What we have here is the top 106 books most often marked as "unread" by LibraryThing’s users. As in, they sit on the shelf to make you look smart or well-rounded. Bold the ones you've read, underline the ones you read for school, italicize the ones you started but didn't finish.

Bold the ones you've read, underline the ones you read for school, italicize the ones you started but didn't finish, and (h/t to maisfeeka) bracket the books you own but haven't read yet.

( The List )

I think I'm just glad to have heard of most of them. :-)

Tagged by cjmr to list the books I'm currently reading. Which won't take much time, as I don't remember the last time I was reading more than two at any given time, and at the moment it's only one:

Cheerleader! An American Icon, by Natalie Guice Adams & Pamela J. Bettis. Like most of the random nonfiction I've read in the past decade or so, this happened to catch my eye on a recent run to Half Price Books (which has finally opened three stores in Chicagoland, whoo-hoo!). I think it was two or three days after watching Bring It On: All Or Nothing on a particularly low-energy Thursday evening and boggling at the fact that, while Hollywood has finally caught on to the mythical (or at least outdated, by more than the 20 years since my experience) nature of many cheerleader stereotypes, they apparently haven't figured out that no high school that wants to have liability insurance EVER again would leave these kids so entirely to their own devices.

It's also an interesting thing to pick up at a time when I've been completely blindsided by how many Heroes fans are shocked and/or ambivalent about actually liking Claire, even though she's *gasp* a cheerleader! I grumped in passing to neadods recently about TV and movies always having tryouts judged by incumbent cheerleaders, and she was sincerely at a loss as to how else it would be done. I'm sure it's partly from having gone to an extremely small high school where pretty much everyone had an idea how everyone else's activities operated, but I still find myself surprised over and over by how foreign the whole thing is to most of my fannish peers.

I thought of that when I read the introduction, in which the authors mention the skepticism and assumptions they ran into when feeling out how serious scholarship on the topic might be received. The book itself isn't academic, but so far it's a fairly impressively encompassing survey of what cheerleading used to be, what it's become, what it probably never was, and what it stands for in people's heads. It's a pretty breezy read, and I can all but guarantee you'll run into things you didn't know. I'm halfway through it, and I know I have.

ETA: I'm one of those annoying people who don't like to tag anyone specific. If you feel like telling us what you're reading currently, consider yourself tagged. :-)

Another thing I can do again when every waking moment isn't about getting something done: Read some of the Christmas harvest of new books!

Last night and today, that means ( Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister )

All in all, not something about which I'll say "Oh, my God, you MUST read this!!" But certainly worth the reading.

Sniffly. Hacking. Headachey. Pitiful. About to rack out at absurdly early hour for lack of energy to sit at computer or read or even sprawl on couch and watch tube.

Great accomplishment for the evening: Posting 19 Wicked icons in iconaddicts, none of which were actually made tonight. As that would have required energy.

Primary occupation of the evening: Soaking in tub reading Dante and getting pruney. Will have to go back and start over (Dante, that is; the pruneyness was quite thorough) because brain isn't registering. Hoping to convince brain to get back into Lizzie project brainspace. Vita Nuova necessary part of process, hasn't been read since college. Wondering if I can get my hands on Rossetti translation. Although I still want to reread a standard one too, since Gabriel, being Gabriel, was bored by the prose commentary and didn't bother to translate it. Which I had known but forgotten before reading it in the introduction to the edition I have. *snerk* There were a lot of jokes about what PRB really stood for; pity I can't think of anything that would indicate perpetual adolescence. (Although it's implied fairly well by one guy writing to another that a third thought it meant "Penis Rather Better"... can't recall who the writer, recipient and subject of that observation were, though I'm pretty sure Gabriel was involved somewhere.) Although most of them eventually grew up. Even Gabriel, to some extent, although I think about 75% of him remained arrested at about 19 until the day he died. *rolls eyes*

The snarkiness of which Lizzie was documentedly more than capable? Going to play a substantial role in this piece by the time I finish writing it, methinks. I'm playing with the idea of using the anecdote about the tribulations of picking up money someone mailed to her in France, which is freakin' hilarious, as a starting point, and seeing what I can build around it, rather than trying to begin at the beginning of the play/monologue/whateveryoucallit and writing until I come to the end. I really have only a vague general idea how it's going to be structured at this point, so I should just play with the pieces that are strongest in my head and see if I can't figure out how to get them to come together.

Which reminds me...my various references for this project are what I forgot to put on my list to bring back from Columbus last weekend. Must put on list for next time. Must acquire higher proportion not written by Jan Marsh. Not that I have anything against her, by any means. I actually agree with a lot of her assertions. But the woman is nothing if not prolific on the subject, and I need more representation from other writers to balance it out.

Okay, I said I was going to bed. I'm going to bed. G'night folks!

Don't swear off sleep.

Yes, that would be the flippant reaction. I knew going in that this book didn't have a happy ending, or even necessarily a satisfying one.

*sigh* Done now. Brain has a lot to chew on, but is also sure to swing back into obsessing over the musical. In which I'm more vocally suited to Glinda, but as an actress more in love with Elphie than ever. She is and isn't the same character -- shades and nuances can inform across adaptations, even when the difference is this pronounced. Mostly her songs aren't a problem, but there are a couple challenging points, most notably the last note of "I'm Not That Girl," which is the absolute lowest pitch I am physically capable of producing. It can just barely be called a pitch when I do, and can't be heard over, well, anything.

Which means that, when regional rights for this puppy get released a few years down the road? I have a snowflake's chance in hell of getting that role. Even if I hide my soprano light under a bushel (a tactic I've been known to adopt on occasion -- Cosette gets the boy and the frills, but Eponine gets the meat!), which I wouldn't do in this case because I sure as hell wouldn't turn down Glinda either. But that's unlikely to happen unless they don't have a more conventionally cute girl who can sing it. (Been there. Done that. Had three roles in a row -- one of them Rosa in Drood, which I desperately wanted -- come down to me and one other girl shortly before I moved away from Denver. Same girl. She got all three.) I'm tall and angular and can do gawky with the best of 'em. On physical type, I'd totally get slotted for Elphie. If I still had Equity eligibility, I might even have a crack at sliding in when they go to cast the tours...because they'll be miked within an inch of their lives. The level I work at? Occasionally, but mostly not.

I am whimpering that the prospect of getting painted green eight times a week is beyond my grasp. Such is the weirdness of my life.

Perspective, folks.

Remember to sleep. ;-)

Started reading Wicked as soon as I had dinner ready last night, around 6:15.

Stopped and went to bed at 12:45.

Am about 2/3 of the way through.

Am going to have to read all the Oz books again. Y'know, the ones I last reread when I was 11.

Baum's stated goal was to create an American fairy tale. Not that we didn't know he succeeded, but I do wonder what he'd think of it getting the same sort of reclaiming-for-adults revisionist treatment by modern authors as its Old World cousins. I kinda think he'd think it was pretty cool. His sociopolitical allegories might be slyer than, say, Lewis Carroll's, but they're there -- enough that I recognized them in fourth or fifth grade.

Mind you, the standard revisionist-fairy-tale genre is typically informed by pre-sanitized folk versions of the tale in question. Since that didn't exist here, Maguire reverse engineered one. Or, more accurately, several. No mean trick, that, and what I'm finding most interesting about the book overall. (I'm sure it shocks you all terribly that I'm loving the mytho-religious and cultural debates among the characters. *g*)

My favorite as a kid (sort of by default, as it happened to be the first one I owned) was Glinda of Oz, and it's therefore the one I recall most clearly. So it's been fun wrapping my head around what a Kumbric Witch is/was in Maguire's Oz -- what Coo-ee-oh was therefore claiming to be, and doing a crappy job at while still being more dangerous than Glinda gave her credit for. It was obvious to me, even at 7 or 8, that there was a whole lot Glinda (the only adult figure on their side in that one, IIRC) wasn't telling Dorothy and Ozma.

I think that's probably the main reason Baum succeeded in his goal: he understood, like the other children's authors who have stood the test of time, that a fairy tale needs a genuine sense of risk for the child(ren) undertaking the appointed quest. They have helpers along the way, and guides to watch over them, but they're never 100% safe. Was it Ozma or Glinda who pointed out that, even though Dorothy couldn't be killed while wearing the Nome King's belt, she could still be cut up in little pieces and scattered through the forest? That image made an indelible impression, lemme tell ya.

Looks like I gots me some reading to do this summer. :-D

:: checks library website :: Ack! There are still six people in front of me on the reserve list for Wicked (the book)!

Okay, I'm sure I can find a plot summary online somewhere. But playing connect-the-dots with the cast album first is more fun. If occasionally frustrating. ;-) Besides, I had plenty of practice at it LONG before one could easily get such information.

( Spoilery Wicked puzzling )

Last seen with ceridwyn.

1. Take five books off your bookshelf.
2. Book #1 -- first sentence
3. Book #2 -- last sentence on page fifty
4. Book #3 -- second sentence on page one hundred
5. Book #4 -- next to the last sentence on page one hundred fifty
6. Book #5 -- final sentence of the book
7. Make the five sentences into a paragraph:

"If I am sentenced to death, Ohashi-san, I will come back to haunt you," said the prisoner to the secret police inspector. When I went out, Auntie was waiting in the upstairs hall with a chore for me. If the stay isn't covered by a lining, sew the stay's edges to the backing with a catchstich. Just over a year after I had returned to my country, my city, my home, I discovered that the same decree that had transformed the single world Iran into the Islamic Republic of Iran had made me and all that I had been irrelevant. And then may it please Him who is the Lord of courtesy that my soul may go to see the glory of my lady, that is of the blessed Beatrice, who now in glory beholds the face of Him qui est per omnia secula benedictus.


*chuckle* I'm way more entertained by stuff like this than I should be.

For the record:

1. Code Breaking: A History and Exploration by Rudolf Kippenhahn
2. Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden
3. Couture Sewing Techniques by Claire B. Shaeffer
4. Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi
5. La Vita Nuova by Dante Alighieri (Barbara Reynolds trans.)