Ms. Smarty Pants Know It All

Here are my favorite reads for the week:

• An article full of common sense about the effort to stop movie pirating.
• I found this blog about unusual, unsightly, and just plain ugly mailboxes.
• Also a newly-found site: Offbeat Bride. I loved the thoughts and touches this couple put into their wedding ceremony. And Space Invaders wedding invitations? Come on with the awesomeness!
• On the Doctor Who front, Amen to this one by Jacob. To prove that I didn’t cheat, here’s mine from earlier this week.

Tags: Recommendations by Ms. SP
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I initially got this with the intention of actually enjoying some poetry during National Poetry Month. But since I fell behind, let’s just pretend it happened, shall we?

Seven Ages of Man: An Anthology of Poetry With Music brings together some of the greatest British and Irish actors to read the works of many English-language poets. This anthology uses Shakespeare’s The Seven Ages of Man as a skeleton. The different Ages help corral the chosen pieces into topical sections.

We’ll first encounter the Infant poems and continue on through the Ages—all the way to the Seventh Age, the “second childishness and mere oblivion.”

The voices of Ralph Fiennes, Ian McKellen, Judi Dench, Michael Caine, John Cleese, Glenda Jackson, and others come out of the recording not just in recitation. Nay, they are performing the pieces of poets like Shel Silverstein, Emily Dickinson, Dylan Thomas, Robert Frost, Christinia Rossetti, and so many other heavy hitters.

I can’t say that I got all of them. Quite a few of the poems went flying over my head. Without the text to refer to, I was undeniably lost some of the time. Other times though, I would find that some poem that I had never heard of before had just commandeered my full attention. More often than I would have expected, I got chills that ran up the back of my neck or had tears of beauty spring unexpectedly to my eyes.

The placement of some of the poems also had me seeing them in new ways. If I remember correctly, Masefield’s Sea Fever was in the Sixth Age. I had always read that one as the longings of a “home” sick sailor, a young man who has been land locked too long. Now, I can totally see this other sadder interpretation.

Tiger, tiger, burning bright (Yes, I know that’s not the real title, but that’s what we all know it as, right?) was in the Adult section (again, this is if I’m remembering correctly). Granted, I still have no idea what the poem is about, but I had always thought it was a younger person’s poem.

This audiobook is obviously meant for repeated listenings. It is not helpful to tumble through all these great works without room for digestion. It, however, is a library copy so to get back to it, I’ll have to check it out again in the future. Regardless of my intention, I know the reality of me. To excerpt Robert Frost’s The Road Not Taken:

Oh, I marked the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.

Audiobook Challenge: four down, eight to go.

Tags: Books by Ms. SP
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The subtitle, A Walk in Chicago, is misleading. This isn’t about the sites that one could see on a walking tour at all. Instead, Alex Kotlowitz uses specific locations and people to tell the story of specific Chicago areas.

Chicago is famously known as a city of neighborhoods, but I can’t claim that Mr. Kotlowitz covers neighborhoods. His focus often encompasses only a few blocks of turf.

Overall, this is a book about the lower socio-economic levels of Chicago society—the immigrants, the union workers, and the city housing residents.

As a self-contained work, I’m confused by what it wants to say (except that Chicago is awesome) and what the connection is between the stories, places, and people included.

Sometimes there is a lot of overlap in what is included, but in the same breath, Kotlowitz will say that Chicago is a city of transition and contradictions. So why a not include more diversity into this collection of snapshots?

At other times, stories stick out like sore thumbs. I would ask myself, “Now what is the connection of this one with the rest?”

While each section is entertaining and informative on its own, I wish the reason of the whole comes through more clearly. I never gained a clear larger-picture idea of the city from him. He was not served by his choice of title.

Audiobook Challenge: three down, nine to go.
New Author Challenge: seven completed, eight to go.

Tags: Books by Ms. SP
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