Navigation
This is Dani Smith

 

I am Dani Smith, sometimes known around the web as Eglentyne. I am a writer in Texas. I like my beer and my chocolate bitter and my pens pointy.

This blog is one of my hobbies. I also knit, sew, run, parent, cook, eat, read, and procrastinate. I have too many hobbies and don’t sleep enough. Around here I talk about whatever is on my mind, mostly reading and writing, but if you hang out long enough, some knitting is bound to show up.

Thank you for respecting my intellectual property and for promoting the free-flow of information and ideas. If you’re not respecting intellectual property, then you’re stealing. Don’t be a stealer. Steelers are ok sometimes (not all of them), but don’t be a thief.

Advertisement
Tag It
10 Things (27) 100 Push Ups (1) A Book A Week (81) Albuquerque Botanical Gardens (1) Alien Invasion (6) Anderson Cooper (1) Aspirations and Fear (11) Bobby Pins (1) Books (20) Bracket (1) Civic Duty (26) Cobwebs (1) Contests (3) Craft (3) Cuz You Did It (4) D&D (1) Danielewski (1) David Nicholls (1) Dolly (5) Domesticity (13) Doodle (1) Dr Horrible (1) Eglentyne (6) Electric Company (1) Etudes (14) Friday Night Lights (2) Frog (1) From the kitchen (or was it outer space?) (14) Generosity (2) Germinology (19) Ghilie's Poppet (1) Giant Vegetables (1) Gifty (14) Haka (1) Halloween (7) Hank Stuever (1) Hearts (5) Hot Air Balloons (1) I really am doing nothing (8) IIt Looks Like I'm Doing Nothing... (1) Ike (12) Inspiration (62) Internet Boyfriend (1) It Looks Like I'm Doing Nothing... (102) Julia Child (2) Kids (10) Kilt Hose (3) Knitting (7) Knitting Olympics (9) Laura Esquivel (1) Lazy Hazy Day (4) Libba Bray (1) Libraries (2) Locks (1) Los Lonely Boys (1) Lovefest (50) Madness (1) Magician's Elephant (1) Making Do (18) Millennium Trilogy (1) Morrissey (1) Murakami (4) Music (9) NaNoWriMo (30) Nathan Fillion (1) National Bureau of Random Exclamations (44) New Mexico (20) Nonsense (1) Overthinking (25) Pirates (1) Politics (20) Random Creation (6) Read Something (94) Removations (1) Richard Castle (1) Running (21) Sandia Peak (2) ScriptFrenzy (9) Season of the Nutritional Abyss (5) Sesame Street (2) Sewing (15) Sex Ed (4) Shaun Tan (1) Shiny (2) Shoes (1) Shteyngart (1) Something Knitty (59) Sonars (103) Struck Matches (4) Sweet Wampum of Inspirado (4) Tale of Despereaux (1) Tech (7) Texas (8) Thanksgiving (4) The Strain (1) Therapy (15) There's Calm In Your Eyes (18) Thermodynamics of Creativity (5) Three-Minute Fiction (1) Throwing Plates Angry (3) TMI (1) Tour de Chimp (2) tTherapy (1) Twitter (1) Why I would not be a happy drug addict (12) Why You Should Not Set Fire to Your Children (58) Writing (89) Yard bounty (7) You Can Know Who Did It (13) You Say It's Your Birthday (16) Zentangle (2)
Socially Mediated
Advertisement
Eglentyne on Twitter

Twitter Updates

    follow me on Twitter
    Currently Reading
    Advertisement
    Recently Read

    Entries in A Book A Week (81)

    Friday
    Jan132012

    A Book A Week: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer

    Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer. Houghton Mifflin 2005 (library copy).

    This book was like a heartbreaking puzzlebox. The layers of discovery unfolded in clever and tangled ways. No one ever suggests that nine-year-old Oskar Schell is autistic, but his overdeveloped precocity does remind me of the autistic Christopher in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time (which I was reading to the Sonars when I read this one).

    Oskar is a boy in New York whose father died in the World Trade Center attack on September 11, 2001. Oskar’s grief is manifest in his emotional outbursts and his tendency to self-harm when he’s very upset. Oskar and his father played complicated word games together, and one of their favorite activities was to find mistakes in the New York Times. So when Oskar finds a key in his father’s closet, Oskar is certain that his father has left him one more puzzle to solve. A child’s idealism and single-mindedness, doused in sadness and guilt and misunderstanding for what he perceives to be an unforgivable secret about the day his father died, mix together as Oskar sets out on the seemingly impossible task to find the lock into which the key fits.

    What unfolds are two main stories, separated in time by decades, but connected by Oskar. The story of Oskar’s search for his father’s puzzle (and his father), and the story of Oskar’s grandparents and their unlikely (and equally grief-doused) love affair and breakup after World War II.

    The improbably complicated story leads Oskar on a journey that has moments of deep emotion and illuminating cleverness. At other moments, though, that plotting sleight-of-hand feels overly contrived. The book is a stunning piece of collective emotional processing though, employing interesting typography, and progressive images that become symbolic in their repetition. Foer points to some of the lies we have told ourselves as a country in the wake of 9/11, and the ways in which grief can twist our thinking, both individually and collectively. At the end, I found the book uplifting and hopeful, not as cloying as some critics found it. I am susceptible to sentimentality at times, of course. I appreciated that Foer builds a case for our interdependence and interconnectedness in this world by allowing Oskar to build an unlikely network of friends and allies who find strength in one another.

    Wednesday
    Jan112012

    ABAW, Read-Aloud Trio: Eternity Code, Graveyard Book, and Curious Incident

    Three books I read out loud to the Sonars in September, October, and November.

    ~~~~~~~

    Artemis Fowl: The Eternity Code by Eoin Colfer. Hyperion via Scholastic, 2003.

    I’ve never liked Artemis quite as much as the Sonars do, but Colfer’s lyrical words are fun to read aloud.

    This is the third in the series of books about the preteen criminal mastermind, but Artemis’ conscience is beginning to prick at him a bit more sharply. Artemis is recognizing that his activities hurt people that he loves. That combined with the moral reformation of his recovering father suggests that Artemis’ criminal days may soon be over.

    “Just one more job” doesn’t go quite as planned. A restaurant explodes and Butler gets shot when Artemis underestimates a dirty American business tycoon. Shaken by his mistake, Artemis has to call on Holly (one more time) to try to save Butler and recover a piece of fairy technology, and the clock is ticking. Butler’s teenaged sister Julia takes on a more prominent role as she tries to fill her big brother’s big shoes. Julia Butler’s style is all her own though. Foaly is my favorite series character, but Artemis, Julia, and Holly have to work with limited assistance from the clever centaur. Without giving away too much, Colfer hits a sort of reset button at the conclusion of this one, promising that subsequent adventures will renew the conflict between human child-genius and fairykind. 

    ~~~~~~

    The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman. HarperCollins paperback, 2008.

    The Sonars chose this book for Halloween reading. This was the second time through for most of us, but the first time out loud.

    Gaiman’s story of Nobody Owens—the boy who is raised by ghosts in a graveyard after his family is brutally murdered—is easily one of my favorite books of all time. It bears rereading, and grows with the kids. They notice and understand the implications of the story differently as they change and understand the world differently.

    The structure of the book makes it a fabulous bedtime read. I think the early chapters could each stand as a story on their own for a reader who isn’t ready to commit to the whole novel.

    I love Gaiman’s books for children and adolescents because he does not condescend to a misguided notion of youthful innocence and understanding. He knows that kids know things, and need to know things. His books are sometimes scary, showing an ugly side of humanity and life and death. But he doesn’t frighten in a vacuum. The children in the stories find strength in themselves to not only conquer their fears, but to find the source of their power in the acceptance of their own oddities.

    As a mother, reading this to my growing boys, I find several parts of the story of the growth of Bod very moving. I’m inspired by the gentle but thoughtful parenting provided by all of the different adults (ghostly and not) in Bod’s life, and hope that I can help the Sonars navigate their ways to adulthood with as strong and wonderful a sense of compassion and self that Bod finds. 

    ~~~~~~

    The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon. Random House (Via Vintage Books) 2003.

    The narrator and main character of this story is Christopher, a fifteen year old boy with autism. In the opening scene, he stumbles on his neighbor’s dog, who has been killed with a garden fork. Christopher wants to solve the mystery of who killed Wellington, and because he loves Sherlock Holmes, he tells us the story in what he imagines to be a Sherlockian detective style. But he also tells us so much more. The mystery is far more complicated than who killed the dog. The audience cannot help but understand who has killed the Wellington, and how a lie has grown, well before Christopher can understand what has happened. The world of emotion is bewildering for Christopher. Details that reveal to most readers information about the well-being (or lack thereof) of various people in Christopher’s life, do not register the same way with Christopher. How does a person who has trouble understanding and expressing emotion, cope with great emotional upheaval in his life? How does he understand trust? How does one rebuild trust with him once it is lost?

    This is not, strictly speaking, a children’s story. I hesitated at first to read this one out loud to the Sonars. Is the story and language too mature? I wondered. Are the subtleties of Christopher’s character too sophisticated for the Sonars to understand? But we read this one right after we finished The Graveyard Book, and I remembered the lesson not to underestimate kids and to trust that they will learn what they can from a story.

    Alternating sequences advance the plot and explain complicated mathematical and logical ideas that help to calm Christopher when he becomes upset. These sometimes very difficult puzzles that we might struggle to understand offer the reader analogies for how Christopher feels in understanding relationships. His father’s pain might be obvious to us, but so is the logic problem obvious to Christopher. Haddon’s portrayal of this character is subtle, compassionate, complicated, and beautiful. As well as sometimes a little gritty and profane (but only mildly profane).

    The Sonars loved this story. I think they did understand that Christopher does not experience the world the same way they do. Nevertheless they were able to very strongly empathize with Christopher’s adventure and his struggle and his fear as he stumbles into a very alien and insecure new circumstance. They sat tensely, on the edge of their seats, as Christopher tried to make his way through the train station the first time, and so, perhaps, understood Christopher’s story on an immediate and more deeply emotional level.

    Monday
    Jan092012

    A Book A Week: The Last Little Blue Envelope by Maureen Johnson

    The Last Little Blue Envelope by Maureen Johnson. HarperCollins EPub Edition, 2011

    This book is a sequel to 13 Little Blue Envelopes, which I talked about here, and it might have been the first eBook I read from beginning to end. Maybe.

    I really like Maureen Johnson’s stories. The tattered remnants of the adolescent I once was can relate to her protagonists as real people who do not fit into cookie-cutter teenager/young adult media molds, and for that I’m grateful. The mom in me is also grateful for books with three-dimensional characters who are sometimes a little nerdy and sometimes a little awkward, but who are also clever and emotionally complicated. I read this one on the heels of Sonar X11, who read 13 Little Blue Envelopes and The Last Little Blue Envelope in one weekend. For a kid who normally goes in for fantasy, I was happily surprised that he liked these books so much. Don’t let those glossy, gossipy, weirdly-stereotyped covers of Maureen Johnson books fool you (she probably didn’t choose those anyway). Inside are characters that are engaging and cool regardless of the reader’s gender. I think Sonar X11 had wild fantasies of going to Europe by himself after reading them. That kind of inspiration can’t hurt, and Johnson makes that kind of whim feel more than possible.

    I was worried that this sequel would be a sort of mish-mash of all the stuff everyone wished had happened in the first book. But I was happily surprised there too. Johnson let’s her main character, Ginny, get her heart broken and get over it in fine form as she seeks to finish the scavenger hunt created by her dead aunt. Ginny’s expectations and assumptions (like mine) are challenged and she matures in bittersweet and smart ways. The search for the art and for a sense of her aunt become secondary to Ginny’s search for herself and the kind of person she wants to be in the world. I’m also pretty sure that one of the guys in this story looks and walks just like the Tenth Doctor. You figure out which one.

    Tuesday
    Jan032012

    2011 ABAW, the statistical retrospective

    I set out to read at least one book each week last year. And I did it. I read a total of 58 books in 2011. That’s down from 2010’s 73 books, but I still did well.

    In January I came up with a PLAN to read in four categories each month: a notable or classic book I’d never read, a book I’d read before, something published in the past two years (alternating fiction and nonfiction), and something banned by an idiot or recommended by a friend. I even preplanned about half the books I thought I’d read. 

    Well, you know what they say about plans. 

    I kept up with all of that for almost half a year. Turns out that I was no good at keeping track of which books were recommended by friends (virtually everything I read was recommended by someone), so that wasn’t a useful category. I’m also not very good at sticking to plans when it comes to my personal whims. I didn’t always feel like reading what came next on the list, so mostly I didn’t. Early in the year, I actively sought out banned books, but as a category, that one fell apart for me pretty quickly. Too many books are banned or challenged.

    I read eleven books out loud to the kids. I’ve never counted that before, but my gut tells me that’s a lot. As they get bigger, the Sonars can keep listening longer. Even when we more frequently replace our out-loud reading time with their own personal reading time. 

    I read five classic or notable books I’d previously missed. I don’t know why I found this category so difficult. There are so many books out there. I suppose I was less inspired by the oldies but goodies. Maybe that will change this year. 

    I reread nine books. More than half of these were books reread to the Sonars. I love to see them rediscover great stories and notice new things. I want to keep working at this category this year. 

    I read fifteen nonfiction books. I did better in this category than I remembered, though this category was bulked up by several summer skims and a little research for a novel. 

    I abandoned two books. One for sheer boredom and one for shift in season. (I’m not counting the handful of books that I picked up but didn’t really start before putting them back into the To-Read pile) I started reading Far From the Madding Crowd last January. I quit and came back to it four times, but can’t bring myself to finish it. It was my first serious eBook and the first time I left it, I thought maybe it was the format. But since I finished at least four other books in the electronic format in 2011, I think it’s just Hardy. The other book I didn’t finish was When Santa Fell to Earth, our traditional Christmas read. Our December reading time was more interrupted than normal, and we started it late. We all love the story, but once Christmas passed, the Sonars were ready to read something else. We’ll catch it next December. 

    I skipped twenty-four books that were on the plan in January. They’ve all gone on a To-Read list. Maybe I can knock out a few of them in 2012.

    My first book for 2012 is The Crossing by Cormac McCarthy. I’d tell you what I hope to read next, but that might just jinx it. What’s on your reading list this year? 

    Thursday
    Oct062011

    A Book A Week: Snowdrops by A. D. Miller

    Snowdrops by A. D. Miller, Doubleday, 2011 (library copy)

     

    Snowdrop. 1. An early-flowering

    bulbous plant, having a white

    pendant flower. 2. Moscow slang.

    A corpse that lies buried or

    hidden in the winter snows,

    emerging only in the thaw.”

     

    When you turn the first page from that epigraph, you’ll get a glimpse of a snowdrop (definition 2.), but just a glimpse. Much of the early book feels like it could become a noir crime story. At any moment, the gruesome or violent bubbles just below the surface of the increasing tension. 

    But this is not a detective novel nor thriller. The mystery that unfolds is the puzzle of denial that Nick Platt builds around himself. Nick, writing from the safety of Britain and his upcoming wedding, tells us—or rather his fiance, for the book is a written confession to an unnamed person he is hoping will still want to marry him after reading it—about the last winter of his four-and-a-half years as a lawyer in Russia. About the secrets that damaged his career and haunt his thinking. Nick allowed himself to be lured into two bad situations, both of them involving fraud, both of them hiding violence. Nick doesn’t experience the violence himself. The story is not graphic except for that one glimpse of a corpse discovered in the melting snow. Nick’s actions and inactions and intentional thick-headedness enable violence to happen. In truth, the crime would have happened with someone else if not with Nick—his seductresses indicate as much when it’s all too late to change. They call him their Kolya, and avert their eyes when he seeks explanation. 

    The colder the Russian winter gets, the colder the narrative feels, the more disconnected Nick becomes from a sense of responsibility and legality. Nick is what happens when we willfully look the other way, how we become culpable for our own ignorance. By the end, I was angry at Nick—not as angry as I imagine his fiance might be—but angry at his pathetic excuses and his inability to relinquish his desire for the trappings of corruption. Nick’s desire is perhaps the more gruesome snowdrop, eclipsing that thawing and decaying glimpse. For the found body merely underscores Nick’s collusion in fraud.

    In spite of my anger, the book kept me hooked to the end. A frosty, atmospheric morality tale.