Kailana at The Written Word and Lu at Regular Rumination have started a monthly poetry blog-along. I haven’t posted my sign-up yet, so I’m combining this month’s post with that.

On the last Tuesday of every month, I’m going to join in and blog (very) informally about some of the poetry that I’ve read over the past month.

For January, I thought I’d share some of Shakespeare’s thoughts from A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

In Act III, scene ii, Hermia has awakened to find her love, Lysander, gone without explanation. She accuses Demetrius, his rival, of harming him:

Out, dog! Out, cur! Thou driv’st me past the bounds
Of maiden’s patience. Has thou slain him then?
Henceforth be never numb’red among men.
O, once tell true: tell true, even for my sake
Durst thou have looked upon him being awake!
And hast thou killed him sleeping? O brave touch!
Could not a worm, an adder, do so much?

I can just feel the pain, anger and contempt in Hermia’s words!

My favorite lines from this play, though, are Helena’s in Act 1, scene i:

Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind,
And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.

HUGE CLEANING JOB. MANY HANDS. DONE 🙂

Want to join the 6WS club? Describe what is going on in your life in 6 words and then link up with Cate at Showmyface.com

FIVE BLESSED HOURS ALONE. QUIET. MMMMMMMM…..

Want to join the 6WS club? Describe what is going on in your life in 6 words and then link up with Cate at Showmyface.com

LIFE’S AT FULL THROTTLE; ENGINE’S OVERHEATING

Want to join the 6WS club? Describe what is going on in your life in 6 words and then link up with Cate at Showmyface.com

Here’s the thing: country living in an old farmhouse = mice in the house.

We’ve seen several mice hiding in the basement woodpile this winter so my husband set traps. (Country living tip: rodent traps are more effective set perpendicular to the walls along which the mice run.)

My three-year-old grandson has a toy snake that he threw down the basement several times without explaining why (and people brought up each time they fed the furnace). Crying, he explained, “I keep throwing my snake down and somebody keeps bringing it up. It needs to be down to catch the mice.” We couldn’t argue with the logic, so left the snake on the basement floor.

After my husband checked his trap-line this morning, here’s what Steven found.

He could not believe his eyes (after all, he knows it’s a toy snake), but once he took things in, he was delighted! Ah, the joys of grandparenthood (in the country).

The Classics Reading Challenge hosted by November’s Autumn is the one I’m calling “Classics with a Twist” – the twist being that on the fourth of each month, Katherine posts a prompt to act as a basis for my discussion of the classic I’m currently reading.

I’m nearing the end of Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Stowe. Stowe was born in 1811 in Connecticut USA. She lived for a time in Cincinnati Ohio where she met her husband, Calvin Ellis Stowe who was a professor at the Lane Theological Seminary there. The Stowes later moved to coastal Maine.

Both Stowes were deeply religious and fierce critics of slavery. It’s no surprise that they supported the Underground Railroad and offered their home as a stop on it.

Her writing is typical of the 19th century writers I have read: great descriptive detail and slow plot advancement. I understand that readers expected in the 1800s to be entertained at length by a single book that could be savored slowly. In my 21st century life, I often read through books just so that I can get to the next one, so I admit that I have been at times frustrated by Stowe’s writing.

I think that Stowe’s novel, published in installments in The National Era in 1851 & 1852, and in book form in March of 1852, was met with the same sort of attitudes that fomented the American Civil War: strident voices both for and against slavery. Anecdotal history says when Stowe met Abraham Lincoln in 1862, he greeted her by saying, “so you are the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war.”

I know that by now, most of you think I’m insane because, after all, I have joined fifty-two (52!) reading challenges for next year. (Here’s the list). Maybe I am a little touched in the head, but I told you I was a challenge addict.

But I do have a plan: a master reading list for next year that right now stands at 106 books and fulfills my entire reading obligation except for the picture books. (I figure I can fit them in somewhere.) Since I read 121 books in 2011 and am aiming for 150 this year, I figure that’s doable.

My only problem will be resisting all the new goodies I see this year until I’ve completed my challenges at the end of the year.

So, how about you? Do you have a reading list for 2012 or are reading catch as catch can – which I think I’d like to try in 2013!