Monday, May 04, 2015

Monday Malarkey - The Usual Jazz and High on Poetry

It must be Monday if I'm posing books on the deck railing.


This week's arrivals, from top:


  • Tales of the Greek Heroes by Roger Lancelyn Green - purchased. This author was mentioned in The Girl With All The Gifts and I know pretty much nothing about Greek and Roman anything, so I figured it would be fun to give the author a try.
  • No Surrender by Hiroo Onoda - via Paperback Swap
  • This is Not a Test by Courtney Summers - library check-out, recommended by a friend
  • Jubilee by Margaret Walker - library check-out for F2F discussion


Not pictured:


  • Parched by Georgia Clark - via Paperback Swap


Last week's posts:



Last week's reads:

  • Sleepy Kitty and Sleepy Puppy by Sterling Kids (board books)
  • Ten Days in a Mad-House by Nellie Bly
  • Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare
  • The Year My Mother Came Back by Alice Eve Cohen 

Currently reading:

  • There's a Trick with a Knife I'm Learning to Do by Michael Ondaatje (poetry)
  • Nine Horses by Billy Collins (poetry)

In other news:

I dropped my good camera -- only a few inches and it was in a padded bag but it made a smacking noise when it hit the floor and when I turned it on it was clearly broken. So, I'm without a nice camera, at the moment, although I still have the Small Emergency Back-Up Camera, which is a good one as smaller cameras go. 

Still painting the deck and you can see that it's red in the photos above. It's taking forever because our deck is large (actually, we technically have two decks but some of the boards on the lower deck have rotted and will have to be replaced). Hopefully, a paint job will last a bit longer than the annual staining. We'd never had a deck till we bought our current house and we're discovering just how much work they are to keep up with but we absolutely love our outdoor space.

Last night, after doing a bit of painting I came inside hot, covered with paint splotches and worn out. I took a soaking bath and staggered around a bit, then climbed into bed with the Ondaatje. At some point, I sat up and the room began spinning and I thought it could be the heat or the paint fumes but I like to think I was high on poetry. Ondaatje is interesting. Sometimes I don't get his poems at all, but sometimes he makes me laugh and at other times I'm so startled that I find myself rereading a poem several times, which is always a good thing. I think I'll be hunting for more of his poetry. I know I have a large volume of Ondaatje's work, somewhere, so I'll have to check to see if there's any poetry in it. National Poetry Month may be over but I'm not quite willing to give up the fun, yet. 

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4 comments:

  1. I admire your ability to read and understand poetry. I have no patience for it which I'm sure my dad is sad about. He used to write poetry. I'm thinking of putting a deck in. I hate the maintenance of them but something needs to cover up the ugly patio I've got.

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    1. I don't always understand it, but I think it helps to read more poetry. You start to grasp imagery and form, eventually. Some poets are just baffling, though, no matter how hard you try to figure them out. I presume a little schooling would help; I'm just feeling my way. :) Very cool about your dad writing poetry. Is he still around? Maybe he could help walk you through some . . . you know, if you're interested. Or you could go for someone who is very straightforward, like Billy Collins or Robert Frost. I very seldom feel baffled when I read either of them.

      I love having a deck and covered patio. Our last house had two small patios but they weren't inviting, were uncovered (the sun is intense, here) and the net result was that we just didn't spend much time outdoors. Having this wonderful outdoor space is really great. But, yeah, lots of maintenance involved. I didn't realize husband hadn't bothered to stain the lower deck, last year. It's going to have to be almost totally redone.

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  2. I love our deck, but I wish we could replace the floor with Trex or some other composite material. I hate to keep having to powerwash and restain every 2-3 years. With all the snow and ice, though, it really needs to be done that often. I love the idea of red paint!

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    1. We have to stain every year or it rots and that's how the lower deck was ruined, hence the decision to try paint. I presume the reason is our heavy humidity level. I was hoping the stain would last longer than a year. So far, I'm loving the red paint! We have tried two colors. The first was "redwood" and it turned out much brighter than expected so we switched to a darker red, which we love. Now, if we can just get the job done. Every time I paint I get a massive number of mosquito bites no matter how much I slather myself in repellent, so I'm mostly doing it on weekends with Huz. I'm allergic to mosquito bites - makes it kind of difficult because if I get more than about 3-4 I get sickish and have to wait a few days.

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