42/365 A Graveyard for Lunatics by Ray Bradbury

Ah.  Um.  Well, I just googled this book and learned that it's the second book in a series.  Which makes it make a lot more sense.  I did feel rather that I was missing pieces here and there.
This book took me ages.  But it was well worth it.  Bewildering and sometimes spooky, but good.  I love reading about people who are really good at something - in this case, film editing, writing, and making clay dinosaurs.  I wish I talked the way the characters do.  When I try to do so - or, even worse, when I try to talk like Lord Peter Wimsey - I sound like a supercilious freak.

I want to say more but my eyeballs are falling out.  I just finished a re-do drawing for art class because I decided that the first one didn't turn out.   From now on I think I will try to stick with the first one.

CONCLUSION:  I'm interested in reading the others in the series, so that has to be a good sign.

P.S.  I do not care for that cover.  Just needed to make that clear.

oh dear

I really, really suck.  School and stressful work is my excuse for being the worst 365 project person on earth, but it isn't a very good one.  SQUIRREL NUTKIN TO THE RESUCE, PLEASE!

43/365 Colossians

Again, what can I say?  It was wonderful and convicting and I didn't get it all - but I hope, someday...

I actually listened to Max Mclean reading the book on Bible Gateway, while I finished some drawings for school.  It was great.
  It took me a loooong time to get used to Max Mclean's voice, but now I like him more than any other Bible reader I've come across.  (When I was a snotty 14 year old I used to make snarky comparisons between him and Dory speaking whale in Finding Nemo.)

CONCLUSION: Bible Gateway is an awfully nice, handy thing.

41/365 The Flying Hockey Stick by Jolly Roger Bradfield.

May I say,

I LOVE JOLLY ROGER BRADFIELD.  My mum loved his books when she was little, and I did too.  Heck, we still love them.  The colors! The stories!  They're wonderful.  This one especially.  What kid has never dreamed of flying?

CONCLUSION:  I need to be brave with color if I become an illustrator.  Books like this are just a feast for the eyes.

40/365 - "American Cities" by Jean-Paul Sartre

I have to admit, I was almost a bit afraid to read from this book.   I wasn't afraid that a few essays would suddenly turn me into a raging existentialist, but I did worry that it would be too hard for me.  I'm part of that annoying cluster of people who hear the word "philosophy" and unconsciously remember bad textbooks we had to trawl through, and therefore refuse to read Plato and Locke because we believe they're going to make our molars fall out from boredom.
So, as I've said, I went in with fear and trembling.  But I chose well (I always think of swallows...) - "American Cities" was a travel essay, and rather a sweet one at that.  Yes, he said some things are ugly and depressing, but I agree so it didn't hurt my feelings.   There were a lot of bits where I went, "Oh yeah", even though it was written in the 40's.  Like when he pointe out that in America we do not have monuments that becomes famous, we have things that become famous because they haven't been knocked down.  He talks a lot about how cities feel almost weightless, and all have a temporary feeling.  I suppose when you come from France - where, from what I understand, a family will own and live in a house for generations - our attitude towards our homes must seem odd.
Even though he doesn't have much praise for the the look of American cities (I don't blame him a bit), good old Sartre says some awfully nice things about the spirits they have.  And, for all the less than complimentary things I think about American cities in general, I agree with him.

And then one finally comes to like their common element, that temporary look.  Our beautiful closed cities, full as eggs, are a bit stifling.  Our slanting, winding streets run head on against walls and houses; once you are inside the city, you can no longer see beyond it.  In America, these long, straight unobstructed streets carry one's glance, like canals, outside the city.  You always see mountains or fields or the sea at the end of them, no matter where you may be. 

Frail and temporary, formless and unfinished, they are haunted by the presence of the immense geographical space surrounding them.  And precisely because their boulevards are highways, they always seem to be stopping places on the roads.  They are not oppressive, they do not close you in; nothing in them is definite, nothing is arrested...

But these slight cities... reveal the other side of the United States: their freedom.  Here everyone is free - not to criticize or to reform their customs - but to flee them, to leave for the desert or another city.  The cities are open, open to the whorls, and to the future.  This is what gives them their adventurous look and, even in their ugliness and disorder, a touching beauty. 

Aw, gee.

CONCLUSION: I will read more Sartre if he's as nice and understandable as all this.

39/365 The Paper Princess by Elisa Kleven

Gee, I haven't read this in years.  Yes, it is a picture book.  It is also wonderful.  One of the best kids' books I think we've got around the house.  And gorgeous! The illustrations are collage-things, and downright fantastic.

It's a simple kind of story - but not a bit boring.  The princess has to deal with a lot of trauma - separation from her little girl, getting crumpled up, a horrible hairstyle - but she faces it all bravely.  Maybe it's because I'm just in a "chill, man" kind of mood, but it seemed a very peaceful sort of story.
I remember loving - loving - this book when I was little, and I think that's definitely a big point in its favor.  It was, you know, written for kids.  So I guess it's just as well.

CONCLUSION: I'll read it to my kids, if I ever have any.

If I end up as an illustrator (which, what with after getting through today's drawing class without wanting to weep, seems less impossible than usual), I will have to come up with some sort of, "Oh I ALWAYS knew this is what I wanted to do" story to scare the guts out of wishy washy people like me with - and I think I'll use The Paper Princess for my story.  Because - ahem! - when I was five I drew this:

Which, really, isn't so shabby.  I will not use "The Mouse and The Giant" (c. third grade) for my intimidation story.  My friend Bradi and I made it one afternoon, and even through I was the illustrator (we came up with the story and she wrote it - her cursive was better), I unfortunately wrestled away the privilege of writing the title on the cover, and it came out "The Mouse and the Ginte." So... we'll stick with the paper princess.

38/365 A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson

It would be hard to overstate how much I love this man's writing.   To give you and idea of the quantity of love we're talking about here, I suppose saying that this:

Was basically the high point of my life.
He is, without doubt, my favorite non-fiction writer.  He most certainly lives with C.S. Lewis, Agatha Christie, P.G. Wodehouse and Dorothy Sayers in my top people of all time worship list.

He really can make anything interesting.  I have almost zero interest in science, yet I just finished a 400-odd page book about it.  Besides the whole "he can make any sentence into an oh my gosh I'm going to pee my pants it's so funny situation", he throws the shallow reader like me good bones every once in a while, and gives side notes about peoples' private lives and characters.  School books would ever mention that so-and-so did fieldwork naked on hot days, or that even Marie Curie's cookbooks are pulsing with radioactivity and have to be handled with care - yet those are the things that make it fun for a person like me.  Bill Bryson ruins you for textbooks.

Whether or not any of it sticks in my head, I come away from his books feeling more intelligent, which is a rare and extremely pleasing feeling.

On a side note, I have one of these thingys:

And it saved my sanity during the drive my the family made from California to Arkansas.  On the other side, it says, "Written and read by the author."  Which makes me chortle and shake my head.

CONCLUSION: I love Bill Bryson.  But I already knew that.

P.S.  I also think that cover rocks.