Deal Me In Challenge 2023

Deal Me In Challenge

Deal Me in Challenge 2023 and again, I stubbornly continue to participate, even though I finish less and less of the selections each year.  Last year, I think I finished one selection (shame!) but even so, I was encouraged by my amount of reading in 2022.  In 2021, I managed to finish 12 books but in 2022 I finished 32.  I think I can keep up that pace and even improve it, so with that in mind, if I concentrate some of my energy on this challenge I should be able to read ….. well, at least more than one!

I kept the same list as last year to save time; better to spend the time saved reading, I think.

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Deal Me In Challenge 2022

Deal Me In Challenge

Jay at Bibliophiilopolis used to host the Deal Me In Challenge every year however 2020 seemed to be the end of the challenge. But since it was one of my favourite challenges, I’ve continued on my own.  Last year was almost a complete bust, but I’m going to try again this year, if only for the value I received from stretching myself to read writing I wouldn’t normally choose.  So here is my Deal Me In Challenge 2022!

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Deal Me In Challenge 2021

Deal Me In Challenge

Jay at Bibliophilica hosts the Deal Me In Challenge every year and it’s one of my favourite challenges. Even considering the fact that I’ve been abysmal with even getting halfway through this challenge the past few years, I’m still going to participate in the Deal Me In Challenge 2021.  Why, you ask?  Well, I do have a very good reason ….

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The Phoenix and the Turtle by William Shakespeare

The Phoenix and the Turtle

I drew The Phoenix and the Turtle, a poem by William Shakespeare, for my Deal Me In Challenge, and after reading it, I’m so confused.  Fortunately, I pulled up an article on it which said it is one of the more confusing poems in English literature, so I feel a little better.  But only a little.  Let’s see what I can discover about it ……

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The Mad Gardener’s Song by Lewis Carroll

Sutterlin Handwriting

These crazy times seemed to be the perfect time to re-start my Deal Me In Challenge and perhaps not so surprisingly, my card-choice led me to a very crazy poem, The Mad Gardener’s Song.  Lewis Carroll is well-known for his zany poetry and stories and this one is no exception.  It also lines up with my activities and planned activities of late …. gardening.  Of course, there is no connection to the mad gardener and me.  Perish the thought!  I’m quite sane.  Really ….! 😂😜

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The Deal-Me-In Challenge for 2019 is here!

Deal Me In Challenge Classical Carousel

Yay!  The Deal Me In Challenge is here again!  Many thanks to Jay at Bibliophilopolis for hosting this challenge which has helped me to read many more Short Stories, Essays, Poetry and Children’s Books than I ever would have without it.

The rules are simple.  Choose short stories to correspond to each card in a deck of cards. Then draw one card each week and read the story that corresponds.

What do you need for this challenge?

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England Your England by George Orwell

“As I write, highly civilised human beings are flying overhead, trying to kill me”

As we can tell from the first line, Orwell wrote England Your England during the conflict of World War II yet the essay turns out not to be about the war but about something very dear to Orwell’s heart: the British people.

Orwell states that the people in the planes trying to kill him must be very much like the British people; but patriotism and national loyalty trumps all, a fact that Hitler and Mussonlini were able to grasp.  Differences between nations are based on differences in outlook and the English are highly differentiated, distinctive and recognizable from their country terrain, to their visual appearance, to their manners.  Yet while these attributes can vary substantially from area to area, the English have a common national identity.  How is that possible among so many differences?  Orwell investigates.

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What I Demand of Life by Frank Swinnerton

My Deal-Me-In Challenge has been going the way of my other challenges this year, but I thought with a few months left in the year, I might try to resurrect it and at least finish well.  We’ll see …. In any case, I drew the queen of Spades, which gave me an essay entitled, What I Demand of Life by Frank Swinnerton.

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January 2018 and My Reading Challenges

Christmas at the Town Hall
© Cleo @ Classical Carousel

I’ve decided to include my reading challenges in this post because I’ve been doing so little reading lately that I’d have little to say otherwise.  Isn’t that pathetic?  Oh well, a new year is here and with it new resolutions, so here goes ……..

December went by so quickly.  My grandmother ended up passing away 4 days before Christmas.  It wasn’t unexpected but still it was sad to see her go.  We’ll certainly miss her but it was fun to remember her stories and the spunk she showed until the end. She had a long life, well lived.

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Tears, Idle Tears by Alfred Lord Tennyson

Alfred Lord Tennyson

Well, I have proven very predictable.  Following my usual pattern for the Deal Me In Challenge of getting off to a great and very consistent start, I then quickly fell behind schedule.  Do I care?  Yes!  I’m usually a very consistent person — a loyal friend, a hard worker, a steady blogger (yes, this is important too!) —- so it really bothers me when I don’t stick to a challenge.  However, I have some very consistent blogger friends whom I won’t mention, whose dedication to challenges continually convicts me (oh okay, I will mention them —- O, I’m referring to you!), so with their gentle reminders, I’ve decided to pick up where I left off and hopefully get some momentum to finish this challenge well.

Finally, oh finally! I drew a poem, my first poem of the challenge so far in 11 choices. What are the odds of that?  Perhaps I should buy a lottery ticket!

Written in 1847 as a song from one of his longer poems The Princess, Tears, Idle Tears, a lyric poem, was composed in blank verse and is said to be one of the few poems where Tennyson conveys his personal sentiments in his works.  Tennyson claims he wrote it after a visit to Tintern Abbey, which was abandoned in 1536 and for him held “the passion of the past, abiding in the transient.”  He said, it was “full for me of its bygone memories ……”

Tintern Abbey
courtesy of Saffron Blaze
Source
Tears, Idle Tears by Alfred Lord Tennyson

     Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean,
Tears from the depth of some divine despair
Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes,
In looking on the happy Autumn-fields,
And thinking of the days that are no more.
      Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail,
That brings our friends up from the underworld,
Sad as the last which reddens over one
That sinks with all we love below the verge;
So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more.
      Ah, sad and strange as in dark summer dawns
The earliest pipe of half-awaken’d birds
To dying ears, when unto dying eyes
The casement slowly grows a glimmering square;
So sad, so strange, the days that are no more.
      Dear as remember’d kisses after death,
And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feign’d
On lips that are for others; deep as love,
Deep as first love, and wild with all regret;
O Death in Life, the days that are no more!

Wow! I remember really liking this poem when I was younger but now it seems all melancholy and sad and depressing.  But really, should have I expected more from Tennyson based on my familiarity with one of this other poems (and one of my absolute favourites!), The Lady of Shallot? —- lots of crying out and isolation and cracking and curses …… no, why am I at all surprised?

 

Tinturn Abbey (inside)
source Wikipedia

So, now for my rather amateur analysis ……. the first aspect of the poem that stood out for me was his initial confusion.  He doesn’t recognize the tears or connect them with anything at first.  They come from deep within him.  Does that highlight man’s propensity to live a rather shallow life?  — to live in the moment without ever doing any deeper self-examination?  And does it also highlight how capricious time is; that it slips away without us even noticing?

The autumn setting gives the poem a melancholy feel as summer has passed, and the passing of summer means less sunshine and happy times, and the death of leaves and greenery as the scenery turns from bright colours and greens to a burnished and faded scene.

Regret is an obvious theme and Tennyson takes us to the underworld, which I assume is really the memories of the dead whom he loved, yet these memories bring him sadness. He is not focusing on the happiness experienced during those times, but the loss of them.

These memories now seem very far away to him, so much so that the very experiences he participated in now appear strange to him.  The casement is shrinking in his vision, perhaps the approach of death?

At least, he feels the memories are dear and sweet, but he acknowledges the death of those times, a death that has happened before he himself has died.  There is nothing uplifting in his remembrance.

Farringford, Tennyson’s residence of the Isle of Wright
source Wikipedia

Good heavens!  Yes, lots of tears and despair and sinking and sadness and strangeness and dying.  It would be fascinating to travel back in time and find out just what was going on in Tennyson’s life and head when he wrote it.

Next up for my Deal Me In Challenge is a children’s classic called Teddy’s Button by Amy LeFeuvre.