The 3 R's Blog // Reading, 'Riting, and Randomness

Warm-ups (Weekend Assignment #295)

2009-12-02T05:00:00.000-08:00

Karen, our Weekend Assignment host, lives in the usually hot Arizona desert, but asks about winter weather this week:

Weekend Assignment #295: Even in Tucson, things can get a bit chilly on December nights. What is your favorite way to keep warm?

Extra Credit: What is the temperature setting on your thermostat?

Right now, the thermostat is set at 73, but the heat's not turned on. I'll switch it on and lower it to 69 overnight, and then bring it up to 73 again in the morning, when we crawl out of our warm beds and into showers that don't warm up fast enough. But on a typical day, I'll turn the heat off again before we leave the house. This is Southern California; the number of days each year when we actually have to heat the house all day long is probably in the low double digits.

Most of Southern California is naturally desert country, which means that there's little humidity to hold the heat in, and nights definitely can get chilly. I notice a difference in just the couple of hours that elapse between when I get home from work and when I take my dog Gypsy out for her evening walk - the temperatures go down with the sun. I'll bundle up in a fleece jacket while we're out. If it's a particularly cool night, I'll warm myself up when we come back in with a hot drink (cocoa, tea, or decaf coffee with sweet milk, depending on my mood), slippers, and a cozy fleece throw over my lap while I watch TV with Tall Paul. When it's time to call it a night, Gypsy will settle in at the foot of the bed until we turn the lights out; she's usually on my side, since my legs are shorter and she has more room. But once I get under the covers, she jumps down to the floor and I can stretch my feet down into the nice warm spot she's left for them.

Other things that help keep me warm:

Turtleneck sweaters
Fires in the fireplace (we have a fireplace, but we don't use it)
Slipper socks
Soft blankets
Comfort food

Actually, I usually don't have that much trouble finding a comfortable temperature at home - it's my office that's the challenge. It's always cold in there, even with a space heater - year-round sweater weather, even when the outdoor temperatures are in the 90's.

The holiday season seems to be the only time that some of us really welcome the cold - it just seems to add to the sense of Christmas in the air, I think. But a lot of folks don't really have much use for wnter once the holidays are over, so it's too bad that there's usually months of it left. What are some of your favorite ways to warm up?

Tuesday's special: Ten Items or Less

2009-12-01T05:00:00.000-08:00

Welcome to a "less" edition of Ten Items or Less, bringing you tidbits and thoughts that don't warrant a blog post of their own:

I wasn't here yesterday - maybe you noticed? I had no post prepared, and rather than stress myself over the weekend about getting one done, I just decided to let it slide. I committed myself to finishing the book I was reading for a blog tour and writing the review to post this Thursday, but other than that - nothing. The "unplugging" continued, and I spent time with my family instead of my MacBook.

You may see more of that - NOT seeing me, that is - over the next few weeks. You may see more randomness like this when you DO see me, too. I wouldn't say I feel burnt out, but I do foresee writing time being a bit scarce during the near term. Still, most of you are probably very busy yourselves right now, and you probably won't mind having a little less blog-reading to keep up with!

I had the day off yesterday, but I worked on the Friday after Thanksgiving. I got a lot done both days, but it seems like I never get as much done as I'd like to - there's always something that doesn't make the cut, for one reason or another.

Have you ever felt like December just becomes a black hole? There's the holiday shopping (which is nearly done for some recipients and barely started for others) and the social calendar - ours includes a birthday party the weekend before Christmas, for my to-be 10-year-old stepson. There's the rush to get all sorts of things done by the 24th, or else they somehow don't count. Then there's the no-man's-land between Christmas and New Year's Day, when no one really wants to get any work done, even if they're at work. Sometimes I feel like I just get lost in it.

But after weeks of not-so-gentle prodding, I can make my own plans for the days I will not be at work over Christmas week, because, at last, my son has bought his plane tickets to SoCal for Christmas with us! He's arriving on the evening of the 23rd and staying till New Year's. During that week, our TV will be tuned to ESPN more than it is for the entire rest of the year, but as far as I'm concerned, bowl games are a small price to pay for his company (as long as he watches his language when the 10-year-old is around).

I hope to spend the last month of the year doing more reading for myself than for obligatory reviews, but depending how much time I actually have for reading, it may or may not pan out. Speaking of reading, sort of: we went to the bookstore on Sunday, and all the books we bought were gifts for other people. I've been feeling strangely unmotivated to buy books for myself recently, but that may be for the best, really - TBR Purgatory has become a ridiculous place!

And while I wasn't blogging during the last few days, my husband put up one of his rare posts over at Blogenstein. Take the quiz he's created, in the spirit of Facebook, and see if you're living to your full potential!

Let's trade off now. I've shared a few of my random thoughts and tidbits - tell me some of yours! What's going on with you?

Sunday Salon, Post-Thanksgiving edition: Bookkeeping, Bookmarks, and more

2009-11-29T08:00:00.000-08:00

Does the holiday season take a big chunk out of your reading time? Between weekends spent shopping, decorating, and socializing and the normal daily routine, I find that I have fewer opportunities to settle down with a book, unless I can squeeze in a day off here and there (which I am doing a couple of times before Christmas, and possibly more once I know what my son's travel plans for the holidays are). My immediate reading agenda is to get through the next couple of reviews I have scheduled, and then I really want to goof off a bit - read for the challenges I'll be starting, and/or read just whatever I feel like. That would make it something of a reading holiday, I think!

What sort of reading plans do you have between now and the end of the year?

✩✩✩✩ Speaking of plans...the Southern California book-blogger contingent is planning to get together around noon on Saturday, December 5 at Portrait of a Bookstore in Studio City. We'll have lunch at the adjoining Aroma Cafe, browse (maybe do some Christmas shopping?), and chat about blogging, books and whatever else comes to mind. If you can make it, we'd love to see you there! ✩✩✩✩

BOOKKEEPING: The Reading Status Report

Reviews posted this week:
The Help, by Kathryn Stockett

Next Reviews Scheduled:
When She Flew, by Jennie Shortridge (for TLC Book Tour December 3)
Lift, by Rebecca K. O'Connor

New to my LibraryThing "To Read" collection (current count - 252):
Thanks to Nicole at Bookreporter.com, an entire series for review, by Laura Pedersen:

Beginner's Luck: A Novel, by Laura Pedersen
Heart's Desire: A Novel, by Laura Pedersen
The Big Shuffle: A Novel, by Laura Pedersen
Best Bet: A Novel (The Hallie Palmer Series), by Laura Pedersen

New additions to the Wishlist*:
None...and that may be a good thing

Challenge Updates/Conclusions:
Read Your Own Books Challenge (RYOB 2009): Pledged 20; Read 20

Completed as of 11/24/09
I'm glad I signed on for this one, and I think liking it so much may be one reason I'm cutting back on accepting books for review. In the same spirit, but with a slightly different twist, I've decided to join the 2010 Reading From My Shelves Project hosted by Diane at Bibliophile by the Sea. That challenge has the additional requirement that participants must pass on their books once they've read them, and that's something I normally do anyway. I will pledge to read 25 books for the challenge (which can cross with other challenges), which happens to be the just over the minimum of 20 allowed, but I'm now feeling a little more confident about a slightly bigger commitment.

Clear Off Your Shelves Challenge: Pledged 25% of books read in October and November to qualify; Read 4 out of 9 books that qualified (44%)

Completed as of 11/4/09
I guess I could have closed out this one sooner, but I wasn't sure how much more I might accomplish in November. I did better than expected, but most of that is directly due to participating in the 24-Hour Readathon last month. I'm also choosing not to count an e-book for this challenge, since it doesn't actually occupy a shelf.

BOOKMARKS: Reading-related Reading

It's been a year since we lost one of our leaders...and still, the book-blogging community continues to grow and expand, and to follow her light. We still remember, and we still miss Dewey (and sadly, we can't even access her blog archives any more...)

Considering the inclusion of "fluff" in the literary diet

A contrarian approach to a school-wide book ban

The kind of behavior that gives book bloggers a bad reputation

Thanks to Lisa at Lit and Life for the "Over the Top" Award! There's a quiz/meme that goes with the award and I'll get to that later, but since I'm infamously negligent about acknowledging awards, I wanted to get to this one before I got too distracted :-).

Happy Thanksgiving - now go eat your turkey!

2009-11-26T06:00:00.000-08:00

I'm unplugging from the blog for the next few days - there will be no new posts here until Sunday!

Thanksgiving will be fairly low-key. None of our kids will be around, but my husband and I are hosting my dad and a friend of his for dinner. I'm roasting chicken breasts - yes, chicken, you read that correctly! - and potatoes, with some other veggies and a salad, and baking an apple crisp and a pumpkin pie. We'll probably watch a movie after dinner - most likely something Christmas-themed, since that's allowed as of today!

I'm at work tomorrow, but the commute should be light and the office will probably be quiet. My mother-in-law is coming to visit until Sunday, and I'll still get some extra weekend time - I'm taking the day off on Monday!

If you're celebrating Thanksgiving Day in the USA today, I wish you a happy feast with family and friends, and I thank you for stopping by to say hello! Now, get off the computer and enjoy your day :-).

Thank you, 21st Century! (Weekend Assignment #294)

2009-11-25T05:00:00.000-08:00

Karen is still thinking about holidays with this Weekend Assignment:

Weekend Assignment #294: Thanksgiving is upon us, and it's traditional to ask what you're thankful for this year. But let's tweak that a bit. As we prepare to finish off the first decade of a new century, let's take a moment to appreciate the good things that have come about since 12/31/1999. What aspect of living in the 21st century are you most thankful about? I'm talking technology, medical breakthroughs, favorite tv shows, even people and pets born since the ball drop of nine years ago.

Extra Credit: What are you most looking forward to as the century continues?

I'm glad Karen's taken a non-traditional approach and a specific focus to this, especially since she's asking about the last ten years. The last few months of 1999 were some of the most difficult ones of my life, and the new decade got off to a rough start as well. My life has gone through many changes since then - new state, new jobs, new family - and I'm very thankful to have come through it all to arrive where I am today. But I'm also thankful I don't have to discuss all that emotional stuff right now.

Still, it's hard to pick just one thing to answer this question, so here's a Fave Five, in no particular order:

E-Readers: I never would have said this until a few months ago, but my Kindle has truly made me a believer. I don't think e-books will replace the traditional kind for me, but the Kindle made carrying books with me a lot more convenient. Since e-books tend to become available at the same time as hardcover editions, and they cost less than most trade paperbacks, I don't have to wait so long for some of the books I really want to read, either!

Implantable lenses: I'm not a candidate for LASIK vision correction, but the implantable collamer lens (ICL) might be a viable alternative to the glasses and contacts I've worn for almost my entire life. I haven't had the procedure done myself, but I have recently come across someone who had a great experience with it, and I'm thinking I might like to make this my 50th-birthday gift to myself.

The iPhone: I don't have one, and I don't really think I want one, but I certainly believe it's enhanced the gadgets and goodies available for more traditional cell phones. However, my husband's had one for most of this year, and he swears he can't remember how he got along without it. If I'm with him, and he's with his iPhone - which is nearly all the time - it's the next best thing to having one of my own.

The DVR: I never could master "time-shifting" with a VCR, but we've had a DVR since late 2005, and it's truly changed the way we watch television. We've effectively become our own programmers. We rarely watch anything when it's actually scheduled on TV. This does have the drawback of interfering with watercooler discussions the next day, but it's more than worth it to be able to avoid the commercials.

Blogging: The early ancestors of today's blogs were being born in the late '90's, but the explosion of the form to what we know today seems to have happened in just the last few years. Free software that's easy to access and use has opened the Internet to the less tech-savvy, and anyone who has something to say - which seems to be almost everyone - can create their own place to say it, and easily find others to share the conversation. I started blogging in earnest in the spring of 2007, and I wish I'd gotten into it sooner. I can safely say it's changed my life more than anything in the last few years, other than getting married.

What 21st-century development are you especially thankful for?

(E)Book Talk: "The Help," by Kathryn Stockett

2009-11-24T05:00:00.000-08:00

Disclosures: I purchased this to read as an e-book on my Amazon Kindle. *The purchasing link at the end of this review goes through my Amazon Associates account.

The Help
Kathryn Stockett
ISBN 0399155341 / 9780399155345
Fiction (historical/literary), 2009
Kindle e-book edition

Opening Lines: "Mae Mobley was born on a early Sunday morning in August 1960. A church baby we like to call it. Taking care a white babies, that's what I do, along with all the cooking and the cleaning. I done raised seventeen kids in my lifetime."

Book description: Twenty-two-year-old Eugenia "Skeeter" Phelan has just returned home after graduating from Ole Miss. She may have a degree, but it is 1962, Mississippi, and her mother will not be happy till Skeeter has a ring on her finger. Skeeter would normally find solace with her beloved maid Constantine, the woman who raised her, but Constantine has disappeared and no one will tell Skeeter where she has gone.

Aibileen is a black maid, a wise, regal woman raising her seventeenth white child. Something has shifted inside her after the loss of her own son, who died while his bosses looked the other way. She is devoted to the little girl she looks after, though she knows both their hearts may be broken.

Minny, Aibileen's best friend, is short, fat, and perhaps the sassiest woman in Mississippi. She can cook like nobody's business, but she can't mind her tongue, so she's lost yet another job. Minny finally finds a position working for someone too new to town to know her reputation. But her new boss has secrets of her own.

Seemingly as different from one another as can be, these women will nonetheless come together for a clandestine project that will put them all at risk. And why? Because they are suffocating within the lines that define their town and their times. And sometimes lines are made to be crossed.

Comments: In September, The Help was voted "Best Book Published So Far in 2009" by participants in Book Blogger Appreciation Week. It was one of those books that it seemed like everyone was either reading or wanted to read, and it was hard to find anyone who had a negative reaction to it. Books like that make me very nervous. I'm afraid that I'll be the lone voice of dissent about them...or worse, that I'll just think I like them because I'm supposed to.

As it turns out, I've made up my own mind about this novel...and I'll have good things to say about it too. It's rare for me to finish a book and immediately want to start reading it again, but I had that reaction to The Help. Kathryn Stockett's first novel is thoroughly involving and engaging. It drew me in immediately and kept me reading compulsively; I was trying to read a couple of other books while reading this one on my Kindle, but they had to take a back seat.

I'm both drawn to and cautious about novels set in the South; drawn to them because I lived there for half of my life and still love many things about the region (flaws and all), but cautious because a lot of Southern stories seem to be almost deliberately, self-consciously "quirky," and that just annoys me. The Help takes place in that flawed but real South, not the exaggeratedly eccentric one. Its characters are well-drawn and developed, and its situations are pulled from real life in a challenging time - Jackson, Mississippi in the early 1960's, as the civil-rights movement was beginning to build. While slavery had ended nearly a hundred years earlier, the world was still black and white, and people's places in that world were pretty well fixed, while their relationships were more complex than they might appear to be. Yet change was simmering, and it scared people - even people for whom it might mean better things.

The basic plot of The Help might seem a bit unlikely, to be honest. Recent college graduate Skeeter Phelan has no marriage prospects and is actually interested in a career as a writer, but her prospects for that aren't good either. Her only opportunity is a weekly housekeeping column in the local paper...but as a white, upper-middle-class Southern girl, Skeeter has no experience with domestic chores. Like everyone she knows, her family has always had "help" - a black woman who was charged with cleaning, cooking, and child-rearing. Skeeter would ask her family's maid to help her with the column, but the maid she grew up with has mysteriously disappeared, and she hasn't gotten to know the new maid well. Instead, she obtains permission from her friend Elizabeth to go to Elizabeth's maid, Aibileen, with her questions for the column. Her conversations with Aibileen begin to open Skeeter's eyes to more than just housekeeping, and they're eye-opening for Aibileen too. Never forgetting the risks to their lives and livelihood, Aibileen and her friends begin secretly collaborating with Skeeter on a book to tell their stories.

The Help is an excellent example of a character-driven novel, and Stockett has created some vivid and indelible characters, particularly the three narrators, Aibileen, her best friend Minny, and Skeeter. I grew to love them all, but I think Minny was my favorite. Stockett made an interesting, rather controversial narrative choice in using dialect for the first-person narration by Aibileen and Minny; she also made a smart choice in writing Minny's dialect a bit differently. I didn't really find it necessary, having enough familiarity with both black and white Southern voices that I probably would have "heard" each character's voice as intended without the dialect, but not every reader will bring that experience to the book, so I think using it was effective.

I grew to love this book more as I progressed with it, I didn't want it to end, and I definitely want to read it again, although I'm not going to forget it any time soon. I'll look forward to Kathryn Stockett's next novel, but even if there isn't one, she's made a big mark on the literary world with The Help. It's a thought-provoking, well-told story with characters I cared about, and it's a novel that's going to stick.

This completes my 20-book pledge for the Read Your Own Books (RYOB) Challenge 2009. (Since it was an e-book, I won't count it for the Clear Off Your Shelves Challenge.)

Rating: 4.25/5

Buy The Help at Amazon.com

Find more reviews of The Help with the Books Blogs Search Engine

Book Bloggers' Top 10 of 2009 (Weekly Geeks 2009-43)

2009-11-23T05:00:00.000-08:00

(Well, I wasn't sure if I'd have a post up today, but what do you know? Here's one after all!)

I hadn't expected to start thinking about my end-of-the-year book choices quite yet, but Weekly Geeks is a little bit ahead of me:

This is a guest post by Jackie of Literary Escapism who has graciously offered to organize the Book Blogger Top 10 again this year.

Welcome to the Weekly Geeks Book Bloggers Top 10 of 2009!

You always see these “Top Whatever” lists that the newspapers/publishers put out and, for a second year in a row, we the book bloggers are going to put out our own Top 10 list. This week, the Weekly Geeks team and I are asking you to come up with your own Top 10 Books that were published in 2009 (books that were reprinted or re-released are not eligible, sorry).

Now, the idea is to only choose books that were published in 2009, regardless of what country you live in. If a book was released in the US in 2008, but released in your country in 2009, that's okay. I know there is still a month in a half left of 2009, but if you know there is a book coming out between now and Dec. 31st, then it’s still eligible.

This year, I am also asking for something a little more specific. When you submit your novels, you must include the genre it is from as well. Last year, when I was trying to categorize everything, I had to guess on a lot of novels and I know there were some people who disagreed with my choice.

You'll have two weeks to come up with your list before I begin compiling the voting booths. Then we'll put it to a vote. Last year, we ended up with over 1300 individual voters and I know we can make it just as big this year.

So what are your top 10 books of 2009?

This may be the first time I've actually read more than ten books published in the current year, so I'm not ending up with a "default" Top 10 list. Some of these will most likely be in the running for my personal "Books of the Year" lists too, but those will be drawn from all of the books I read in 2009, regardless of the year of publication. However, just to preserve the suspense and make you come back to find out about those later, I won't tell you which books those are.

My Top 10 of 2009 includes both fiction and nonfiction, and is listed in the order in which they were read; the titles are linked to my reviews, which are excerpted below as well.

Honeymoon in Tehran: Two Years of Love and Danger in Iran by Azadeh Moaveni (memoir, rated 4/5): Some of the memoirs by journalists that I've read have felt more like a reporter's work than someone's own story - there's almost too much detachment. Honeymoon in Tehran does not suffer from that sense of distance. While I thought that Moaveni documented the political and social climate in post-September 11 Iran well, it felt - appropriately - like context for her own experience; she strikes an excellent balance between the personal and the political.

Bad Mother: A Chronicle of Maternal Crimes, Minor Calamities, and Occasional Moments of Grace, by Ayelet Waldman (personal essays/memoir, rated 4/5): The book is an interesting combination of memoir and essay; each of the eighteen pieces in it (there's a significance to that number which is explained in the Introduction) revolves around personal incidents which Waldman relates to her own reflections and opinions on parenting and society. Her opinions are strong and expressed with eloquence and passion.

The Unit, by Ninni Holmqvist (fiction - speculative/dystopian, rated 4/5): The Unit takes place in a modern society where, if you make it to the age of fifty (if you're a woman - it's sixty for men) without becoming a parent and/or pursuing a socially-beneficial profession, you are considered "dispensable." You're not "needed" - relationships with spouses, siblings, and even pets don't count, nor do many jobs. However, there are still a few things you can do for "the community;" the Unit will make all the arrangements for them, and they'll make your life quite comfortable in the bargain.

Admission, by Jean Hanff Korelitz (fiction - literary, rated 4/5): Fiction in an academic setting frequently appeals to me. However, despite that, I saw this as a "domestic" novel; the suspense and drama in the story are of the everyday, character-driven variety, and much of the plot wasn't hard for me to anticipate. I like that too, though, so it wasn't a drawback. But I think one's reaction to the novel depends on how one feels about Portia, ultimately. I liked and related to her, and felt that her personal growth over the year spanned by the story was believable.

Shelf Discovery: The Teen Classics We Never Stopped Reading, by Lizzie Skurnick (literary essays/memoir, rated 3.75/5): Shelf Discovery is a thoroughly enjoyable trip back through the books you may have grown up with - and the ones that helped you grow up - especially if you were a girl growing up during the 1970's and '80's. Lizzie Skurnick has been discussing YA literature, and how it's influenced the women we've become, online for a while; those essays are expanded here. The book is divided into ten genre/thematic sections, including tearjerkers, thrillers, romances, "issues" literature, and the adult, "dirty" books that we really were too young for; the essays themselves are labeled "book reports" or, for less-remembered titles, "extra credit."

Still Alice, by Lisa Genova (fiction - women's/literary, rated 4/5): I had postponed reading Still Alice because I was pretty sure it would be a difficult book for me, emotionally - and it was, but not quite in the way I expected it to be. It got under my skin, and it's stayed on my mind. It made me sad, although it didn't make me cry; but more than that, it scared the hell out of me. I was engrossed and moved by Alice's story, and I feel that it gave me a lot of insight into Alzheimer's that I didn't have before - but knowing more has made me more afraid of experiencing this than I was before, too.

The Possibility of Everything, by Hope Edelman (memoir, rated 3.75/5): Domestic drama frames this story, but its heart lies in the family's experiences with a hospitable inn-keeping family, their explorations of the rainforest and the ancient ruins of pre-Columbian Central America, and their visits with two healers. Edelman's writing is conversational and full of detail, and her style is open and intimate; I found her voice appealing. I've never been especially curious about visiting Central America, but her descriptions of the sacred Mayan ruins made me think I'd like to see them. She brought me along on a journey with her family, and I never felt like an intruder. She revealed her self-awareness and shared her doubts and failings frankly; I was able to understand and empathize with them, even though I don't think I would have addressed things the same way.

Catching Fire, by Suzanne Collins (fiction - young-adult/dystopian, rated 4.25/5): Katniss returns to the Hunger Games in the Quarter Quell, an "all-star" edition held every 25 years and played by previous winners. The premise of the Games themselves fascinated me. It's the ultimate high-stakes reality-TV show, literally. They're broadcast around the clock throughout the country, and the tributes become overnight celebrities who gain sponsors and renown as their numbers dwindle. The contestants may form alliances or mark each other as immediate targets. Some of them are playing out a storyline that may or may not have been fully revealed to them, and they're all being manipulated and orchestrated by the Gamemakers who oversee everything. It's Survivor + Big Brother with some Lord of the Flies and a touch of Lost mixed in, and I couldn't pull myself away from it.

The Longest Trip Home, by John Grogan (memoir, rated 4/5): John Grogan is a born storyteller with a conversational writing style, and I found myself laughing out loud in numerous places while reading The Longest Trip Home, particularly during the first two sections. The last section of the book is more reflective and emotional, and readers with aging parents may feel it keenly. Grogan's issues with the Catholic Church particularly resonated with me, because I have similar ones of my own.

The Help, by Kathryn Stockett (fiction - literary/historical, rated 4.25/5): I've just finished reading this, so my review isn't posted yet...but it probably doesn't matter, because you'll be seeing this one in many book bloggers' Top 10 lists. Kathryn Stockett's first novel is a vivid, fascinating, and memorable story about the black maids who keep the houses and care for the children of the white housewives of Jackson, Mississippi in the early 1960's, the complex connections between them, and how the burgeoning civil-rights movement is beginning to change them all. This is another case of "a hundred book bloggers could be wrong, but they're not" in their praise for this novel; The Help is a must-read.

Which of these have you read? Let's discuss them in the comments, and tell me some of your 2009 favorites!

Sunday Salon 11/22: Bookkeeping, Bookmarks, etc.

2009-11-22T06:00:00.000-08:00

Audience Participation: Blogger Input Requested!

This is a new one:
I've been contacted by the author of an in-progress book on blogging professionally who would like to include interviews with some book bloggers who have found business success with their blogs. She's actually looking for book reviewers here, not people who’ve used a blog to promote their own books, and "success" can be defined as meeting whatever income and/or recognition objectives you've set (acknowledging that very few blogs make tons of money).

That's the dream, isn't it? If you're someone who has achieved it - or you know of someone else who has - please e-mail me at 3.rsblog AT Gmail DOT com and include the blog URL. I'll write back with more info and, if you're OK with it, refer you to the author!

This is an encore from the past week:
If you're a Southern California book blogger or author, have you given your input on a new site to help build up our connections to each other? If you missed the post about that this past Tuesday, or just haven't responded yet, please read all about it and take our very short survey!

It's the season to find Reading Challenges for the coming year, and I seem to come across a new one every day! You can try looking both inward and outward on one of the four paths in Bibliofreak's World Religion Challenge, or looking back to re-read a book you've read before (liked it or not) in Aarti and Kristen M's Flashback Challenge.

And then there's the challenge that might be the most challenging of all...unplugging. This may be the one I need to join more than any other. Jen of Devourer of Books is hatching this one:

I was talking on Twitter with Candace from Beth Fish Reads about the need for all of us to take a break now and then. A lot of people chimed in that they had a hard time stepping back from their blogs, Google Reader, and Twitter. Part of the reason for it is that many of us have become good friends, but we don’t live near one another and don’t talk on the phone, so we need blogs, Twitter, Facebook, and the rest of it to keep up with one another. I know that more than one person said that they felt like they would miss out on something if they turned off the internet. Maybe we all just feel like we need permission to unplug ourselves.

Well, Candace and I are GIVING you permission. More than that, we’re CHALLENGING you to unplug sometime between now and the end of the year. The holidays are a great time to spend with family and, even though I know sometimes the blogging community feels like family, take some time off to spend with your IRL (in real life, for those of you who don’t know) family.

Here are the rules: there are no rules. We’re just suggesting that you pick a time between now and the end of the year (or anytime, really!) to unplug. Turn off Twitter, don’t blog, etc. If you need to give yourself a Twitter limit instead of turning it off, sure, whatever works for you. Choose a day, a week, evenings, whatever, but unplug, relax, and fight blogger burnout. Also, don’t worry about having posts go up when you’re unplugged! If you have some and want to pre-schedule, okay, but don’t kill yourself trying to get some up, that defeats the whole point!

It seems appropriate that there's no official sign-up for this, since it's more like an "un-challenge" - but this is where I'm letting you know that I'll be participating. Here's how I plan to unplug:

Reduce posting during the coming week and through Thanksgiving weekend, and again between December 20 and New Year's weekend
No Twitter except for morning and mid-day check-in; no Twitter at all on weekends (if there's something you really need me to know about, e-mail me - the address is in my profile!)
Use the "mark all as read" button in Google Reader daily/as needed to clear posts and get offline no later than 8 PM

I can totally picture myself fudging #3, but that may be the thing I need to unplug from the most. so I need to make the effort to stick to it. Regarding the second item: I do enjoy Twitter, but if I spend more than a few minutes at a time there I start feeling stressed, constantly refreshing and looking for new @replies. I'll miss some fun conversations, I'm sure, but the bigger things eventually get blogged about anyway (which goes back to #3). My built-in hedge for #1 is that I normally get posts written ahead of time as it is; I'll just be able to spread them out a little more. (Besides, for me, "reduced" posting is probably going to be more like 3 or 4 posts in a week instead of 6.) However, since I actually don't have one ready for tomorrow yet, this comes along at the perfect time - if I don't get one prepared today, I'll feel a lot better about it!

BOOKKEEPING: The Reading Status Report

Next Reviews Scheduled:
The Help, by Kathryn Stockett
When She Flew, by Jennie Shortridge (for TLC Book Tour December 3)
Lift, by Rebecca K. O'Connor

New to my LibraryThing "To Read" collection:
The Widow's Season, by Laura Brodie (moved from the Wishlist)

New additions to the Wishlist*:
Anne Frank: The Book, The Life, The Afterlife, by Francine Prose
Commencement, by J. Courtney Sullivan
Love or Something Like It, by Deirdre Shaw

No reviews this week, and still multi-tasking on my reading - yeah, I really do need to get unplugged for a bit!

BOOKMARKS: Reading-related Reading

Overnight sensations are rare in the writers' world

Thoughts on the relative literary merits of young-adult literature as reading for "regular" adults

The Amazon Vine review program, as discussed in Publishers Weekly: this may be the only time I've seen concern that "free" books may be reviewed too harshly. Hmm. (via @mawbooks on Twitter)

It's been just about a year since the book-blogging community lost Dewey, and Kailana proposes marking that anniversary with a community-building challenge.

The book club meets the bad apple; the book blogger addresses the self-published author

Just in time for your holiday wish list: reading-themed jewelry at The Well-Dressed Reader! (via Booking Mama)

"Black Friday" and the official start of holiday-shopping season are just a few days away. (But with online shopping and stores open seven days a week, isn't every day between now and December 24 a "shopping day"?) From the blog for the Bunch of Grapes Bookstore, via Shelf Awareness, here are a few reasons you might want to get an early start on Buy(ing) Books for the Holidays:

1. We have not yet started playing Christmas music.

2. That feeling of self-righteousness over starting so early translates into treating yourself to something as well.

3. You can make a list of all the things you want, so that you can hint liberally at Thanksgiving.

4. If there’s a hardcover you’ve been eyeing, you have time to read the whole thing before giving it away.

5. We have free gift wrapping. By Christmas, you’ll forget what it was you bought. Aren’t surprises great?

6. It’s much easier to stick to your budget when we aren’t serving you eggnog like we do the week before Christmas.

7. All versions of The Night Before Christmas are still in stock. You won’t have to settle for that one weird one left over on Christmas Eve.

8. You’ll bring smiles and joy and a twinkle to the eye of your favorite local, indie bookseller.

Bunch of Grapes is located on Martha's Vineyard, but if you can't make it there, some of these might apply to your favorite nearby independent bookstore, too!

Week-End Review: Travels around the blogiverse this week

2009-11-20T05:00:00.000-08:00

Audience Participation: Blogger Input Requested!

Two items - one regional, one worldwide:

If you're a Southern California book blogger or author, have you given your input on a new site to help build up our connections to each other? If you missed the post about that earlier this week, or just haven't responded yet, please read all about it and take our very short survey!

Become part of a very ambitious project to collect one single favorite post from bloggers all over the world, no matter what they blog about (as long as it's in English) - pick out your own from your 2009 archives, and then find out about how to include it in The Golden Haiku!

New Arrivals in my Google Reader

Becca's Byline
Bookstack (also by Becca)

Dispatches: Links of the Week

(Not a huge collection this time - I've been having trouble keeping up with my blog-reading this week!)

Money may just be the one thing that's too personal for mom bloggers to blog about. Somewhat related: There are many great reasons to start blogging - making money really is not one of them

Reporting on Blog With Intergrity's webinar with the FTC

Some people are spending this month writing novels...and some people will be their editors

Should we tell them the truth, or let them keep believing?

Kids and their potty talk - such a bad influence! Somewhat related: watch out for those (Freudian?) slips of the tongue

The apocalypse had BETTER not spoil her birthday!

"There's No Treatment For That," via Not Always Right

Tech Support | Torrance, CA, USA

Customer: “Hi, I had my computer looked at there, and you guys said that it’s running slow because there are probably bugs in it. Well, I sprayed some bug spray in it and now it won’t turn on.”

Me: “Ma’am, when they tell you bugs, they mean computer viruses, not an actual bug.”

Customer: “Well, what can I spray it with to get rid of the viruses?”

Some people's computers need to be repossessed. Now.

A few words about wordy writing women

2009-11-19T05:00:00.000-08:00

If you pay any attention to the book business and the mainstream media, you've heard the uproar about the list of Top Ten Books of 2009 that Publishers Weekly announced a couple of weeks ago. Aside from the fact that it came out with nearly two months left in 2009 - is it like the award-eligibility period for the Grammys, where 2009 also includes the end of 2008? - people noticed pretty quickly that the list didn't include any books by women writers - no novels, no poetry, no genre fiction, no nonfiction of any kind. To be fair, the extended "Best Books of 2009" list, which breaks down by genre and is included in the above link, does have books by women listed in nearly every category; it just seems that none of them were able to make the Top Ten cut - which is, of course, the list that gets all the attention.

On the Chicago Moms Blog, Susan Bearman reacted to the announcement:

I'm a writer, and I can't turn a blind eye to the fact that the recently released Publishers Weekly list of the Best Books of 2009 did not include a single female author. Not one. In fact, all but one of the authors on the list was a white male — not that there's anything wrong with being a white male author. I'm all for them. I'm all for any author achieving any form of success in a publishing industry that is struggling mightily to survive.

So, why is it such a big deal, that a top 10 list doesn't include any female writers? It's a big deal because it shows that women are still not held in the same regard as men who do the same job. PW claims that they "ignored gender and genre and who had the buzz," but what makes these guys "the best"? Any top 10 list is fraught with subjectivity, so not including a single female author on such a list is making a statement — to the world, to writers and readers, and especially to our daughters — that women writers just aren't good enough...To me, the PW list represents the idea that a woman's voice, a woman's story, a woman's experience is less valuable than a man's.

I don't pay all that much attention to publication dates, and chances are that I won't read some of those "Best of 2009" books until 2010 - or much later, given the state of TBR Purgatory. But as I try to narrow down the best books I've read in 2009, women authors are most certainly in the running:

Honeymoon in Tehran: Two Years of Love and Danger in Iran, by Azadeh Moaveni

Gods Behaving Badly, by Marie Phillips

Home Girl: Building a Dream House on a Lawless Block, by Judith Matloff

Bad Mother: A Chronicle of Maternal Crimes, Minor Calamities, and Occasional Moments of Grace, by Ayelet Waldman

The Senator's Wife, by Sue Miller

The Unit, by Ninni Holmqvist

Admission, by Jean Hanff Korelitz

Goldengrove, by Francine Prose

Still Alice, by Lisa Genova

The Possibility of Everything, by Hope Edelman

The Hunger Games and Catching Fire, both by Suzanne Collins

I'm currently reading The Help by Kathryn Stockett on my Kindle, and I already know it's going to be part of this group too.

The books I put on my "potential" reading list for the Women Unbound Reading Challenge are not only about women, they're all by women as well, and that's just one of the reasons I'm excited about doing this:

Sisterhood, Interrupted: From Radical Women to Grrls Gone Wild, by Deborah Siegel

I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts On Being a Woman, by Nora Ephron

Lipstick Jihad: A Memoir of Growing up Iranian in America and American in Iran, by Azadeh Moaveni

Ladies of Liberty: The Women Who Shaped Our Nation, by Cokie Roberts

Mother on Fire: A True Motherf%#$@ Story About Parenting!, by Sandra Tsing Loh

The Faith Club: A Muslim, A Christian, A Jew-- Three Women Search for Understanding, by Ranya Idilby, Suzanne Oliver, and Priscilla Warner

Hypocrite in a Pouffy White Dress, by Susan Jane Gilman

Olive Kitteridge: Fiction, by Elizabeth Strout

American Wife: A Novel, by Curtis Sittenfeld

Losing Kei: A Novel, by Suzanne Kamata

I've added a few other titles as I've checked out other challenge participants' lists (there are over 75 so far!):

When Everything Changed: The Amazing Journey of American Women from 1960 to the Present, by Gail Collins (in TBR Purgatory, Kindle division)
Candy Girl: A Year in the Life of an Unlikely Stripper, by Diablo Cody (in TBR Purgatory)
Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith and/or Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith, both by Anne Lamott (in TBR Purgatory)
Flow: The Cultural Story of Menstruation, by Elissa Stein and Susan Kim (NOT in TBR Purgatory - yet!)

Again, they're all books by women and about women.

Just for fun, I checked out my LibraryThing statistics to see the breakdown between male and female authors in my collection; over 70% are women. This doesn't surprise me in the slightest. I've always been drawn to books about women, and I tend to feel that women have a slight, innate advantage at writing those. That's not to imply that men can't write good female characters; I really think it's more of a style preference, to be honest, and I'm sure it's connected to the types of books I most like to read (general/literary fiction and memoirs).

I'm not looking to start a "girls vs. boys" argument here, or carp about "fairness," or claim that women are better writers than men just because they're women. I'm not trying to say that women deserve recognition for their writing any more than men do. There are plenty of women who write crap, and there are plenty of men who do the same. But there's no shortage of women creating good literature either. All I'm really getting at here is that if the same quality standards are applied to all books regardless of the sex of the author, I just think it's questionable that not one woman wrote a Top-Ten-quality book this year.

In any case, I think it's clear that I support, and seek out, the work of women writers. The fact that none of them are represented in PW's Top Ten Books of the Year certainly seems like an oversight, at the very least, and just plain farfetched, in truth. (You can search Twitter under the #followreader and #fembook hashtags for more lively discussion about this and related issues of recognition for women writers.) What do you think?

photo credit

Sights and Sounds of the Season (Weekend/Wednesday Assignment #293)

2009-11-18T05:00:00.001-08:00

Is it beginning to look a lot like Christmas in your neck of the woods?

Weekend Assignment #293: Halloween is behind us, Thanksgiving ahead, and Christmas advertising has begun. So how about it? When do the holidays begin for you? Do you avoid thinking about Christmas and Hanukkah until after Thanksgiving, or is any time after Halloween okay? Is it time for Christmas lights in your neighborhood, and do the neighbors agree with you? How about Christmas music? When does that become okay, if ever?

Extra Credit: Have you bought any holiday presents yet? If not, when do you think you'll start?

When do the holidays start? Too frickin' soon, that's when. Long before I'm ready for them.

Now that we have the Grinchiness out of the way...

When my sister and I were little, we used to start playing the Christmas records in August. My mother was far more patient with that nonsense than I would be. Now, if I start hearing holiday music before the end of November, it's "rushing the season." There's a lot of Christmas music that I actually like - I just don't want to listen to it, or sing it, until the calendar is edging into December. And I really don't want to walk into Target on Halloween - in the morning, before anyone's been out trick-or-treating yet - and see the Christmas-decoration department already set up in the "seasonal" corner of the store. However, since Target didn't bother to ask me how I felt about it, I did indeed have to see that a few weeks ago.

I do have fleeting thoughts about the holiday season as early as the spring before. It's usually because I've come across something that will make a fine Christmas gift for someone and I want to make sure I don't forget about it (although if I actually buy it then, I may forget where I stashed it by December), or because I'm looking for a Christmas-tree ornament to commemorate a vacation (ornaments and refrigerator magnets are my favorite travel souvenirs). I also tend to start bugging my son about his holiday-travel plans somewhere around mid-September, but that's mostly because I know he's a master procrastinator - and now that he's working and living on his own, I don't buy his plane tickets for him any more. Aside from that, I try not to give too much thought to the holidays until early November, and that's still mostly thinking - I'll do my best to avoid doing much about them for a few more weeks.

We have just gotten started on our Christmas gift shopping, but my mental window on the holidays won't officially open till Thanksgiving Day. The stores may be decorated already, but we probably won't start to see lights and lawn decor around the neighborhood till then. Around here, though, it almost doesn't matter - no matter how ornate your decorations are, or when you put them up, it never looks all that much like Christmas in Southern California.

not even at this place, affectionately known around town as "The House That Threw Up Christmas"

We may be putting up our Christmas tree quite late this year - possibly not until a week or so before Christmas - because my stepson's birthday is in mid-December and his party is planned for the weekend of December 19. Birthdays near Christmas tend to get shortchanged, and we don't want the holiday to take attention away from him on his own celebration; besides, we'll probably need the space the tree would be occupying. But we can start doing some of the other holiday decorating any time after Thanksgiving - and we can also start watching our favorite holiday movies! Watching A Christmas Story on Thanksgiving weekend has become a family tradition. Avoiding stores as much as we can on Thanksgiving weekend is also a tradition.

Are you and your house getting into holiday mode yet? Tell me about it here, and you still have time to tell everyone about it in answer to this week's Assignment question. Here are the guidelines:

Please post your entry no later than Friday, November 20th at 6 PM. (You can also post your response in the comments thread, but a blog entry is better. )
Please mention the Weekend Assignment in your blog post, and include a link back to the lead post at Outpost Mâvarin.
Please return to the lead post after you've posted, and leave a link to your entry in the comments below.
Visiting other participants' entries is strongly encouraged!

Southern California Book Bloggers: Your input, please!

2009-11-17T05:00:00.000-08:00

If I had to list all the things I love about blogging, "community" would be very high on the list. I've found several communities that feel a bit like home, but the book-blogging community is extra-special to me, and not just in its virtual form; I appreciate that I've been able to get to know some of my fellow Southern California book bloggers in so-called "real life" too. But I know there are a lot more of you that I haven't had the chance to meet yet - and probably even more than I don't even know are in SoCal in the first place. I'd like to see that change, though; I'd like to see even more connections forming within the SoCal book-blogging community. And I'm glad to know I'm not the only one who feels that way.

One of the SoCal book bloggers I've been lucky to get to know is My Friend Amy. Most of y'all know her too, I'm sure - founder of Book Blogger Appreciation Week and community-builder extraordinaire!

Amy recently approached me about an idea to start a blog/community site for those of us who live in Southern California and love to talk about books online - bloggers and authors especially. I'd love to see something like that - a "community hub" for the region, where we can help promote the reading life of a place that tends to be better known for other forms of entertainment, as well as get to know one another better (online, and possibly offline as well) - so I'm more than happy to help her out.

But it will take a village to build this village! We need to know who's out there, whether you'd like to be part of a site like this, and what you'd like to see there. If you're a book blogger or author based anywhere in Southern California - San Diego to Santa Barbara to San Bernadino to all points in between (we're rather flexible on the geography, but want to be clear that we're definitely not talking about just LA and the OC) - we'd like to hear from you, and we've got a little survey right here. The responses will go into a spreadsheet and help us get a feel for the interest in this - so please let us know that you're interested!

Amy is posting this survey today too, so please respond at only one of our blogs! Your information will help us figure out where to take this project next, and we'll update you on that soon. We hope you're as interested in strengthening the SoCal book-blog community as we are!

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Picture this: a modern family portrait

2009-11-16T05:00:00.000-08:00

Not long ago, my stepson brought a flyer home from school. It informed parents that on the evening of Picture Day, the photographers would be back at the school to take family portraits for those who were interested. Of course, the flyer came home the night before this was supposed to happen, so there wasn't much time to plan. Besides, he and his sister would be at their mom's house the night of the photo event, but the notice came to his dad and me, since it was sent home on one of his days with us.

Families like ours aren't unusual anymore, but they can - literally - be a bit tough to picture.

We have snapshots of the four of us, but formal portraits have a certain significance. When my husband and I got married, we did get a few photos done of the two of us together with all three of our respective children - his two, and my one. In my thinking, that's our little family portrait: his and mine, all evened out.

Picture this: you can read the rest of this post at the Los Angeles Moms Blog. Since it was selected for national syndication last week, you were also able to read it in the newspapers - in print and online - in such far-flung locations as Medina, Ohio; State College, Pennsylvania; Boise, Idaho; Charlotte, North Carolina; Rock Hill, South Carolina; and Sacramento, California. If the links are still working, you may still be able to read it on the news sites, but you can only comment on it at the LA Moms Blog - and here, of course!

Sunday Salon, 11/15: Bookkeeping, Bookmarks, etc.

2009-11-15T06:00:00.000-08:00

I should know better, and yet every now and then I attempt it anyway. I'm currently reading polygamously - I have three books going at once. Technically, it's four books, since one of them is a special edition containing two novels, but I've finished one of the stories in it; however, I won't review that one until I finish the book itself. (I'm being a stickler, despite the fact that it may mean I won't post a review this week at all) However, that's the only one I've managed to finish lately, and I feel like I can't even count it. Here's what I have going right now:

Lift: A Memoir, by Rebecca K. O'Connor (ARC)
The Help, by Kathryn Stockett (on Kindle)
~~Heaven to Betsy~~/Betsy in Spite of Herself, by Maud Hart Lovelace

Yes, I was reading two of these in my update two weeks ago. This is why I usually don't two-time books, let along triple up on them - it takes me so much longer to finish any of them! I find it quite dissatisfying to divide my attention this way, although it's slightly easier when one of the works in progress is an e-book; since I feel like I don't have enough time for reading as it is, I'm making it harder on myself to choose how I want to spend it when I give myself too many options. And eventually, one book will pull me more strongly than the rest - right now, it's The Help - and then I'll feel conflicted about neglecting the others. (Note that I don't feel guilty - I don't attribute human feelings to my books and think that THEY feel neglected - but I'm questioning my choices every time.)

So, why do I do this to myself? This time, it came from not wanting to choose between review responsibilities with deadlines and reading something I just didn't want to wait for, so I tried to have it all. I think post-Readathon euphoria/exhaustion was a factor too. And although I'm finding it frustrating - as I usually do whenever I attempt this sort of thing - I may need to keep it going for another few weeks. How do those of you who multi-book make it work?

Once I get through this, I'm going back to being a serial reading monogamist - one book at a time for me! That is, until I forget how badly I manage it and try multi-booking again. If I mention that I'm doing that, would someone please remind me of what I said today?

BOOKKEEPING: The Reading Status Report

Book reviews posted this week:
The Longest Trip Home, by John Grogan (TLC Book Tour)

New to my LibraryThing "To Read" collection:
For review:
Matters of Faith, by Kristy Kiernan (received from the author after an introduction on Twitter - thanks to @DarryleP, noted social-media ~~slut~~ matchmaker!)

New additions to the Wishlist*:
Saffron Dreams by Shaila Abdullah
Hummingbirds by Joshua Gaylord

BOOKMARKS: Reading-related Reading

Reflecting on the expectations we bring to reading; discussing the possible reactions other people - particularly authors - may have to our reviewing

None of Publishers Weekly's "Top 10 Books of 2009" were written by women - say what?!?

Just in case you ever need to know: five ways to survive in a dystopia

Does what we re-read reveal who we really are?

The confessions of a "Twilight Mom"

New uses for old books? Also: paper and "plastic" (e-)books - is peaceful coexistence possible?

Reading Event News

Get into the holiday (eating) spirit with Bermudaonion and Booking Mama's Twelve Days of Christmas Cookies! (OK, maybe it doesn't sound like a "reading" event, but there is a cookbook involved, so I'm counting it!)

Have a "mini-readathon" the weekend of December 4 - read for 5 hours straight and help Jennie celebrate the 5th anniversary of Biblio File! You can even do it as part of Bethany's "make-up" 24-Hour Readathon, hosted at Dreadlock Girl on December 5 (she had a schedule conflict with the 24-Hour Readathon in October, but didn't want to wait till the next one in April!).

If you can't wait till then, and you're not too busy over the Turkey Day holiday, celebrate the Thankfully Reading Weekend with Jenn's Bookshelves, Devourer of Books, and Beth Fish Reads! These ladies will be virtually hosting this reading respite at the Book Blog Social Club. Beth F says:

Thankfully Reading Weekend will start on Friday, November 27 and end on Sunday, November 29.

There are no rules to the weekend and no prizes; we're simply hoping to devote a good amount of time to reading, and perhaps meeting some of our reading challenges and goals for 2009. We thought it'd be fun if we cheered each other on a bit. If you
think you can join in, grab the button and sign on to Mr. Linky. If you don't have a blog, use the comments!

During the weekend, come back and link any Thankfully Reading Weekend posts to the Mr. Linky we'll put up on Friday, November 27. Feel free to link as many posts as you'd like. On Sunday will put up another Mr. Linky for your wrap-up post.

We'll also be checking in on Twitter using hashtag #thankfulreading. Join in for the weekend or for only a single day. No rules, no pressure!

International readers: Just join in, no need to be celebrating the U.S. holiday. Remember that there are no rules.

We'll have a houseguest that weekend - hi, Mom-in-law! - and I'll be working on the Friday after Thanksgiving, but I certainly hope to make some time to read over those three days! How about you?

Week-End Review, Friday the 13th: This week around the blogiverse

2009-11-13T05:00:00.000-08:00

Happy Friday! Here's what I have to share with y'all this week:

seven new-to-me blogs
a collection of links that are a bit more thought-provoking than usual (must be something about autumn - the cool weather and short days must make some of us more reflective)
a timely Blogthings personality quiz, and
a Customer of the Week (fortunately, not my customer!)

Also, if you haven't already told me your favorite cover songs and your thoughts about living online, I'd love your feedback on those two posts from earlier this week!

New Arrivals in my Google Reader

Readers Guide to...
Bookworming in the 21st Century
The Evening Reader
Livingston, I Presume
Katherine Center (author blog)
Spiritual Pedicures (author blog - Elissa Stein)
Classics Rock! (a blog of popular songs with literary connections)

Dispatches: Links of the Week

A couple of days late for a Veterans' Day reflection - and let's remember the four-legged veterans too

Arguments in favor of keeping a place for the arts in education; facing the reality that there's just not enough education money for every program that deserves it

Talking about a taboo, and questioning a "stigma"

There's no "return policy" for children

Peanut allergy "myth"? This mom - and her daughter - say no

The "b-word" (and the "f-word," too) - and don't worry, the post is pretty much profanity-free! (Are you curious - and confused - now?)

A quick primer on how affiliate links work; the (inadvertent) cultivation of colleagues

A message to teens regarding something my 15-year-old has learned the hard way: cell phones are not machine washable!

It's been my favorite browser for at least half its life: happy fifth birthday to Firefox! (Yes, even on my MacBook, to my Safari-using husband's befuddlement...)

And in honor of this week's 40th anniversary of Sesame Street:

You Are Bert

Extremely serious and a little eccentric, people find you lovable - even if you don't love them!

You are usually feeling: Logical - you rarely let your emotions rule you

You are famous for: Being smart, a total neat freak, and maybe just a little evil

How you life your life: With passion, even if your odd passions (like bottle caps and pigeons) are baffling to others

The Sesame Street Personality Quiz

*Well, maybe...except for one thing. I pay good money NOT to have that unibrow!*

For the Birds, from Not Always Right:

Pet Store | Keene, NH, USA

Customer: “Your bird bit my kid.”

Me: “Well, the birds can’t reach their beaks through the cages. Did your son have his finger in the cage?”

Customer: “Yeah. Well, there’s nothing telling you not to.”

Me: “Sometimes they get scared when you poke your fingers into their cages, and the only way they know how to tell you is to nip you.”

Child: “Oh, okay. I bet he was just scared.”

Customer: “You should put up some signs in here telling people your birds bite!”

(I show the customer the signs posted on each and every bird cage asking customers not to poke fingers into the cages as the birds may bite, as well as the additional two on the doors entering the bird room.)

Customer: “Well, that’s stupid! How do you know I can read?”

Knowing how to read is one thing...knowing how to think is apparently something else entirely.

Have a great weekend!

Yo ho, yo ho, the online life for me!

2009-11-12T05:00:00.000-08:00

"I'm on Facebook, but I'm not on Facebook - it just sucks up your time. And I've never even seen Twitter." As you might guess, I was not the person who said that, but it got me thinking.

I consider myself far from cutting-edge, but compared to a lot of people I know in my off-line life, I'm living in another dimension. I'm always thrilled to see one of them start using social networking, and it's so nice when I don't have to explain how a blog works, but it continues to surprise me how many people's lives still don't have much of an online component. I'm not talking about people without access; these are people who use computers daily and are never without their cellphones - they've got the ability to be connected. They just aren't.

For whatever reason, they don't get it...and I must confess that this means I don't entirely get them. (And by extension, they probably don't really get me either.) I'm not saying that there's anything wrong in this, but it's like people who don't read; I know they exist, and I can accept the difference, but it's a big thing that we don't have in common. And given the way the world is moving, the lack of online commonality and community is likely to be a bigger obstacle than the reader/non-reader difference has ever been.

I realize that there are certain aspects of my personality that have made me take to the online life pretty easily, and being a reader is probably one of them. A lifelong preference for writing to people rather than talking to them on the phone (and sometimes, to be honest, in person) is surely another. I'm an introvert who's better at responding to other people's in-person overtures than at making them myself, and I'm not very comfortable in crowds. I prefer quieter settings and small groups. I like being able to research things on my own, and being able to compose my thoughts before I express them. These are all things that have helped make the Internet a comfortable place for me to hang out. The things I've learned online about myself and other people - bloggers who have become friends, people I'd never have the opportunity to cross paths with normally, and let's not forget my husband - have made my off-line life better too. I've become more informed, more interested (hopefully more interesting as well!), and even a bit more outgoing.

Part of why those of us who have taken to living online enjoy meeting each other in person is that it can be such a joy - and so easy - to be with people who get it, and who get us. I know there are people in my off-line life who aren't likely to embrace the online world, and with some of them - mostly members of the older generation - it really won't affect our relationship one way or another. Others have come aboard; we're not always hanging out in the same online neighborhoods, but we're speaking a common language now, although it may be with different local dialects and idioms. I have yet to inspire anyone to start up and stick with a personal blog, but as I said, I'm glad to see them getting active on Twitter and Facebook. Still, I know that some of my off-line relationships may not develop as well as they could, because they don't - or won't - have that additional online connection, and I think that's a sad thing.

Being able to search Google, type a URL into a browser, and get news, weather, and your bank balance from the Internet aren't things that define the online life - they're part of it, but even more, they're life skills that enhance your offline life. There's so much more to living online, but if you're reading this, you probably already know that and have embraced it. I'd just love to see even more people get it, and come join us!

photo credit

This Old Thing? (Weekend Assignment #292)

2009-11-11T05:00:00.000-08:00

This week's Weekend Assignment question is a simple one, but may require a bit of thought. Even if you don't normally participate in these things, please take a moment to answer it in the comments below.

Weekend Assignment #292: What is the oldest thing in your house or apartment?

Extra Credit: Is there anything from your childhood that you've managed to hang on to all these years?

I have to be honest: When I read the question for this week's Assignment, I laughed. When Tall Paul came over to find out why, I read it to him - and then I gave him a look. Then he gave me a look. Yes, the first thing that came to mind as "the oldest thing" in my house was my husband. After all, he did just turn 47, and he will always be 17 months and 3 days older than I am. Still, that wasn't entirely fair. When her age is converted into human equivalents (7 years of ours for one of hers), our dog Gypsy is much older than he is - she's probably pushing 90, by my best guess.

She looks pretty good for an old lady, doesn't she?

As for the oldest non-living thing in the house, I think it's a diamond ring that belonged to my namesake grandmother, and which was passed down from my mother to me. It dates from the late 1920's - I'm not sure of the exact year, but since my mother was born in March of 1930, and both of her parents were good Catholics, I'd estimate around 1928. The ring is platinum, with a diamond solitaire in a raised setting; I've never had it looked at by a jeweler, so I don't know any of its "four C's" (carat, cut, color, and clarity) or have any idea of its monetary value. It certainly has strong heirloom value, though.

Facsimile ring (via stock.exchg)- not the actual ring described above

Facsimile lobby card (via Amazon.com) - looks just like the one described below

We think the next oldest thing is an antique extension table that my husband bought in Long Beach, long before I met him. We're storing it in the garage and not using it right now, but it's been a dining table, a game table, and a desk - sometimes simultaneously. He's not sure how old it is, but Tall Paul thinks it may be from the 1930's. He also brought in the third oldest thing: one of the items in his movie-memorabilia collection is an original lobby card from the 1948 Bob Hope/Jane Russell movie The Paleface, one of his all-time favorite comedies. (So, while he's not the oldest thing in the house, my husband is responsible for some of the oldest things.)

Since my family pretty much started from scratch when we moved from Connecticut to Florida in 1976, when I was almost 13, not many items from my childhood have stayed with me. I think there may be some books from my high-school and college years in a box out in the garage, but I haven't looked in it lately, so I'm not sure.

Have you got any interesting old possessions around your house? Are you in need of some blog fodder? Join in on this week's Weekend Assignment and tell us about it! Here are the guidelines if you'd like to participate:

Please post your entry no later than Friday, November 13th at 6 PM. (You can also post your response in the comments thread, but a blog entry is better. )
Please mention the Weekend Assignment in your blog post, and include a link back to this entry.
Please go back to Outpost Mâvarin after you've posted, and leave a link to your entry in the comments on the original post.
Visiting other participants' entries is strongly encouraged!

Same but different: Favorite Song Remakes (Ten on Tuesday)

2009-11-10T05:00:00.000-08:00

Ten on Tuesday can usually snag me with pop-culture prompts. This week, Yano asked for "10 Favorite Movie/Song Remakes" - I went with songs, and over on Blogenstein, Tall Paul took the movie route. That's pretty much in character for us. He's more of a cinemaphile than I am, although "cinemaphile" is probably too highbrow a word for his tastes; better to say "movie maven," perhaps. On the other hand, he recently asked me - as I started singing along with the radio yet again - "Don't take this the wrong way, but is there any song you don't know?"

I went through my entire iTunes library (presently at over 6400 songs) looking for songs that I knew were cover versions. I found some instances where I had more than two different versions of a song, and others where the remake is probably better-known than the original. I have multiple versions of several Christmas songs, and chose to leave them all out of consideration.

I used to be a purist - or snob, really - about preferring the original version of a song, particularly if it was recorded by the songwriter. Who could do it better, after all? As I've gotten older, though, I've come to appreciate different interpretations (and, sometimes, better voices) and how they let me hear a song in a new way. Sometimes a cover version is actually my introduction to a song, and it turns out to be the one I like best.

It was a bit tricky to narrow it down, but here are ten song remakes I really like, in no particular order:

Jeff Buckley, "Hallelujah" - I wavered a little on this one, because it's a Leonard Cohen song and I've never heard Leonard Cohen sing it, but I decided to count it anyway, and for this reason: No offense to Leonard Cohen fans, but his songs tend to sound better when sung by other people's voices. I've also heard other people sing it besides Jeff Buckley - k.d. lang does a good interpretation too - but Buckley's version seems to have become the definitive one over the last decade. You've probably heard it on TV and movie soundtracks. I love it - it can still give me chills sometimes.

The Beatles, "Twist and Shout" - Like "Hallelujah," a cover version that stands as the definitive. I think that the fact it isn't a Beatles original (it was first recorded by the Isley Brothers) may have been lost over time to most people who aren't Beatles trivia nuts like me.

Aretha Franklin, "Respect" - By a fluke, I actually have both Aretha's remake and Otis Redding's original in my iTunes library. Aretha's rules. It's an anthem for very good reason.

Annie Lennox, "Train in Vain" - This was an extremely tough call. Annie Lennox's album Medusa is mostly covers, and most of them are extremely well done, so I had a hard time singling out just one. I settled on this one because her take on the song just sounds so different from the Clash's original, which I also happen to love. Still, her interpretations of "Can't Get Next to You," "A Whiter Shade of Pale," and "Take Me to the River" from the same album could fill this slot just as well.

Scissor Sisters, "Comfortably Numb" - My husband will not be impressed with this choice, but I'm nowhere near as big a fan of Pink Floyd as he is, so I don't consider their music sacred territory. A disco-influenced version of one of the best-known songs from The Wall? Audacious, a bit bizarre, and certainly an unexpected creative choice, it's probably not to everyone's taste, but I like it.

Cake, "I Will Survive" - This remake goes in the opposite direction from Scissor Sisters, taking the disco completely out of the Gloria Gaynor classic. Cake's sound is pretty much all their own, and it's not very likely to be the kind of music you'll hear on the dance floor. Another one that probably doesn't have mass appeal, but again...I like it.

Fountains of Wayne, "Trains and Boats and Planes" - My favorite modern-day power-pop band proudly wears its 1960's influences, and this song was originally recorded in the 1960's (by Dionne Warwick, as written by Burt Bacharach). It's one of several covers on their Out-of-State Plates collection of B-sides and previously unreleased material, and it's just a good piece of classic pop. However, their remake of a far inferior bit of pop history - "...Baby One More Time" - might actually be more memorable.

Clint Black, "Galaxy Song" - My husband introduced me to this highly unlikely cover: one of country music's biggest stars performing Monty Python? I loved it when I first heard it on his iPod, because I've always enjoyed the song itself...and when he told me who was singing it, my jaw dropped. Clint Black does a little editing on the lyrics, but the fact that he recorded this at all is probably one of the things that helped soften my anti-country-music stance (and pave the way for using one of his songs as the first dance at our wedding).

The Fray, "Heartless" - I have to be honest; I've managed to avoid Kanye West's original of this, and I'm fine with keeping it that way. Even so, I can safely assume that The Fray's mostly-acoustic take on it sounds very different, and it managed to turn the song into an earworm that's still lodged in my head.

David Cook (via Chris Cornell), "Billie Jean" - David Cook is my favorite American Idol winner, largely because of the way he put his own stamp on everything he did during the competition, taking it far away from the high-level karaoke show it sometimes is (and I say that as someone who mostly likes AI and has watched it pretty consistently since Season 2). He's acknowledged that sometimes his takes weren't entirely original, though, and his performance of Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean" was based on a version recorded by Chris Cornell. Still, it was probably new to most of AI's audience, and it got far more exposure thanks to Cook. It's a very different spin on a song very closely associated with its original performer - and again, I love it.

Do you have any favorite song remakes? And here's the even more fun question: Are there any remakes you absolutely can't stand - you know, the ones that make you wonder what anyone was even thinking to record that song again? Tell me!

Book Talk: "The Longest Trip Home," by John Grogan (TLC Book Tour)

2009-11-09T05:00:00.000-08:00

Disclosures: I received this book for review from the publisher via TLC Book Tours; no additional compensation was offered to me, or accepted by me. *The purchasing link at the end of this review goes through my Amazon Affiliates account.

The Longest Trip Home: A Memoir
John Grogan (blog)
Harper (2009), Paperback (ISBN 0061713309 / 9780061713309)
Nonfiction/memoir, 352 pages

Opening Lines: "The call came on a school night in the autumn of 2002. Jenny was out, and I was fixing dinner for our three children, who were already at the table. I grabbed the phone on the third ring."

Book description: Before there was Marley, there was a gleefully mischievous boy growing up in a devout Catholic home outside Detroit in the 1960s and '70s. Despite his loving parents' best efforts, John's attempts to meet their expectations failed spectacularly. Whether it was his disastrous first confession, the use of his hobby telescope to take in the bronzed Mrs. Selahowski sunbathing next door, the purloined swigs of sacramental wine, or, as he got older, the fumbled attempts to sneak contraband past his father and score with girls beneath his mother's vigilant radar, John was figuring out that the faith and fervor that came so effortlessly to his parents somehow had eluded him.

And then one day, a strong-willed young woman named Jenny walked into his life. As their love grew, John began the painful, funny, and poignant journey into adulthood—away from his parents' orbit and into a life of his own. It would take a fateful call and the onset of illness to lead him on the final leg of his journey—the trip home again.

The Longest Trip Home is a book for any son or daughter who has sought to forge an identity at odds with their parents', and for every parent who has struggled to understand the values of their children. It is a book about mortality and grace, spirit and faith, and the powerful love of family.

Comments: John Grogan's second book for adults shows that he can write a moving and often hilarious memoir that doesn't involve a dog. Of course, you didn't have to be a dog person to love Marley & Me...but it didn't hurt. At the same time, you don't have to have grown up Catholic to appreciate The Longest Trip Home...but again, it probably wouldn't hurt. I'm sure it contributed to my own appreciation of this book.

The memoir is divided into three sections. "Growing Up" covers Grogan's childhood and high-school years. The youngest of four children, his family lived in a lakeside suburb near Pontiac, Michigan, in a house that his very devout Irish-Catholic parents chose for its proximity to the church. John and his siblings all attended the parish school, he and his brothers served as altar boys, and he even had an after-school job in the office of the church rectory. His parents were active in parish life, and the priests were frequent mealtime guests at the Grogan table. Aside from the church involvement, though, John's childhood stories will probably ring bells with anyone who grew up in the suburbs during the 1960's and '70's. The tone Grogan takes in sharing stories of boyhood adventures and stunts reminded me a bit of Jean Shepherd's in the tales that became A Christmas Story, and that's not a bad thing at all.

John succeeded in convincing his parents to let him transfer to public school in the tenth grade. High school was where the seeds of his eventual career in journalism were planted, but it was also the time when he found himself beginning to shift away from his parents' church. As he moves into young adulthood in the second section of the book, "Breaking Away," he grows more comfortable with being less Catholic, except where his parents are concerned; he's unable to be honest with them about his doubts, even as they become even more fiercely Catholic with age. The strain becomes impossible to ignore once John and his future (non-Catholic) wife, Jenny, move in together before they're even engaged, and he can't keep that fact from his father and mother. As John and Jenny eventually marry and start a family of their own, he and his parents start realizing that their relationship is defined by certain "safe" topics and others that they have an unspoken agreement to avoid. The last portion of the book, "Coming Home," finds some of those walls breaking down again as the senior Grogans become incapacitated with age, and there are things that have to be talked about before time runs out - and those things include faith and prayer.

John Grogan is a born storyteller with a conversational writing style, and I found myself laughing out loud in numerous places while reading The Longest Trip Home, particularly during the first two sections. The last section of the book is more reflective and emotional, and readers with aging parents may feel it keenly.

Grogan's issues with the Catholic Church particularly resonated with me, because I have similar ones of my own. He seems to have made some peace with being a "nonpracticing Catholic," one who doesn't participate at all because there are aspects of the faith that he can't believe in, and yet continuing to identify himself as "Catholic" because of his upbringing. (I definitely relate to that - the stuff sticks.) He and his wife believe they can raise ethical, moral children outside of a religious framework, and are making their best effort to do so; I agree that it's possible. He comes to respect what his parents' faith, and their practice of it, means to them, even if he can't embrace it the way they do. I think anyone who questions the religion they grew up with can relate to this - Catholics in particular, but the generalities may strike a chord for those of other faiths as well. Grogan doesn't take on big philosophical questions here; he's strictly recounting his personal experiences, but sometimes that can be equally thought-provoking.

I plan to share The Longest Trip Home with my sister and my husband - both raised Catholic, one still practicing, one not - and I'll be interested in their impressions. I also think it will keep them reading, and make them laugh.

Rating: 4/5

Buy The Longest Trip Home: A Memoir at Amazon.com

Other stops on this TLC Book Tour:

Monday, October 19th: BookNAround

Wednesday, October 21st: The Novel Book Worm

Monday, October 26th: Book Club Classics

Tuesday, October 27th: Readaholic

Wednesday, October 28th: Bloggin’ 'Bout Books

Tuesday, November 3rd: Bookstack

Wednesday, November 4th: The Girl from the Ghetto

Thursday, November 5th: The Book Zombie

Thursday, November 12th: Cozy Little House

Tuesday, November 17th: Starting Fresh

Date TBD: The Book Lady’s Blog

Sunday Salon 11-8: Bookkeeping, Challenging, etc.

2009-11-08T06:00:00.000-08:00

I just looked at the calendar, and there are not quite eight weeks left in 2009 (!). Soon I'll be putting together my Books of the Year picks and my Year in Review posts. It may be a little more challenging this year. I've read more books than the 35 I managed last year (yay!), and I'm pretty sure I'll knock out a few more before the end of December. But I've also read quite a few books that I rated at least a 4 out of 5 this year (also yay, for good books!), so choosing my very favorites will be harder (not so yay). I think I'm up to the task, though.

I'm also thinking about planning my reading for 2010 - the first few months, anyway - and that's still not something I'm entirely used to. I'm kind of torn, to be honest. I have about 20 books tagged as "review copy" in my "To Read" collection on LibraryThing (some of which have had that tag since last year, which is really getting embarrassing!), and I really want to make those go away. I've cut way back on the number of review books I'm taking in, so that should help. I'm getting fewer pitches lately, and still decline some of those; I submit the occasional publisher request through Shelf Awareness ads and LT's Early Reviewers program, but those don't always yield books; and I'm a sometime tour host for TLC Book Tours. I'm fine with limiting my sources of new review copies to those for the foreseeable future, and focusing on getting through the ones I already have.

I've done pretty well leaving the review books aside for the Read Your Own Books Challenge this year, though, and I think I may sign up for that one again in 2010 - it's useful. I'm doing two other reading challenges that will run into next year as well - one will end in April, and the other lasts almost all year. I'm excited about both of them, and one of them will cross over with the RYOB Challenge, which makes it efficient.

However, I know I get restless with too much routine, and having my reading dictated by challenges and review obligations will get to me. When can I read just what I feel like reading? There will be times I'll rebel and pull something off the shelf that doesn't fit into any of those categories - and I'll try not to feel too guilty about it. The change of pace will probably be good for me.

But having said all that, I'm thinking about a pattern: review book, challenge book, discretionary book, review book... Something like that might work.

I'd love to know: Have you started thinking about your year-end book picks yet? And how do you approach obligatory vs. discretionary reading?

BOOKKEEPING: The Reading Status Report

Book reviews posted this week:
Love the One You're With, by Emily Giffin
The Hunger Games/Catching Fire (dual review), by Suzanne Collins

Next reviews scheduled:
The Longest Trip Home, by John Grogan (TLC Book Tour stop scheduled for November 9)

New to my LibraryThing "To Read" collection:
In which I make up for not adding any new books last week...
For review:
When She Flew by Jennie Shortridge (for TLC Book Tours)

For the Shelf Discovery Challenge:
Forever... by Judy Blume*

For me, for no particular reason:
The Shadow of the Wind, by Carlos Ruiz Zafón^*1
Beat the Reaper: A Novel, by Josh Bazell^*1
Street Gang: The Complete History of Sesame Street, by Michael Davis^*2
My Life in France, by Julia Child*
Wishful Drinking, by Carrie Fisher*

¹Book bloggers are totally to be thanked/blamed for this acquisition!
²Discovered via excerpt from DearReader.com E-mail Book Club
^*Books bought yesterday in celebration of National Bookstore Day (and a "Buy One, Get One 50% Off" coupon)

New additions to the Wishlist*:
A Friend of the Family, by Lauren Grodstein
Sunflowers, by Sheramy Bundrick

Challenge Statistics:
Read Your Own Books Challenge (RYOB 2009), January-December 2009: pledged 20 books (no list required) - 19 read/reviewed to date
Clear off Your Shelves Challenge, October-November 2009: pledged 25% of books read (no list required) -57% of books read/reviewed to date (since October 1, with 3 weeks to go)
Shelf Discovery Challenge, October 2009-April 2010: required 6 books, list posted; none read/reviewed to date
Women Unbound Challenge, November 2009-November 2010: pledged 5 books, list posted; none read/reviewed to date

BOOKMARKS: Reading-related Reading

The next 24-Hour Readathon has been scheduled for April 10, 2010, so mark your calendar NOW! And if you'd be interested in helping out behind the scenes, you're needed.

What is it about reading, anyway?

Whether you're just getting started or trying to stay on track, the "how and why" of writing book reviews is always important to consider (link via Heather J.). Also worth considering: what's your dream for your blog? Does it involve taking it back to basics?

It's the spoof we've been waiting for: Nightlight. (Read it instead of seeing New Moon) Semi-related: proposing that Twilight is not anti-feminist

Buying books for the somewhat-reluctant reader; who says book bloggers don't buy books?

Going through with a negative review, at the author's request (really!)

A discussion of the "mean girl," in (YA) fiction and reality

Book bloggers are curious folks. Natasha wants to know about your reading habits (how active? how long?), while Jessica C. wonders how you feel about word-usage corrections (the giving and the getting).

Have a great week - hope it includes some great reading!

Week-End Review, 11-6 - Friday On My Mind

2009-11-06T05:00:00.000-08:00

New Arrivals in my Google Reader

Lit and Life
Steele on Entertainment
Average Girl Reads
Meg's Idle Chatter
Shona's Bookshelves
Gen Xtinct (this is for my fellow lost children of the '70's and '80's!)
My Sandwich Generation (for my fellow children whose parents may be in their 70's and 80's)

The end of the year is rushing toward us, accompanied by THE HOLIDAYS! Book bloggers have their own way to celebrate: The Book Blogger Holiday Swap!

What the heck is that? It's a Secret Santa gift exchange open to book bloggers all over the world, now in its third year. The FAQ tells you all you need to know!

Now, does that sound like fun? Want to get in on it? Sign up before the deadline of November 12!

And as you're looking for the perfect gift for that book blogger - or for ANYONE on your list, really - remember that the Buy Books For the Holidays campaign is back on for 2009! (It was mentioned in the Shelf Awareness e-newsletter this week, too!)

Celebrate the holiday season virtually, with your blogging buddies, during the week of December 7-11 - sign up to participate in the Progressive Dinner Party! (Virtual food and drink has no calories!) Share your favorite holiday recipes and decorating and entertainment ideas - more details are on the way.

***Tomorrow, Saturday, November 7, is National Bookstore Day - and there's only ONE way to celebrate that!***

Dispatches: Links of the Week

50 things you should know if you start a blog today (and wouldn't hurt even if you've been doing this for a while) (via @PaulaatAME on Twitter); a link about the value of proper linking (via a link from Cathy at Kittling: Books); starting a conversation about commenting practices

School standards that don't make sense

Remember the children...because you can't remember anything else! Also: a mother rebels against the reading log; kids learn responsibility by being responsibile

It seems I'm guilty of stereotyping in assuming that Alaskans cocoon at home during their very long, very cold winters - check out 29 winter activities in and around Anchorage

A time capsule of slang (Far out, man! Dig it! Groovy!)

Trick or treat! I DEMAND particular candy!

Yeah, it's not my favorite holiday either - let's rename New Year's Eve

Has the computer ruined your handwriting, too? It certainly hasn't been good for mine!

Yes, It Actually IS Your Job, via Not Always Right

Call Center | Tennessee, USA

(I was helping a user in one of our accounting firm’s remote offices.)

Caller: “My email isn’t working!”

Me: “Okay, what seems to be the problem?”

Caller: “I already said, my email isn’t working!”

Me: “Okay, so is it not sending email, or is it not opening?”

Caller: “It’s not sending email. This is pathetic! I don’t have
time for this!”

Me: “I am here to help you. Does it say ‘connected’ at the lower right hand of the screen?”

Caller: “I don’t know, this isn’t my job! It’s yours, so fix it!”

Me: “I am trying to, sir, but I will need your help with fixing this issue remotely.”

Caller: “No, that’s not what I get paid to do. I am an accountant! I’m not supposed to know how to use a computer!”

Sometimes I'm embarrassed for my profession, and this was one of them.

Happy Friday, y'all!

NaNoWriMo? Why, no! Why not?

2009-11-05T05:00:00.000-08:00

Quite a few of my blogging buddies are taking a shot at writing fiction this month - and why not? November has been National Novel Writing Month - NaNoWriMo for short - for the past ten years, and thousands of people (over 100,000 this year alone!) have set themselves the goal of producing a 50,000-word novel by the end of the month. It's great to have a support group for an effort like this. It's ambitious, it's admirable...and it's not for me. Never say never, but for now, I'm just saying NO to NaNoWriMo.

There are a couple of things y'all know about me: I love to read, and I love to write. Also, I love to write about what I read, otherwise this blog would never have been born. I think there are some truths about life and humanity and why we are the way we are that are best explored through fiction. I think that fiction can help us identify themes in our own lives. I enjoy vicariously experiencing lives that are different from my own, and finding things that make them feel not so different. I respect the creativity and imagination that can invent characters and storylines and situations that capture my mind and my emotions.

One reason that I respect it is that I'm pretty sure I don't have it.

I love the novel, and I think it deserves to be considered at the peak of creative endeavors, but my own creative impulses just don't go in that direction. Some people manage to be both writers and storytellers, while some lean one way or the other. I've read a few books by storytellers whose strength wasn't in the writing; I'm writing without having much of a story to tell.

I've learned over the last couple of years that the kind of writing I most enjoy doing - and that I seem to be pretty competent at - is the sort of thing I do here. It's personal essays and news reports. It's the occasional topical op-ed piece, and the frequent cultural discussions (that would be the book and movie reviews). Despite my tendency toward long-windedness at times, it's short-form writing. It allows for creative expression, but it's rooted in my everyday life. It gives me enough maneuvering room to satisfy me, and I think it'll keep satisfying me for a while longer. While I love reading fiction, I just don't feel a yearning to produce it; nonfiction writing feels like my niche.

With that realization, I can put the goal of writing the Next So-So American Novel to rest...for now. Like I said, never say never, so I'll have to check back on it next November. But are you participating in NaNoWriMo? I'd love to know how it's going, if you are - and if you're having fun! (And if you'd like a reader, just ask - I'm pretty good at that!)

Book Talk times two: "The Hunger Games/Catching Fire," by Suzanne Collins

2009-11-04T05:00:00.000-08:00

Disclosures: I purchased these books for my personal library. *The purchasing link at the end of the review goes through my Amazon Affiliates account.

The Hunger Games

Suzanne Collins

Scholastic Press (2008), Hardcover (ISBN 0439023483 / 9780439023481)
Fiction (fantasy/sci-fi/YA), 384 pages

Catching Fire

Suzanne Collins

Scholastic Press (2009), Hardcover (ISBN 0439023491 / 9780439023498)
Fiction (fantasy/sci-fi/YA), 384 pages

Opening lines:
"When I wake up, the other side of the bed is cold. My fingers stretch out, seeking Prim's warmth but finding only the rough canvas cover of the mattress. She must have had bad dreams and climbed in with our mother. Of course, she did. This is the day of the reaping."
- The Hunger Games

"I clasp the flask between my hands even though the warmth from the tea has long since leached into the frozen air. My muscles are clenched tight against the cold. If a pack of wild dogs were to appear at this moment, the odds of scaling a tree before they attacked are not in my favor."
- Catching Fire

Book descriptions (from the publisher's website):
The Hunger Games

In the ruins of a place once known as North America lies the nation of Panem, a shining Capital surrounded by twelve outlying districts. The Capital is harsh and cruel and keeps the other districts in line by forcing them to participate in the annual Hunger Games, a fight-to-the death on live TV. One boy and one girl between the ages of twelve and sixteen are selected by lottery to play. The winner brings riches and favor to his or her district. But that is nothing compared to what the Capital wins: one more year of fearful compliance with its rules.

Sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen, who lives alone with her mother and younger sister, regards it as a death sentence when she is forced to represent her impoverished district in the Games. But Katniss has been close to dead before – and survival, for her, is second nature. Without really meaning to, she becomes a contender. But if she is to win, she will have to start making choices that weigh survival against humanity and life against love.

Catching Fire

Against all odds, Katniss Everdeen has won the annual Hunger Games with fellow district tribute Peeta Mellark. But it was a victory won by defiance of the Capitol and their harsh rules. Katniss and Peeta should be happy. After all, they have just won for themselves and their families a life of safety and plenty.

But there are rumors of rebellion among the subjects, and Katniss and Peeta, to their horror, are the faces of that rebellion. The Capitol is angry. The Capitol wants revenge.

Comments: I resisted the Hunger Games juggernaut for quite awhile, in the face of near-universal acclaim among my book-blogging cohorts. But I caved in shortly after the second book in the trilogy, Catching Fire, was published, although it wasn't without anxiety - were they really that good? Even so, based on what I'd heard about the series, it sounded like they'd be ideal reading material for October's 24-Hour Readathon (whether I ended up liking them or not), so I decided to read them back-to-back then. For that reason, it makes sense to me to discuss them both in a single review.

They're not perfect books, but they were perfect for the Readathon - and while it's possible that hundreds of book bloggers could indeed be wrong, in this case they're not. Suzanne Collins has created a world that intrigues, a plot that immediately grabs your attention and keeps you on the edge of your seat, and an appealing protagonist who propels the whole thing forward.

In a dystopian setting in an indeterminate time, North America has become the country of Panem, where twelve Districts are ruled from a prosperous, decadent central Capitol. Each District is organized around a primary industry (fishing, agriculture, mining, etc.), and its citizens don't know much about the inhabitants of other districts. Life is difficult and tightly controlled.

Over seventy years ago, the Capitol crushed a civil war, and continues to assert its domination over the Districts with its Peacekeeping force and control of the food supply. Food is part of the grand prize in the annual Hunger Games, in which each District sends two youth to the Capitol as "tributes" to compete in survival trials. The winner secures prosperity for his or her family and generous rations for the home District until the next year's Games, and needs strategy, cleverness, and a true killer instinct.

The premise of the Hunger Games themselves fascinated me. It's the ultimate high-stakes reality-TV show, literally. They're broadcast around the clock throughout the country, and the tributes become overnight celebrities who gain sponsors and renown as their numbers dwindle. The contestants may form alliances or mark each other as immediate targets. Some of them are playing out a storyline that may or may not have been fully revealed to them, and they're all being manipulated and orchestrated by the Gamemakers who oversee everything. It's Survivor + Big Brother with some Lord of the Flies - and, in Catching Fire, a touch of Lost - mixed in, and I couldn't pull myself away from it.

Katniss Everdeen, the sixteen-year-old primary caretaker of her family since her father's death in a mining accident five years earlier, volunteers to go to the 74th annual Games as a replacement for the original girl selected as District 12's tribute - her little sister Prim. She's a resourceful girl with a talent for hunting and skill with a bow and arrow, and despite the fact her District hasn't fared well in previous Games, she's determined to make it through and provide for her mother and sister, whom she leaves under the protection of her best friend and hunting partner Gale Hawthorne. She isn't thrilled about her fellow District tribute, baker's son Peeta Mellark - and is even less so when she learns that there are plans to present the two of them to the country as star-crossed young lovers. However, as the Games progress, she realizes that if she can't win them herself, having Peeta win would be almost as good for her family and their District, and seeing that he remains alive gives her additional motivation.

(Since there is a second book - and a third one on the way - I'm not treating Katniss' victory in the Hunger Games as a spoiler; reading about how she gets there offers plenty of suspense and excitement.)

Just a year later, Katniss returns to the Games again in the Quarter Quell, an "all-star" edition held every 25 years and played by previous winners; other than that, the rules aren't any different. But the stakes are a bit higher this time. Katniss' actions in the first Games have made her famous and inspiring to the citizens of Panem - and potentially dangerous to the Capitol. Her motivations are a little different this time as well - she's still focused on protecting her family, but she's also trying to sort out her feelings for Peeta and Gale, each of whom has a lot in his favor.

Both books are told from Katniss' point of view, and I found her a very engaging and convincing character - strong, driven, complicated, emotional, confused and not always fully aware of her situation at times, yet impressively clever at other times. I just had to root for her all the way through, even when I didn't necessarily agree with what she was doing. Even though the books are more plot- than character-driven, some of that drive is weakened if the characters don't resonate - and in this series, they certainly do.

I've passed both of these books on to my 15-year-old stepdaughter* to read next - Katniss Everdeen is a character she needs to know. But I want her father to read them too; the story is just that good. It's one I'll read again, and I'm now part of the crowd eagerly awaiting Book Three. *UPDATE: Katie tore through the first book and stayed up late last night starting on the second - she's loving it, and I'm so glad!

Rating (for both books): 4.25/5

Reading Challenges Qualified: Books #17 and #18 for the RYOB 2009 Challenge; Clear Off Your Shelves Challenge

Buy The Hunger Games at Amazon.com
Buy Catching Fire (The Second Book of the Hunger Games) at Amazon.com

Use the Book Blogs Search Engine to find more of the many other reviews of these two books!

Bitten by the challenge bug AGAIN - and now UNBOUND!

2009-11-03T05:00:00.000-08:00

It's a reading challenge that was born on Twitter, in a comment Eva made after finishing a book last week: someone should start a "women's studies" reading challenge. As tends to happen, book bloggers jumped in and out of the discussion, and within a few hours, a name, a hashtag, and a challenge blog were launched: Women Unbound!

Full disclosure, as mentioned in the "Community Credit" item on the blog's sidebar - I was part of the original Twitter conversation:

While Aarti, Care, and Eva are your three co-hosts, this whole challenge has been a real group creation. Thanks to all of the following bloggers who joined in the brainstorming session: Beth F (who also gave us our marvelous name), S. Krishna, Florinda, Chris of Book-a-Rama, Nymeth, Heidenkind, Vasilly, and Dawn.

I've been invested in this one from the beginning, even if I'm a little late in signing up!

What does a "women's studies" reading challenge mean, exactly? Again, from the challenge blog:

Participants are encouraged to read nonfiction and fiction books related to the rather broad idea of ‘women’s studies.’ The definition according to Merriam-Webster:
the multidisciplinary study of the social status and societal contributions of women and the relationship between power and gender.
For nonfiction, this would include books on feminism, history books focused on women, biographies of women, memoirs (or travelogues) by women, essays by women and cultural books focused on women (body image, motherhood, etc.). The topics listed aren’t mean to be exhaustive; if you come across a nonfiction book whose subject is female-related, it counts! Of course, if you’re not sure you can always ask about it in a comment.

It’s trickier to say what is applicable as fiction. Obviously, any classic fiction written by a feminist is applicable. But where do we go from there? To speak generally, if the book takes a thoughtful look at the place of women in society, it will probably count. At the end of the day, it’s up to you to explain in your review why you chose this for the challenge and its connection to women’s studies.

There's a "Reading Lists" page on the challenge blog where you can find plenty of book suggestions.

The challenge runs from November 1, 2009-November 30, 2010 (slightly more than a year, which should be plenty of time), and readers can join in any time. Participants do not have to be bloggers. There are three levels of participation, and you can count books for other reading challenges as well:

Philogynist: read at least two books, including at least one nonfiction one.
Bluestocking: read at least five books, including at least two nonfiction ones.
Suffragette: read at least eight books, including at least three nonfiction ones.

I'm signing on as a Bluestocking. The challenge doesn't require committing to a specific reading list - just a number of books - but I've made some preliminary selections from my "To Read" collection that fit the challenge parameters:

Sisterhood, Interrupted: From Radical Women to Grrls Gone Wild, by Deborah Siegel

I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts On Being a Woman, by Nora Ephron

Lipstick Jihad: A Memoir of Growing up Iranian in America and American in Iran, by Azadeh Moaveni

Ladies of Liberty: The Women Who Shaped Our Nation, by Cokie Roberts

Mother on Fire: A True Motherf%#$@ Story About Parenting!, by Sandra Tsing Loh

The Faith Club: A Muslim, A Christian, A Jew-- Three Women Search for Understanding, by Ranya Idilby, Suzanne Oliver, and Priscilla Warner

Hypocrite in a Pouffy White Dress, by Susan Jane Gilman

Olive Kitteridge: Fiction, by Elizabeth Strout

American Wife: A Novel, by Curtis Sittenfeld

Losing Kei: A Novel, by Suzanne Kamata

I realize this tentative listing is more than enough to complete the Suffragette level, but I don't want to over-commit, and I may drop a few from the list over the course of the challenge year.

Challenge co-host Aarti has posted a short, optional Start of Challenge Meme for participants to answer:

1. What does feminism mean to you? Does it have to do with the work sphere? The social sphere? How you dress? How you act?

To me, feminism is about how you act, but even more, it's about how you think, and how consistent your actions are with your beliefs. It's supporting the efforts and development of women, and speaking out in favor of equal rights, responsibilities, protections, and privileges for them within society.

What feminism is NOT is equally important, though. It's not about women undermining one another. It's not about exalting one way of life over another. And tempting though it is at times, it's not about bashing men.

2. Do you consider yourself a feminist? Why or why not?

Oh, yes. My awareness was formed in the 1970's, the peak of second-wave feminism and efforts to pass the Equal Rights Amendment, although I was too young to participate in those activities then...and by the time I was old enough, "feminist," like "liberal," had become a bad word. But I still believe in the ideals I learned about in those formative years, and I still try to act with them in mind.

3. What do you consider the biggest obstacle women face in the world today? Has that obstacle changed over time, or does it basically remain the same?

I can't narrow it down to one single thing, and I think it varies based on where in the world women live and their socioeconomic circumstances, but if I had to sum it up, it probably comes down to "respect" - or more accurately, the lack of it. Women are held back by not being respected and valued - by their employers, their families, their governments, and sometimes by one another (and themselves). Unless that changes, not much else can either.

Are you on board for Women Unbound?

Book talk: "Love the One You're With," by Emily Giffin

2009-11-02T05:00:00.001-08:00

Disclosures: I bought this book for my personal library. *The purchasing link at the end of the review goes through my Amazon Affiliates account.

Love the One You're With
Emily Giffin
St. Martin's Griffin (2009), Paperback (ISBN 0312348673 / 9780312348670)
Fiction, 368 pages

Opening Lines: "It happened exactly one hundred days after I married Andy, almost to the minute of our half-past-three-o'clock ceremony. I know this fact not so much because I was an overeager newlywed keen on observing trivial relationship landmarks, but because I have a mild case of OCD that compels me to keep track of things."

Book description: Ellen and Andy's marriage doesn't just seem perfect, it is perfect. There is no question how deep their devotion is, and how naturally they bring out the best in each other. But one fateful afternoon, Ellen runs into Leo for the first time in eight years. Leo, the one who brought out the worst in her. Leo, the one who left her heartbroken with no explanation. Leo, the one she could never quite forget. When his reappearance ignites long-dormant emotions, Ellen begins to question whether the life she’s living is the one she's meant to live.

Comments: I'm on the picky side when it comes to the often-maligned "chick-lit" genre, but Emily Giffin is one author who always makes the cut. Her books have many of the chick-lit trappings - designer labels, glamorous careers, fancy restaurants - but they're overlaid to stories and characters with some depth and substance. Love the One You're With is her fourth novel; I've read them all, and this may be my favorite one yet.

It took Ellen Dempsey a couple of years to sort herself out again after the abrupt end of her intense post-college relationship with Leo, the journalist she met during a stint at jury duty. But when she was ready, there was already someone waiting - Andy Graham, her best friend's brother. Their relationship may lack some of that intensity, but it's compatible and comfortable, and Ellen's genuinely happy with it...until she unexpectedly runs into Leo on a New York City street, and the encounter makes her start asking herself a lot of questions. Meanwhile, Andy's asking questions of his own, but his involve leaving their New York life behind and moving back to his hometown, Atlanta. His family is there, along with a position in his father's law practice - but aside from that, what does the upscale suburb of Buckhead hold for Ellen and her photography career?

I liked most of the characters in this novel, which is narrated in the first person by Ellen - and I really liked Ellen. The character has a lot of self-awareness, even as she does things that she realizes are probably not in her best interests and could very well backfire on her. She has a tendency to idealize her husband's family and their background, but I think it's understandable to anyone who's ever felt their own upbringing to be lacking somehow; for her, much of that sense of lack is the result of the early death of her mother, and it colors many of her relationships. The most important women in her life are her best friend/sister-in-law Margot and her older sister Suzanne, but mother loss plays a role in how she relates to men as well; it's part of the intensity and insecurity in her relationship with Leo, and a factor in the comfort of her marriage to Andy - the same comfort that makes her wonder if she's somehow "settling."

Emily Giffin does a fine job of drawing believable, human characters who have to make choices that aren't always black and white, and that rarely turn out to be final or perfect. I related to Ellen a lot, and I think other readers will too - most of us have had reason to wonder about our relationships and who we are in their context, at one time or another, haven't we? Giffin's brand of chick-lit is lower on the fluff and melodrama than some examples of the genre, and I'm sure that's part of its appeal for me. Love the One You're With is a smart, character-driven novel, and its author remains on my must-read list.

Rating: 3.75/5

Reading Challenges Qualified: #16 of 20 for the RYOB 2009 Challenge; Clear off Your Shelves Challenge

Buy Love the One You're With at Amazon.com

Other book bloggers' reviews:
DearAuthor.com (includes very detailed plot recap)
A Novel Menagerie
Nomad Reader
Me, My Book, and the Couch
Kristina's Book Blog
S. Krishna's Books

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If you've read and reviewed this book, please leave your link in comments or e-mail me at 3.rsblog AT GMail DOT com, and I'll edit this review to include it!