Books Out Loud

This summer I went on several road trips and listened to more books on CD/tape than I have since I was little and they rang a little bell when you are supposed to turn the page. On some of my other road trips I didn't listen to books I read them out loud to nieces and nephews. Also, I have spent some time reading my own book out loud to myself as a form of editing. So here are some thoughts on books out loud.

I enjoy reading out loud, I find it fun to try to get into the characters a little bit.

I have found listening to other people read annoying. Women often read men in a breathy, false deep voice. It's weird. Men sometimes read women or girls in an overly falsetto tone that makes it hard to take anything they are saying seriously. And the books that aren't as exciting are even less so when I hear them read because they take longer to get through the boring parts. 

Perhaps I would prefer reader theater types where there are different voices for the different characters. 

I just think it is weird that I enjoy reading out loud, but don't really like the books on tape or CD. Strangely, I don't mind people I know reading out loud. Maybe I'm not expecting as much or something...

Always and Never

I never know what to post about on here, but I always come up with something eventually.
That statement is only true for moderate values of never, and high values of always.
It's the same principle as 2+2=4 except for exceptionally high values of 2.
And yet that is how I always speak. It is so easy to talk like that. Using words that are very extreme in ways that are not.
This is somewhat ironic though. Have you ever seen those questionnaires that have options Always/Almost Always/Sometimes/Almost Never/Never or 1 is Horrible and 10 is Amazing, or some such thing? Those I rarely will put down the extreme answers, I always stick to something more moderate. For some reason putting "I always brush my teeth twice a day" on paper seems more inaccurate than if I just said it. Because it is only true for moderately high values of always.
I hope you all read my blog every week!

Ownership: Part 2: Creativity

I wanted a CD case for multiple CDs so I went to a thrift store and found one for a dollar. The only problem was that someone had painted "DVD" on it badly. And crossed something else off of it. It was kind of ugly. But I decided that instead of always looking at it and thinking "wow that's ugly" I would so something about it. So I painted it. (Too bad I didn't take before and after pictures, just after).

Now everytime I look at it, it makes me happy.
So going back to my first post on ownership... This was a choice, but the choice was only half the battle, I also had to be creative with it.

Bird Morality

I apologize before hand if you think this post is gross.
Early this spring I was out in the garden and found a dead bird. I buried it, but noted where it was buried. This week with the help of one of my nieces and some nephews I dug it back up in the hopes of finding the bones, because I like bones and I have kind of been experimenting with making myself a comparative collection. I felt kind of bad though, digging up a burial I had buried. I won't go so far as to say it felt wrong, but it was along those lines. One thing I did learn in my osteology class, when we were dealing primarily with human remains, was that the bones we work with were real people and we must treat them with respect. I dug up the flicker (that's what kind of bird it was) not because I wanted to make Halloween decorations or scare someone. I dug it up to learn. I'm sure that the words: "in the name of science" can not clear all actions, but I think motive is important, and knowledge is a very powerful one. I'm also not saying that people with cow skulls in their front yards are bad. In fact I think they look cool. But it is more of a moral subject than I had thought about previously. So here is my thoughtful but unrepentant picture of the bones we did find of the flicker (I will clean them up later).

Gross

I have been thinking about what gross means for some time now.
My little nephew freaked out not long ago when he asked for a napkin at lunch and I handed him one that had a tiny bit of food on it. He couldn't handle even sitting near it. It was too gross.
And I was like "You'll live."
When I was in kindergarten I remember finding a stick of gum on the bus, still in the wrapper. I chewed it, when I got home my Mom asked me where I got she was not impressed.
To children somethings seem beyond disgusting that parents are like "yeah, I deal with that all the time." But then other things that seem totally fine to kids, completely gross their parents out.
How do people learn what is "gross" and what isn't.
I see the same things in adults. I watched this video not long ago. The little boy smearing his dad with spaghetti sauce totally grossed me out. (Which by the way is NOT the point of the video). And yet most days of the dig I smeared my own face and arms with dirt and vanilla (the vanilla was to keep the bugs away, the dirt just happened). And that didn't bother me at all.

Honestly, I think food grosses me out more than a lot of other things. Like cleaning up food, and leftover food and such, not eating it (usually). But other people that came to the dig didn't even like to touch the dirt without a glove and told their children not to touch worms.
I feel like sometimes in our world we act like things are either gross or they aren't. That they are just inherently that way. At least that is how we talk to children. "That's gross, don't touch/eat it." Not "Please don't touch that. It is unsanitary/dirty/etc." So how do we, as individuals, learn what gross is?

Epic!

***

I feel like epic has become a pretty popular adjective, at least among those of my generation. We want our movies and books to be epic. Superheros, Lord of the Rings and Brandon Sanderson are all pretty epic. Epic stories, and epic visuals.
But then I was thinking about what actually makes things epic. If Vin*, bounding across a smoke filled landscape with a sword twice her height, was not fighting for the survival of her world would it still be epic? Would Eowyn's** defeat of the Witch King with her famous line "I am no man" be epic if she and the others weren't fighting for the protection of Middle Earth?
I'm not sure they would. And yet when I hear people talking about things in real life being epic they tend to be  like this picture of me on the top of a mountain.

But really I'm not doing anything epic. I'm not saving the world, or even someone's life. I just went for a walk one evening after work. (Granted I was living at high altitude for an Archaeology Dig). So I find myself asking why don't we call doctors saving someone's life epic? Or a child standing up to a bully?

*One of the main characters from Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn trilogy.
**A character from J R R Tolkein's Lord of the Rings.
***A fairly "epic" pose I did of a character from the book I'm writing. (Harrock).

Editions

Many times I have had teachers tell me and my fellow students that they better not see the first draft of our essays or papers. They much prefer a third or fourth edition.

I am presently rereading the book North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell. The copy of it that I have has the title of chapter 24 being "The Meeting." Then it has a footnote noting that that title was probably a typo in the first edition and it should have read "The Mutiny." This would be a much more fitting title because that is the main subject of the entire chapter. So the question is why did the editor of my book find it necessary to keep the mistake just so that it would be consistent with the first edition. The author herself probably made the change. I find it more rude to ignore the author's intent then go back to the "original." 

I am in the process of editing my own book right now, and I certainly edit it for a reason, and want people to read the most recent copy. 

First Editions are overrated, that's what I'm saying.