Nanowrimo and The Bloody Chamber

I am not a writer.

I am a reader.

A lover of the real and the bizarre, great plots and even better sentences.

But since I think everyone should get step out of their comfort zone for a minute, I'm participating in this year's Nanowrimo, otherwise known as National Novel Writing Month. Nanowrimo starts every year on November 1st and for the whole month, thousands of people will write a novel, word by word, while trying to accomplishing their total word count. The prize: the ability to say honestly that you wrote a novel.

This will be the third year I've participated and I am determined to accomplish my word count of 50,000 words. What is my book about or its title, you ask? I have no idea. I barely have my protagonist's name.

But that will not stop me.

I will write word after word until I reach my goal despite tests, studying, family, and life in general. I will get to 50, 000 words by writing 1,667 words a day. I just have no idea what I'm going to reward myself with at the end. Maybe with a nice book.
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It's Halloween night and not one child has knocked on my door. I'm glad I'm not the one who bought the candy this year. But no worries; I have Angela Carter's fairy tale masterpiece The Bloody Chamber to keep me company on this spooky night.

I heard about Angela Carter through a review by Carl at Stainless Steel Droppings. Then recently I read a great essay called "The Angela Carter Workshop" in Tin House. The essay's author, Ricky Moody, described what it was like to be a student in one of her workshops and to have an ongoing correspondence with her.

Carter went and retold old stories in a way that leaves the reader in awe. I know I held my breath several times while reading "The Company of Wolves," a retelling of Little Red Riding Hood. Once I finished reading it, I had to read the story over again. Highly recommended.

Halloween and the R.I.P. Challenge

All Hallows Eve is almost here and so is the end of the R.I.P. challenge hosted by Carl. This was my second time participating in the challenge and I had so much fun. I signed up for Peril the First, which was to read four books of any length, but I read a little more than that. My only regrets are that several of the books on my list I'm still waiting for my library to get in and that the weather is finally starting to feel like fall. Today started out so cold and foggy but then the sun came out late morning and a cool wind started to blow. A lot of Californians call it "earthquake weather" but I call it fall.

I read:

1. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight - The Pearl Poet
2. The Halloween Tree - Ray Bradbury
3. Gloom Cookie - Serena Valentino
4. Wanted - Mark Millar
5. The Sisters Grimm Volume 1 - Michael Buckley
6. The Bearskinner: A Tale of the Brothers Grimm - Laura Amy Schiltz

I just received today The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter and Death with Interruptions by Jose Saramago from the library. Both books go perfectly with this challenge. I'm spending the next week devouring both while studying for a test.

I'm still waiting for Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book and Y: The Last Man Volume 2. But until then, I will spend the rest of winter reading the books on my list.

Sunday Salon: Breaking All the Rules

This month has been very bookish despite the fact that fall semester has started for me out here in California. So even though I have almost no spare time to read that hasn't stopped me from acquiring books in any way that I can. Which really sucks since just last Saturday I signed up for J. Kaye's Ban-on-Spending Book Challenge. The premise of the challenge is not to spend another dime on books until you read the books you already own that are on your TBR list. I tried, I really did. But within a couple of days I had books in my mailbox from Paperbackswap and Amazon. Having a $1 bookstore just down the street from where I live doesn't help matters either. Every single book in the store is only one dollar and you can always find great finds.

Friday I promised my younger siblings and my kids that if they behaved well while we were school shopping, I would take them to our local $1 bookstore. Mind you, I forgot all about the the ban on spending. We went in and I came out with seven books for myself, which brings this month's total of books bought or traded to 26, a record for me. But can I really complain when I acquired Munro, Welty, Lutz, Smith, O'Brien, Hoffman, and the many other book covers you see throughout this post for one dollar each or for free? You will hear no complaints from me.

I felt guilty for about three seconds before hugging my new books protectively and pushing the thought out of my mind. I'll try the challenge again September 1st. Not a day before.

Too bad none of the books fit into any of the challenges I signed up for this week: Lambda Challenge and Carl V's 3rd annual Readers Imbibing Peril (R.I.P.) Challenge. The Lambda Challenge is an ongoing challenge based on the Lambda Literary Foundation awards. Every year the foundation gives out awards to celebrate gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender literature. Since this is a genre I totally forgot about, I'm in. I have no idea what I'm going to read yet.

Carl's R.I.P. Challenge is one of my favorite challenges. Every year I count down to fall and the chance to sign up and read as many scary stories as I can. I'm a chicken so I read more mysteries than thrillers. Because my list of potential reads is long, I won't list it here. You can read it here though.

This week I managed to finish three books and a couple of essays. Housekeeping vs. the Dirt by Nick Hornby is a collection of essays about the books he's read for The Believer magazine. The collection is smart and funny, a great collection for any book lover's shelf. I've read several books by Hornby including About a Boy, How to be Good, The Polysyllabic Spree, and currently High Fidelity. You cannot go wrong reading Hornby.

The Pull of the Moon by Elizabeth Berg was this month's re-read. It's a pretty simple story about a woman named Nan who leaves her husband, home, and life as she knows it to figure out who she is and what she wants. Along the way she talks to strangers who are almost always women to see how their own lives turned out and are they living the life they want. Written as letters to Nan's husband and also as diary entries, the book is a quick and enjoyable read.

Also read this week was Sir Gawain and the Green Knight by the Pearl Poet. This was required reading for my British Lit class, but I'm glad I read it. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is thought to have been written in the 14th-century by an anonymous writer. It's about a mysterious, huge, green knight coming to King Arthur's court to challenge any knight to a game he had in mind: he would let them strike a blow to him with his large, scary axe in exhange that in one year and a day that same knight will find him and stand a blow from the green knight. There's a lot of embrassment because no one was stupid enough to volunteer. Arthur ended up volunteering and before he could strike a blow to the green knight, his cousin Sir Gawain, offered to take Arthur's place. Gawain cuts the knight's head off thinking that would be the end of the game only for the green knight to pick up his rolling head, tell Gawain who he was and the name of his manor, before riding on his large green horse with his head in his hands. The rest of the poem had to do with Gawain's journey and what happens. I have to thank my professor for requiring this and holding my class's hands through this. For a minute I thought about changing my major from English to accounting.

Yesterday I started reading Breaking Dawn by Stephenie Meyer. I was kind of wary about reading it since every book after Twilight hasn't been as fulfilling. But Breaking Dawn is proving to be as much of a page-turner as the three books before it. I plan on finishing this morning so I can start on my many pages of homework. I'll post my review later on this week.

Okay this post is so long. So I'm off to drink too much coffee and read while shouting at Bella to quit being so selfish. Have a great week.

R.I.P. Challenge

It's back!! Carl's annual Readers Imbibing Peril or R.I.P. Challenge is back. I have been waiting for this challenge all year long. I am so happy.

The R.I.P. Challenge runs from September 1st through October 31st. The theme is to scare yourself silly reading books from the mystery, suspense, thriller, dark fantasy, gothic, horror, and/or supernatural genres. You can even start reading now if you wanted to.

This is my favorite peril. I plan on reading at least four books from my pool of potential reads.

1. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon

2. The Graveyard Book - Neil Gaiman

3. I am legend - Richard Matheson

4. Dracula - Bram Stoker

5. Breaking Dawn - Stephenie Meyer

6. Fragile Things - Gaiman

7. 20th Century Ghosts - Joe Hill

8. The Historian - Elizabeth Kostova

9. We have always lived in the castle - Shirley Jackson

10. The Haunting of Hill House- Shirley Jackson

11. The Best American Mystery Stories of 2006 & 2007

12. Case Histories - Kate Atkinson

13. Lasher - Anne Rice

14. Hellboy Vol. 1 - Mike Magnola

15. Y: The Last Man Vol. 2

16. The Complete Sherlock Holmes Vol. 1 - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Readers in Peril (R.I.P.) Autumn Reading Challenge

Here's one more challenge I'm signing up for! I really don't read horror, but why not have nightmares? I'm tired of sunny California. I'm ready for winter. Mind you I don't want the flooding that's going on in other states, but can't I have a little cold weather? I'm going to go for Peril the First and also the Sunday Short Story Peril. Here's my list of possible suspects:

Bradbury Stories: 100 of his most celebrated tales -Ray Bradbury

Strange Happenings- Avi

Dracula - Bram Stoker

His Dark Materials Trilogy -Philip Pullman

Dreamcatcher - Stephen King

The Stand - Stephen King

Mayfair Witches Series- Anne Rice