some days

....are just like that.

I am thinking of people who need to be thought of.

I am appreciating the beauty in tiny moments, but I can't upload the pictures from this morning's drive to preschool. In fact, I lost my header photo and can't seem to retrieve it.

I wanted to do more edits, had an awesome session of it yesterday and finally completed for the thousandth time the emotionally relevant chapter that is twice as long as the rest of the chapters, but I finally accepted that it was okay, because a middle reader can handle one 10 page chapter in a book of 35 chapters that are 3-5 pages each. But see people statement re: doing more edits today, but maybe I still can. And there is laundry, of course.

I wanted to go to a retreat this weekend, but it isn't in the cards. I am sending Mr. Cynic, and he is cool with that.

It's a gorgeous day, the library book I was waiting for was finally in yesterday, and I checked it out. I feel like going outside to watch the blue jays and cardinals flit between the changing trees, listen to the wind rustle them, too, and maybe, just maybe read for half an hour uninterrupted, outside, where there is beauty to be found everywhere, if you just look.

That last option is sounding the most appealing at the moment....

And then I will go pick up Toots, and the mayhem will resume. Captain Comic is having a rough first quarter of the school year again, and Mr. Cynic still needs to pack for the weekend and I am not sure when his ride is coming for him.

But yes, tra la la - opting for some time in the warm autumn breeze and light and colors.

i won!

Liz Hum is the author of Vampires Don't Drink Wine, a new collection of short stories that put Vampires back where they belong, in your nightmares doing twisted murderous things - Not sparkling or dating humans while drinking synthetic blood.

She is an excellent and opinionated blogger here and here. She is married to a Viking and the mother of three Viking children in the suburbs of Chicago. Her No BS meter runs in the red zone all. the. time.





I was lucky and won a hard copy in her blog raffle. Please click on the book cover to purchase her book. I bet she'll buy her neighborhood bike helmets if she sells enough of them. At 99 cents a piece in e-reader format, that's a lot of books to sell to keep rabble-rousers safe and blood off the streets.

Maybe. She had to get the idea for the vampires from somewhere....

a few highlights, low key

Pretty low key weekend, but we found a watermelon growing in the cukes.

 Toots had a haircut on Friday, but with the humidity, you would never know. Many women in the salon pleaded for a head of hair with her natural caramel highlights and those curls. Of course, they don't have to comb them out three times a day. I do, or dreadlocks.

 It was too hot to even blow bubbles, but we did.

 ""But I done wanna yook at you, Mommy. I'm busy here."

I walked Lucy, also known as The Goo, Goose, Goosie, Lucy Goose. We sat by the lake for a bit. It was cooler than it has been, a few clouds rolled in and spit on us today. I wouldn't exactly call it rain, but it made things about fifteen degrees cooler. Again, poor cellphone camera capture, but that lump on that branch on the tree across the inlet? That's a great blue heron. He was magnificent in person. I know, bad tease. I'll try to remember a better camera next time.

Mostly, this weekend was spent wandering in a big box store, watching a three year old who has been full of beans lately, and reading Sookie. 

I have come to the conclusion, that I like the books better than the show. The show mucks with perfectly good material way too much. They need to leave a good thing well enough alone. Although, I do love the show, too, but now that I'm well-ensconced in the books, I love it just a little less.

I'm really ready for the boys to come home.

distracted and frustrated

This post is kind of a way for me to work out hitting a wall in my manuscript. All I want is to finish it. In my heart, I still love it. But after so many edits, this edit is really a bore to do. In my house, two kids are gone for a month, including the most distracting one. In and around my house is a lot of neglected house stuff, largely due to my trying to focus on the manuscript.

When I try to write at home, even if I have my mother-in-law take the three year old out of the house for a couple of hours, invariably I putz around finding other things to do until, lo and behold, they return, and I haven’t even pulled the critiqued manuscripts out of my tote bag.  Like the day last week, when Toots decided waking up throwing up was the way to go that day rather than out of the house with Grandma. I sank her into the couch with Netflix streaming kid videos, and the next thing I knew, I found myself hacking branches in the yard in 100 degree heat, because that apparently was immensely preferable to actually finishing my novel.

And I had a good session on it the day before when I did my usual Tuesday routine of packing everything up and taking it to the library to edit. Okay, so the next day, off to the library I went, and knocked through two chapters in a fairly painless edit session.

As I write this, I look back over this very morning, noting that, yes, I had an early doctor appointment, from which I left a bit upset, mostly just burnt out on doing the specialist shuffle, so I gave myself permission to see another human being, I mean tea chat with a friend, and then another friend who is back in town visiting from far far away showed up, and finally I trotted myself off to the library. I couldn’t settle in as the place was teaming with people, and then the summer camps came tromping through in droves, so I turned right around, having never even opened the laptop.

Home again, Toots was getting a dose of the one program I don’t let her watch, which frustrated me, because I thought I was pretty clear about that to Grandma, but I didn’t make a stink about it. (Do we really need one more show for her to request immediately and often?) I preferred to focus and to attempt to write during and after lunch, Toots’s nap time, and when Grandma typically goes upstairs for a reading rest of her own.

Well, then I started getting ideas. My, isn’t it a lovely day out there, not a hundred degrees, now that we had a good thunderstorm last night. I know! I’ll go out to the picnic table around the side of the house that has a little privacy and an outlet! I got all set up and touched my black keyboard in the sun - youch! like a stove burner that has been left on.

Trot everything - drink, lunch, boiling laptop back inside, two trips - turn on the a/c in the office, and try to “white noise out” that Toots is not interested in napping at that time. Stare at my laptop screen and start typing this instead.

So what is my problem? Why am I having such difficulty with starting a single editing session? Any session for that matter? The excitement is inside me to Git ‘er Done!  Yet instead, here I am devising ways to rearrange the office so that I can work better, more comfortably, get more organized, etc. Frankly, I have rearranged the place a dozen times, and nothing seems to work, and that box of papers that grows and shrinks but never disappears is still in more or less the same spot - not in the file cabinet - it has sat for the past five years since we moved it to Virginia from Massachusetts. Don't ask me how many residences that thing has moved from or the decades involved, I implore you! It is my my little hoarder albatross. It's a smallish box, I swear.

I have little over a week before I retrieve the boys and my mayhem returns to its full tilt, after a camping trip with all the kids.  I have about twelve, albeit, short chapters to go, a bunch of query letters to write and send, and a writing group twiddling their thumbs to see this last draft before I send it out.

Maybe just putting it down where I can see it: twelve chapters in about as many days, is what I needed to do. I sure hope so. Once I get started, I’m good for at least a chapter a session, so now, I just need to do it. Hello five a.m. for the next week?   Any suggestions would be appreciated. 

quiet & things

Back from camping, this week was mostly much needed downtime. 


My writing group had a lunch meeting after a hiatus period due to travels of each, and surgery of one. We had a logistics meeting discussing where we all were at the moment in writing, how we want the group to function, and dare we invite some new blood in after loosing two members to moves somewhat cross-country in the past year. We all agreed on new blood, some of us moaned about the current transitory state of publishing world, the other members all recently submitted works and are in that sea of rejections and non-responses. I ended up being the cheerleader to keep them all from quitting writing, and thankfully it worked. They are all too good to not be read out. 


One had to remind herself of why she writes besides trying to publish. I not so eloquently put it, "If I'm not writing, I am miserable to be around. Might as well shoot me it the head." And the rest, thankfully, recognized that in themselves.


Speaking of writing and rejections, I saw a bit of an interview last night in which the author of The Help claimed to have received 60 rejections over the course of three years. Now she's a best selling author with a highly anticipated film on its way to release. 


So there's always hope.


I had one good writing session this week. Polished up another chapter. I am hoping to get more in this week, especially while the boys are out of state with their father. I really want to knock this revision out and get it in the same state as my writing group compatriots. Although, if I feel as hopeless as they did before my cheer session, maybe not. Who am I kidding? I want to get the book out of my hands and into the public. And I have other starts and ideas to work on.


It's quiet. Too quiet. I find it disorienting, though it is what I loved most about my pre-motherhood. I really loved just curling up with a book because I felt like it and no one interrupted me for anything darn thing. Or just going outside for a walk to clear my head. Not that it needed much clearing then. And writing for endless hours because my head had empty rooms to wander around in.


Now I want to be interrupted. Curses.


I miss the boys. I miss my grown up talks with my really perceptive teen. I miss Captain Comic yelling and stomping through the house because I am ruining his life or crushing his dreams because I won't buy him a real movie camera. Hm, just Googled, looks like that would run me about $67K, used. I would sooner replace Big Bertha, my rusty year 2000 minivan, and the fence. Or maybe try to put in that second master suite to the house.  Or sock it away toward the kids' college educations, half of one of them anyway. I miss how he always makes me laugh.


Other than that, I have been battling weeds and squash bugs, a Normandy style invasion of which destroyed my beautiful squash plants, again. And Toots and I have been having fun with each other and with friends. 


So this Saturday is an extra quiet one, and I almost - note almost - feel a smidge ho-hum. 

on writing

I went to the library. I resisted. I stared at the screen, the document, out the window and at the critiqued copies.

I wandered the library stacks looking for the the next Charlaine Harris book in the Sookie Stackhouse series. It wasn't there. I looked at bindings. I couldn't remember who else I wanted to read. Nothing else appealed.

I opened facebook. I kvetched. I closed facebook.

I picked up one of the critiqued copies and started reading the chapter I needed to work on. I wrote in what needed to be added, in the margin. I stared at the screen, knowing I needed to start typing. I looked out the window. It is a stunningly gorgeous day. I thought I'd rather be weeding my garden.

My phone buzzed. It was a call from my father. My father rarely calls. Does he want to ask about my garden? Does he want to talk about his? Did something terrible happen to Mom? To one of my brothers, anyone in their families?

I took the phone out front and called him back. Mostly he wanted to talk about gardening, but he also wondered if he left a hat here when he last visited. He found it in the garage before I called him back. He laughed at himself. We talked about growing beans, and his single radish that came up.

I returned to my seat. I started to type. I texted two different friends to see if they wanted to meet for coffee. I typed a little more while they both teased me via text.

I typed some more, then noticed the time. I needed to make a run to a store across town before I came home in time for the boys to arrive home from school. One of the friends said she had something for me. I stopped at her place. We chatted, major girl talk. She gave me purple Thai basil to grow in my garden, because she realized she wasn't going to eat it no matter how pretty it looks in the sunshine.

I came home. I think I forgot to disconnect the USB before I turned off the laptop. but I saved my changes, minimal as they were on the desktop.

I know this doesn't sound like I did much writing or editing, but I did. I changed the way I thought about the chapter, and I only need to type about half of it, hopefully tomorrow.  I have edits in margins I can type in, and I gave my brain room to roam as I wandered the labyrinth of library and mind. And that my friends, is how I write.

What did you do today?

progress

I made some headway during a writing session at the library this morning. I'm in a section that just needs some tightening, mainly. But mostly, I am happy to be in a part of it that I am really pleased with already. Now if I can just commit to type-type-typing away.

I did a little bit more research on Galileo again, too. Just a refresher that helped a lot, because I had made up a comet that he spotted in 1603. That wouldn't have happened. The telescope wasn't invented until 1608, and he made improvements to the first in 1609. So 1603 became 1609 in my manuscript.

I am all about accuracy, even when I am making it up.  It's the little things that you pay attention to that really make a work of fiction believable.

lazy sunday afternoon

After Saturday night's storm, Sunday couldn't have been more perfect weatherwise.

I parked myself under the wisteria with an interesting non-fiction read that I have renewed at the library for the third time. It's fascinating, but I can't or don't sit down long enough to just read a good chunk of it. If you're curious, it's called Occult America: The Secret History of How Mysticism Shaped Our Nation by Mitch Horowitz. I was familiar with a lot of the material he covers, but I really like how he puts it all together and shows a real chronology of the history of faith in America in all of its complexity.

Honey came out and joined me for a cuddle on the chaise for a bit, as Mr. Cynic mowed the front yard. Then Honey went in and woke up Toots from her nap. She came out for a cuddle with me, too.

Toots then got busy playing all over the yard with her daddy and I looked at the wisteria's wild dreadlocks, and decided to tame them a bit. I got out the ladder and string and started climbing and pulling at vines. While I was up there, someone came to chat, kind of.

Captain Comic: Hi Mom. What are you doing?

Mom: Hey Buddy, I'm fixing the wisteria. Whatcha been doing this afternoon?

Captain Comic: Stuff.

Mom: What kind of Stuff?

Captain Comic: Supercool Stuff you wouldn't understand.

Mom: What kind of supercool stuff - drawing comics? 

Captain Comic: Groan growl.  

And he circle paced around once more and headed toward the trampoline from where I heard squeaks and jumps as I went back to the business at hand. 

The wisteria on the fence is still a bit wild, but at least she doesn't look like Coolio circa 1994, or Weird Al Yankovic, for that matter. She smells a lot better, too, I bet.

vote for me - american gods

I love Neil Gaiman's writing, from Black Orchid, Sandman, and Books of Magic graphic novels to  Good Omens with Terry Pratchett, Anansi Boys and the Newbery Medal Winner The Graveyard Book. My favorite book of his is American Gods. I am nearly as well versed in world mythologies, but not nearly as easily referential as Mr. Gaiman, nor so quick to bring forth the old stories into a new millennium in amazingly inventive tales. Nor am I anywhere near as prolific - since it is taking me nearly a decade to write my first novel in a time he has written and published, well, many many more, as well as screenplays, and much more.

The tenth anniversary of the publication of American Gods is bringing with it a new audiobook edition. With that on the horizon, there is a contest to be a reader for it - a chance for his myriad fans to play a character in my favorite novel.  Of course you realize, I am utterly enthused about the prospect of playing a Neil Gaiman character.

Here's where you come in. Anyone can vote once per day until mid May. Please vote for me. I am 'cathysea' in the voting gallery. And then, please go back and vote for me again tomorrow, and the next day and so on.

I would be immensely grateful to you for furthering my opportunity to be a part of a book I've read nearly as many times as I've read To Kill a Mockingbird, in about one quarter of the years I've been reading my other favorite book, which I have read nearly annually since 1974. I always find something new in American Gods each time I read it. It's very nuanced and a great old fashioned murder mystery, too. I think what I love about the book the most though is how it shows the transplanted author's genuine love for the expansive landscape and character of his adopted home and all of our influences.

Please click on the link above, vote for me, and spread the word via blog, twitter and facebook, etc so that I may have a chance to be a part of my favorite book in the UNIVERSE.

list it tues: list of lists & a book review

I am so far behind this season, I can't see straight - note item 2's missing s.

But I ate up a book in about three days. It's been a long while since I've done that, but I felt crappy with a cold, and about the best I could do was lie around and read.

The Help by Kathryn Stockett

I still have mixed feelings after finishing this book. I know I am coming to this party late, to review a best seller. But I think I needed the time it took me to approach The Help. I am a great lover of To Kill a Mockingbird.  Any other book that wants to cover racial issues in the South before 1970 is treading really difficult waters, especially in an attempt to personalize issues of segregation and racial relations after Harper Lee's seminal work.

I must admit I like the book better after reading Stockett's closing words about growing up in a similar situation to what she illustrates. The relationships between black maids and their white family employers are revealed through the narratives of two black maids and one white daughter who is seeming to finally come of age after college, and back in the home and town of her childhood. Skeeter is the one who turns Jackson's well-established order inside out, but she can't do so without Aibileen and Minny.

A lot of my difficulty came from the colloquial nature of the narrations, something I usually enjoy. When the book opens with a black voice written by a white author though, I cannot help but feel a bit suspicious that things will turn out too close to say, Song of the South. But throughout the book, I think Stockett shows an awareness of wanting to avoid that as well as a conscience about how difficult the waters are to tread.

But here's what I like about the book.  She treads very cautiously through these stormy waters.  She has to, and that is what was made clear to me in her afterwords.  This book was her way of understanding and apologizing to the maid who brought her up, who died when Stockett was just sixteen, and who was clearly a strong mother figure to her. Because of her experience growing up in Jackson, she really is able to write the affection Skeeter has for her lost maid, and the affection Aibileen has for the baby girl in her care.

The characters are lively, if a bit stereotypical to begin with, but I think Stockett grows as a writer through the book in her ability to understand what life must have been like for these women. The primary point Stockett makes is about the delicate line that had to be walked through dangerous times in about the most dangerous place, Jackson Mississippi leading up to Martin Luther King's March in DC and the assassination of Pres. Kennedy. Thankfully those incidents are far in the background of the story.

I do recommend it, it is a quick read, even at 451 pages. It was a great escape while I wasn't feeling well, even if it wasn't a comfortable one. But that's just the kind of book that I really enjoy.  I don't like easy reads nearly as much.  I want a book to stay with me.  I think this one will.

Addendum again: in my rush to get something up earlier today, I once again forgot to point the way to more listers who participate.  Please click on the green List it Tuesday square in my side margin to see them starting in artsyville! Oh and while you're there, do wish aimee a very happy 40th birthday!!!

To Kill A Mockingbird

I may be a little late on this, but I don't think anytime is a bad time to celebrate my personal favorite book of all time.  This year marks the 50th anniversary of Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird.

I read this book every summer from the summer I was eight years old, admittedly an early age for the material, but I was more caught up with the stories of Scout, Jem, Dill and Boo than I was with the courtroom. I read it every summer until I was twenty-four.  I know, because I remember where I was that summer, reading it, the smells around me mingling with the smells in the book.  I can smell that stifling chicken wire ham costume right now.  and the Wrigley's Double Mint gum in the tree, and Calpurnia's breakfast.  I have read it periodically since, and always in the summer. When I was a kid reading it, I saw Atticus as a distant yet caring father with a lot on his mind.   The main thing I got from the book, was what Atticus taught them not just by his words but by his actions.



I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know you're licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do.

~ Atticus

You do what is right, because it is the right thing to do. 

You treat people with respect, no matter who they are, because respect is what you'll get if you do.  And mostly, because it is the right thing to do. 

Just because you can shoot a gun better than anyone else in the county, doesn't mean you go around showing off about it.

And you help those who can't help themselves, because it is the right thing to do.

There's plenty more.  The book is full of wisdom, beauty, life in a microcosm shedding light on humanity as a whole.  An excellent story on every level and there are many, and the writing is so good, straight and simple, I can cry from the opening line.

When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow.

I know it, because I've read it so many times, but the whole of that tale is held in that sentence.  You feel it when you read it even for the first time.  You know immediately, something is up, and it's big.  You just may not know how big it is til you get to it, but it is big.

I think I got my lifetime sense of needing to right the wrongs in this world from reading this book so many times and from such a young age.  I may not have really known what the courtroom stuff was about specifically, but I knew it was wrong to lie and accuse an innocent person of something that was clearly bad.  I knew it was wrong for that mob of neighbors to come to Tom Robinson's jail cell in the cover of night. 

What I love more than anything about this book is Scout's growth.  Narrator Scout tells of her own growth through her childhood fallibility.  She shows how hard it is and how simple it is to see wrong and make it right.  How hard it is to be wrong and have to admit it.  And how much easier the world comes to you once you accept how you're wrong, and do what you can to change it.

I could go on.  I can talk about the kid's adventures, Boo's real gentleness. I can talk about  'a sin to kill a mockingbird', the rabid dog, the relatives, the house burning down, the sitting with the sick old Mrs. Dubose for penance. I can talk about pies, pants caught on garden fence, and the collection tin at  Calpurnia's church.  I can talk about  Atticus's perceptive defense of Tom, the nervous trapped cat sense of Mayella, the snobby relatives, Walter Cunningham, fights, squabbles, making up, and the big brother saving the life of his sister with the help of a ghost of a man everyone fears. I can talk about kids and trains, and a sense of belonging we all long for and think we can find in a simpler time that was never so simple after all.

But mostly I can go read again (and suggest you may want to, too) the most simple, complex, learning tale of a girl, her father, a small town, and the need for justice.  Simple elegant justice, and how even when it seems so simple, so elegantly right, it can still go wrong, because we all, after all, are human, and still learning.

stuff

I have books.  A lot of books.  I've whittled down to two tall bookshelves and even those are still overflowing in the office as well as another shorter one overflowing in my bedroom.  There are more books I want to own besides the ones I already do.

This weekend we cleaned out our garage which acts as an attic as well as a basement because we live on a slab foundation.  We also rearranged my area of the office, including emptying and moving those two eight foot bookcases.  I got a new (used) desk - with drawers.  so a lot of little junk that was piled in front of the books on the bookcases is now in drawers, mostly office supply and baby barrette kind of stuff.  Stuff to have at the ready when needed.  It's nice to have an actual desk as opposed to the table version without drawers I was using.  We sent that one up to Captain Comic's room, as well as a file cabinet, because he was making his comics on the floor for the past few years. That stuff was all over his room.

Anyway, it became apparent just how much stuff we have, and we still have plenty more in storage several states away....

Personally, except for the books, I would be happy to get rid of a lot of stuff, but there's sentimental attachment, logistical stuff, the sheer number of people in our home and all of their stuff...and the dog and cat, and their stuff, and stuff to keep all the stuff in...


I mean, it's not like we're hoarders, but it's a lot of stuff. It's a serious workout for everyone to move all that stuff around.  Particularly the books and shelves.  I think Honey is happy to go back to work today, so he can rest.

In the midst of all the stuff, Honey and I made a dump run, the back of his Element was stuffed with, you got it.  Even the back seats were pulled out to make room for all the stuff we were getting rid of. Poor Honey dropped the old kitchen counter piece on his toe and busted open his nail. 

So our big exciting date for the weekend was the two of us going to the dump.  Then we made a stop at the Hawaiian style snow cone place. We sat on a bench in the shade on the 100 degree heat and thoroughly enjoyed the cool refreshment and moment of quiet together. 

That moment was in the middle of the weekend of stuff. So we're exhausted come Monday morning, but it's a good, satisfying kind of exhausted for a change.

How was your weekend?  Productive like ours or nice and relaxing?

Fabulous news and a wondrous speech

For those who don't know, I love the work of Neil Gaiman (I have been fortunate enough to meet him on a few occasions), and his most recent children's book has just won the Carnegie Medal, the British equivalent of our Newbery Award, which it has also won.

The Graveyard Book really does deserve all the praise and awards it has received.  It is a simply told tale of a boy trying to understand the world around him and the wonder that is life.

Here is his acceptance speech in which he praises libraries and librarians, and their influence on 'a bookish boy' who read by the way the librarians pointed him.  He also tells why it took him essentially 25 years to write the book.  I can relate to that.

http://www.carnegiegreenaway.org.uk/2010awards/media_ceremony.php?file=1


I have been recommending this little book in my right margin practically since it came out.  Really, please read it.  It is truly a lovely book.  And read it with your kids.  If I can get Captain Comic to sit still enough (as he did in rare form for The Phantom Tollbooth last summer) I will read it with him this summer.

A book review

Barefoot Books has a new and absolutely beautiful book out, We're Roaming in the Rainforest written by Laurie Krebs with illustrations by Anne Wilson.

I was lucky enough to be in a position to buy the book from the lovely and talented author Laurie Krebs, and she signed it to Toots and another copy to my young nephews, who are in kindergarten and first grade.

It is a magical introduction to creatures you would see in the Amazon Rainforest, told with wonder and through the eyes of three kids who hover in the background of the full, full pages of art. It's like entering the rainforest itself, where you get to swim with pink river dolphins, hang with sloths, squawk with parrots, sssslither with snakes and lizards and jump with monkeys. 

Toots is so in love with the book, she has to sleep with it, after I've read it to her umpteen times.  Then she woke up this morning, and went searching immediately for the green, green world within its pages. 

Now don't tell anyone of a certain age that they might enjoy it, too, just hand it to an eleven year old and see what happens.  Captain Comic was enthralled. There's a bit of an encyclopedia at the back, after the younger kid romp through the rainforest.  This section gives fabulous information on the creatures, conservation, and even the different tribes of people that can be found along the banks of the Amazon River. 

And guess what?  I really enjoy it, too.  I definitely feel transported to the rainforest as I turned each page. 

So don't wait!  Hurry up and find a copy for yourself and kids, and if you can't find it in your local bookstore, ask them to stock it!!!

The Easter Bunny, three days late

The Easter Bunny brings my kids books.  Always has.  Oh sure they get candy, too.  But since it's now Wednesday, I will skip what plenty of others have already posted blogs about throughout the interwebz. 

However, briefly, I will mention the moment we found a stripped down to her diaper, sugarblitz Toots rolling around in a chocolate bunny puddle on the dining room carpet and smearing it all over her, too.  While singing something between Happy Birthday and Twinkle Twinkle, which she sings Ticko ticko I wonder where you are.

Now that's how most women want to eat chocolate.  Oh to express ourselves they way we truly feel about it, with two year old abandon!

Now back to our scheduled program:  Books.

Toots received a little board book, The Story of Easter.  Cute, but a little too glossed over for my taste. It works for a toddler.  She seems to like it well enough.


Captain Comic received Jeff Kinney's Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules.  He read it before we got out the door to my church chorus rehearsal, which was before the early service, not our usual shift.  The best review of a book in my book is one that is essentially eaten in one bite, and with outloud laughter.  Here is his assessment:

It was Okay.  A lot of essential humor, and a good story where Rodrick tells Greg that if he ever snitches, he's going to spill Greg's secret about something really embarrassing that happened in the summer to the world. And one subplot I really liked in the book is when Greg and Rodrick are punished by having to write what they did wrong to each other and draw a picture of it.  My favorite drawing is when Rodrick makes his drawing that says on the top, 'I will not push Gregory' and it shows Rodrick pushing Greg off a cliff into the ocean where a hungry shark is waiting.  hahahahaha!

For the record, Okay must mean great, because he's read it several times since, too. *

Mr. Cynic received Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman's Good Omens. Nothing quite like a good romp through the Apocalypse for Easter, eh?


*I asked him if this seemed like the right thing to say and he confirmed. 

Yippee!

In honor of Captain Comic and Mr. Cynic bringing home excellent mid-year report cards this week, I will share a little something that I found over at Jacqui's Room.  But before I do that, if you haven't been to the blog of the fabulous author of two incredibly insightful children's picture books, please clickie on the linkie above.  Jacqui Robbins is generally cheerful and inventively humorous.





Now if you have school aged kids, go to an independent bookstore or click on the titles to purchase Two of a Kind and The New Girl ... and Me.

To Conclude Banned Books Week

I would like to simply point you to a lovely letter written by a librarian to a patron regarding a book the patron wanted removed from the children's section. I believe it is well thought, well stated and in accordance with the the purpose of our founding fathers.

Reading, the other love of my life. & 3 current reads

Here is my big fat opinion: writers write because they love to read. They write the books they want to read because they haven't found them yet on the library or bookstore shelf. As a writer and someone who is absolutely in love with books, I find this whole new e-book phenomenon repulsive, an abomination. As much as I love trees and want the planet, myself, my children and grandchildren to breath for a good long while, I love the feel of a book in my hands, the scent of paper and ink, the feel and sound of the flip of the pages, the finality, the permanence, the thing of it, what makes a book a book, the words on the page, the pages themselves.



Mine is a love that knows no bounds. I will read anything, though I am partial to fiction, poetry, children's literature, biographies, autobiographies and plays. I used to read the signs on the subway trains and busses of the Boston T. I read road signs, months old magazines in waiting rooms, even if they're about fly fishing. I read cereal boxes, all six sides. If words in print lay within eysight, I read them.



The above does much to explain why I am currently reading the top three books on the side bar reading list. Go ahead, take a look. Here they are again:



Alison Weir, The Life of Elizabeth I
Norton Juster/Jules Feiffer, The Phantom Tollbooth
re-reading:John Elder Robison, Look Me In The Eye



Weir's book has been on my bedside table since early in my bedrest pregnancy of C who is edging onto seventeen months old now. Somehow, I abandoned it, without really abandoning it entirely. We've even rearranged the room several times as well as emptied it out to be painted and rearranged it again, including switching out furniture, but through it all, Weir's book remained firmly by my lamp, even when I bought a new one. I've always been fascinated by the original Queen Elizabeth's story. Heck, it's juicy even before she was born! I do like the way Weir tells the story, but sometimes I'd like a little more on some areas where it feels like a British presumption. I've been involved in history classes at many grade levels here in America, covering the time period, but sometimes I still feel like I need a little more background on the nobility - who they are and what part they play in the story, their motivations, etc. Also, sometimes she dates things without the year as she goes long into chapters of telling, and I forget, are we still in 1559? February what? When did she meet Dudley? How long has this issue of who to marry or not marry at all been going on now? Admittedly, some may be the two year gap on my part, but a little reminding clarifying details thrown in here and there can be very helpful.



I love Jules Feiffer's illustrations. I've admired him since childhood, in comics as an adult, and his I Lost My Bear! is a fabulous picture book. His simple line drawings in Norton Juster's The Phantom Tollbooth are spot on. His map is great for referencing the imaginary world where it seems all is wordplay come to life. S and I are reading it aloud together. S prefers factual reading or comics and he has a hard time with inferences, so the fact that there are such easy telling pictures really works for him to understand a lot of what otherwise goes over his head if I don't stop, repeat, and laugh again, explaining why it's so funny. He particularly loves the very short Officer Shrift. We've just past the chapter, Discord and Dynne, and to have an illustration of 'that awful din' lit S up. We're still following Milo in his search and rescue of Rhyme and Reason. I've read the book previously, but it's been a while, and I am thoroughly enjoying it besides how much fun it is to make S laugh outloud with it. Of course, it helps that Juster seems to have as much a love for words and their playful side as I do. Even my son K, when he read it was laughing out loud.



John Elder Robison's book, Look Me In The Eye: My Life with Asperger's is much more than a book about having Asperger's Syndrome. It is one man's journey through life in this world, where it is difficult for anyone to find their way. He is an astounding storyteller, which is all the more remarkable when you consider the usual view of people with Asperger's is that they are emotionally void and unable to relate to others. The life he has led is vastly entertaining and traumatic and sad and beautiful and joyous and full of hope and ultimately full of faith in people and in himself. You feel by the end that his journey goes beyond Odysseus' of Homer's epic, The Odyssey. And he designed the cool guitar effects and more of the original showmen of Rock and Roll, KISS. I first read Robison's book about two years ago, having no idea about it except that he was the author of Running with Scissors Augusten Borroughs' brother. It blew my mind and gave me hope for my son. I am not recommending this book solely because I am a mother of an Aspergian, I am recommending it because it is damn good. It has been translated into dozens of languages and sold in as many countries as a long time NY Times Bestseller. This goes way beyond an inside look into Asperger's. This is an excellent memoir in it's own right. Go buy it now.

200 Novels or thereabouts

After mentioning these on Monday, I figured I better put up the links:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/bigread/top100.shtml

http://www.time.com/time/2005/100books/the_complete_list.html

There. Now you have an excellent reading list or two to choose from if you were at a loss as to what to read next.

Time for my confession. No I have not read them completely. I have easily read over eighty percent of each and that's more by a long shot than my facebook friends, who are a largely intelligent, well-read and personally competitive lot. And I've read a lot more besides.

Now here's my critique of the lists: very culturally self-referential, ie: lots of British books on the BBC, lots of American on the Time list, barely a side note of amazing Latin American, Asian, Australian, Native American, African, etc.

And who will put out the list of must read Poetry books? HHHMMMM? Or have I just made that my job? Quickly, a blogger can be seen ducking the oncoming task as if it were a bird of prey and she, a mouse in an open field.


As you make your reading way through those lists, may I also recommend a turn at this one:

http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/alsc/awardsgrants/bookmedia/newberymedal/newberyhonors/newberymedal.cfm

I promise, you'll be amazed.

Pride and my prejudice

Back in the Dark Ages, when I was in college - really the mid-late 80's - I was one of those horrid people who knew everything about anything to do with books: a Lit Major. I recognize now, I was probably a big Pain in the Butt to people who were not avid readers, and to those who were, as I would argue critique til I won, or until one of us was blue in the face. I enthusiastically tried to convince non-readers of the joys of Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment. I mean really, who doesn’t love a 19th century tome about someone who thinks he can get away with murder for the intellectual sport of it but suffers through psychological and moral self-torment until he is rescued by the love of the original hooker with a heart of gold? (double eye roll, from the then me to everyone else, and a bigger one from the now me to the twenty year old me)

How Pretentious. I'm glad that particular phase is over, but that in my life, I still am an avid reader and adore books of wide variety.

But back to the Dark Ages: I had taken every course in English Literature from Chaucer to the 18th century, everything in American 18th, 19th and 20th century, and everything in 19th century Russian literature, and a smattering of European modern and ancient authors. By the time I got to 19th century English literature, I was up to my eyeballs with the polite society of people holding teacups. And then I was required to read Jane Austen. I wearily opened Pride and Prejudice, and couldn’t make it to page 50 before throwing the book against the wall. My claim for many years was that if I had to read about another dang teacup I was going to start breaking things.

Well, here it is twenty odd years later, two movies, and who knows how many BBC productions of the book later. Many friends, who I consider to be intelligent, fun, and thoroughly modern women have insisted repeatedly what an excellent and favorite book it is of theirs. I absolutely must read it!

So, finally, I did. And it just so happens that my son about to enter high school has to read it for his Advanced English course this summer. Well, for his sake, I’m glad I did, so I can help him through the dense turn of the 19th century language of it. I’ve been rather steeped in the contemporary middle reader genre of late. P&P is a long way from Hoot. Heading back to that stuff after so long a break from it really took me forever to read. I mean, my eyeballs didn’t bleed or anything, but it just seemed I couldn’t get through more than a few pages at a time. Of course, I also had multiple distractions, as I started it after school let out for the boys, and of course I’m in constant toddler attendance.

I swore I would finally finish Pride and Prejudice, and I did. I slogged my way through it and can now add it to my list of ‘have reads’, which, I’ve found out recently is a rather long list compared to most people I know, so should be very proud of myself or admit what a geek I really am. It’s still a toss up, guess I’ll make that decision conversation by conversation. There is a BBC list floating around on the web of should have read classics, and I may have actually completed it and then some now. There is a similar Time magazine list, which I’ve also nearly completely, if not by now. Few books make it to both aside from Pride and Prejudice. But back to said book.

As much as the actual physical reading of it gave me some pains, I really did ultimately enjoy it. Not that Jane Austen needs any help from my review, as it is required reading in both high school and colleges now. And she's dead anyway and would not benefit from the book sales.

The characters are lively. Elizabeth and Darcy are well-suited to each other as they are, in fact, seemingly so unwell-suited. Each’s strength to each’s weakness is a good counterbalance. They each need a good challenge, and get it in each other. The rest of the cast is really entertaining and thoroughly real in their riduculousness. The plot regularly thickens. While so much seems stuck in the time, it is a thoroughly timeless and modern tale. Every romantic comedy in the theater takes its core cue from good ol’ -2oo year old to be accurate - P&P. Here’s a partial character list: sassy lead female, reluctant lead male, the ridiculous and greedy mother, the chuckling father who’d rather be done with all this nonsense for all five of his daughters so he can be left to his library, his hunting and fishing. The silly sisters, best friends, the nemesises, et al.

So, if you have so far managed to avoid it, I highly recommend it. That is no feint praise. And honestly, nary is a teacup in sight.