The Gilmore Girls Reading Challenge

Yep, yet another reading challenge. This is actually the one that jump-started my motivation to get involved in reading challenges when I came across it a couple weeks ago in the sidebar at Book Journey while joining the meme It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

It's no secret how I feel about The Gilmore Girls. I went head-over-heals when my niece introduced me to them in the summer of 2007. That's when she began bringing over for her sleepovers at her Grandma's her boxed season sets that she'd been collecting from birthday and holiday gifts for over a year. At the time she had 1-4. She left them with me as school started in the fall, claiming she wouldn't have the time and it would free up shelf space for her. It was part of her campaign to ease the pain of the six month library closure we were in the midst of at that time. She'd also left almost two dozen YA novels with me. Eventually she left seasons 5 and 6 with me as well. And I still have them though I've made it clear to her that she has only to say the word and they would go home with her--along with the season 7 set that my Mom, sister and I ordered online last spring after we'd watched the first 6 together and couldn't stand to leave off with that season 6 finale.

At any rate, from the get go I identified most with Rory even though I never went to prep school nor even on to college until I was nearly 30, didn't have a steady boyfriend in high-school, didn't have a single mother or rich grandparents. It was Rory's relationship with books and reading that was identical to my own as a kid and teen though I had to depend much more on the libraries than Rory seemed to as I wasn't really encouraged to spend money on books. It's not that I never did, it was just frowned upon as wasteful as long as there were plenty of books in the public or school libraries I hadn't read yet. I still carry a bit of that sense of shame or guilt whenever contemplating spending money on books.

In spite of that Ed and I had built up a personal library of nearly 1000 volumes by 2001, 22 years into our marriage. We sold over half of them after Ed lost his tech job that year and the rest were left behind in storage when we fled the Silicon Valley by bus with a duffel and backpack and two cat crates in August 2001. The backpack full of books was the extent of what I rescued. That experience, as my psyche had been well prepared for, still feels like a punishment for having collected them in the first place.

And yet it wasn't long before I was collecting them again even while living with my in-laws. First the World Book Encyclopedia set I bought off the library at $1 per volume followed ten days latter by a Britannica Great Books set also for $1 per volume which replaced the set we had left behind in California (actually we had lost 3/4 of that set in a previous move out of the Rogue Valley in 1987). That was in 2005 soon after I'd started my blog and discovered the book blogging world but it wasn't until 2008 that I had my first contact with publicists and authors offering review copies and giveaway copies and since then our personal library has begun to overflow our tiny room. It's not nearly the same as before as most of these aren't chosen according to personal taste and my lost library was better than 50% writer's reference and NF related to research for my stories and I have hope (or fantasies) of replacing them someday.

At any rate, getting back on track here, the Gilmore Girls challenge involves reading books, stories and plays on the list of those mentioned or featured in a scene somewhere on a Gilmore Girls episode. Someone actually made the list! I'd been thinking of watching the entire series again for just that purpose. You can find the list on the challenge entry post linked to the picture above as well as the Mr Linky sign-up.

The challenge runs from January 1 through December 31 this year. There are three levels of involvement in this challenge:

• Emily: Read 5 books from at least two different categories.
• Lorelai: Read 10 books from at least three different categories.
• Rory: Read 20 books from at least four different categories

The five categories: classics, non-fiction, modern classics, children/YA, other

And of course, with my declared affinity with Rory I have to aim for the Rory level even though I'm getting in with the year nearly half gone already and there isn't one title on the list which I happened to have read since January. But there are titles that crossover with one or more of the other challenges I have and/or will join this year and it appears that when there is a movie based on the item that watching the movie counts.

I'm not going to declare my list at this time but this is the post I will update as I read any item on it and also link to any reviews of such items I may post.

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Sunday Serenity #153

What does joy, O Mag, B & N, Shakespeare, Dreams, Books, Drums and Gilmore Girls have to do with one another let alone with Sunday or Serenity?

Well Friday was my birthday and Ed was planning to take me out to dinner but got home late and wiped. Instead he brought home Subway sandwiches and the latest O Magazine to hit the stands. I'd mentioned the O Mag earlier that week when the Oprah show was about the making of the cover and the story behind it--the shenanigans Ellen pulled on her show last winter that inspired Oprah to invite her to share a cover with her and the photo shoot and the reveal of the cover. Ed had walked in while I was watching, shortly after the reveal and I was like 'Whoa, look, my name is on O!!! I want! I want!'

I was half being silly but only half. I collect things with my name on them. Not because--or at least not just because--it is my name. But because of the meaning of the word that is my name. I didn't start doing that until the mid nineties tho. Before that, for most of my life and especially through my whole school years, I hated my name exactly because of the association with the word and its meaning. It didn't help that I was constantly reminded by my parents that they'd named me Joy because my arrival had brought them such joy and I was supposed to be a joyful child and I'd been such a happy baby so what happened? Because from about age 4.5 on I was a moody and often morose child.

Ed was aware of all of this so his bringing home the O mag was a meaningful gesture to go with his apology and promise to do something special on Sunday instead. So today he took me out to Hometown Buffet for dinner but first we made a stop at Barnes & Noble so I could spend over an hour browsing and deciding how to spend the $40 gift card my niece (who was my secret Santa last year) had given me for Christmas just before I left town for six months to help out with my Mom's post-surgery care in Longview.



So today was both a belated birthday and belated Xmas celebration in a sense. And after nearly two hours of browsing and finding and considering over a dozen items on my serious wish list, I selected two books and--something else--but first the books:


Thinking Shakespeare byBarry Edelstein wasn't on my wish list by title but by topic--I needed something to give me insight and hard facts about what it means to act in and/or direct a Shakespeare play because of that story I'm planning to write that has Faye, Julia, Wilma, and Inny producing Macbeth with high school kids. Before I picked this one up, I'd looked at several of the Shakespeare books I keep checking out of the library and looked for several more that weren't there. Every one of them would have eaten at least 90% of the card and a couple would have gone over. I still seriously considered at least three of them but couldn't decide between them. Then Ed handed this one to me and I read the subtitle: A how-to guide for student actors, directors and anyone else who wants to feel more comfortable with the Bard.

That hooked me into opening at random where I read this advice: Shakespeare's characters thought in ten syllables. After I read the explanation surrounding that line, I knew I needed this book and I knew the library didn't have it because I've had out every Shakespeare book they have at least once and had never seen this one. Only then did I look at the price and see that I could have it and at least one other of the items I'd considered--one of the $30 something which meant either the Crochet Stitch Bible or the book with 200 braid patterns.

But on second thought, I still have the Crochet Stitch Bible checked out of the library and besides I knew I could get them both on Amazon cheaper if I waited so my thoughts went back to the first book I'd pointed at on our way into the store--the new Stephen King. I knew it would be months before we could get our turn at the library and I knew Ed was as eager as I for it. But on the other hand, I wouldn't get to read it until after Christmas anyway as I couldn't start it during NaNo and I really didn't want to carry 1000 page tome with me to Longview since I'd not likely be able to read much while there anyway.

While all this was going through my head, I was making my way back to the front section where we'd started. Alone because Ed had wandered off as soon as he handed that Shakespeare book to me. I had started to head back to the sewing and craft section but had just made a turn back towards the display tables where the bestsellers where and was about to make another sharp turn toward the bargain section where I'd spotted that encyclopedia of symbols and signs in dreams which I'd spent a good ten minutes looking at earlier, intrigued by its discussion of the language of image and musing about its relevance for a writer who might like to know the potential impact of certain images they're thinking of using in stories or poems. That was only $10 and Thinking Shakespeare was only $8 so I could have both and still have something else in the $20 something range.

But before I could get back to that spot I ran into Ed. Almost literally. I stopped short by about half an inch. He was looking for me and he had the something else plus a book. And he was telling me that if these three items went over the card limit he would cover the excess. The book was the latest Oprah Book Club selection, Say You're One of Them.

So tempting. It was on the list I had rattled off in the car on the way. I'd been wanting it since Oprah announced it a couple months ago and he had looked at all the places he had been shopping--Wal-Mart, Target, grocery stores--but it was never in stock when he happened to be looking. B&N is quite out of the way of his usual routes and he wouldn't have gone there without me. He had been promising me a visit 'soon' ever since I got back from Longview in June but it never worked out for both of us on the same day. So tempting.

But the Oprah Book Club web event had met over that book last week and my turn is coming any day for the library book. So I held my finger up, saying 'Maybe, but just a sec.' and darted (as best I could with a white cane in a semi-crowded store aisle) toward that dream symbol book to take another look at it. Ed followed and when he saw what I had returned to, he laid the novel in some random place and reached for the two books in my hands and said 'Let's go.' as he laid them on top of the box he was carrying:



It's a beginner's drum kit with the sticks and a practice pad, a book with lessons that start with how to hold the stick and include over 100 exercises that take you into advanced technique and a DVD with over 70 minutes of instruction. I'd pointed this out to him in the first ten minutes we were in the store. I hadn't really thought to include it in today's choices but for him to consider for Christmas maybe or just to be pointing it out because my long standing interest in learning the drums had just heated up again this past week as he and I reached the Gilmore Girls episode late in season two in which Rory's best friend Lane Kim finds her true passion and calling--drumming.

I'd first told Ed of my thwarted interest in learning the drums our Senior year in high school when we noticed we both had the annoying habit of tapping--he with his fingers and me with pencils and pens. I told him that my first choice for a band instrument as I entered sixth grade had been drums but it had been nixed by both the band teacher and my parents. The teacher said it wasn't a girl's instrument. My parents said it wasn't for hymn accompaniment. I ended up with the clarinet which I hated and dropped after two years.

I had been talking a lot in the last two years--ever since NaNo 2007 when I gave two of my major characters drumming as a skill and passion--that I really needed to learn how to play drums now if I were to make these character's ability on the drums believable. I don't know the jargon, or the feel of holding the sticks or how it feels when the sticks hit the drums surface. I don't even know the correct way of holding the sticks.

By bringing the box to me and offering to pay the extra so I could still have two books, Ed was essentially telling me it was time, that finding that kit at that price on this day was a sign and I'd be a fool to walk out of that store without that box because who knew if either of us could get back here before Christmas and it was so obviously a Christmas special they would not likely continue to stock beyond it.



He was right and I came home with them. As thrilled as I am that I'm about to embark on learning a skill I've dreamed about for forty years there is that part of me wondering what the world were you thinking? Your poor wrists are not going to thank you. In fact they just may curse you.




But then again, nobody is saying I have to get good at it. This is about playing with a couple of sticks and letting the rhythms penned up in my brain loose once in a while. And its about learning just enough that I can create a believable character who can be as expert, as genius at the drums as her story requires. And its about saying 'Yes!' to something that my intuition has been trying to tell me for most of my life is needed by my psyche and for some unfathomable reason is connected in my psyche with the concept of joy--and Joy.

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Almost Forgot

moar funny pictures
Today was dirt track racing for Ed and his folks. It was laundry day for me. But it wasn't all drudgery. My niece came over to hang out with me. We had a long visit. Our first since Thanksgiving week. And we watched 7 episodes of Gilmore Girls. Beginning with the last two from season 6 which we'd both seen multiple times before but wanted to set the scene to segue into season 7. She had loaned me her Gilmore Girls seasons 1-6 two years ago and I took the first three with me to Longview to share with my sister. Got her hooked on them and surprise, surprise got my mom hooked on them too. We had to ask ed to mail the next three in March which we had watched by mid April. My sister and mom hated the season finale cliffhanger of season 6 as much as I had when I saw it the first time in August 2007. So much so, they decided to order season 7 online. I contributed part of the cost and the idea was to put it with the rest when I returned them to my neice. I watched season 7 with them in late April and May. I've been looking forward to watching and talking about the season 7 episodes with my neice ever since. We are both ga-ga over the Gilmore Girls.

It's already dawn on Sunday and I've got to be up and ready to go before noon as we're having a family pic-nic at the river. My neice will be returning home afterwards and we won't get another chance to visit or binge on Gilmore Girls until late August as she is leaving next weekend for a stint in Youth Corp

I opened this post during an intermission while my neice was on the phone while it was still light out but didn't get anything written before she was ready to get back to the next episode. We had to take a break when Ed and her grandparents got home from the races but after everybody else went to bed we started watching again. I finally called it quits at 4AM even though she was game for one more. But I still had to wash the dishes we'd used today and post something here or break my over two year streak of daily posting.

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Thursday Thirteen #49

Thirteen Attractions of Gilmore Girls with a Variety of Video Examples

I had hoped to include substantial commentary with each point but have run out of time and energy. The following amounts to a substantial outline with citations for the essay(s) I would like to write on what I see as the value and relevance of the Gilmore Girls for anyone interested in the art of storytelling or the art of relationship.

1. The story. I learned a lot about the structure of story and what makes it work its magic. :
   "From the beginning to the end"
   This vid will serve as an orientation to a few of the characters and plot lines over the seven seasons. But its emphasis on romantic relationships makes Gilmore Girls look like a Soap Opera. And that is so wrong.
2. The Music:
   The soundtrack music is as eloquent as the dialog.
   Grant-Lee Phillips Stars Hollow Troubador
3. Romance:
   Luke & Lorelai The Early Years
4. Small Town Theater:
   Luke was a Trekky!!
   Gift for Luke
   Kirk Crashes Into Lukes Diner
   Stars Hollow
5. First Loves & Coming of age:
   Rory-Getaway
   Lane Kim
   
6. Witticisms and rapid fire repartee:
   Wordplay
   Wordplay II
   More Wordplay
   What'd you say?
   Gilmorisms
   More Gilmorisms!
7. College culture--studies, studs & stupidity:
   Everything I ever needed to know about university
   "You Jump I Jump Jack"
   Not As Cute As Pushkin
8. Celeb Cameos:
   Norman Mailer I'm Pregnant!
   Madeleine Albright
   --During the estrangement Rory dreams Albright has substituted for Lorelai in their annual birthday ritual.
   The Real Paul Anka
   
9. Quirky Characters:
   Kirk
   Mrs. Kim
   Michel
   
10. Conflict:
    Fights
11. Family Dynamics:
    Families (The Reason)
    Lorelai & Emily
    Friday Night Fight
    The Prodigal Daughter Returns
12. Friendship:
    Sookie & Lorelai
    Lane & Rory at 16
    Lane and Rory at 21
13. Laughter--the proverbial best medicine:
    Gilmore Funny Moments
    An Ode to Kirk
    Squeegy Beckinheim
    Sugar On Your Toes
    

The purpose of the meme is to get to know everyone who participates a little bit better every Thursday. Visiting fellow Thirteeners is encouraged! If you participate, leave the link to your Thirteen in others comments. It's easy, and fun! Be sure to update your Thirteen with links that are left for you, as well! I will link to everyone who participates and leaves a link to their 13 things. Trackbacks, pings, comment links accepted!

View More Thursday Thirteen Participants

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Apologies and Thank-yous

Apologies and thank yous are in order for all those who left comments on my meme posts in the last two weeks. I feel so bad that I haven't dropped by to return many of your visits. I feel I should drop out of the memes until I am able to follow through on that obligation. Visiting your contributions is more than half the fun anyway. But I'm afraid I would stop posting altogether if I quit Thursday Thirteen, Poetry Train, and Friday Snippets even temporarily. Besides the fact that coming up with something else to post about seems like a monumental challenge right now, dropping out of the memes would further demoralize me.

Speaking of demoralizing: I think I may have already inadvertently dropped out of 70 Days of Sweat as I completely forgot to make the mandatory Sunday check-in. Not to mention that I haven't been able to make any new word count in two weeks now. I haven't reneged on my commitment to spend quality time with my story world each and every day though. Intense, vivid, detailed daydreaming of the characters, settings and events keeps the pump primed, is just as entertaining as TV, DVD, or reading fiction while having the advantage of being doable with closed eyes and completely relaxed body.

What is really bumming me most about this situation is that I've been denying myself the privilege of even reading many of my favorite blogs because I won't let myself go to the ones I owe comments to unless I am prepared to leave comments. Being prepared entails sitting up on the edge of the bed in a position to accommodate typing. This uses up my energy in less than an hour. Since I typically spend twenty to sixty minutes on each blog I visit you can see my conundrum. Thus, I am wondering if it would be totally tacky of me to compose a few pre-typed comments that I could paste in while I visit in a variety of reclining positions that allow me to read the screen and use the touch pad for clicking and scrolling but will not allow for ten-fingered typing and some no visual of the keyboard at all, which rules out hunt and peck too.

That has been one of the contributing factors in my watching 100 episodes of Gilmore Girls in eleven days. Though some might think this last is the major contributing factor to my continued fatigue, muscle weakness and lack of energy. :)

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Gilmorized

Since I got sick ten days ago, I've watched 98 episodes of Gilmore Girls. I was on episode five of second season when this thing hit me and just watched episode fourteen of season six. Eight more episodes and I will be stuck until my niece has acquired her season 7 DVDs and watched them. Which is not due out until November 13.

Eventually I'm hoping to write a coherent post to explain why my psyche has been shanghaied by this series which I never even bothered to check out while it was still in production. Someday. In the meantime this video gives a number of examples of the 'Gilmorisms' that are a hallmark of the show. They are references to 3000 years of literature, drama, art, music, history and pop culture woven into the dialog. Between Lorelei and her daughter Rory they almost amount to a private language.

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Poor Excuse For a Post

I've never been so tempted to let a day slide without posting. All I have to show for this day is another six episodes of Gilmore Girls. There might have been more but I couldn't be bothered to switch the DVDs even though I could have done so without lifting my head off the pillow.

I don't know how much of this enervation is due to post-illness effects and how much to the heat and humidity of a day that hit triple digits here with thunder showers rolling in at dusk. Which last means there would be an element of barometric pressure effect that I've frequently linked to depressed mood and energy and elevated anxiety. Not to mention headache and blurred vision.

At any rate, I've decided to postpone posting of my TT until tomorrow in hopes of coming up with something a little more upbeat than 13 things I hate about being sick, or 13 things I hate about humid heat. Or some equally pathetic pity-party mantra.

Gilmore Girls here I come....

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Better Not Best

Still on the shaky side. Been feeling pretty wretched (drop the w) since late Saturday. The worst was over by the wee hours of Monday but it left me weak and weary and contending with the blurred vision which is often a side-effect of illness for me.

It hasn't been all bad. I've watched sixteen episodes of Gilmore Girls on DVD since Saturday. Have started season three now. This thanks to my niece who began loaning her sets to me months ago, handing over the last of the available ones--season six--several weeks ago. I never started watching it while it was in production but I am so hooked now.

Then an email from a Friday Snippet participant containing a PDF of his entire manuscript for me to read and provide feedback. I was already confident the story was destined to be published someday just based on the half-dozen snippets I read over the last couple of months. I am no less confident after reading the first 70 pages. It has completely taken my mind off of Harry Potter and having to wait for my chance to read Deathly Hollows. It is that good.

As if that wasn't enough goodness for one day, the box of goodies I won in the 70 Days of Sweat Sunday check-in drawing two weeks ago, arrived in the mail. Alison Kent was the sponsor that week and she really surprised me. I was expecting one or two paper packs. That would have been waaaay cool. But there were four novels and three how-to for writers. 7 in all. I was intending to list them all here but I've run out of steam.

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I Never Do Anything By Halfs

Clips representing significant moments of Gilmore Girls Season 1 set to to When It's Over by Sugar Ray

For those of you as clueless as I was a month ago, here are links to YouTubes of the Starz Insider interviews with the cast after season 1: Part One & Part Two & Part Three

(I am seriously trying to avoid spoilers but just reading the titles on other selections as I searched for these has given me info I wish I didn't have yet.)

For anyone who has visited one of my memes since last Thursday and have not gotten a return visit yet, I owe an apology and explanation. I will be working to return those visits over the next day or so. The above videos represent the simplest explanation of what's become of me since last Thursday. The complex explanation follows: My 13 year old niece arrived here at her Grandma's last Wednesday in the late evening. We didn't get to have our usual into the wee hours of the morning hang-out that night because I'd already been up for over thirty hours by the time she got here. Though if she had waited until the following day as planned, I may have watched coverage of the bridge collapse right on through the night inspite of being punch-drunk with sleep depravation and ODed on Apocolyptic images.

By Thursday afternoon I'd gotten some sleep and we spent the day chatting and reading out in the yard. And that night we watched the second disc of Gilmore Girls Season 1, having watched the first disc the week before July 4th on her last visit. I had planned to keep on watching after she left last month but fell into Sven's Sauna on the 9th. So we started where we left off. Each disc exept the last one has four episodes on it and takes about three hours to watch straight through. We planned to watch one per night. But Friday night Ed stayed up waaaaay past his usual bedtime to visit with us and she and I were both too tired to start a disc by then. So we watched two on Saturday, starting one in the afternoon while every one else was at the dirt track races and another in the late evening which was interrupted for an hour when Ed and his folks returned near midnight. Then we watched the fifth disc Sunday night after everybody else had gone to bed.

We were watching the last episode on disc six when she had to leave Monday afternoon. That last one we were watching on my laptop in my room because we didn't have access to the TV with the DVD player in the front room. After she left, I watched the last ten minutes of the season 1 finale by myself. The scene with the 1000 yellow daisies for those in the know. And then I watched over an hour of bonus material.

I had pulled the box with the second season discs off the shelf and was seriously considering starting disc one to see what happens next. Season finales are almost always cliff hangers and this was not one of the exceptions. I might have succumbed to the temptation if Ed had not got home from work just then.

The problem with loving to be immersed in something is that it doens't leave room for other things to time-share your attention. I climbed out of my own story world Thursday night and into someone elses which was so awesome, I think I got intimidated.

My niece introduced me to the Gilmore Girls. She loaned me the first couple of seasons last Novemeber before news of the library closure. I had promised myself a reward for the hard work of NaNoWriMo in November of a fiction binge in December which was to include a marathon Gilmore Girls and the Lemony Snicket and Harry Potter books she had loaned me also. But word of the impending library closure derailed that plan. So what with one thing and another I never did watch a Gilmore Girl episode until after the series finale this year.

My niece has loaned me all six of the available seasons on DVD. I've had them for months (the last two since Easter I think) but because I've always been immersed in one thing or another since she handed me the first two last November, I kept holding them out as a reward for getting through something else. But now I've been immersed in Gilmore Gils and I am so tempted to stay in the water, to dive deeper and not come up for air until the end of season 6. But I don't dare. How would I explain that to Sven?

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