Learning From Fairy Tales [The Six Swans Retelling]

From Shelley Jackson's retelling of "The Six Swans" (renamed "The Swan Brothers" in My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me (pg 93):

        Women are trouble -- if it isn't an evil wife, its an evil stepmother. Or mother-in-law. Mother's are usually all right, unless they're witches -- watch out for witches. And their daughters.
        You might be all right with kings, princes, and fathers, unless, as is usually the case, they're under the influence of someone else, usually a woman. Men are weak. Sometimes they rescue you, but they always have help -- from ants or birds or women. Sometimes you rescue them. This is kind of sweet.

         You can trust animals. Sometimes they turn into people, but don't hold that against them.
         Children had better watch out.

[Amazon Affiliate. If you click from here to Amazon and buy something, I receive a percentage of the purchase price.]

The 150 Book Challenge [Updates]

So far the challenge is going pretty well. I finished book 29 yesterday, and I'm midway through book 30:

I've been able to cycle books pretty quickly, partially because I've mastered keeping a flow of books coming. Without new books to read, the whole process would stop.

[Amazingly, the last ten books I have read have all been by women. That happen all the time.]

One thing that has been holding me back, though, has been how cold its been here in DC. I spend 15 to 30 minutes every day waiting for the bus (I have to transfer buses, which accounts for some of that time). Its been too cold to get my hands out of my coat to hold the book, so I've been waiting until I actually get in the bus to begin reading.

I've got to read 12 to 13 books a month, which so far I've been right on: I hit 25 books the last day of February. With the last few books added into the mix, I've been finishing a book every 2.3 days on average. In order to stay on pace, I have to finish nine more books this month.

In the wings, I have one of George R. R. Martin's books in my To Be Read pile. Those have been challenging this year, because they are 800-1000 pages long, and have taken 6-7 days to complete. So far to combat that I've been trying to get through at least 100 pages of it a day, no matter what.

Right now I'm 22 days ahead of where I was last year, or 7 books ahead. So its going pretty well. Just for a comparison, here's 2010:

And here's the same time period again, this year:
 

Pretty awesome. More books read in the same time period.