A Visit From the Butcher

Kevin wrote a poem for Hallowiener this year, and it was so wonderful I had to post it here.


Twas the night before Hallowiener and all through the kitchen,

Not a creature was stirring, they were dead as fried chicken.

The fridge was well packed with sausage and hare,

And kegs were out icing in tubs by the stair

The mudders were passed out all over the floor,

With visions of venison and wild boar

And Caitlin and I were tucked in and warm,

Enjoying the calm ahead of the storm

When out on the patio arose such a clatter,

I sprang from the bed to see what was the matter

Away to the window I stumbled and fell

To make sure all was right with my old Weber grill.

The moon through the branches of now leafless trees

Gave light to the red cups, blown around in the breeze.

When, what to my half drunk eyes should appear

But a kangaroo, yak, and a couple reindeer.

Herding them all, so tasty and thick,

Was a butcher, I thought might be playing a trick

But behind him came others, with all types of meat

And i suddenly realized this must be a treat.

"Now Camel! now, Llama! now, Pheasant and Beaver!

Iguana! Alpaca! Prepare for my cleaver!

And as you prepare for the cut of this knife

Remember how tasty your flesh and your life!"

As a lamb at a slaughterhouse walks calmly by

Not knowing that soon it will be sent to the sky

So too did these creatures step calmly up

Volunteering themselves to be what we would sup.

I made my way down, down to the main level

Anticipation flowing for the next day's revel.

I opened the door, to offer the butcher,

Any help he might need, or beer from a pitcher.

He was dressed in brown leather, from ankle to hood,

And his clothes were all stained with intestine and blood,

A stack of thick steaks he had piled nearby

He looked just like death, with a twinkle in his eye.

His brow, it was furrowed!  his dimples how stoic!

The work he was doing was truly heroic!

His droll little mouth in a state of repose,

And the beard of his chin dripped red as a rose.

The hilt of his tool he held tight in his hand,

And the block on the table was fancy and grand.

He had strong broad shoulders, and muscular arms,

Undoubtedly ladies did swoon at his charms

He was skilled at his craft, a seasoned old killer

I hoped to one day know as much as a griller.

A wink of his eye and a twist of his head,

Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread.

He spoke not a word, but finished his work,

And filled all the coolers, with game meats and pork.

And laying his cleaver back down on the block,

Double checked that in fact we had plenty of stock.

He then sprang to the woods, but gave one final bow

To honor the creatures he'd butchered just now.

But I heard him exclaim, ere he ran out of sight,

"Happy Hallowiener to all, and to all a good-night!"

This also inspired our wonderful friends to write some poems of their own

A Tale of Two Reading Challenges

Early in the year, I came across an interesting reading challenge. It looked fun, but it also looked difficult and I've been on the fence about whether to do it ever since. The original is posted here, but this is the quick rundown:

January: A book published the year you were born
February: a book recommended on a blog
March: a book that has been made into a movie
April: a book from your childhood
May: a book from another country
June: a classic you never got around to
July: a book you found on a social-networking book site
August: a genre or format you don't usually read
September: a book from an opposing point of view
October: a book being read by a local book club
November: an award winner
December: someone else's favorite book

There are a few things here that I think are interesting and that line up pretty well with things I've been wanting to read. It turns out that the first novel in the Vorkosigan Saga was published in 1986, which gives me a good excuse to start that series. June may be just the push I need to finally finish Treasure Island. And the May challenge lines up nicely with my honeymoon, so it would be really easy to find and read a book published in a foreign country.

Then again, there are things on this list I'm less excited about. Finding new recommendations from blogs or the internet in general is not something I need to do. My to-read list is long enough as it is, just from me hearing about new and interesting books in the course of my daily life. The last thing I need to do is actively seek out more books. I'm also somewhat less excited about September, partly because I don't know what to read, and partly because I think life is too short to read things I dislike. If I disagree with a book strongly enough, I probably won't finish it. Though I suppose it depends on the topic and how much I'm willing to tolerate another point of view.

Anyway, I'm definitely torn about this challenge. And seeing as January is almost over and I haven't started yet...well we'll see if I end up attempting it at all. Maybe I can do part of it.

Once I joined Goodreads, I learned about another challenge, that seems a bit more up my alley. It's called the Monopoly Genre Challenge. The idea is that each "monopoly" represents a different genre and each property is a specific sub genre. To earn a monopoly, you read a book from each sub-genre. The goal is to collect as many monopolies as possible by the end of the year. Here's the challenge, along with my progress and plans:

Monopoly Challenge Genres: purple are completed books, red are planned books

As you can see, I've already made some headway here. The fact that I had one complete monopoly already definitely push me over the edge on attempting to complete this challenge. Then I realized that my current to-read list actually matches up with this challenge pretty well. Throw in a couple of Kevin's books that I wasn't necessarily planning to read, but that I have easy access to, and this one seemed like a no-brainer.

I read a lot of fantasy and science-fiction, but I like to branch out beyond those categories, too. This gives me a good excuse to read some non-fiction and test out some genres I usually stay away from. It also gives me an excuse to re-read Clan of the Cave Bear, which I've wanted to revisit since high school but can never seem to make time for.

There are a couple of genres that I'm completely stumped on. I haven't got the slightest idea where to begin with romance. But I have enough of a plan to get started, and I can keep my eyes open for interesting books over the course of the year.

There are also a few books I've been wanting to read (Beloved, The Blind Assassin, Time Enough for Love), that don't seem to fit anywhere in these two challenges. But given the rate at which I read, I should have time for them this year anyway. Especially with two transatlantic flights in my near future.

I'll try to remember to keep you all updated on my progress, at least on the monopoly challenge. The first challenge I may treat as more of a guideline than something I really want to finish. We'll see how it all goes. In the meantime, I'm excited to break out of fantasy a bit and explore some more of what's out there.

Reader Species

I just found this and had to share. I'm mostly a Book Worshipper with a bit of Re-Reader thrown in for comfort. I love my library and own several books that are Not Allowed Out Of The House. But there are also a handful of titles that I own several (up to 5) copies of because I keep reading them to destruction or annotating them to hell or loaning them out to Book Thieves.

What's your species?


Please include attribution to Laura E. Kelly with this graphic. (Click to view at original large size.)

Visit Laura-e-Kelly.com for more about books, reading, and authors.

Girls Who Read

As a girl who reads, I have to say that I absolutely adore both of these essays.

The first, titled You Should Date an Illiterate Girl, was originally published by Charles Warnke on Thought Catalog a year ago. It's posted in two parts, and it's the second part that really gets me. I love this dude's bitterness and the way he articulates it.

Date a girl who doesn’t read. Find her in the weary squalor of a Midwestern bar. Find her in the smoke, drunken sweat, and varicolored light of an upscale nightclub. Wherever you find her, find her smiling. Make sure that it lingers when the people that are talking to her look away. Engage her with unsentimental trivialities. Use pick-up lines and laugh inwardly. Take her outside when the night overstays its welcome. Ignore the palpable weight of fatigue. Kiss her in the rain under the weak glow of a streetlamp because you’ve seen it in film. Remark at its lack of significance. Take her to your apartment. Dispatch with making love. Fuck her.

Let the anxious contract you’ve unwittingly written evolve slowly and uncomfortably into a relationship. Find shared interests and common ground like sushi, and folk music. Build an impenetrable bastion upon that ground. Make it sacred. Retreat into it every time the air gets stale, or the evenings get long. Talk about nothing of significance. Do little thinking. Let the months pass unnoticed. Ask her to move in. Let her decorate. Get into fights about inconsequential things like how the fucking shower curtain needs to be closed so that it doesn’t fucking collect mold. Let a year pass unnoticed. Begin to notice.

Figure that you should probably get married because you will have wasted a lot of time otherwise. Take her to dinner on the forty-fifth floor at a restaurant far beyond your means. Make sure there is a beautiful view of the city. Sheepishly ask a waiter to bring her a glass of champagne with a modest ring in it. When she notices, propose to her with all of the enthusiasm and sincerity you can muster. Do not be overly concerned if you feel your heart leap through a pane of sheet glass. For that matter, do not be overly concerned if you cannot feel it at all. If there is applause, let it stagnate. If she cries, smile as if you’ve never been happier. If she doesn’t, smile all the same.

Let the years pass unnoticed. Get a career, not a job. Buy a house. Have two striking children. Try to raise them well. Fail, frequently. Lapse into a bored indifference. Lapse into an indifferent sadness. Have a mid-life crisis. Grow old. Wonder at your lack of achievement. Feel sometimes contented, but mostly vacant and ethereal. Feel, during walks, as if you might never return, or as if you might blow away on the wind. Contract a terminal illness. Die, but only after you observe that the girl who didn’t read never made your heart oscillate with any significant passion, that no one will write the story of your lives, and that she will die, too, with only a mild and tempered regret that nothing ever came of her capacity to love.

Do those things, god damnit, because nothing sucks worse than a girl who reads. Do it, I say, because a life in purgatory is better than a life in hell. Do it, because a girl who reads possesses a vocabulary that can describe that amorphous discontent as a life unfulfilled—a vocabulary that parses the innate beauty of the world and makes it an accessible necessity instead of an alien wonder. A girl who reads lays claim to a vocabulary that distinguishes between the specious and soulless rhetoric of someone who cannot love her, and the inarticulate desperation of someone who loves her too much. A vocabulary, god damnit, that makes my vacuous sophistry a cheap trick.

Do it, because a girl who reads understands syntax. Literature has taught her that moments of tenderness come in sporadic but knowable intervals. A girl who reads knows that life is not planar; she knows, and rightly demands, that the ebb comes along with the flow of disappointment. A girl who has read up on her syntax senses the irregular pauses—the hesitation of breath—endemic to a lie. A girl who reads perceives the difference between a parenthetical moment of anger and the entrenched habits of someone whose bitter cynicism will run on, run on well past any point of reason, or purpose, run on far after she has packed a suitcase and said a reluctant goodbye and she has decided that I am an ellipsis and not a period and run on and run on. Syntax that knows the rhythm and cadence of a life well lived.

Date a girl who doesn’t read because the girl who reads knows the importance of plot. She can trace out the demarcations of a prologue and the sharp ridges of a climax. She feels them in her skin. The girl who reads will be patient with an intermission and expedite a denouement. But of all things, the girl who reads knows most the ineluctable significance of an end. She is comfortable with them. She has bid farewell to a thousand heroes with only a twinge of sadness.

Don’t date a girl who reads because girls who read are the storytellers. You with the Joyce, you with the Nabokov, you with the Woolf. You there in the library, on the platform of the metro, you in the corner of the café, you in the window of your room. You, who make my life so god damned difficult. The girl who reads has spun out the account of her life and it is bursting with meaning. She insists that her narratives are rich, her supporting cast colorful, and her typeface bold. You, the girl who reads, make me want to be everything that I am not. But I am weak and I will fail you, because you have dreamed, properly, of someone who is better than I am. You will not accept the life that I told of at the beginning of this piece. You will accept nothing less than passion, and perfection, and a life worthy of being storied. So out with you, girl who reads. Take the next southbound train and take your Hemingway with you. I hate you. I really, really, really hate you.

The second essay, Date a Girl Who Reads, was (according to the internet) written in response to the first by Rosemarie Urquico. I actually read this one first, and it led me to the original article. I love this one for saying what it means, though I think the original is a bit more clever for the way it gets exactly the same message across.

Date a girl who reads. Date a girl who spends her money on books instead of clothes, who has problems with closet space because she has too many books. Date a girl who has a list of books she wants to read, who has had a library card since she was twelve.

Find a girl who reads. You’ll know that she does because she will always have an unread book in her bag. She’s the one lovingly looking over the shelves in the bookstore, the one who quietly cries out when she has found the book she wants. You see that weird chick sniffing the pages of an old book in a secondhand book shop? That’s the reader. They can never resist smelling the pages, especially when they are yellow and worn.

She’s the girl reading while waiting in that coffee shop down the street. If you take a peek at her mug, the non-dairy creamer is floating on top because she’s kind of engrossed already. Lost in a world of the author’s making. Sit down. She might give you a glare, as most girls who read do not like to be interrupted. Ask her if she likes the book.

Buy her another cup of coffee.

Let her know what you really think of Murakami. See if she got through the first chapter of Fellowship. Understand that if she says she understood James Joyce’s Ulysses she’s just saying that to sound intelligent. Ask her if she loves Alice or she would like to be Alice.

It’s easy to date a girl who reads. Give her books for her birthday, for Christmas, for anniversaries. Give her the gift of words, in poetry and in song. Give her Neruda, Pound, Sexton, Cummings. Let her know that you understand that words are love. Understand that she knows the difference between books and reality but by god, she’s going to try to make her life a little like her favorite book. It will never be your fault if she does.

She has to give it a shot somehow.

Lie to her. If she understands syntax, she will understand your need to lie. Behind words are other things: motivation, value, nuance, dialogue. It will not be the end of the world.

Fail her. Because a girl who reads knows that failure always leads up to the climax. Because girls who read understand that all things must come to end, but that you can always write a sequel. That you can begin again and again and still be the hero. That life is meant to have a villain or two.

Why be frightened of everything that you are not? Girls who read understand that people, like characters, develop. Except in the Twilight series.

If you find a girl who reads, keep her close. When you find her up at 2 AM clutching a book to her chest and weeping, make her a cup of tea and hold her. You may lose her for a couple of hours but she will always come back to you. She’ll talk as if the characters in the book are real, because for a while, they always are.

You will propose on a hot air balloon. Or during a rock concert. Or very casually next time she’s sick. Over Skype.

You will smile so hard you will wonder why your heart hasn’t burst and bled out all over your chest yet. You will write the story of your lives, have kids with strange names and even stranger tastes. She will introduce your children to the Cat in the Hat and Aslan, maybe in the same day. You will walk the winters of your old age together and she will recite Keats under her breath while you shake the snow off your boots.

Date a girl who reads because you deserve it. You deserve a girl who can give you the most colorful life imaginable. If you can only give her monotony, and stale hours and half-baked proposals, then you’re better off alone. If you want the world and the worlds beyond it, date a girl who reads.

Or better yet, date a girl who writes.