The “About” Page

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Most blogs have one. In fact, it’s a default page or widget in most blogging software. It’s the first thing I look for and check out when I encounter a new blog. Yep, it’s the “about” page.

The “about” page is pretty important to a blog. It gives readers and potential readers a snapshot of you and your blog. It also serves as a good reference in the future for readers to refresh on the details. Okay. It’s important. Good.

Content.

Location? Vocation? Pictures? Blog intro? Reading habits/philosophy? Contact info? Book reviewing policies? Links? There is a fine line to walk here between being informative and privacy concerns.

My “About” Page.

Here is how mine reads as of right now:

My name is Jessica, and I am a book addict. I read and read and read (as much as my career, family, and church will allow).

If you would like me to review one of your books, please leave a comment on this page or email me at thebluestockingsociety (at) gmail.com.

Not bad. Not too spectacular. To get ideas on how to add a little pizzazz to my “about” page, I did a quick tour of my blogroll.

Examples.

Matt at A Guy’s Moleskine Notebook has a list “about” page that lists his interests and activities and 100 things about him.

Eva over at A Striped Armchair has a lengthy “about” page which includes a general introduction to her and her blog and her reading tastes. Also, she links to memes she’s posted that tell a little bit more about her.

Chartroose over at Bloody Hell, It’s a Book Barrage! has a nicely crafted, alliterate “about” page.

Raych over at Books I Done Read has a rant of an “about” column that conveys all of the necessary information about her blog.

Dorothy W. over at Of Books and Bicycles has a brief “about” page similar to mine above.

Rebecca of Rebecca Reads and Karen at Sassy Monkey Reads both have conversational “about” pages that explain their personal book blog philosophies.

Christine over at She Reads Books has a comprehensive “about” page organized by topic for easy access, and she even includes a privacy statement.

Dewey over at The Hidden Side of a Leaf has an informative “about” page that was a little hard to find but full of useful information about her blog (and her extensive blog-community events) and her personal life. She has a little bit of the list thing going on there at the end, too.

Rants and Reads at The Novel World admits to struggling with her “about” page, but provides good information there.

The above examples are not exhaustive. There are many good examples out there, but these are the ones that kind of stuck out in some way to me.

Resolution.

Based on my own thoughts and my review of several blogs, I’ve established that I would like to revise my “about” page. Specifically, I am going to add more personal information like location and possibly vocation. Also, I’m going add a little intro to my blog. And, finally, I’m going to be more specific about my ARC/review policies.

I think it’ll be a work in progress, an evolution, if you will. The first phase in the evolution should occur in the next day or two. Be sure to check it out.

Questions.

What are your feelings about the “about” page? Do you have one? What do you include? What do you leave out? How often do you update or change it? (Including links to your “about” info would be helpful on this one.)

Do you check out other blogs’ “about” pages? Are you disappointed when there isn’t one? What would you like others to include?

Sunday Stacks

Since I can’t consistently participate in The Sunday Salon because Sundays are generally pretty hectic, I thought I would pipe in today with a couple of book piles.

I made a little trip to the library yesterday and came away with more books than I can possibly read in the next three weeks.  (Typical.  At least I managed to avoid purchasing any books from the book sale.)  Good thing there is a liberal renewal policy.  Anyway, to the right is a picture of my loot.  I already cruised through The Invention of Hugo Cabret yesterday and am looking forward to devouring the rest of the stack.  Stardust and Heart of Darkness are both books I’m reading for the Novella Challenge.  The Post-Birthday World and Diary of a Bad Year are both books I picked up because of reviews I read on book blogs here and the sidebar here.

This second picture is a medley of books I’m currently reading and/or recently acquired.   I recently purchased and am slowly making my way through Dracula.  I’ve been reading one poem a day from the Billy Collins collection as part of my Poetry Tuesday resolution.  Pictures from Italy and Farworld: Water Keep are both ARC’s I need to get through so I can post reviews.  The rest of the stack is the loot I ordered from Amazon last week. 

I love books!

Which Book Are You?

I’m To Kill a Mockingbird:

Perceived as a revolutionary and groundbreaking person, you have changed the minds of many people. While questioning the authority around you, you’ve also taken a significant amount of flack. But you’ve had the admirable guts to persevere. There’s a weird guy in the neighborhood using dubious means to protect you, but you’re pretty sure it’s worth it in the end. In the end, it remains unclear to you whether finches and mockingbirds get along in real life.

Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.

LibraryThing Meme

This list of books is (or was at one time) the most unread on LibraryThing.com. The meme asks readers to categorize the books using a variation on the key below.

Key
Asterisk – I own the book
Bold – I’ve read the book
Italics – I’ve started the book
Stricken – I hated the book
Underline – on my current TBR list

THE BOOKS:

* Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell
* Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
* One Hundred Years of Solitude
* Wuthering Heights
* The Silmarillion
* Life of Pi: a novel
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
* The Odyssey
* Pride and Prejudice
* Jane Eyre
*A Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
* The Time Traveler’s Wife
* The Iliad
* Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
* Great Expectations
American Gods
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
* Atlas Shrugged
* Reading Lolita in Tehran
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
* Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
The Canterbury Tales
* The Historian
* A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
* Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World
* The Fountainhead
Foucault’s Pendulum
Middlemarch
* Frankenstein
* The Count of Monte Cristo
* Dracula
* A Clockwork Orange
* Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
* The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible
* 1984
* Angels & Demons
* The Inferno
The Satanic Verses
* Sense and Sensibility
* The Picture of Dorian Gray
* Mansfield Park
* One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest
To the Lighthouse
* Tess of the D’Urbervilles
* Oliver Twist
Gulliver’s Travels
* Les Misérables
The Corrections
* The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
* The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
* Dune
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela’s Ashes
The God of Small Things
A People’s History of the United States : 1492-present day
Cryptonomicon
* Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
* Beloved
* Slaughterhouse-five
* The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake : a novel
Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
* Lolita
* Persuasion
* Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
* On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity’s Rainbow
* The Hobbit
* In Cold Blood
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
* The Three Musketeers

TOTALS
Books read: 21
Books owned: 51
Books hated: 1
Books TBR: 15 (really all of them not already read)
Books not finished: 5

Poetry Tuesday – How to Read a Poem

“Poetry is a deal of joy and pain and wonder, with a dash of the dictionary.” Kahlil Gibran

Reading poetry is a challenging enterprise. I have scoured the vast resources of the internet in search of some simple tools to make the initial encounter with poetry a little more pleasurable.

Websites

I found the following “The 11 Basic Steps to Reading a Poem” here.

Step 1: Read through the poem to get a sense of it.

Step 2: Identify the sentences and independent clauses (circle the periods, exclamation points, question marks, and semicolons). For some reason, people always forget that poetry is made up of complete sentences.

Step 3: Read a few lines to figure out the meter (figure out how many stresses there are in a typical line).

Step 4: Note the rhyme scheme (look for a pattern).

Step 5: Read the poem out loud. Try to follow the rhythm. If you do this you’ll hear where the poet plays with the rhythm. And you’ll hear the rhyme scheme.

Step 6: Look up any words you don’t understand.

Step 7: Re-read the poem out loud.

Step 8: Mark off any sections in the poem. These sections may be speeches given by a character, discussions of a particular topic, changes in mood, or a new stage of an argument.

Step 9: Re-read the poem.

Step 10: Figure out the tone — the emotion — of the poem.

Step 11: Re-read the poem.

A similar checklist approach to reading poetry can be found here.

An excellent three-tiered approach based on skill-level can be found here.

Books

The Poetry Foundation has excerpted the first chapter of How to Read a Poem by Edward Hirsch here. The 16 sections of the book deal with 16 different ways of thinking about a poem. My favorite section is Give a Common Word the Spell. I love the way poetry makes me think about words and language in a new way.

I recently purchased Rhyme’s Reason by John Hollander as a treatise on poetic form. Thus, far I have been unimpressed by the book’s organization but somewhat pleased with the content.

I also own Harold Bloom’s The Art of Reading Poetry but have not yet delved into it.

Finally, I have heard Mary Oliver’s A Poetry Handbook touted as a must for all poets and poetry readers. It’s on my wishlist.

Any other suggested poetry resources?

Poetry Tuesday – The Poets Laureate

I have always liked the idea that there is a poet laureate. The government (or at least some part of it) believes in poetry enough to create an official post for it. This Poetry Tuesday is thus dedicated to the poets laureate of the United States of America and of Great Britain.

First up, the Britains.

The job description:

• The realm’s official poet
• Member of the royal household
• Charged with writing verses for court and national occasions (such as for a Royal Wedding or the New Year)
• Awarded the position for life (more recently, the term of office has changed to 10 years)
• Chosen by the British reigning monarch, from a list of nominees that the Prime Minister compiles after a poet laureate dies
• The salary has varied, but traditionally includes some alcohol

The Poets Laureate of Great Britain:

• 1599: Samuel Daniel
• 1619: Ben Jonson
• 1637: Sir William Davenant (a godson of William Shakespeare)
• 1668: John Dryden
• 1688: Thomas Shadwell
• 1692: Nahum Tate
• 1715: Nicholas Rowe
• 1718: Reverend Laurence Eusden
• 1730: Colley Cibber
• 1757: William Whitehead, on the refusal of Thomas Gray
• 1785: Reverend Thomas Warton, on the refusal of William Mason
• 1790: Henry James Pye
• 1813: Robert Southey, on the refusal of Sir Walter Scott
• 1843: William Wordsworth
• 1850: Alfred, Lord Tennyson, on the refusal of Samuel Russell
• 1896: Alfred Austin, on the refusal of William Morris
• 1913: Robert Bridges
• 1930: John Masefield, OM
• 1967: Cecil Day-Lewis, CBE
• 1972: Sir John Betjeman, CBE
• 1984: Ted Hughes, OM, on the refusal of Philip Larkin
• 1999: Andrew Motion (for a ten year period)

Next, the Yankees:

The job description:

• Serves as the nation’s official lightning rod for the poetic impulse of Americans
• Seeks to raise the national consciousness to a greater appreciation of the reading and writing of poetry
• Appointed annually by the Librarian of Congress and serves from October to May
• In making the appointment, the Librarian consults with former appointees, the current Laureate, and distinguished poetry critics
• The position has existed under two separate titles: from 1937 to 1986 as “Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress” and from 1986 forward as “Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry.” The name was changed by an act of Congress in 1985
• The Laureate receives a $35,000 annual stipend funded by a gift from Archer M. Huntington
• Minimal specific duties in order to afford incumbents maximum freedom to work on their own projects while at the Library
• Gives an annual lecture and reading of his or her poetry
• Introduces poets in the Library’s annual poetry series
• Not necessarily expected to compose works for recitation at government events or in praise of government officials

The Poets Laureate of the United States of America:

• 1937-1941 Joseph Auslander
• 1943-1944 Allen Tate
• 1944-1945 Robert Penn Warren
• 1945-1946 Louise Bogan
• 1946-1947 Karl Shapiro
• 1947-1948 Robert Lowell
• 1948-1949 Leonie Adams
• 1949-1950 Elizabeth Bishop
• 1950-1952 Conrad Aiken (First to serve two terms)
• 1952 William Carlos Williams (appointed but did not serve)
• 1956-1958 Randall Jarrell
• 1958-1959 Robert Frost
• 1959-1961 Richard Eberhart
• 1961-1963 Louis Untermeyer
• 1963-1964 Howard Nemerov
• 1964-1965 Reed Whittemore
• 1965-1966 Stephen Spender
• 1966-1968 James Dickey
• 1968-1970 William Jay Smith
• 1970-1971 William Stafford
• 1971-1973 Josephine Jacobsen
• 1973-1974 Daniel Hoffman
• 1974-1976 Stanley Kunitz
• 1976-1978 Robert Hayden
• 1978-1980 William Meredith
• 1981-1982 Maxine Kumin
• 1982-1984 Anthony Hecht
• 1984-1985 Reed Whittemore (Interim Consultant in Poetry)
• 1984-1985 Robert Fitzgerald (Appointed and served in a health-limited capacity, but did not come to the Library of Congress)
• 1985-1986 Gwendolyn Brooks
• 1986-1987 Robert Penn Warren
• 1987-1988 Richard Wilbur
• 1988-1990 Howard Nemerov
• 1990-1991 Mark Strand
• 1991-1992 Joseph Brodsky
• 1992-1993 Mona Van Duyn
• 1993-1995 Rita Dove
• 1995-1997 Robert Hass
• 1997-2000 Robert Pinsky
• 1999-2000 Special Bicentennial Consultants: Rita Dove, Louise Glück and W.S. Merwin
• 2000-2001 Stanley Kunitz
• 2001-2003 Billy Collins
• 2003-2004 Louise Glück
• 2004-2006 Ted Kooser
• 2006-2007 Donald Hall
• 2007-Present Charles Simic

And, to wrap things up here is a poem from the current U.S. poet laureate, Charles Simic:

In the Library

for Octavio

There’s a book called
“A Dictionary of Angels.”
No one has opened it in fifty years,
I know, because when I did,
The covers creaked, the pages
Crumbled. There I discovered

The angels were once as plentiful
As species of flies.
The sky at dusk
Used to be thick with them.
You had to wave both arms
Just to keep them away.

Now the sun is shining
Through the tall windows.
The library is a quiet place.
Angels and gods huddled
In dark unopened books.
The great secret lies
On some shelf Miss Jones
Passes every day on her rounds.

She’s very tall, so she keeps
Her head tipped as if listening.
The books are whispering.
I hear nothing, but she does.

—Charles Simic

Book Report & The Uncommon Reader, Part I

Is “Fiction Friday” too trite? Probably. Good thing I didn’t pick it. Plus, if I set up too many weekly features, I’ll have to come up with something everyday.

I have had a book-ridden week. Sadly, that left little time for reading. On Wednesday night, I went out with two women from my church to discuss the intricacies contained in The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands. See my review here. Last night, I hosted my regular book club. The book was Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson. We had a very nice discussion over tea. It was a perfect beverage and book for a blustery day. Anyway, I was very pleased with the discussion. It made me realize that there is a lot of redeeming qualities to the book, even though some of the writing was atrocious. See my review here.

My reading horizon is now quite cluttered. I started reading Emma after the PBS Masterpiece Classics presentation on Sunday. Then I put Emma on pause to read The Uncommon Reader, a novella by Alan Bennett universally beloved among booklovers and bookbloggers. See blogs here and here and here. I will finish The Uncommon Reader today, hopefully on my lunch break. Then it’s probably back to Emma, unless I decide to hurriedly devour the next book club selection, The Whaleboat House (also known as Amagansett) by Mark Mills. I also checked out Cannery Row from the library, so I’m going to try and squeeze that in before I have to return it in two weeks.

I like having so much to look forward to.

In The Uncommon Reader, the Queen of England suddenly, and quite by accident, becomes a book addict. This has interesting consequences for both her personal and her public lives. I’ll do a full review this weekend after I finish the book, but I have been thinking a bit about the Queen’s reading methodology. She always reads with a notebook and pencil in hand, jotting down passages that catch her attention.

I haven’t ever really read while taking notes, unless it was a textbook and I was reading it for a class. I have thought for sometime now that it would be interesting to start a kind of book journal in which I record my contemporaneous reactions to books, jot down good (or bad) quotations, and thereby keep a log of my reading activities. This has also been a subject of interest on other blogs of late. See here and here and here. How do you people out there read and record?

Book Indecision – March 2008

I finished Dr. Laura’s atrocious “book,” The Proper Care and Feeding Husbands, and Three Cups of Tea last week. Since then, I have been unable to commit to the next book.

I am currently about halfway through the following:

• The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court, by Jeffrey Toobin
• Reading Lolita in Tehran, by Azar Nafisi
• The 3 A.M. Epiphany, by Brian Kiteley
• Sophie’s World, Jostein Gaarder
• 1776, by David McCollough
• Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, by Gregory Maguire

I have started reading the following:

• In Defense of Food, by Michael Pollan
• Atonement, by Ian McEwan
• Emma, by Jane Austen
• Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, by Doris Kearns Goodwin
• The Golden Notebook, by Doris Lessing
• One Hundred Years of Solitude, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
• The Subtle Knife, by Philip Pullman
• September, by Rosamunde Pilcher

I have purchased, or otherwise obtained, but have not yet read, the following:

• The Complete Novels of Jane Austen, by Jane Austen
• The Fall, by Albert Camus
• The Alchemist, by Paulo Coelho
• The Illiad & The Odyssey, by Homer
• The Murder Room, by P.D. James
• The Life of Pi, Yann Martel
• The Road, by Cormac McCarthy
• Saturday, by Ian McEwan
• Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov
• The Dante Club, by Matthew Pearl

Any suggestions for what I should read next?

The Sweet Far Thing, Part II

So, I’m 350 pages in to The Sweet Far Thing, and I’m not even half way!! What is it about trilogy writers? (Or series writers in general, for that matter?) The first book is a good solid 300-500 pages. The second book adds perhaps a hundred or so pages more. THEN, the third book is monstrous. A few examples illustrate my point:

The Gemma Doyle Trilogy, by Libba Bray

1. A Great and Terrible Beauty = 432
2. Rebel Angels = 592
3. The Sweet Far Thing = 832

The Twilight Series*, by Stephenie Meyer

1. Twilight = 512
2. New Moon = 608
3. Eclipse = 640
4. Breaking Dawn = ?

*The Twilight Series was originally supposed to be a trilogy, but the third book was so long they made it into two books!

The Lord of the Rings*, by J.R.R. Tolkien

1. The Fellowship of the Ring = 398
2. The Two Towers = 725
3. The Return of the King = 1137

*I think The Lord of the Rings was originally written as one book and was then broken into three books by a publisher.

His Dark Materials Trilogy, by Philip Pullman

1. The Golden Compass = 368
2. The Subtle Knife = 304
3. The Amber Spyglass = 480

The Bourne Trilogy, by Robert Ludlum

1. The Bourne Identity = 544
2. The Bourne Supremacy = 646
3. The Bourne Ultimatum = 672

The Harry Potter Series, by J.K. Rowling

1. Harry Potter & the Sorcerer’s Stone = 309
2. Harry Potter & the Chamber of Secrets = 352
3. Harry Potter & the Prisoner of Azkaban = 448
4. Harry Potter & the Goblet of Fire = 734
5. Harry Potter & the Order of the Phoenix = 896
6. Harry Potter & the Half-Blood Prince = 672
7. Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows = 784

Okay, so my theory doesn’t ALWAYS hold up, but it seems that publishers are more willing to let authors be verbose as the series or trilogy goes on. (Also, I have a related theory that editors and publishers get more lax about the editing process as the series and the author becomes more and more popular.)

Wanted

Smart, funny, slightly off-centered people who are willing to read at least two books a month and discuss all things literary and cultural with a forthcoming group of bluestockings.

Please respond to this posting with your name, age, educational pursuits, email address, and top five favorite books.