this several times and have wanted to continue
• Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham
• The Nine Tailors by Dorothy L. Sayers — I have a copy of this that I once began
• The Book of Illusions by Paul Auster — I got a copy of this for a now-defunct book group I began online
• The Red Queen by Margaret Drabble — I never heard of this either, but again I thought it looked interesting

So I’m joining this one (click banner at right) too. “The rules are easy: 3 Southern Setting Books by Southern Authors in 3 Months beginning May 15 through August 15!” our host Maggie says.

My three books for this challenge are:

1. Look Homeward, Angel by Thomas Wolfe — a copy of which I’ve had since childhood.
2. Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
3. The Moviegoer by Walker Percy — for some reason, I have two copies of this and while I’ve read other Percy novels, I’ve never read this one, his debut.

And finally for this post, a book meme from Beastmomma

1. What is the earliest book you remember loving?

The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins by Dr. Seuss

2. When you were younger, which book characters did you want to be in your circle of friends?

Bilbo Baggins, later Frodo, Sam, Pippi Longstocking

3. What books do you have nostalgia for as an adult?

Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White, The Hobbit, Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of Nimh by Robert C. O’Brien, The Black Stallion by Walter Farley, almost all of the Jim Kjelgaard books, just to name a very few

4. What books do you wish to share with the kids in your life?

All of the above

5. More philosophical question— how do you think your childhood reading shaped what you like to read as an adult?

Hmmm. Good question. I think I still like the books that can go off into fantasy, but still stay rooted in reality, for one. I also like rural characters over urban characters, I’d say. Those are just a couple of the ways I can think right now of how my childhood reading shaped what I like to read as an adult. If I thought about it some more, I’m sure I could come up with a more exhaustive commentary (for another time, I guess.)

The Monsters of Templeton

Title: The Monsters of Templeton
Author: Lauren Groff
Publication Year: 2008
Pages: 361
Genre: Fiction
Count for Year: 26

I came across this book, I believe, on a Shelfari group. I saw several people mention it and thought I wonder what all the hoopla is about. So when it arrived at our library on the new book shelf, I thought I’d try it. I really didn’t know what it was about, but I thought if all these people are talking about it, I guess that means I should see what’s up.

So what’s up is college student 20-something Willie Upton, thinking she’s pregnant by a professor, returns to her ancestral home, Templeton, N.Y. just as a monster is pulled out of the town lake, Lake Glimmerglass. Also her mother, Vi, pulls out this: Willie is not the product of a hippie-commune tryst, but Mom won’t say who the father is. So begins a mystery to find out who the father is, and in the background, the mystery of the monster, ghosts of famous ancestors lurk.

The journey takes her through family history, back to the town’s founder, Marmaduke Temple, who brought the baseball museum to town. Yes, the town is based on Cooperstown, New York where Groff was born. In the process, we all manners of ancestors and even Chief Uncas and Natty Bumpo himself, some of whom tell their own stories through letters, memoirs, novels they wrote. As such, the book bounces back and forth between the present and the past with some chapters in the voices of the ancestors. Other chapters are told by people in the present, namely, the Running Buds, a group of middle-aged to elderly men, who run through town every day and one of whom Willie thinks might be her father, along with almost all the men in town.

I can’t put my finger on it, but Groff reminds me of someone, yet still has her own voice, which I guess in a way is a compliment. She presents layers upon layers of characters, plots and subplots, all that reveal as they are unpeeled that Templeton has more than one monster, of course. In the end, the conclusions aren’t quite as satisfying as the journey, but the journey was still a good one.

Final analysis: 8/10. Good for a debut novel, but I think she’ll get better than this, and at times, I did lose interest and felt like I was plodding through the book, just to get it finished. But in hindsight, it was a pretty good yarn, if at times uneven and hard to keep track of all the characters, plots and subplots. That, though, is probably the main part of the draw.

If you’ve reviewed this book, drop me an e-mail at justareadingfool [at] gmail [dot] com and I’ll link to your review also.

Weekly Geeks #3: Memory jogged - check

This is part III of a three-part response for this week’s Weekly Geeks, in which we were to write about our fond memories of childhood books. In Part I, I talked about books from Dr. Seuss to Dr. Spock and the dogs Clifford and Fletcher. In this part, I continue with more of my favorite childhood books, and in a third part, I will share the memories that were triggered by my reading the posts of other bloggers who participated in this week’s challenge. Unfortunately, because of time constraints this morning, I’m not going to be able to elaborate much right now and may come back and edit this post, but I do want to give a quick “shout-out” to all those who helped jog my memory.

I read through several of the Weekly Geeks’ responses, and wow, the memories just came flooding in.

SomeReads reminded me of Scholastic Book orders and on the other side of the literary spectrum, sort of, Mad and Cracked magazines. Many of the books that I mentioned in the previous two posts were books I ordered through Scholastic. I still have books I ordered through Scholastic, including Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of Nimh, about which Book-O-Roma helped remind me.

Meanwhile, Deb at Nothing of Importance triggered memories of elementary school with her post in which she mentioned bookmobiles. It was the highlight of our week, or was it monthly? Whichever, it was something worth waiting for, especially at our small town school.

Like Andi, I loved The Chronicles of Narniaa too, but maybe not for the same reasons as she. Mr. Tumnus wasn’t one of my favorite characters. I think I was more into Aslan.

Becca at The Inside Cover helped me with my own trip down memory lane by reminding me of the Ralph S. Mouse books by Beverly Cleary. It fits right in with my love of fictional mice and rats.

Like Mel at Mel’s Reading Corner, I also was a big fan of Nancy Drew mysteries and also, of course, The Hardy Boys.

And finally, Florinda helped jog my memory about The Great Brain series by John D. Fitzgerald.

I’m sure as I read more of the posts of fellow Weekly Geeks, my memory will be jogged more, but for now this is a start.