Madeline Miller Talk

 This week I attended an author event and got a chance to meet Madeline Miller. She was brilliant. Funny, clever, engaging, the best-selling author knew how to speak to a crowd with ease. You could tell she’d taught for years and had the ability to make complicated discussions about women in Greek mythology feel relevant and accessible. I adored both of her books, Circe and The Song of Achilles, and can’t wait to see what she writes next. 

 I loved that she answered questions about her writing process and provided details about her research. She talked about how women are frequently made small in mythology and just used to further men’s stories. They are either the wife/mother/daughter of someone or they are a villain. It’s rare to find more meat to a female’s story.

She mentioned two poems, Ulysses by Tennyson and Penelope by Dorothy Parker (below) showing two very different views of their story. 

In the pathway of the sun,
In the footsteps of the breeze,
Where the world and sky are one,
He shall ride the silver seas,
He shall cut the glittering wave.
I shall sit at home, and rock;
Rise, to heed a neighbor's knock;
Brew my tea, and snip my thread;
Bleach the linen for my bed.
They will call him brave.

- Dorothy Parker

In Circe she gave voice to a character that was skated over in The Odyssey. She allowed her a messy life with complicated family relationships and a deep empathy toward humans. Miller shared that she directed Shakespeare’s plays in her free time and it took her five years to find each of her main characters’ voices while writing her novels. It was an incredible talk and one that gave an added depth to her work. 

One side note: this was my first night out after having my second kiddo. I wasn’t sure I’d even be able to make it. Sitting there in that beautiful amphitheater and feeling my brain hum as I listened to her fascinating talk gave me so much satisfaction. After you have kids you can often feel like you are missing a piece of yourself. You are exhausted and rarely have time for intellectually stimulating pursuits. I just want to say that it does get better. Making time for the things that are important to you is just crucial. It is NOT easy, but it is so rewarding.

*Photos property of Avid Reader's Musings

Books to Read via Amy Sherman-Palladino

 

 Rory's love of reading on Gilmore Girls didn't come out of thin air. The show's creator, Amy Sherman-Palladino, is a big reader herself. Years ago when the show was still on, Sherman-Palladino release a list of some of her favorite books. It was broken into two parts, classics and newer releases. There were 60 books (120) on each list.

I printed off the list around 2006 and started reading books from it. I discovered so many amazing gems! The list introduced me to the work of Margaret Atwood, Mary Roach, Dorothy Parker, Ann Patchett, Richard Russo, and Carlos Ruiz Zafon. I discovered The Awakening, Ella Minnow Pea, and Middlesex because of this list. Not every book has become a new favorite, but I've gotten something substantive from almost every single one. As I read each book I marked it off my tattered list and checked to see what I had left to read. I still have a few, but I'm running out of her recommendations!

In the comments of recent post on Brick Lane Trish asked me where I'd heard about the book. It was from this list and I realized I should post about the wonderful books I've discovered in the last decade because of it. I couldn't find a single place online where all these books are listed. Honestly, it's been so long since I first found it, I don't even remember where I got it.

So I just scanned my very worn copy of the list that has traveled around with me for years. You'll see a list of 30 Books to Read Before You're 30 on there as well. It also includes a list of Best Picture Oscar winners that I've been slowly working my way through. There's a little list of Stephen King's top 10 audiobooks that ran in Entertainment Weekly years ago. That list is the one that first introduced me to Neil Gaiman's work!

You never know where you'll find a great book recommendation. Before I started blogging this list was my secret key to discovery so many of the authors who are now my favorites, so I had to share it. I'm so grateful for Sherman-Palladino's impeccable reading tastes!

p.s. If you have any questions about a specific book just ask! I'm sure some of the titles are hard to read because of my scribbles and notes.

p.p.s. If ANYONE know how I can watch the movie Cavalcade, please let me know! It's the only movie on my Oscar list that I haven't seen and I've never been able to find a copy of it. 

A to Z Reader Survey

Authors you've read the most books from:

Douglas Adams, Jane Austen, Ray Bradbury, Roald Dahl, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Neil Gaiman, C.S. Lewis, L.M. Montgomery, and William Shakespeare

Best sequel ever:

All of the Harry Potter sequels (I know that’s cheating)

Currently reading:

Arrowsmith, The Cuckoo’s Calling and Grimm’s Fairy Tales

Drink of choice while reading:

Usually either coffee or red wine.

Ereader or physical book:

Physical books all the way, but I’m finally used to occasionally reading on my kindle.

Fictional character that you probably would have dated in high school:

Quentin in Paper Towns or Arthur Dent in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, I love the quiet guys.

Glad you gave this book a chance:

The Sparrow, seriously it’s so good and the description of it makes it sound awful.

Hidden Gem book:

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, shows the true meaning of endurance.

Important moment in your reading life:

Reading Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil in high school and realizing how fantastic nonfiction could be.

Just Finished:

Re-reading American Gods

Kind of books you won't read:

Romance novels and modern political whining

Longest book you read:

Probably The Count of Monte Cristo or War and Peace.

Major book hangover because of:

The Harry Potter series, every time I read it I don’t want to read anything else.

Number of bookcases you own:

Oh man, nine bookcases including two massive ones that take up a whole wall.

One book you've read multiple times:

Ender’s Game

Preferred place to read:

Curled up on the couch with my pup.

Quote that inspires you:

“Let me be something every minute of every hour of my life…And when I sleep, let me dream all the time so that not one little piece of living is ever lost.” — A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

Reading Regret:

Not getting the chance to visit Oscar Wilde’s grave when I was in Paris.

Series you started and need to finish:

Sue Grafton’s alphabet series, I read one whenever I need a break from another book.

Three of your all-time favorite books:

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

Unapologetic fangirl for:

Neil Gaiman and Harry Potter

Very excited for this release:

New Salinger books!

Worst bookish habit:

Buying all of the books!

Xmarks the spot! Start at the top left of your shelf and pick the 27th book:

The Portable Dorothy Parker

Your last bookish purchase:

A gorgeous 1916 copy of A Girl of the Limberlost from Half Priced Books.

Zzz-snactcher. Which book kept you up way to late:

The Night Circus

Photo by moi. 

Top Ten Favorite Quotes from Books

This week's Top Ten from The Broke and the Bookish asks for my Top Ten Favorite Quotes from Books.

1) “Let me be something every minute of every hour of my life…And when I sleep, let me dream all the time so that not one little piece of living is ever lost.” — A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

2) "You must never feel badly about making mistakes, as long as you take the trouble to learn from them. For you often learn more by being wrong than you do by being right for the wrong reasons." — The Phantom Tollbooth

3) “I realized that you can get so used to certain luxuries that you start to think they’re necessities, but when you have to forgo them, you come to see that you don’t need them after all.” — Half Broke Horses

4) "The world is a great book...they who never stir from home read only a page." — St. Augustine

5) "What she was finding also was how one book led to another, doors kept opening wherever she turned and the days weren’t long enough for the reading she wanted to do.” — The Uncommon Reader

6) “But we are living in a skeptical and, if I may use the phrase, a thought-tormented age: and sometimes I fear that this new generations, educated or hyper-educated as it is, will lack those qualities of humanity, of hospitality, of kindly humour which belong to an older day.” — Dubliners

7) “By hook or by crook, I hope that you will possess yourself of money enough to travel and to idle, to contemplate the future or the past of the world, to dream over books and loiter at street corners and let the line of thought dip into the stream." — A Room of One’s Own

8) “Noble deeds and hot baths are the best cures for depression.” — I Capture the Castle

9) “It could be said that they are still people who consider a bookshelf as a mere storage place for already read books and do not think of the library as a working tool.” — A Passion for Books

10) "I ordered a coffee and a little something to eat and savored the warmth and dryness. Somewhere in the background Nat King Cole sang a perky tune. I watched the rain beat down on the road outside and told myself that one day this would be twenty years ago." – Notes From a Small Island

BONUS QUOTES:
“America has never quite grasped that you can live in a place without making it ugly, that beauty doesn’t have to be confined behind fences, as if a national park were a sort of zoo for nature.” — The Lost Continent

"That which Voldemort does not value, he takes no trouble to comprehend. Of house-elves and children's tales, of love, loyalty, and innocence Voldemort knows and understands nothing." – Harry Potter Book 7

“No one knows how greatness comes to a man. It may lie in his blackness, sleeping, or it may lance into him like those driven fiery particles from outer space. These things, however, are known about greatness: need gives it life and puts it in action; it never comes without pain; it leaves a man changed, chastened, and exalted at the same time – he can never return to simplicity.” — Sweet Thursday


“The writer's way is rough and lonely, and who would choose it while there are vacancies in more gracious professions, such as, say, cleaning out ferryboats?” — Dorothy Parker

Image from here .