Women in Translation Month, the Inprint Margaret Root Brown Reading Series, and, Yes, Moby Dick

August is Women in Translation Month, an event hosted by Bibliobio. The event is designed to encourage more books by women who live outside English-speaking countries to be translated into English. I finally got around to reading three of my 1001 Children's Books that are written by women and that have been translated into English: Aldabra: The Tortoise Who Loved Shakespeare by Italian author Silvana Gandolfi, A Letter to the King by Dutch author Tonte Dragt, and The Big Sister by Swedish author Six Widerberg.  I have a selfish reason for wanting to encourage more English translations of works by women: many of the 1001 Children's Books (and I'm trying to read all 1001) have not been translated into English. You still have time to join in. Visit Bibliobio to read a book or two before the end of August. 

Yep. Moby Dick. Just 4% to go.

I wrote about Moby this week:

But What is Moby Dick About? Why Everyone Should Read Moby Dick

Moby Dick: Whale Words and Boat Words

The poll is still open to vote for your favorite Moby Dick character. Vote here: 

The Moby Dick Character I Like Best

I'll be wrapping up Moby Dick this week, with a couple of final posts. 

I'm terribly excited about the 2019-2020 Inprint Margaret Root Brown Reading Series in Houston. Do you recognize any of the faces on this poster? Authors who will be reading from and discussing their writings this year are Ta-Nehisi Coates, Colson Whitehead, Louise Erdrich, Carmen Maria Machado, Reginald Dwayne Betts, Emily St. John Mandel, Natalie Diaz, Carolyn Forché, Elizabeth Gilbert, and Colum McCann. If you live in the Houston area, you can buy season tickets here. 

The Cybils are coming! It is time to seek judges for the 2019 Children's and Young Adult Bloggers' Literary Awards. Do you love to read and review children's books or young adult books? Apply to be a Cybils judge here.

My sister and her husband and my husband and I have a little film club where we get together at our houses, eat pizza, and watch and discuss a movie together on Sunday evenings. We alternate the responsibility for choosing the movie. Last Sunday I chose Grand Canyon. I had forgotten how violent the story is, but it was as thoughtful a flick as I remembered it being; I'm still thinking about it. The loneliness and isolation of the characters felt tragic and it was only when they took action to connect  with others that things went better for them. Have you seen this movie? What movies would you suggest we show in our film club? I'd love to hear your thoughts.

How was your week?

Did you read any good books? Please share them with us.

What other bookish things did you do? What else is going on in your life?

I'd love to have you to link up here and/or at the Sunday Salon page on Facebook each weekend (Saturday-Sunday-Monday) and let us know what you have been doing. I hope you will visit other blogs and join in the conversations going on there. 

If you have other blogging friends, it would be wonderful if you'd tell others about our salon and encourage them to join us.

Other places where you may like to link up are below. Click on the picture to visit the site.

My linkup for Sunday Salon is below. 

Moby Dick: Whale Words and Boat Words

I've only been on a boat about a dozen times, and most of those were on a kayak. I've never been asea on a big boat, not even a cruise ship. I've never been whaling (probably no surprise to you), but it seems like it might be a fun task to save and share a collection of the wonderful boat words and whaling words from Moby Dick.

Forecastle (pg. 4): the front part of a ship below deck, site of the crew's quarters. (Pronounced "FOX-ul")

Astern (pg. 4): the rear of the boat

Bowsprit (pg. 7): a pole extending from a ship's bow (front)

Cockpits (pg. 12): a cramped space below a ship's waterline

Man-ropes (pg. 32): ropes alongside a ladder that serve as handrails

Prow (pg. 39): the part of the ship's bow that is above water

Starboard (pg. 39): on the right

Foundering (pg. 39): filling with water and sinking

Fore (pg. 44): towards the front of the boat

Aft (pg. 44): towards the rear of the boat

Fathom (pg. 47): length of six feet

Keel (pg. 48): the lengthwise structure at the bottom of a ship's hull, on which the rest of the hull is built

Hold (pg. 94): the interior of a ship, usually the cargo area

Capstan (pg. 101): a vertical revolving spool used for hoisting heavy loads

Windlass (pg. 101): a horizontal revolving spool used for hoisting heavy loads. It was sometimes used in tandem with the capstan

Windward (pg. 103): the direction the wind is blowing from

Men-of-war (pg. 107): armed sailing ships

Halyard (pg. 118): a rope used for raising or lowering a sail

Frigate (pg. 168): a medium-sized warship that typically had colored pennants at the top of its masts

Keeled (pg. 172): capsized

Sounding (pg. 179): diving down

Gunwale (pg. 214): the upper edge of the side of a boat

Loggerhead (pg. 219): a post on a whaleboat used to secure the harpoon rope

Bivouacks (pg. 226): temporary encampments

Bowline (pg. 233): a rope used to steady the edge of a square sail in strong winds

Bulkhead (pg. 252): a wall dividing compartments of a ship

Helm (pg. 256): the steering gear of a ship

poop deck (pg. 259): an exposed partial deck built on at the rear of a ship

Heave to (pg. 259): turn a sailing ship so that its bow faces the wind and it drifts

Skiff (pg. 267): a shallow, flat-bottomed boat propelled by oars

Luff (pg. 282): sail closer into the wind

Trimming (pg. 326): adjusting the sails to accommodate a changing wind

Jib-boom (pg. 330): a pole or spar that extends from the bowsprit at the front of the ship

Rampart (pg. 377): a defensive wall, as in a fort

Eddying (pg. 505): floating on a cross-current of wind

Festoon (pg. 513): loop

Bearing (pg. 537): direction

Shiver her (pg. 538): make the sails shudder from lack of wind

Heave-to (pg. 546): drift

Wondrous Words Wednesday is a weekly meme where we share new (to us) words 

that we’ve encountered in our reading. 

If you want to play along, grab the button, 

write a post and come back and add your link to Mr. Linky at Bermuda Onion!

But What is Moby Dick About? Why Everyone Should Read Moby Dick...

I am reading Moby Dick but it's not because I wanted to read it. Nothing about Moby Dick appeals to me. I'm not a person who likes adventure stories. I'm not keen on male protagonists. I'm not even interested in whales.

What has made me decide to read Moby Dick? It's hearing the fanatical Moby Dick fan talk about the vast themes of the book.

Nathaniel Philbrick is so enamored of Moby Dick that he wrote an entire book called Why Read Moby Dick? and, of course, I read that. "It's as close to being our American Bible as we have," Philbrick tells us in an interview with NPR. Moby Dick contains the "genetic code" of America, he goes on to say, and, as Americans, we will always go back to it "whenever we will run into an imminent cataclysm."

Curious to know more, I searched for the themes found in Moby Dick by others. 

Austin Allen in an article in Big Think tells us that the "long stretches of tedium interrupted by bursts of gripping excitement" in the book are exactly like a whale hunt.  "The novel all but dares you not to finish it," he adds, prodding us further, "lest you fail like Ahab." Then Allen jabs us with a harpoon: "This is a feat of endurance, captain."

For Philip Hoare, writing in The New Yorker, "In an age of uncertain faith, then as now, “Moby-Dick” resembles a religious tract, an alternative testament." It took Hoare time to become a convert, but once he started reading, he found he couldn't stop. Hoare says it's not a book at all. "It’s more an act of transference, of ideas and evocations hung around the vast and unknowable shape of the whale, an extended musing on the strange meeting of human history and natural history," he gushes.

Mark Beauregard finds that Moby Dick "just won't die." It provides perfect analogies and symbols and themes for today's world. "Moby Dick as a symbol of nature’s resistance to human will has become more powerful and terrifying than ever," Beauregard tells us in Literary Hub. In the last American election, some Americans wanted monomaniacal Captain Ahab (Trump), Beauregard says, while others looked for a radical populist Ishmael (Sanders). 

In The Atlantic, Joe Fassler writes, "It's been called a whaling yarn, a theodicy, a Shakespeare-styled political tragedy, an anatomy, a queer confessional, an environmentalist epic; because this novel seems to hold all the world, all these readings are compatible and true." 

Wow. There's a lot of love out there for this book.

Looking further, I find a long list of themes found in Moby Dick:

Fate and free will

Man and the natural world

Limits of human knowledge

Good and evil

Consciousness and instinct

Surfaces and depths

Struggle and acceptance

Contemplation

Sin and redemption

Fraternity and friendship

Defiance

Sexuality

Race

Religion

Madness and obsession

Civilized and pagan societies

Duty

Death

It's all there.

And that's why everyone should read Moby Dick.




Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish in June of 2010 and was moved to That Artsy Reader Girl in January of 2018. It was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together. Each Tuesday That Artsy Reader Girl assigns a topic and then post her top ten list that fits that topic. You’re more than welcome to join her and create your own top ten (or 2, 5, 20, etc.) list as well. Feel free to put a unique spin on the topic to make it work for you! Please link back to That Artsy Reader Girl in your own post so that others know where to find more information.

Best Books About Teachers

Miss Nelson is Missing

Thank You, Mr. Falker

My Great Aunt Arizona

Wonder

Goodbye, Mr. Chips

To Sir, With Love

The Water is Wide by Pat Conroy

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

Up the Down Staircase






Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish in June of 2010 and was moved to That Artsy Reader Girl in January of 2018. It was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together. Each Tuesday That Artsy Reader Girl assigns a topic and then post her top ten list that fits that topic. You’re more than welcome to join her and create your own top ten (or 2, 5, 20, etc.) list as well. Feel free to put a unique spin on the topic to make it work for you! Please link back to That Artsy Reader Girl in your own post so that others know where to find more information.

Sailing On with Moby Dick and I Learn to Crochet

The burning question is: Have I finished Moby Dick? No, not yet. I'm at 75%. I've read whole chapters about a sperm whale's head, a right whale's head, whales in art, the rope used in whaling, as well as chapters that actually advanced the plot, including one where a crewman fell into a whale head and almost drowned. Moby Dick. I press on.

I finished six children's picture books, so thank goodness these continue to pour into my mailbox; at least I will finish something while I'm putt-putting along on the Pequod:

Isn't it odd how serendipitous life is at times? Look what sailed my way this week. Doesn't the cover of The Sea Mammal Alphabet Book remind you somehow of Moby Dick, with all the strange markings on the whale on the cover. The markings are actually the light from the sky above, not scars from battles with whalers. It isn't a Sperm Whale like Moby Dick at all, in any case, as this whale has baleen, not teeth. Good grief! I know too much about whales now. Here's my review.

Five other wonderful children's picture books were read and reviewed last week. Click on the links to take you to my complete review:

Lizzy McTizzy and the Busy Dizzy Day written by Sarah Weeks and illustrated by Lee Wildish

No Frogs in School written by A. LaFaye and illustrated by Églantine Ceulemans

Amy Wu and the Perfect Bao written by Kat Zhang and illustrated by Charlene Chua

Spencer's New Pet written and illustrated by Jessie Sima

The Most Terrible of All written by Mượn Thị Văn and illustrated by Matt Myers

What am I currently reading?

Can you guess? 

Yes, Moby Dick.

I continued to obsess over Moby Dick this week:

Classic Book Characters from Moby Dick: Who is Your Favorite?

Moby Dick: Odd Words We Should Add to Our Vocabularies Today

I'd love to have you vote for your favorite Moby Dick character. It doesn't matter if you have read the book or seen the movie or not; everyone has a favorite character, I think. Please vote for your favorite here. 

Take a look at this: Mini Rant Reviews for All 19 Books I Read in High School from Kay at Hammock of Books.  Why, why, why do we continue to kill children's love for reading with required reading? 

My friend Elke is teaching me to crochet. Elke learned to crochet when she was a child in school in Germany. Doesn't it sound like a great idea to teach children to crochet?

The Art of the Pie is my go-to pie making book. I made a peach pie and an apple pie this week. The crust was a little crumbly but it had great buttery flavor.

How was your week?

Did you read any good books? Please share them with us.

What other bookish things did you do? What else is going on in your life?

I'd love to have you to link up here and/or at the Sunday Salon page on Facebook each weekend (Saturday-Sunday-Monday) and let us know what you have been doing. I hope you will visit other blogs and join in the conversations going on there. If you have other blogging friends, it would be wonderful if you'd tell others about our salon and encourage them to join us.

Other places where you may like to link up are below. Click on the picture to visit the site.

My linkup for Sunday Salon is below. 

Moby Dick: Odd Words We Should Add to Our Vocabularies Today

While Moby Dick is widely acknowledged to be filled with wonderful words that are used today by the most erudite of people, it should also be acknowledged that the book is filled with odd words that should be re-inserted into our modern conversations. Here are a few of these I'd like to promote.


Bosky (pg. 29): forest-like

Scraggy (pg. 32): ragged, bare

Verdure (pg. 37): greenery

Cupidity (pg. 39): greed

Confabulations (pg. 52): conversations

Vitiated (pg. 55): impaired

Trump (pg. 61): a reliable or admirable person (Oh dear!)

Vesture (pg. 75): clothing

Crotchet (pg. 88): a perverse or unfounded belief or notion

Costermonger (pg. 94): a person who sells fruits and vegetables from a cart on the street (I wish we had more costermongers, by the way.)

Muster (pg. 100): assemble, gather

Palavering (pg. 104): talking

Quoggy (pg. 111): mushy, soft

Waggish (pg. 116): humorous, playful

Essayed (pg. 129): attempted

Carking (pg. 156): distressing, worrying

Malignity (pg. 176): malevolence

Gainsaid (pg. 208): denied

Celerity (pg. 215): speed, haste

Solicitudes (pg. 220): causes for anxiety or concern

Haply (pg. 225): by chance

Cozening (pg. 246): misleading, deceiving

Shindy (pg. 293): commotion, uproar

Nonce (pg. 334): time being (I like this simply because it is very close to my last name.)

Disport (pg. 387): take amusement

Rake (pg. 390): a libertine, a pleasure-seeker

Diddled (pg. 405): cheated, swindled

Ablutions (pg. 425): cleansing rituals

Twigging (pg. 429): observing

Larders (pg. 443): pantries

Prating (pg. 470): babbling

Lave (pg. 478): wash

Sup (pg. 484): eat

Feign (pg. 510): fain, gladly

Arrant (pg. 519): complete

Boon (pg. 524): favor, benefit

Avail (pg. 547): use

Weltering (pg. 563): surging

Do you like any of these? Any of these you find useful?

Wondrous Words Wednesday is a weekly meme where we share new (to us) words 

that we’ve encountered in our reading. 

If you want to play along, grab the button, 

write a post and come back and add your link to Mr. Linky at Bermuda Onion!

Classic Book Characters from Moby Dick: Who is Your Favorite?

I've been attempting to read Moby Dick for the very first time this month. Typically, when I read a work of fiction, I find one or more of the characters to be a person I can identify with, a person with whom, were the characters real, I might befriend.

Such characters seem sparse in Moby Dick.

Who do you find most appealing? Vote in the poll below and share your thoughts in the comments.

Here's a little information about each character:

Ishmael
Our protagonist from Moby Dick is a solitary character, spending much of his time moaning about life's difficulties and questioning the meaning of life.

Queequeg
To start, Queequeg has no table manners; he uses his harpoon to pass food around the dinner table. He has some sort of scary tattooing on his face and body. Most off-putting is probably the fact that Queequeg is an acknowledged cannibal.

Father Mapple
An old-time preacher, Father Mapple frightens his congregation of whalers with the cautionary tale of Jonah from the pulpit.

Elijah
Elijah makes a brief appearance in the book, shouting at people preparing to board the whaling ship, warning them of dangers he foresees, prophesying about death and doom.

Captain Bildad and Captain Peleg
These two together finance the trip the ship is taking and choose the crew. They are penny-pinchers and try to stiff the crew members of the profits. Neither goes aboard the vessel themselves.

Ahab
The captain of the ship, Ahab, literally does nothing but obsess about ways to destroy the white whale, all the while hobbling back and forth across the deck of the ship with his peg-leg.

Fedallah
The mysterious harpooner Fedallah is referred to as "Ahab's Dark Shadow," and the crew speculates that Fedallah is the devil in man's disguise.

Dough Boy
Dough Boy is the pale, nervous steward on the ship.

Moby Dick himself
Yes, Moby Dick is a whale, but he's not the gentle giant promoted by modern whale-huggers. He's a scarred, angry whale, set on crushing all humanity aboard whaling vessels.


So, who do you find most appealing from Moby Dick? Which of these characters do you find yourself most drawn to? Who is your favorite? Please vote in the poll below and share your thoughts in the comments.





Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish in June of 2010 and was moved to That Artsy Reader Girl in January of 2018. It was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together. Each Tuesday That Artsy Reader Girl assigns a topic and then post her top ten list that fits that topic. You’re more than welcome to join her and create your own top ten (or 2, 5, 20, etc.) list as well. Feel free to put a unique spin on the topic to make it work for you! Please link back to That Artsy Reader Girl in your own post so that others know where to find more information.