Far Be It From Me...

Truly, I hate to contradict another's opinion of a book. But seriously, The Truth Teller by Angela Hunt is hardly the 'suspenseful page turner' that one reviewer claimed. This was a book full of potential. Seriously, modifying the sperm of a dead husband with the DNA of the Iceman is a cool (no pun intended) premise. A rich businessman, a corrupt research scientist, a grief stricken widow...could you honestly have better bones for a plot?

Yeah. Well, add the subversive Christian message and it somehow falls flat. Honestly, I am a spiritual person. And I do not wish to insult those of faith. I just cannot and will not accept the fact that God plays chess with each of us. I will leave it at that. Yet, I do understand that many people believe that each and every aspect of their lives is part of a greater plan. What I cannot understand is someone telling me that there is only one way to reach God. Using a five year old character to push a religious agenda does not work for me. In fact, it made me rather angry.

Let me leave you with a better book selection. Right now I am reading Loving Frank. Which is where I am headed right now with a cup of steaming tea. Mamah Borthwick Cheney, you and I my dear, would have been the best of friends.

Close Enough

You Should Be a Social Worker

You are deeply caring and empathetic. You are able to take on other people's problems as if they were your own. Sensitive and intuitive, you understand human emotions well. Helping others gives you the most joy in life. You feel like it's your purpose in life. You do best when you: - Have a lot of responsibility - Greatly impact someone's life with your work You would also be a good philanthropist or stay at home parent.

What Should You Be When You Grow Up?

The Joy of Music

Yesterday I had the pleasure of attending a concert at Holy Angels Church. My co-worker, Rob, is the director of Harmonia Chamber Singers. The acoustics of this church were the perfect compliment to this group's talent. I had almost forgotten that music has the ability to transcend; to make us believe that we are indeed capable of greatness, or that we may be better than we truly are. During the Credo from Palestrina's Missa Papae Marcelli I almost believed I was in the presence of angel voices. If you live in the Buffalo area, please do yourself the favor and attend their next concert. Their calendar is on their homepage.

Mean People Suck or Sixth Grade Teachers Can Be Less Mature Than Their Students

Ok...today I was held hostage by my job. Stuffed into a windowless, drafty room for eight hours. Granted, by the end of a rather non-productive day none of us were at our best.

However, is there a syndrome of some sort that makes a rude group/clique/small mob believe they are invisible to the rest of the room? Each time certain individuals spoke at this meeting, this little mob of bullies began rolling their eyes, laughing, making exaggerated, and may I add unflattering, facial contortions. WTF???

It was the first time in my life that I deliberately gave an adult my "teacher/pissed off mommy" look. Apparently that was enough to interrupt this unnamed syndrome and the symptoms abated.

I believe this syndrome is related to another which my husband and I refer to as "State of Oblivion". Persons exhibiting symptoms are simply called "Oblivions". Hey, I never said we were terribly clever at chez Swanson. I am sure you have met these people. No? Just this week I spotted the following:

• a girl at Wegman's who wanted her sub toasted AFTER it was wrapped and bagged.
• annoying women with push carts at Kohl's who blocked the aisles with their carts in the shoe department
• more annoying women at Kohl's weaving down the aisles while their heads were turned sharply in another direction
• drivers in pricey cars and the right of way coming to complete stops before making right hand turns
• me, if I continue to add to this list and bore you with this rant:)

You get the idea. If you spot these individuals, remain calm. Shoot them "the look"; you will feel better and they will not notice. Avoid close contact. Although not contagious their actions may be harmful to your personal well being.

Brain Dead?

Since school started, I have been in a funk. After six weeks of school you would think that I would be back in the groove. But I am not. I could blame it on a lot of things: having a student teacher, working with one of the "worst" groups of youngsters to grace our halls in many years, listening to the constant whining from some of my co-workers, listening to the constant whining of my children as they work their way through the first weeks back at high school, sorting out the conflicting messages of the political pundits, attempting to understand the real causes of the Wall Street debacle...you get the idea.

Whatever the reason(s) the effects are even worse. My reading, which over the summer, was fast, fierce, and fun has become sporadic (to the detriment of my book club obligations). My productive level of knitting is back to its pre-summer trickle. My social life, which I was really making an effort to improve, is starting to wane.

Now, could my reading matter be part of the problem? The Bridge of Sighs by Richard Russo was a doorstop of a book. Named after the famous bridge in Venice, this 547 page missive, reminiscent of Empire Falls, takes us through the lives of Lucy (Lou C. Lynch), his best/worst friend Bobby Marconi, and their love, Sara Berg.

The first 300 pages were entertaing, the last 247 were just plain tedious. So stick a fork in it - it's done.

Mercy! Uncle!

This week kicked my ass and handed it to me on a platter. It is only the third full week of classes and I say I just cannot do it. It should not feel like December yet. Honestly, I really like my students. And this is the smallest class load I have ever had. So could someone please explain why it feels so damned hard this year?

Anyhoo...I somehow squeezed in two books since school has started: The Secret Scripture and Big Mouth and Ugly Girl. The former is a Man Book Prize winner. Interesting concept, this one. Roseann Clear-McNulty tells her story from the mental hospital she does not call home. She has been a resident of the facility for over 60 years. I had a hard time wrapping my "inner reader's voice" around the author's for the first view chapters, but quickly became engrossed in the story. It switched between the diaries of Roseann the patient and Dr. Gene the psychiatrist. I am sure you will be shocked to hear the good doctor had a problem or two? Roseanne's childhood is a piece of Ireland's history. The ending is a bit predictable once you reach the end of the narrative, but satisfying none the less. Roseann was a victim of her time. The parish priest and his disgust of women, her husband and is lack of faith in his young bride, her shrewish mother -in -law all play a role in her destiny. Well worth the paper it is printed on.

Now, Big Mouth and Ugly Girl was a sheer joy to read. This is Joyce Carol Oates first young adult novel. And it was perfect! It had a totally believable plot, realistic characters, and a plain old feel good ending. If you have any teen readers in your house, send it there way. I was reading this one at school during our Silent Sustained Reading time. Every day at the end of reading I would say, "Wow! I really like this book!" After about 4 days of this, the kids finally started asking if they could read it when I was finished. Sneaky, huh?

Banned Books?

You know that list? The "Palin" list? The list that could not be true if one thought about it for more than one knee jerk second? Well, Erica had a great idea. Go ahead. I'll give you a second, but be sure to come right back.

Got it? Ok, here is my list:

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle*
Annie on My Mind by Nancy Garden
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
Blubber by Judy Blume
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley*
Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson*
Canterbury Tales by Chaucer
Carrie by Stephen KingCatch-22 by Joseph Heller
Christine by Stephen King
Confessions by Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Cujo by Stephen King
Curses, Hexes, and Spells by Daniel Cohen
Daddy's Roommate by Michael Willhoite
Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Peck
Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
Decameron by Boccaccio
East of Eden by John Steinbeck
Fallen Angels by Walter Myers
Fanny Hill (Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure) by John Cleland
Flowers For Algernon by Daniel Keyes*
Forever by Judy Blume
Grendel by John Champlin Gardner
Halloween ABC by Eve Merriam
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling
Have to Go by Robert Munsch
Heather Has Two Mommies by Leslea Newman
How to Eat Fried Worms by Thomas Rockwell
Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
Impressions edited by Jack Booth
In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak
It's Okay if You Don't Love Me by Norma Klein
James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
Lady Chatterley's Lover by D.H. Lawrence
Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
Little Red Riding Hood by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm
Lord of the Flies by William Golding*
Love is One of the Choices by Norma Klein
Lysistrata by Aristophanes s
More Scary Stories in the Dark by Alvin Schwartz
My Brother Sam Is Dead by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier
My House by Nikki Giovanni
My Friend Flicka by Mary O'HaraNight
Chills by Dean KoontzOf Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
On My Honor by Marion Dane Bauer
One Day in The Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn
One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Ordinary People by Judith Guest
Our Bodies, Ourselves by Boston Women's Health Collective*
Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy
Revolting Rhymes by Roald Dahl
Scary Stories 3: More Tales to Chill Your Bones by Alvin Schwartz
Scary Stories in the Dark by Alvin Schwartz
Separate Peace by John Knowles
Silas Marner by George Eliot
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain*
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
The Bastard by John Jakes
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier*
The Color Purple by Alice Walker
The Devil's Alternative by Frederick Forsyth
The Figure in the Shadows by John Bellairs
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katherine Paterson
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
The Headless Cupid by Zilpha Snyder
The Learning Tree by Gordon Parks
The Living Bible by William C. Bower**
The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare
The New Teenage Body Book by Kathy McCoy and Charles Wibbelsman
The Pigman by Paul Zindel*
The Seduction of Peter S. by Lawrence Sanders
The Shining by Stephen King
The Witches by Roald Dahl
The Witches of Worm by Zilpha Snyder
Then Again, Maybe I Won't by Judy Blume
To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee*
Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare
Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary by the Merriam-Webster Editorial Staff
Witches, Pumpkins, and Grinning Ghosts: The Story of the Halloween Symbols by Edna Barth

Green means I read it. Add '*' and I have taught it.

Whenever I read a banned book list, I always wonder how it got there. More often than not it is based on one word, one idea, one small item taken out of context. Last year at our high school, we had a mom on a mission. She wanted to forbid the reading of To Kill a Mockingbird because of the alleged rape of Mayella Ewell by Tom Robinson. Why? Because four of our students were on trial for the rape of a young white teen. She wanted to forbid the reading of Speak. Why? Because the main character was raped at a party. She did not want her son reading The Kite Runner assigned by his Honors English teacher. Why? Because there is a brutal sexual assault in the novel. See a theme here?

The only thing I can say in her defense: she read the books before making her suggestions. How many times have we heard of people wanting to ban a book that they never even held in their own two hands?

Right now I am reading Big Mouth and Ugly Girl by Joyce Carol Oates. Maybe that should be on the list. Gee, the main character is contemplating suicide because he was wrongly accused of threatening to bomb the school and his life has gone down the tubes. Or her other book Sexy where a teacher is unjustly accused of 'immoral' acts.

So go ahead. Give me a book that makes me squirm! I have a brain and I am not afraid to use it.