A Single Layer

Pinterules

2012-02-03T21:02:00.000-08:00

Not to overdo it on Pinterposts, but the recent onslaught of friends, acquaintances, and everyone-else on Pinterest has led me to think of some rules. In pirate fashion, these are actually guidelines, and the purpose is to ensure that Pinterest is useful and interesting for you - because, quite honestly, it's not really a social network. It's a network, and a society, but it's mostly a silent one. Pinterest comments are rare, and the best followers and followeds are more often than not complete strangers. It's about meeting one another in the places your aesthetic tastes lie. Who you are behind your tastes is secondary. I will never meet Mary Beth Burrell, but I love her outrageous 433 boards. I will never meet Maia Then, but we swap typography pins on a regular basis, without overt acknowledgement.

1. To begin with, you shouldn't join Pinterest just because "everyone else is doing it." You can browse your friends' boards without making your own, so don't feel like you have to make an empty profile unless you start seeing pictures everywhere that you don't want to lose!

Because that is the ultimate point. To keep all the pretty things you see together in one unforgettable place. It has nothing to do with how many followers you have, or how often you are repinned. Those things are nice affirmations of your style-sense, but if you have 100 followers and five pins, you're missing the point.

2. There are three things you can do to someone else's pin (other than commenting or ignoring, which would make five...). You can report it, which you should do if it is inappropriate, the guidelines for which are outlined under Pin Etiquette, which you should read before you begin. Seriously. My mother's on Pinterest. Let's keep it clean.

Other than that, you can "like" it, or you can "repin" it. Liking a pin does more than just stamp the pin with an effervescent symbol of your approval. It stores the pin in one big folder of your very own that says "Likes." The pins you like do not show up in the feeds of pinners who follow you, so it's a wonderful way to quickly collect little things here and there that you don't want to forget (a recipe or how-to-clean-with-lemon-slices tutorial) but that you also don't necessarily want cluttering up your follower's home pages.

You should have a code concerning what you pin, an internal guideline, a sense. You should pin the things you don't want to live without. The things you want to somehow, with or without effort, incorporate into your life. Things that make your eyes widen slightly, or a smile form, or even the tenderest tear fall. They should be things you want to look at again in five years, and in ten. Pin what moves you. Pin what you care about. Because you are amassing a collection. And if you collect a load of crap, it will be your pinterburden for all time.

3. When pinning from a website other than Pinterest itself, try your darndest to pin from a solid original webpage. One that will not change its content. This is called a permalink. Be careful of this especially when you pin from Tumblr or other similar sites. I cannot tell how many times I have tried to locate the original source of a pin only to find myself trolling through dozens of pages on someone's Tumblr or blog. It's not just about convenience, though. It's about crediting your sources. A photographer should be findable from his/her photograph. A designer should be findable from his/her quirky logo. This isn't just a guideline, either. Pinterest asks you to do it, and plenty of artists, designers, photographers, companies in general, etc. are legitimately worried about the implications of Pinterest when the sources of things are not maintained. Honor the artist.

These are only three pinterules, but they should be all you need, at least as you get going. In the meantime, here are some other great pinners to follow:

http://pinterest.com/mishqueen/
http://pinterest.com/oldsoul/
http://pinterest.com/susanpearls/
http://pinterest.com/lilbikergirl/
http://pinterest.com/wendyd/
http://pinterest.com/lctortuga/

Have fun!

*Note, graphic above came from here.

As silly as it may sound...

2012-01-30T20:09:00.000-08:00

...I work very hard to collect pins I care about. I'm referring to Pinterest, of course. I've been on there for quite a while now (has it been years?), and have developed over the course of time an internal filter as to what I will and will not pin. If something interests or amuses me that doesn't quite fit the internal standard I've set for my boards, I may file it away among my "likes," but it will not join my carefully curated collection. (Unless, as recently with the Boromir/Samwise pic "One does not simply walk into Mordor"... unless I just can't help myself.)

So it's a little odd to me that in this last week, while I've been especially artful and moved by the images I've come across (and thusly pinned), that one pin of mine in particular seems to be getting an absurd degree of attention. Here are some of the pictures I've found in the last few days (please follow the links, as they are even more amazing when viewed in the context of their exhibitions):

Matteo Pugliese

The Obliteration Room, is part of Kusama’s Look Now, See Forever exhibition

Zadok Ben David's Blackfield

a light painting, by Rashad Alakbarov

These are incredible images. I do not hesitate to say so, because I had nothing to do with making them. Even so, would you, could you imagine just which of my many pins is the most popular?

It's this one:

a pearl-encrusted ornament from Anthropologie.

Go figure.

The Artist

2012-01-22T22:21:00.000-08:00

I was just thinking the other day how bored I am by today's celebrities, how they all seem to look the same, and how the few actors and actresses who actually do work worth caring about are just too few. This also says a lot about the movies that are out there, but there are legions of mediocre films because we watch them in spades. This is why a film like The Artist is such a breath of unbelievably fresh air, and yet it's just the sort of air that we must be told and told and told again to go breathe. If you have heard that you should see The Artist and yet have not, please do it. It is breathtaking, not just in beauty, but in whatever-it-is that makes a person sit taut in their seat with their fingers to their parted lips and their eyes wide and unblinking toward the motion picture. It's also lovely, and charming, and a number of other words that don't quite come close. I hope it wins all the awards that are awarded to films of any nature.

*Regarding the leads - For those who are wondering, "Why haven't I seen either of these actors in anything before?" it's because they are from other countries and do not act in your grand movies. Except once, Berenice Bejo was in A Knight's Tale, that most fascinating and fabulous work of cinematic oddness, as Shannyn Sossamon's maid. This should not be held against her. She rocked that role too.

recs

2012-01-17T22:40:00.000-08:00

A friend requested I pin some book suggestions earlier today, so I started a new Pinterest board for book recommendations. Generally I don't like to recommend a book unless I know you and know what sort of books you might like, but I've had more repins and likes on this board in the last hour than any other I've made pretty much ever. So here's the link if you care to check it out, though it's nothing new to anyone who knows me on Goodreads.

poems

2012-01-17T10:21:00.000-08:00

I am participating in a writer's workshop at my church in a few weeks. Last week I had to draft my submission, and it was not very easy. We had the option of non-fiction (which I don't really do) and fiction (which, with a 2000 word limit, is a bit difficult) as well as poetry. I chose poetry because it is easy in terms of word count and writing time, but I almost pulled a submission out from my archives (that's what I did last time), simply because I couldn't write anything. I haven't written much poetry in a while, and when I look back at what I used to write, I get discouraged. Not that the poetry isn't good to write, but there's a difference between poetry as an act of self-expression, discovery, or even meditation and the poetry that ought to be read by other people.

So I sat down with a little notebook and a Bible and a prayer book and another Bible, one with illustrations by Chagall (maybe you've seen it before), and a book of fairy tales by George MacDonald and the New and Collected Poems of Czeslaw Milosz, 1931-2001. I brought the latter because he always reminds me of the purpose of writing in the first place. I opened up to my favorite of his poems (if I have a favorite), and I read it, and I read it again, and then I wrote a response to it, which was really just a much poorer version of what he wrote, and I turned that in as my poetry submission.

This morning I am sitting with the same pile of books, and I have read the selections of the Bible that my prayer book lists for the morning of the Tuesday after the second Sunday after Epiphany, and I have written my thoughts about things in that little notebook. Then I open the Milosz book again and turn to a poem I have never read before, which is called "Report." It's on 589, and I will not transcribe it entirely because I very much respect his copyright.

But it is a poet presenting his report to the Most High who "willed to create me a poet," on being a poet and what that has meant or led to or whatever. It's very good, of course. Milosz didn't win the Nobel for nothing. He begins with gratitude and then moves to an observation of how very selfish he is, "self-deluded," as he calls it. Then this line: "How does it happen then that such low beginnings lead to the splendor of the word?" And still more, because the word is beautiful but it is not everything: "And our tender thought about all who lived, strived, and never succeeded in naming. / For to exist on the earth is beyond any power to name." Reading this, I am reminded to think tenderly of the world. More than reminded, I am drawn to tenderness. But somehow, he ends with tenderness toward the self, despite self-delusion, and maybe even because of it, for all I know. I am only reading this poem for the first time, after all, and I am slow to learn, or slow to remember all I have learned: "How then could I not be grateful, if early I was called and the incomprehensible contradiction has not diminished my wonder?" I am afraid my wonder has been diminished, just for a moment, and I am reminded that for me at least, writing anything at all has never been about polishing something for a reader, nor has it been merely self-expression. It's been an act of wonder. From the first.

I may share the poem I wrote last week, but not until I've workshopped it. And only if you remind me, because I'm very likely to forget. In the meantime, whether or not you were called to name things, I hope you, too, will be drawn to wonder for the world today.

Kindle thoughts

2012-01-14T11:58:00.000-08:00

When I was a kid, I lived for three years on a small missions base in the southern Philippines. When I or one of my friends got a new book, it was a big deal. We ordered books from Scholastic, but when there are no bookstores and the school library hasn't been restocked in forty years, those Scholastic orders were pretty much the life and breath of our literary discoveries. I remember when Scholastic sent my friend Colleen a complimentary copy of Dealing With Dragons, and we thought "this is not our kind of book," but then we read it, sitting next to each other on her covered porch, and then we shared it one by one with all of our friends. We did that with The Ordinary Princess, by M. M. Kaye, and a number of others as well. A book was never just ours. It circulated.

Looking back, it occurs to me that that was the first book club I'd ever been a part of. We all read the same things, and then we incorporated them into our conversations, our classes, our play (we made a paper machê dragon in sixth grade and named it after Kazul from Dealing With Dragons). There are certain books I still feel compelled to do that with. When I finish an adult classic, my impulse is to tell people to go out and buy that book - because it's something they should own, something they should sit with. But when I read a good children's or teen novel, my impulse is to pass it on. I don't feel the need to keep my copy of The Hunger Games or The Graveyard Book all tidy on my shelf. I want to share it. To hand it over to someone and say, "You might enjoy this, and if you don't get around to it, you'll find someone else who will."

In the couple weeks I've owned a Kindle, I have realized that this one thing is missing. The ability to share. Lending doesn't count. None of the people I would loan my Kindle books to have the same digital device, if they have one at all. It wouldn't be such a bother, except that the books I wouldn't share, or the books I would expect back in good condition and relatively short order, are the books I'd want sitting on my shelf - not the ones I would download.

It is also interesting how differently people experience this medium. And I wonder, given that the medium is the message, what sort of message I'm acquiring here.

Ommmmm

2012-01-12T14:57:00.000-08:00

I know I've mentioned this before somewhere or other, but OmmWriter is rocking my socks in a zen sort of way. If you find yourself with some writer's block, try it out. You may not write what you need to (you may, in fact, find yourself writing some bad poetry, or expostulations on the nature of the sun slanting through the window), but you will at least write something.

A Nod to the Bookroom

2012-01-09T20:29:00.000-08:00

Having alluded to the "other" blog, I suppose now is the time to mention that it actually has a home. Follow the link to read up on certain books I'm reading, hoping to read, etc. What you won't find there are my thoughts on non-fiction, essays, interior design, theology, or winter trips to Arkansas. Well... probably not, anyway. The best blogs often have themes, and I think it's about time I distilled my posts of a certain theme to a singular location. Here's to 2012.

2012-01-02T18:42:00.000-08:00

One of the things I'm working on doing for 2012 is separating my book blogging from my "here's my life do what you will with it" blogging. I've toyed with doing this several times over the past few years, but this is the year. Being, of course, the year the calendar quits, I guess that means this is the year to live like there's no tomorrow?

I've been reading a lot of resolutions online, but few of them have that sense of urgency, that impulse to live like you mean to now, or else. Regardless of the Mayans and whatnot (fears in which I put little stock), it would be good to approach your resolutions with that kind of energy.

It is already the second day of the year, and I am still not sure of what I particularly resolve.

I resolve to be resolved?

2011-12-23T17:24:00.000-08:00

Apparently I'm not writing a series for Advent, as the season is coming to its beautiful close. I'm alright with that. The not writing, I mean, not the end of the season. There's been a lot going on this month, and I haven't regretted any of my minutes. A couple weeks ago, several extended family members came into town to celebrate the life and honor the death of my grandfather. It was a wonderful opportunity to reconnect with cousins I haven't seen in well over a decade and uncles I care rather much for.

My Christmas will, as usual, span several days, beginning tomorrow with my sister and brother-in-law coming into town, and then on the 25th, flying to Arkansas to be with my brother in his brand new home. I'll be seeing old friends, handing out some presents, and generally just taking a breather from life-busy-life.

There are a lot of things I want to say as the year wraps, especially about Christmas and Jesus and the Holy Parents. I want to say some things about family, and work, and the need to pause. I want to talk about what I miss and what I look forward to.

But I think I will close the computer instead, and let my blog silence stretch a little longer. If you'd like to reach me, you probably know where to find me.

November 26

2011-11-26T10:57:00.001-08:00

Tomorrow is the beginning of Advent, which may or may not be the beginning of a series of Advent-related posts on my blog. Even if I don't end up writing my way through these holy days, I've tagged all my past Advent posts so you can find them easily. Most of them are other people's writings, which makes them all the more worthwhile.

One good reason to get all your holiday shopping done on Black Friday and Small Business Saturday (this is a new one to me, but I like that the day also gets a name), is that you don't have to think of presents for the rest of the season. Here is where I shall make a subtle word distinction. It is good to get present shopping over with, but it is all the more good to make this a season of giving. I say that without the Hallmark cheesiness. I mean, rather than shopping frantically, it would be appropriate in these next weeks to think about generosity, about giving and receiving with a thankful heart, the way it ought to be done. Take a hiatus from the jewelry commercials and the sales racks, and consider how you can give of your time, attention, affirmation, and acts of service. These have little (or nothing) to do with your wallet, and everything to do the season.

Last Things

2011-11-14T20:04:00.001-08:00

Less than an hour after my last post, my grandfather passed away. Any meditation on the words of C. S. Lewis seems a worthy occupation in a time of great weight, but I confess that I wish I'd been quoting something from A Grief Observed or The Great Divorce in my post - something with uncanny relevance. I like to look back and see uncanny relevancies, but there were none in the late morning of October 30th.

I learned a few things that day, and they were mostly very human things, universal in a molecular rather than a spiritual way. Looking back in a not-uncanny way, I feel I understand the incarnation much better than I did before. Death shows us what a body is, what it means to be embodied, what it means when these bodies are done with themselves, when they say "it is finished."

I have never been much bothered by death. I know that most people fear it, and that perhaps in some very ancient way, I fear it too, and that is why I jump at surprising noises and shake my head at bad drivers. But in the part of my brain that does more than simply react, I am bothered more by the absence of death than its presence. We go to great lengths, not just to avoid death for ourselves, but to avoid any reminders of it. Maybe this is just living in Los Angeles, but I'm pretty sure it's more widespread than that. I think this hurts us very deeply.

I miss my grandfather. What I miss most is caring for him. Not in some noble, Florence Nightingale kind of way, but in the way that caring for people who are older makes you forget yourself. It slows you down. It causes you to put everything else on an indefinite hold. In some ways, this is about priorities. But more than that, it's about seeing another person more than yourself. Sitting in the room with him during his last week, I felt I could watch my grandfather's determined breathing for hours without discomfort or distraction.

It is my hope that I have learned something from this, that two weeks later I would be more capable of recognizing the needs of others, more conscious of the life and spirit in those around me than I am in myself. But I think I am still much the same. It's a bit disappointing, but it's not very surprising. We are stubborn souls. I still hope, though, that underneath all my sameness some change is being wrought, day by day, word by word - a change I may not recognize myself, but which is acknowledged by the one who matters most. The other one who died. Who had a body, and blood. I can, perhaps, manage enough forgetfulness of self to let him manage the change, to leave it to him.

C.S. Lewis, from Experiment in Criticism

2011-10-30T11:04:00.000-07:00

"The man who is contended to be only himself, and therefore less a self, is in prison. My own eyes are not enough for me, I will see through those of others. Reality, even seen through the eyes of many, is not enough. I will see what others have invented. Even the eyes of all humanity are not enough. I regret that the brutes cannot write books. Very gladly would I learn what face things present to a mouse or a bee. . . .
"Literary experience heals the wound, without undermining the privilege, of individuality. There are mass emotions which heal the wound; but they destroy the privilege. In them our separate selves are pooled and we sink back into sub-individuality. But in reading great literature I become a thousand men and yet remain myself. Like the night sky in the Greek poem, I see with a myriad eyes, but it is still I who see. Here as in worship, in love, in moral action, and in knowing, I transcend myself; and am never more myself than when I do."

Madeleine L'Engle, from Walking on Water

2011-10-29T09:00:00.000-07:00

"But I was frightened, and I tried to heal my fear with stories, stories which gave me courage, stories which affirmed that ultimately love is stronger than hate. If love is stronger than hate, then war is not all there is. I wrote, and I illustrated my stories. At bedtime my mother told me more stories. And so story helped me to learn to live. Story was in no way an evasion of life, but a way of living life creatively instead of fearfully."

Flannery O'Connor, from "The Nature and Aim of Fiction"

2011-10-28T12:57:00.000-07:00

"I am not, of course, as innocent as I look. I know well enough that very few people who are supposedly interested in writing are interested in writing well. They are interested in publishing something, and if possible in making a 'killing.' They are interested in being a writer, not in writing. They are interested in seeing their names at the top of something printed, it matters not what. And they seem to feel that this can be accomplished by learning certain things about working habits and about markets and about what subjects are currently acceptable.

". . . What interests the serious writer is not external habits but what Maritain calls, 'the habit of art'; and he explains that 'habit' in this sense means a certain quality or virtue of the mind. The scientist has the habit of science; the artist, the habit of art."

Office Space

2011-10-11T16:29:00.000-07:00

Not to continually regurgitate my Pinterest finds onto the blog here, but I have been sorting through some of my collected office space ideas, and thought I'd share my favorites. If you want to take a look at the original sources, follow the link to the board, the board to the image, and the image to the link. Sounds like a circle, but it's really a spiral. Promise.

2011-10-07T10:28:00.000-07:00

Speaking of Snow Whites, here are some photos from the upcoming film by Tarsem.

October 01: LA Billboards

2011-10-01T23:13:00.000-07:00

So I was driving along in LA today, passing the Hollywood sign on the hill and offramps with names like "Melrose" and "Universal" and such, and I noticed several very interesting billboards advertising what looked like the same upcoming television series with two different titles.

On the one hand, there were these flashy images with the word ONCE (and yes, I wondered for a split second if it was some television version of the cult favorite featuring musicians Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova). I was able to make out the small print, "upon a time," which certainly cleared up the otherwise incongruous imagery of the billboard.

Then there were those nearly identical adverts with the word GRIMM. I immediately (and illegally) punched both titles into my cell phone to look up when I got home. I don't usually have much hope for any series based on fairy tales, Arthurian legends, or Robin Hood, but with these two there are very significant indicators that suggest a turn in the tide. Once Upon a Time was created by Adam Horowitz and Edward Kitsis, most notable for their work on Lost. Grimm was created by David Greenwalt and Jim Kouf.

In other words, what we have here are two very different sorts of brilliant hitting the same subject in radically different tones. What with the variant takes on Snow White coming up next year (and it's worth it to mention that the same character plays a pivotal role in the first of these two shows), I think we have a theme for the season: Magic.

2011-09-30T14:11:00.000-07:00

In a few days, I'll be running off to the desert to housesit for some friends. Housesitting is always an interesting opportunity to devote yourself to projects that would otherwise take a back-burner to normal life. I'm working on a list of things to do - manuscripts to proof, books to read, Buffy to watch, that sort of thing. If you have any suggestions, let me know. We'll see how I do.

You ask, I answer.

2011-09-26T12:53:00.000-07:00

1. Favorite childhood book?
The Golden Book of Fairy Tales (still a favorite)

2. What are you reading right now?
Joseph and His Brothers, and 2012 manuscripts

3. What books do you have on request at the library?
None. Though I requested so many books at my old library growing up, that I memorized my 13-digit library card number years before I knew my social security number.

4. Bad book habit?
Using coffee table art books as food and drink trays or laptop desks in bed. Sorry, Impressionism.

5. What do you currently have checked out at the library?
Nothing. I know. The mighty have fallen...

6. Do you have an e-reader?
My iPhone does qualify as an e-reader. I have read a few paragraphs of free ebooks here and there, but that was about a year ago when it was a novelty. I have also used it for last minute Bible references, and on more than one occasion, have pulled up documents from my email. I am more likely to use my phone for emergency writing than reading. The notebook feature is cluttered with bizarre paragraphs from stories otherwise never written.

7. Do you prefer to read one book at a time, or several at once?
I prefer one book at a time, but we live in a broken world.

8. Have your reading habits changed since starting a blog?
Yes, but I don't believe the change was influenced by the blog at all.

9. Least favorite book you read this year (so far?)
I'm gonna skip this one.

10. Favorite book you’ve read this year?
I haven't read much this year apart from work. I think I've hit 27 work-related book reads since January, which is pretty awesome. My favorite non-work book is undoubtedly Divergent. It would probably be a favorite even if it wasn't one of only two options, the other being The Strange Case of Origami Yoda. And yes, read that book you should.

11. How often do you read out of your comfort zone?
I am not sure what "out of my comfort zone" is. Horror, maybe? Romance? The Dummies Guide to Horoscopes? Short answer, I don't. Unless it's work related.

12. What is your reading comfort zone?
Literary fiction, teen fiction, science fiction and fantasy (more or less), Victorian, post-Victorian, pre-Victorian, 14th, 15th, and 16th century writing, stuff old enough that it's been translated from the Latin or Greek, epic poetry, poetry-poetry, spiritual philosophy (is that a recognized category?), and my blogroll.

13. Can you read on the bus?
I can read anywhere. Except in front of the television. Unless it's turned off.

14. Favorite place to read?
I can read anywhere. Except in front of the television. Unless it's turned off.

15. What is your policy on book lending?
I lend books. I know I will never see them again. I also borrow books. I still have them all.

16. Do you ever dog-ear books?
Hell no.

17. Do you ever write in the margins of your books?
Hell yes.

18. Not even with text books?
Uhhh...

19. What is your favorite language to read in?
English.

20. What makes you love a book?
Epiphany.

21. What will inspire you to recommend a book?

I do not recommend books because I like them. If I'm recommending something to you, it is because when I read it, I felt the book told me something about you. In some way, the book spoke your name. It was more yours than mine.

(Either that, or you've been begging me for book recommendations. You know who you are.)

22. Favorite genre?
memoirs and spirituality writing (UPDATE: I have no idea why I wrote "memoirs" here, as I do not read memoirs, utterly ever. See "biography" below. Same thoughts apply. The real answer is that I do not have a favorite genre. Sorry.)

23. Genre you rarely read (but wish you did?)

General literary fiction. Which is weird. You'd think it would be my go-to genre.

24. Favorite biography?
I am pretty sure the last biography I read was something about Beethoven in 7th grade. Unless that was just a general music history book... The only biographies I ever feel compelled to read are bios of Abraham Lincoln. Other biographies fill me with metaphoric yawn at the thought of them.

25. Have you ever read a self-help book?
No. I don't think so. Not that I recall.

26. Favorite cookbook?
Betty Crocker for the basics. The Olive and the Caper for awesome dinner parties of Greek wonder.

27. Most inspirational book you’ve read this year (fiction or non-fiction)?
I've been reading some Thomas Merton. Does that count as inspirational? What does this mean, exactly?

28. Favorite reading snack?
Tea and shortbread!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

29. Name a case in which hype ruined your reading experience.
I started The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo before the hype. I didn't get past the first chapter. Then there was hype and I felt guilty for not having finished it. So in a sense, hype ruined my I-decided-not-to-read-this experience.

30. How often do you agree with critics about a book?
I despise D. H. Lawrence. Certain "critics" put him on essential reading lists, lists of classics, required course reading catalogs, etc. I despise such critics.

31. How do you feel about giving bad/negative reviews?
I have become increasingly less inclined to give negative reviews on this blog since entering the book industry. Which is sort of a shame, since negative reviews are often way more fun than positive ones. Considering that attitude, I guess it's a good thing I don't do them anymore.

32. If you could read in a foreign language, which language would you chose?

Russian

33. Most intimidating book you’ve ever read?
Greek was intimidating. So I guess the New Testament qualifies.

34. Most intimidating book you’re too nervous to begin?
These questions are intimidating. I am not nervous to begin any books I know of.

35. Favorite Poet?
Czeslaw Milosz. Still.

36. How many books do you usually have checked out of the library at any given time?
None right now, but when I do check books out, it's usually a stack of about 7-12 titles.

37. How often have you returned book to the library unread?
All the time.

38. Favorite fictional character?
Levin.

39. Favorite fictional villain?
Spike.

40. Books I’m most likely to bring on vacation?
Best book I brought on vacation was Wives and Daughters. It was so perfect for that trip. Most recently, I started Joseph and His Brothers when I went up to San Simeon with my mom. That was excellent. But the book I always bring on every vacation is my journal.

41. The longest I’ve gone without reading.
I don't know what this means.

42. Name a book that you could/would not finish.
The one by D. H. Lawrence. Sons and Lovers of Daughters of Ladies or whatever. I would burn that book without batting an eye.

Also, American Gods. Though I wouldn't burn that one.

43. What distracts you easily when you’re reading?
Other books.

44. Favorite film adaptation of a novel?
I am a faithful follower of all BBC Victorian adaptations. North and South (not the Civil War epic) was amazing. But Little Dorrit is possibly one of the best adaptations of utterly ever.

45. Most disappointing film adaptation?
Those Twilight things.

46. The most money I’ve ever spent in the bookstore at one time?
No idea.

47. How often do you skim a book before reading it?
Only non-fiction, and rarely.

48. What would cause you to stop reading a book half-way through?
Another book.

49. Do you like to keep your books organized?
Yes. I used to re-organize my books by subject every year or so. Most of my books are now in boxes from lack of space, so I now organize them by color. My life is too visually cluttered not to make this absurd aesthetic concession on the bookshelves.

50. Do you prefer to keep books or give them away once you’ve read them?
I keep them. You never know.

51. Are there any books you’ve been avoiding?
Should I mention D. H. Lawrence again? No? Okay, I successfully avoided the Da Vinci Code craze. I avoided Elizabeth Gilbert and The Last Lecture and The Shack. But the books I most viscerally avoid are Nicholas Sparks novels.

52. Name a book that made you angry.

Graceling. Because it was a good book, but not very self-aware.

53. A book you didn’t expect to like but did?
I don't read books if I don't expect to like them. I have too many books I do expect to like waiting in the wings to waste my time on the off-chance that I'll be wrong.

54. A book that you expected to like but didn’t?
I can't remember...

55. Favorite guilt-free, pleasure reading?
Like I'd tell you that.

Hardly Dauntless

2011-09-25T17:35:00.000-07:00

Everyone who has read Divergent has loved it, and for good reason. (If you are one of the nonexistent who disagree, just keep quiet.) Usually when I finish the first book in a good series, I can't wait for the second. Divergent is the kind of good that makes you get to the end and want to read it again.

Most people in the Veronica Roth fandom are asking each other which faction they'd be in - or if they, too, are Divergent. This is an obvious question to arise from the book, as it explores a society split into four factions with essentially unique characteristics. But an equally obvious question would be about our fears.

In the novel, Tris joins a faction bent on overcoming their fears to become - as their faction's name claims - dauntless. At one point, Tris undergoes a test in which she has to face each one of her fears in order to overcome them. In comparison with her other Dauntless friend, she has surprisingly few fears to combat - though that doesn't make the ordeal any less harrowing. One character in particular is known for carrying the record for fewest fears in the entire faction. He is named for his record, and we trembling readers are unquestionably in awe of him. His name is Four.

I was thinking about Four this morning while I sat listening to a sermon about the Israelites and the Egyptians - that ancient narrative of the supreme God proving his faithfulness to a people so fearful he had to take them the long way through the desert just so they wouldn't see the warmongering Philistines and run back to their Egyptian slavery. I was thinking about Four and how he could name his fears on one hand. I was thinking about Tris and the test she took, and what it would be like to distill your fears into individual experiences, to face them head on, to know their names.

I doubt anyone's going to let a "name your fears" test go viral on Facebook in honor of Divergent. It's just as relevant a question as "what faction are you in," but a lot more personal. It's also harder to answer. It would take a great deal of self-awareness to be able to count your own fears, let alone the bravery it would require to face them all.

It's a testament to how good the book is that I'm still thinking about these things months after having read it. If you haven't yet, feel free to borrow my copy. Though be sure to return it. I'll be rereading it before long.

Eyeing November

2011-09-14T14:33:00.000-07:00

November is a month and a half away, but I'm already thinking about National Novel Writing Month and whether or not I will participate. I am thinking that maybe this will be the year I do it. Not that I remotely have time, but the whole point is to make a goal regardless of your commitments and find the time in the cracks and crannies of the usual crazy world. It helps, of course, if you know what you want to write about beforehand, and there are some significant things you can do to help yourself prepare without officially jumping the gun.

For example, an outline, drafting character sketches, writing sample dialogues, reading similar works, collecting first and last names so you don't leave a bunch of these ___ scattered through the manuscript... that sort of thing. Figuring out the very mechanics of how you will write the thing (pen and paper? trusty laptop? occasional twitter posts?) may seem overly specific, but may be just the sort of initial decision-making that will set you up for success.

Though it's worth it to note that success is not necessarily the completion of a novel. It may be that the best preparation is deciding what you really want to take away from the project. A stronger grasp on grammar, the sensation of having completed something from start to finish, or the exploration of a certain subject to the exclusion of all else for thirty solid days. It could be any number of things. The choice is yours.

2011-09-09T20:55:00.000-07:00

The other day as I was driving down the freeway, thinking about my perception of all the cars around me and the noise of their engines, I was struck by the similarity of light and sound in that they are both waves. Or rather, I was struck by their dissimilarity, because light and sound seem thoroughly disassociated from one another in our perception of them. And yet, atomically, or subatomically, they are these shivering waves coming at our senses. Bumping our neurons and sending the dendrites shuddering toward the brain.

It seemed like such a phenomenal revelation, this wave business. It took my mind in a hundred different directions all at once, and I found myself rattling off these wonders of nature and perception that were all somehow tangentially related to the fact of the sensory wave, from modern art to the temptation in the Garden of Eden.

It occurred to me that I was just as thrilled by these different ideas and their connections as I was by the fact of thinking of them at all. I had earlier, for a number of semi-legitimate reasons which I won't bother recounting, been thinking about things that thrill people, especially in relation to vampires. In the sense that vampires seem to require (at least in most traditional lore) rather extreme and inappropriate sources of pleasure, namely the whole blood-and-fang business. And in the sense that the vampire narrative represents the corruption of human desires. I imagined myself, at the vast edge of my wonder, standing next to meta-vampire as he laid claim to the epitome of human experience. I imagined myself looking askance at meta-vampire and saying quietly but superiorly, "I know something more. I know epiphany."

Eye candy

2011-09-03T17:54:00.000-07:00

This is going to be one of those posts that reflects just how much I wish Pinterest had a blog feature. Not that that's remotely a good idea, as I wouldn't honestly be too interested in reading other Pinterest blogs, but... whatever. Here are some pictures for you:

From the Boca Raton Museum of Art exhibit "The Magic of Realism," by Robert Vickrey

You never know when you might need a flickr collage of ancient maps and such.


The Bucephalus living sculpture by Robert Cannon.

Just follow the link to the other "accidental mysteries" featured here.

Tapping into my inner melodrama for this one. I really do love it, and no less with the knowledge that it will probably grace the cover of a teen paranormal romance novel some day.

Found somewhere on the blog Blue Velvet Chair. Click through at your peril.

From a collection of incredible book paintings by Mike Stilkey.

Chicago

2011-08-10T23:06:00.000-07:00

Many of my college friends are in Chicago this week for a wedding, which makes me a little sad that I don't live there. I have been thinking about living in Chicago for the last few days, since I stumbled across the pictures for HGTV's upcoming giveaway.

I won't win this one either, but I am trying really hard to figure out if there's a way to affordably DIY the Frank Lloyd Wright Tree of Life lightboxes from the living area. Looking at the photos of the view out the apartment's window has brought a flood of memories (though some of the memories, I realize, are actually scenes from Divergent playing in my head, others are real).

Some of my most vivid memories of Chicago:

When we accidentally gave a drug dealer a ride home from the Jazz Festival.

When I got suckered into giving a guy $20 to help me walk my luggage to Ogilvie (a cab ride would have cost less than half as much).

When I changed for the opera in a McDonald's bathroom, leaving Jenny to carry my snow boots around the city.

When my sister Amanda visited and we wandered farther north in the city than I'd ever been before on foot with her friend Reed and we stopped to eat in a random little restaurant and I tried pumpkin ravioli for the first time and it was underwhelming.

oh, the days of black sweaters and red lipstick

My first trip into the city, with Jenny and Micah and Chaeli, to the Art Institute, where I had my first conversation with the latter and she asked each of us in an intent and deeply interested way, "What are your passions?"

The midnight study run to the 24 hour Starbucks where, during my reading for Art & Theology, I stumbled across a picture of Constantine and realized that my friend Brendon looked exactly like him. (The next day I approached Brendon and said "Guess who you look like?!" thinking how glad he would be to look like Constantine. He gave an epic scowl and said, "I know." Three minutes later, I realized he thought I was going to be the hundredth person to point out his resemblance to Conan O'Brien, which was also uncanny. I tried to apologize, but we haven't really spoken since...).

The first time I saw the water along the lake shore turn to ice from the parking lot of La Rabida Children's Hospital.

Photo from Steven S. Gearhart. More through the link.

The view of the city coming in on the Metra, an indelible sight. If any part of Chicago makes it into a novel of mine someday in the future, it will be that train ride.

Editing

2011-08-09T11:21:00.000-07:00

I have been editing a lot lately. I have read and reread at least 23 manuscripts since the beginning of the year. Let me type that out for emphasis: twenty-three! And there are about four more left for the month of August, so I'm not slowing down any time soon (except to blog a bit, I guess).

I am learning a few things about editing as I go, the most important being that it is never a waste of time to read something again. There's a reason publishers object to digital books being priced lower than print books. They both cost exactly the same amount to make in terms of time and expertise - and since digital books have to be formatted in a number of different ways for various platforms, they arguable cost even more.

I am finding the ideal number of read-throughs for a manuscript, after all content is ironed out and sentences are looking more or less as they ought, is three. This is why there are copyeditors, line editors, and proofreaders, and why each of them have a slightly different function. Each reading is a different exercise, using a different muscle of the brain. Each reading strips a new layer of errors away from the text, until it's (hopefully) perfect.

This is also why conscientious readers have a difficult time with self-published material. It is so often lacking one - or all - of the aforementioned editorial layers. And quite honestly, a good book deserves nothing less than a thorough scrub before publication. Good readers deserve it, too. As do good writers. In short, it's good for everyone and everything.

If I'm honest, though I'm quite particular about things, these editing layers are not my strong suit. I am better with content, as most people who have undergone extensive creative writing seminars and workshops are. But the wonderful thing about these types of editing is that you can learn them. You can learn to identify a run-on sentence, especially one that seriously disturbs the language of a paragraph. You can learn to notice when quotation marks are missing, or facing the wrong direction, or not remotely necessary. These are technical things, of which some creativity but not much is required to master.

One of the most significant pieces of advice I would give an aspiring writer would be to learn these things for themselves. Because a publisher will do them for you (or should), but an acquisitions editor should not be turned off by the lack of them at that first step in the game.

More importantly, though, knowing the rules of grammar, punctuation, and even formatting - all those technical things - will really help your writing to begin with. It's rather like knowing the rules of etiquette. When you first learn them, they might feel unnatural and hindering. But as you grow familiar with them, you learn that they are tools by which human interaction, conversation, daily life, is made more simple. They become the frame for other things.

And any artist will tell you that the frame of a piece is (almost) as important as the piece itself.

Crystal Cove in Pictures

2011-07-29T19:40:00.000-07:00

Blueberry Lemon Ricotta Pancakes at the Beachcomber

The view from our table

Beginning the walk

My mother, on the phone with my brother, bridging two coasts

A map of seaweed

Thanks to Instagram, without which, I can't take pictures worth salt. Considering my proximity to the sea, that's really not worth much at all.

Snow What?

2011-07-26T13:12:00.000-07:00

The big movie news (at least in my odd world) is the dual releases of Snow White adaptations happening next year. Universal is shooting one with Kristen Stewart, and Relativity is releasing one with Lily Collins. Take a look at the promotional images:

Obviously the Kristen Stewart version looks cooler, but the problem with it is equally evident - they cast Kristen Stewart. The wicked stepmothers are also an interesting battle of the hotties, Julia Roberts for Relativity and Charlize Theron for Universal. The latter has a bigger budget, but the former (apart from not having casted an angsty mouthbreather in the lead role) has the greatest card in its favor: It's directed by my favorite film genius, Tarsem Singh.

Take a look at a few of the images from The Fall, one of my favorite films of all time. Seriously, if Snow White has any measure of this kind of aesthetic quality, Bella doesn't stand a chance:

Posts

2011-07-24T00:17:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I write elaborate blog posts only to delete them moments before publishing. It's a good thing, both for you and for me. I was about to wax angry and uneloquent on all the fuss over Amy Winehouse when more tragic things have happened in the last twenty-four hours or so. But the fuss is understandable, and I have reminded myself to be sympathetic in all things. I will try.

The difference lies in our choices. Amy Winehouse is a tragedy, because she is the portrait of Dorian Gray. She is a reminder of what our choices mean, what they look like when they are worn on our skin. A reminder that we are all one ugly decision away from that kind of living hell. When we look at her and read the verse "for the wages of sin is death," we begin to wonder if it's talking about punishment - or inevitable consequences.

Norway is a different kind of tragedy. We are talking about a massacre of innocents. They're both tragedies, and I suppose the former is better suited to speckle my Facebook wall than the latter. Because the former might make me shake my head and sigh and maybe Google some headlines. But the later will make me shut myself in a quiet room and cry.

I knew this before I read the paper this morning. I was in Edinburgh when I read about the man who shot the Amish children, the little girls in their smocks and clean white bonnets, and I really did shut myself in the toilet and sob. I remembered the Amish children on the train from Chicago to Washington D.C. I remembered when the little boy handed his father a bunch of string, and the man coiled it playfully and thoughtlessly through his fingers for over an hour, delighting in that motion with the same simple childlike simplicity of the precious children around him. I remembered how I yearned to be like them, not in my dress or habits, but in my heart. I remembered them as I tried to keep my voice down so that my flatmates wouldn't wonder what was wrong. They would think it odd, because I hadn't lost anyone personally. Yes, odd. But so it is.

Now I think of Norway. I remember the first time I saw a picture of the fjords. I remember the language, and all the incomprehensible lilts and tilts it takes on the tongue. I think of it as an English speaking person, as Tolkien might once have done, viewing it with the awed distance of one who honors the presence of something more ancient and epic than my own patchwork bloodline has ever known. I think of the tongues who once spoke it, who will speak it no more.

I am sad tonight. Can you tell?

Taking Offense

2011-07-08T00:09:00.000-07:00

I just read a post over at Publishers Weekly about a book group being vocally offended by a bookseller's reading suggestion. The bookseller, who is also the PW blogger, was baffled by their offense. Not just because they were so loud about their objections - which I might understand; after all, they should have known better than to keep reading if the material was offensive - but that they seemed reluctant to talk about the issue of sexuality.

When I was working on my graduate degree, some of my fellow students invited me to watch a widely acclaimed art house film that was laced with sexually explicit scenes. When it was over, I told them how awful I thought it was, how inappropriate, disturbing and unnecessary it seemed. In turn, they were offended that I hadn't been able to see past my puritanical hang-ups to see the artistic quality of the film.

I have remembered that post-movie conversation with them for years because it baffled me. I have still not been able to figure out why I was so quickly accused of being small-minded just because I believed that some kind of precious human intimacy had been violated on screen. Since when does a moral conviction imply intellectual inferiority? Does maturity mean you ought to relegate your personal convictions to a matter of conversational disagreement? Is it no longer politically correct to take offense? Why on earth is this?

There's a big difference between watching a scene of sexual experimentation or reading about a woman's sexual explorations, and having a conversation about it. I doubt these book group women were offended by the prospect of discussing the book as much as they were offended by the encouragement given to them to read something that they considered to have crossed 'the line'.

Now, they had every right to put the book down and express their opinion silently and graciously - or not at all - without reading another word. And I had every right to walk out of the film so many years ago, though I didn't. If I was small-minded about anything, it was that I cared too much for my friends' good opinion.

I agree that we seem hesitant, as the blogger suggests, to discuss dissenting ideas. I don't think sexuality is one of them. People have been arguing over sexual privacy and sexual freedom since the dawn of human intercourse (double meaning intended). What we continue to avoid addressing is that these two perspectives just don't live well together: those who say it's socially oppressive to take public offense over a personal conviction, and those who say that the more we relegate moral conviction to private opinion, the more we damage whatever it is that makes us human.

We seem to skirt around this distinction, focusing instead on either, a) the smallness of the minds of the conservative, or b) the audacious laxity of the liberal. (It doesn't help that these arguments somehow land themselves on two opposing sides of a political fence.)

If I believe that something is sacred, whether it be sexuality, the office of the church, the unborn, the creative urge of humanity, science, dolphins, whatever, am I not obligated to acknowledge that sanctity before the world? Have we forgotten that a belief and an opinion are two different things - and that if I believe something, I cannot believe it is true only for me, or it is only an opinion (or even an illusion)? And if something - like a moral code, perhaps - is true for everyone, and I find it being ignored or mocked or abused, shouldn't I say something? Wouldn't it be cowardly of me not to?

It certainly wouldn't be small-minded.

I suppose it would just be refreshing, after all, if the side in favor of moral license would just admit that they, too, are offended. But 'taking offense' has become their way of labeling something on our side. It's their way of taking our convictions and demeaning them to the state of a child's tantrum. Interesting wordplay. In the end, it makes real discussion - of the kind the aforementioned blogger is apparently hoping for - well...rather impossible. Not much can be done until we're all, at the very least, speaking the same language.

Summer Reading

2011-07-05T18:43:00.000-07:00

I have a lot of wonderful things to read this summer. I'm really excited about it, actually. Even so, my whole summer reading list is pretty much work-related. There are a few books I have sitting on my shelves that I kind of wish I was reading as well (not instead).

I have been meaning to reread this since I first turned the last page.

All you need to read is the first page to know you should read the whole thing.

I freely admit, I want to read this for the cover alone.

It has been too long since I last read anything by O'Connor. She is required reading for life.

Pinterest!!

2011-06-25T13:44:00.000-07:00

Thanks to my brilliant sister, I finally have a link to my Pinterest boards up on this blog. Go ahead and click through the button on the left to view all the pretty pictures I've been collecting this year. Here's a sampling. You can find all their sources by clicking through the images on their respective boards:

Michael Blake

2011-06-23T11:51:00.000-07:00

Michael Blake, author of Dances With Wolves and The Holy Road (currently pictured in my sidebar), will be chatting on blogtalkradio this evening at 7PM, about his books, his ranch, and his life. Click on the link to listen in.

Cereus

2011-06-22T20:26:00.000-07:00

The cereus is blooming twice over tonight. We are huddled round the plant, which is some sort of cactus, watching the buds turn from tightly woven pods to starry trumpets and at last to beautiful white flowers. This plant has a special history. It was my grandmother's, and my mother inherited it upon her death some fifteen years ago. It bloomed for the first time only a year ago, and now has a miraculous six buds gracing its succulent stems. Two of them are opening right now, and we are watching the petals move before our eyes, ever so slowly, from cocoon to flower.

It's a lesson from nature in waiting, perseverance, silence, patience, and doubtless a dozen other things the Puritans would better understand than I do.

YA still doesn't save. Even after all these weeks...

2011-06-21T21:09:00.000-07:00

I really didn't think I'd be writing another blog post on the YASaves issue, now so many weeks outdated, but I started drafting a comment to one of my favorite book bloggers, and it just got waaaay too long. So I am posting it here instead.

Favorite Blogger was actually writing in response to a different article - an opinion piece in the Huffington Post - written in support of Gurdon's socially disastrous WSJ article and against the ensuing broo-ha-ha. If you can follow that at all, let me try a little better to summarize the issue. Gurdon says certain books aren't appropriate for teens because of their violence and sexuality and general too-much-like-the-underbelly-of-the-world nature. Teen writers and readers (some of them, mostly the ones with twitter accounts) unite in a social networking frenzy to say that Gurdon's attempt to ban books from their category is small-minded and quack. Huff-Po opinion piece says this isn't banning; it's good parenting. Favorite Blogger says yes, parenting is not banning; but parenting other people's children is banning. Her actual words are, "That's when the word censorship comes into play."

Banning is not the same as parenting, but neither is it the same as reshelving. A book's age group is usually determined by its publisher. Obviously I know this because I am one, but it doesn't take an industry professional to trace the determination of a book's audience to its makers. This means that publishers - not parents or booksellers or even writers - are setting the standards for age-appropriate children's literature. And seriously, who made them the judges? Why are they allowed to determine what other people's children can and cannot read, but a book reviewer isn't?

I don't see a problem with a parent (or book reviewer) claiming that publishers are categorizing things offensively. If you put Catcher in the Rye on a shelf for ten year olds, I would ask that it be removed. I am not banning, nor am I parenting; I am reshelving a book out of an inappropriate age group and into an appropriate age group. As a bookseller, I did this frequently at the Stephenie Meyer table when parents would ask me whether or not their nine year old would enjoy Twilight. "Doubtful," I would say, "on a number of levels. But the real issue is whether you want your nine year old reading about vampire sex."

A parent (or book reviewer) arguing that there should be standards for age-appropriate teen literature is no different. It isn't the same thing as banning - though it may mean requesting that a book not be placed on a shelf. Now, if I tossed it out of the library altogether, that's when the term censorship comes into play. When I deny a book any audience at all, I am banning.

I think most people are objecting to this not out of a sense of literary injustice (which banning most certainly is) but out of the same impulses that have shifted the criteria of film rating over the years. What teens are 'allowed' to watch (or read) nowadays is obviously more liberal (not in the political sense) than it used to be. And there's nothing wrong with objecting to that on a social level. It's certainly not the same thing as parenting other people's children - or teens.

I have said this before, that I'd be a lot more sympathetic with people who object to Gurdon's article if the loudest of them weren't the authors themselves. Of course they object; they want to stay shelved where they are, in one of the most lucrative book categories in the business. Less cynically, they've also developed relationships with their readers. Many writers who deal with difficult themes of body image, abuse, depression, suicide, etc. probably hear regularly from young readers who are grateful that someone out there understands them. That doesn't discount the arguments that there are less graphic ways to handle that kind of material with teens, that writers are not (necessarily) qualified therapists (which is what suicidal or anorexic or abused teens really need), and that acceptance of these issues often mysteriously tends to multiply them.

Both sides have valid arguments. But I doubt any of them will start really listening to each other any time soon.

Wordless Wednesday

2011-06-15T11:40:00.000-07:00

Since when does YA save?

2011-06-09T12:08:00.000-07:00

I have waited to blog about this. I considered not mentioning it at all, but there's something about the hashtag YASaves that requires reasonably-minded people to stand up and say "Who made you God?"

For those of you who haven't been following it, here's the short version of the most recent young adult literature internet squawk:
1. Meghan Cox Gurdon, a seasoned children's and young adult book reviewer, wrote an article criticizing the increasingly dark subject matter of YA literature.
2. YA authors protested her criticism on Twitter, grouping their comments under the subject heading #YASaves.

I know. This sort of thing happens all the time. It's not really news. Except it bothers me.

Plenty of people are in uproar about Gurdon's criticism, but few who object to the article have said anything very helpful, at least that I've noticed. Most, in fact, are more defensive about their own work than anything else. Because a large body of those protesting the criticism are writers themselves.

They seem to have forgotten their days in creative writing workshops when criticism was to be taken with grace and absolute silence. In the end, they're going to write whatever they want. That's their prerogative, after all. They're writers. And every writer has to learn to be able to take all kinds of criticism because they get to write whatever they want.

Readers react. That's their prerogative. When other readers come to the defense of the author, constructive conversation occurs. But when the authors start to defend their own work from the likes of audacious readers . . . to be honest, I can't think of any other genre that functions this way. And I don't think it's healthy or fair.

In the last few years, though, YA fiction has risen to a place of power in the book industry. This isn't hyperbole. YA fiction is by far one of the best selling markets. Both teens and adults (myself included) pluck reading material from YA shelves. A category that used to be defined by a certain maturity level (in the same way that juvenile literature is literally defined by reading level) is now being driven by its sellability. It's a subtle shift, but it's significant. Not to mention that "maturity level" is now such a loosely determined category that publishers, editors, book reviewers, parents . . . okay, anyone would be hard-pressed to identify what it means. Just how mature are teens these days? Should teen literature reflect or influence that maturity? Is there a literary purpose to YA beyond just telling a good story? Are there criteria - or should there be - for addressing the darker side of things in YA lit? Is there a standard? Who sets it? How is it monitored? What is its purpose?

Most YA reviewers I've read object to the limitations of maturity restrictions. But if there are no restrictions, why is it considered YA? What differentiates YA from adult fiction? Because there are adult novels that feature teens as their protagonists (though I don't think there are any the other way around), so it's difficult to say the only identifier is the age of the characters.

These questions are old and tiresome, but they exist because no one has answered them yet and without answers we find ourselves in #YASaves arguments. I don't foresee an end to this. It's kind of like the dress code protests in high school. Every generation has them. There are always parents who say it's too lenient, and there are always teens who say it's too strict.

Unfortunately, like the dress code protests, the issue usually reflects the current cultural trends. And Gurdon's most significant observation is that the trends have become darker and more harmful than ever before. The best responses to the debate that I've read so far have been from Alan Jacobs at Text Patterns and Veronica Roth, author of the New York Times bestselling novel Divergent. Veronica observes something important: that the issue is less about the inappropriate nature of young adult fiction than it is the world it represents.

The best way to improve our YA fiction isn't to make it less like the world, but to make the world a better thing to represent. Idealistic and impossible. But seriously, probably the only option. In the meantime, it might serve everyone well for YA authors to acknowledge that words are powerful, readers are varied, and writers are accountable for the effects of their writing. What is cathartic and encouraging for one reader may very well be harmful and disturbing to another. And writers are responsible for that.

They are.

2011-06-01T21:23:00.005-07:00

I don't have anything to say, really. Just wanted to give a little hello to you readers, to let you know I am grateful for you and have not forgotten you.

Spoiler?

2011-05-28T16:29:00.000-07:00

I feel like I should have written something, here or on Twitter or Facebook or somewhere, about the epic season finale on Castle a few weeks ago. Monday nights won't be the same for a while - at least, not until we find out that Beckett miraculously is okay but mysteriously remembers nothing of the last few moments before blacking out. Not that the show is in any way predictable...

I also said nothing about the NCIS season finale, probably because it wasn't nearly as epic as Castle's. It did, however, answer the soon-to-be-tiresome question of how they will let DiNozzo be a grown up without leaving the team. The fact is, much as we love Playful Tony, we prefer it when he acts like a man. It was the only good thing about the Jeanne Benoit season, and we're glad to see that has an opening again.

I don't watch much else, except maybe House every now and then on Hulu. I'm still catching up to the last season of The Office (U.S.)... So I have no other remarkable blog-worthy (or unworthy) opinions about the finale season this year.

I am, however, avidly following the news of new shows being picked up, pilots being pitched, etc. and am very much looking forward to a future of becoming an absolute television vegetable. Networks, cable, all that jazz - here I come.

Creative Energies

2011-05-24T22:31:00.000-07:00

I have been editing a lot lately, several books at once, in fact. And there's something interesting that happens when you have a lot of work to do that is almost creative but not quite. You start having really deep urges to create your own work, projects that will take a lot of time and mental energy that you simply don't have.

There are two particular novels that I someday want to write, both related to one another, but which I always imagined in two distinct genres. The first would be literary fiction, and it would be about a young woman to whom not much happens (I've never been very good developing plot). The second would be a fantasy novel about the first novel's main character's sister. Lots happens to this girl, though I never could quite figure out what exactly. I know she gets imprisoned, more or less, and that she goes on a journey which involves a train and a walrus and a small raft in the middle of the ocean right above the Marianas Trench (work with me here).

In the process of editing other people's books (all of which have very well-developed plots, I might add), I have had this epiphany about my own two loosely related novels. They should both be science fiction! Dystopian! Still not sure what exactly will happen, but I have a very clear image of their urban transportation system. I am very excited to write this someday, and I hope that the more I edit other people's work, the more developed this unplotted multi-genre book duo will become.

In the meantime, since the two sisters are twins (another detail I came up with while I should have been thinking of other authors' characters), I've been trying to figure out what actresses could play these twins in the inevitable blockbuster hit adapted from my Pulitzer Prize winning science fiction series.

The only twins I could come up with were the Olsens. I am trying very hard to convince myself that they are amazing actresses somewhere deep beneath all that Hollywood fashion. Also . . . I still can't tell them apart. Can anyone?

Katniss!!!!!!!!

2011-05-18T13:39:00.000-07:00

GAH!!!!! First photos for The Hunger Games have made their debut on Entertainment Weekly, and I am so distracted with excitement I almost can't remember what real work I'm supposed to be doing right now. See that look in her eye?? See that?!? It says: "Don't matter who they cast next to me, I'm gonna make this movie rock your world."

2011-04-26T17:44:00.000-07:00

This blogger responds to the article that got passed around a couple days ago claiming that we're hard-wired to reject scientific data that contradicts our beliefs. I was skeptical of the original article, mostly because it was intentionally titled and tagged to annoy people who believe things. Have a faith? Well, watch out, 'cause neuroscience proves you're a fool. It was good to read a response that was a little less annoyed and a little more coherent than my own skepticism. The blog post also reminded me of how intertwined our scientific programs and our public policies are. There's nothing wrong with having an agenda, but there's definitely something wrong with ignoring the influence your agenda has on your results. This doesn't just apply to science.

What Springs

2011-04-19T15:16:00.000-07:00

The trouble with loving Pinterest as much as I do is that it can be hard to marry my activity there with my activity here, on my home of internet homes. Yesterday's very small collection of a few of my favorite fireplace shots was so much fun to compile that I thought I'd share a few springtime pictures today. Where I could, I have included their sources. Sometimes original links can get lost on Pinterest (especially with photos from tumblr). Most of them are flowers, which is actually very odd for me. Hope you enjoy:

I have always wondered if there was a creative and untacky use for doilies. The DIY community has recently answered my curiosity with a host of options, this wreath being one of my favorites. Details on how-to can be found over at Martha Stewart.

Origin unknown. I am also not very good at identifying flowers, but I have a feeling that all the flowers posted here are ranunculus. Perhaps they are my favorite. Who knew?

I can get carried away with decorating holiday items, especially cookies. But Easter eggs in particular are both challenging and fascinating to me. Details on how-to master these minimalist wonders over at Pickles.

Mostly I love the colors.

This photo reminds me of the years I gazed longingly through the pages of Victoria magazine. If it inspires you to brew a good cup of tea, we're on the same wavelength.

More photographic collections lovingly and laboriously curated here.

For no particular reason, other than it's my birthday and I like fireplaces.

2011-04-18T16:17:00.000-07:00

From FreshHome.com, an amazing collection of bathrooms with a happy bias toward tubs with fireplaces.

From Simon Dale's incredible hobbit hole home built by hand in Wales. Maybe next year's birthday present for me? Definitely should be HGTV's inspiration for the Dream Home 2012.

Speaking of HGTV, a fire in the kitchen! From their collection of rustic spaces.

Dreaming of Homes (HGTV Opinions)

2011-04-01T21:53:00.000-07:00

The past few months saw the wonder and franticity (made-up word) of my obsession with the HGTV Dream Home, an odd sort of obsession, since I mostly spent my time figuring out how I would completely renovate the place to make it better.

Okay, not completely renovate, but I had ideas. For example, I deeply resented that there was only one fireplace, and that despite the grandeur of its presentation in the living room, it was so very very small. I moved it to the master bedroom, replaced it with a larger one, and installed a third where the television sat in the guest room. I also mentally replaced the very small master tub with a spa tub and opened the guest room windows onto the jacuzzi patio with French doors. The most impractical room of the house, the awesome eight-bed dorm room, I left as it was. Go figure.

Needless to say, I did not win the house. Which is just as well, since I would have spent every penny of the cash prize on renovations instead of banking it for next year's astronomical property taxes. All this despite the fact that my obsessive mental renovation was essentially inspired by a real love for the house as a whole. For all my opinions, something about that house says, "This is your home. Come and stay."

In two weeks, the sweepstakes will open for the HGTV Green Home, but you can view pictures of the house on their website already (follow the link). While unlike in the last sweepstakes, I am confident I will not win this one (despite over 70 million entries, I still held out a hope that I would be flipping pancakes in that epic kitchen next fall), I will probably enter every day anyway. Just because, you know, you never know.

I still have my reservations about some elements of the house. Certain characteristics are carried over from Dream Home to Green Home in a pretty obvious way. The railings of both stairways, for example, look oddly similar. And many of the furniture pieces look like they could have come from the same showroom. And the kitchen cupboards obviously came out of the same brain.

I don't mind those things, of course. They're just fine. But I am still renovating in my mind. (One of the reasons I won't win; I'm already looking the proverbial gift horse in the proverbial mouth.) The bubblegum pink girls' room is possibly the worst idea since ever. It is dramatic and clever for now, but in three years the colors will be outmoded and brash. And it won't be easy to change your mind, since it's the carpet and walls and ceiling (oh my).

I would also always rather have a bathtub in the master suite, though I really do love that bathroom. And, yet again, the fireplace in the living room is mysteriously and irrationally miniature. I know HGTV has some sort of deal going with Rinnai, but what is the point of that epic chimney/hearth presentation if it's just going to frame a little bitty flame? I would understand in Southern California, but this house is in Denver where the winters are bitter cold. Please.

Of course, should I win this (hah!) I take it all back. I do love the colors, adore the furniture, and appreciate the calm simplicity of the whole design. Really, I do. In a lot of ways, this house is very straightforward. It's a simple family home, and it doesn't pretend to be much else. Which is a strength, I think. The extra-special bits are in the details. Like the television hidden behind the paintings above the mantle. Or the very curious "do" room with hidden desk consoles. Or the dog shower in the garage. These are elements that anyone could do in their own home with a little ingenuity. And that, essentially, is what we love best about HGTV. That it inspires us to take what we already have and make it something unique.

Rearranging the Bookshelf (i.e. my life)

2011-03-31T12:45:00.001-07:00

Nerdy Personal Ads.

2011-03-29T22:22:00.000-07:00

Having already tweeted, "liked," and double-"liked" this video, I shall now embed it here, adequate thanks being due entirely to Bookshelves of Doom.

Jessica Therrien

2011-03-24T15:14:00.001-07:00

I am so very excited to get to work with Jessica Therrien, new author over at ZOVA, in large measure because she is a very excellent blogger. She's only just barely begun blogging (and I mean she's got like five posts), but she's a natural. Since I simply love reading blogs from writers, and YA writers in particular, I'm super excited to ride the waves of her future. Take a look at it here.

Katniss Everdeen Continued

2011-03-18T12:40:00.001-07:00

No comment needed: http://insidemovies.ew.com/2011/03/17/hunger-games-gary-ross-jennifer-lawrence/

Cassandra Clare & Holly Black

2011-03-18T12:22:00.000-07:00

If you're a fan...

Cassandra Clare and Holly Black will be answering questions from readers over at Amazon's amazing book blog, Omnivoracious, in anticipation of their upcoming book releases next month. Holly Black will be releasing Red Glove, the second in the Curse Workers series, and Cassandra Clare will be releasing the much-awaited follow-up to her Mortal Instruments series, City of Fallen Angels.

I'm already debating whether or not to attend their Southern California appearance at the Mission Viejo Library following the release - debating, not because I don't enjoy these authors (because I do) but because I predict some hefty crowds.

Katniss Everdeen

2011-03-15T19:32:00.000-07:00

For those of you who follow YA news, film adaptation news, or popular media news in general, you should be at least vaguely aware of the significant casting decisions currently being made by our Hollywood brethren in regards to the upcoming film adaptation of Suzanne Collins's bestselling Hunger Games series (previous posts on the first, second, and third books here).

One of the most pervasive conversations in the blogosphere is the question of Katniss' race. The most recent acknowledgment of the problem that I've read is Gwenda Bond's article over at Heroes and Heartbreakers. Katniss is described as having dark hair and olive-toned skin, yet none of the actresses considered have been people of color. What gives?

Despite our outrage at other instances of whitewashing (anyone remember the original cover of Justine Larbalestier's Liar?) this is one I'm just not getting behind. In the first place, most people who have a problem with the casting of a blonde or a brunette begin talking about how Katniss' race is integral to her status as a lower class coal miner's daughter from District 12. I have no argument with the class distinction. But until casting decisions started being made, no one was having conversations about race distinctions in the Hunger Games. Yes, Katniss is "backwater," but no, she is not necessarily representative of one or another marginalized race.

Clearly, Jennifer Lawrence - the most heated name being bandied about for the role - is not quite olive-toned or dark-haired. Hailee Steinfeld, rumored to be a second casting option, is considerably more so. In the end, however, I would hate to think that the casting director's final choice is determined solely by either girl's appearance. My hope is that they choose the person best suited for Katniss' character. Because in the end, what we remember the protagonist of Collins' trilogy for most of all is not the color of her skin, hair, eyes, or clothes - but for the strength and fragility of her character.

Jane Again

2011-03-08T13:18:00.000-08:00

I really should be over the moon with excitement for the release of Jane Eyre this week, but I confess I am not. If there's anything I love in the world of film adaptations, it's the obsessive recreation of Jane Eyre every five to ten years. I have watched and rewatched nearly every Jane Eyre adaptation, carefully and giddily comparing the portrayals of Rochester and Jane to determine which - if any - adequately convey the complexity of the literary originals. Until recently, I would have been waiting with baited breath for this release. Until recently, every adaptation fell short. William Hurt, brilliant though he can be, was no Rochester; Orson Welles was too . . . Orson Welles; Timothy Dalton was fabulous, but his companion Jane was so painfully unappealing. They were all good of course, but each left such a wide window for improvement.

Then there was the 2006 BBC adaptation. Surely this could be the last. Toby Stephens and Ruth Wilson were perfect. The length was just right. The flashbacks carried the second half. The conclusion was perfectly satisfying. It was the ideal adaptation. Not another one was needed. Ever.

Yet here we are. Five years later, a new release. I wonder how long I will hold out. A week? A month? Till it comes out on DVD? We shall see.

Galleys

2011-02-26T00:24:00.000-08:00

I've been thinking lately of how I miss having the opportunity to read advanced copies of new books on the market. I read the now ubiquitous Hunger Games as an advanced reader (the original ARC is still on my shelf) and even blogged about it once upon a time.

I still read books in advance of when they come out, but they are now always the books my company publishes. There is a sense of anxiousness about those readings; they are as much to catch unnoticed errors as they are to become familiar with the material.

At one time, I almost considered myself a sort of book consultant, offering a broad literary perspective for uncertain readers. Pointing the way toward as-yet-undiscovered works of fiction (or non-fiction) for those who have not learned the careful art of browsing. It was arrogant, I know, but I was a bookseller. As with so many things, it was always so much easier to choose for others than for myself, and I was often amazed at how many books my friends could read through in a month - or even a year - when I, the book aficionado, could barely make it through a small handful.

Last year was a barren year in my reading for pleasure. Apart from the works I published, I read three books - all young adult novels and all read within two months of each other. I was a certain kind of depressed. I was also stuck in a rut.

I have often wondered why literary fiction is one of the hardest categories of books to sell, assuming that it is my own category of choice. But I did not realize that it has been a very long time since I've read any real literary fiction. I want to write it someday, but I do not read it. And this is odd.

Here are some literary fiction works I would like to read someday soon, books I've been looking at and acknowledging somewhere in the back of my mind that they are "for me." Some old, some new . . . just a few:

The Magicians
City of Thieves
The Blind Assassin
Divisadero
Against the Day

Hulu

2011-02-20T18:03:00.000-08:00

I have run out of free episodes of Castle to watch on Hulu. This is just the sort of day to waste on mindless entertainment, because there was a busy week before, and there will be a busy week after - and I woke up tired and chilly and yearned to curl up under a blanket for the first several hours after waking. Which brings me back to Castle, and why there are no more free episodes to watch, and how that's very frustrating to me. I am thinking about downloading the free one-week trial of Hulu Plus just to finish off the season, but I'd really like to start from the beginning (Hulu doesn't have the first two seasons). So I should just get in my car and go buy a gallon of milk for tomorrow and tidy something so that I can consider the day not a total waste.

2011-02-10T08:53:00.000-08:00

Thanks to Emily for sharing this video on Google Reader. I love it! And have discovered a few new fonts I didn't know in the process of brushing up on my alphabet. This is how my children will learn their ABCs; in fontastic good form.

The Alphabet from n9ve on Vimeo.

Book Links

2011-02-02T09:10:00.000-08:00

Just a few:

There's been a fiery to-do over recent book list posted by an online magazine of questionable name. The list was 100 Young Adult Books for the Feminist Reader, and it included some very good titles. When some people objected to a few on the list, the objectionable titles were removed and replaced, causing a comment-war of defense and a slew of reactionary blog posts. I started posting several links for you here, but they are all listed over at Bookshelves of Doom, along with a very interesting list of authors who have requested that their books be removed.

So, I was about to pack my bags to head to the Cairo Book Fair (I wish), but it's been canceled. Huh. Didn't see that coming...

Not quite book related, but an interesting development in internet reading habits thanks to the Rise of the App (is anyone else annoyed by that word?).

Every writer should read this, a collection of shorts on why writers write, from such greats as Flannery O'Connor, Joan Didion, and Roberto Bolaño.

Blog

2011-01-30T23:46:00.000-08:00

My dad has a lot of books sitting on the shelves of what we call the "man room," books that nobody reads but him - and even that I'm skeptical of. Some of the books are actually mine, but the generalization remains: he's still the only one who reads them. One of them, though, I plucked from the shelf a while ago in a rare attempt to educate myself on the internet phenomenon I so regularly take part in. It's Hugh Hewitt's book Blog, and it's sitting next to me right now.

Somehow it managed to land on a different bookshelf - my own - and has been there for over six months. Most of it is geared more toward political or current events blog-dom, but it does provide an interesting, Hewitt-esque perspective on the history of similar social phenomena. The most interesting aspect of the book is it's current relevance - and irrelevance. Published in 2005, the book is self-consciously outdated at six years of age.

While most of the things Hewitt acknowledges are still significant today, his rallying cry for all types of everyone in business or politics or any field of knowledge to find their corner of the blog market and stand ground . . . well, I'm not sure we need to hear that anymore. I'm pretty sure everyone's already done that. The battle now is not so much about content, but traffic. Long ago, I learned about the paralyzing nature of choice. Take one quick look at my Google Reader, and you'll be backing slowly away.

My real question from all this has little to do with blogs and more to do with the infinite nature of the internet and how that affects how our brains process information and how that affects canon and communities and . . . oh, all sorts of things. But because this is not a professional blog, because it is a personal blog read by only a few, I will leave this post at that. No conclusions. No grand statement. Not even a book review. So there.

East to Adonia

2011-01-25T13:31:00.000-08:00

I am biased about this book for a number of reasons. For one thing, I obviously published it. For another, the author is a good friend and once roommate, so of course I am more than supportive. But the fact remains that if you are looking for a good adventure story, fantasy novel, or general children's series, East to Adonia is a perfect choice. The story begins with a fascinating character, twelve year old Mercator Robinson, who has a unique ability to draw maps of anything and everything that exists. He cannot map a place that is not real, but he can map literally everything that is - from his sister's closet to the wastelands of Siberia. So it is odd, to say the least, when he finds himself using the new mapping kit his uncle brings him for his birthday to draw an island he's never heard of before. Suddenly hurled headlong into a new and mysterious world, Mercator finds himself standing on the very landscape he has been mapping with no idea how he got there - or how to get back home again. Then he meets with a princess and her talking horse, gets himself kidnapped by pirates who sell him to a wicked duke and... well, anymore and I'll be giving too much away. The point is, this story goes from one moment of awesome to the next. It is classic fantasy, classic adventure, classic kid-spirited fun.

Fontastic

2011-01-21T14:10:00.000-08:00

One of the perpetual projects in my little publishing company's life is the development of our company logo. This is my favorite project, as it involves the use of fonts. And I am rather a font fanatic. I have spent the last few hours trolling dafont.com, which is a wonderful website of free and mostly-free fonts for personal and often commercial usage. Rather than download every font I like, I sketched out my own versions of each of them as they inspired me. I thought I'd share them with you here, and if any of my noble readers have preferences, feel free to shoot me a comment. I am hoping I have determined the font-of-choice by the time the new website is ready to go up. After all, what's a corporate website without a corporate logo? Here are some photos of my most recent selections.

Happenings

2011-01-18T18:29:00.000-08:00

Rather than recount all the details of things going on this week - professionally, at least - please click through to my vocational blog at zovabooks.blogspot.com for a few updates on this week's book releases. There you'll find updates on the print and ebook release of favorite blog reader Jenny Bellington's debut novel, East to Adonia (proper review to come) - as well as the incredible ebook release of Michael Blake's historical masterpiece, Dances With Wolves.

All this activity should shed a little light on why I've been a bit tired lately - not to mention hard to get a hold of. Fear not. I will return to the light of sociability and friendliness as soon as I win this year's HGTV Dream House (which I would link to, except I want no competition).

Dancing with Words

2011-01-07T20:42:00.000-08:00

For interesting reasons I will not go into right now, I am currently rereading Dances With Wolves, the inspired novel behind the 1991 Academy Award winning film. I have just glanced once more over the words of the first page, and I cannot quite explain my feelings. This is the first book I am reading in this new year, and I feel blessed by it. It reads like something I would have encountered in my days as a creative writing student. It is a lesson in how to do this craft we call writing. It is beautiful.

The 20th Anniversary Blu-Ray of the film Dances With Wolves comes out in a few days, and I have a number of reasons for hoping that this book garners new and due attention. But foremost among those reasons are the simple facts that this book is beautiful, that it is a precious and honored representation of our Native American forebears, and that those who read it do not walk away unchanged. Thank you, Michael Blake. We still remember you.

2011: Looking Forward

2010-12-31T22:17:00.001-08:00

The new year is coming in about an hour and a half, and I am as prepared as I can be. I have just spent the last four hours going through shipping and inventory folders, the last couple days driving and visiting and getting my hair cut, and the last week drafting lists and outlines of projects (generally work-related) for the new year.

Usually, years come and go a little too quickly for me to prepare. I find my resolutions are usually made closer to March than January. This year is different. I've been mentally preparing for the changing tides for almost a month. I have looked forward to this otherwise superficial shift in the calendar with a patient eagerness. The song in my head for Christmas 2009 was Sufjan Stevens' "Sister Winter," but for 2010 I have been humming his "Chicago," with the joyfully resounding lyric "All things go, all things go!"

I am packing up the sack I will take with me from one season to the next. I am keeping little, but all of it precious, some of it awkward, and still more of it a little adventuresome. The things I'm leaving behind? I am too close to 2011 to recount them. They are at my back. I have moved on.

I have fears about the coming year. They are pretty enormous, actually, and most have to do with honoring serious commitments to other people and paying bills. I rarely worry, and I'm even less often afraid, so this is unusually hard for me. Please ignore the deepening lines in my forehead and at the corners of my mouth. Ignore them, or pray for me.

I have hopes for the year, too. They also have to do with the commitments I've made to others and the paying of bills, but they also have to do with remembering a lot of things I've forgotten in the last five years or so, rebuilding some things I've let crumble, and exploring some other things I've only just begun to discover. Vague, am I? Sorry, but this blog is still too public for everything in my head.

(I can share this small one, though. I am greatly hoping to read more non-work-related books in 2011. I read four such books last year, and that had to be some sort of record of lameness. Incidentally, all four were YA books. Much as I love them, that is just not right.)

I will not last till midnight. I say goodbye to 2010 an hour early. In sleep, I forget you. The morning brings a new day. Goodbye, and God be with you.

All I Want for Christmas are Good Graphics

2010-12-23T15:44:00.000-08:00

The following is not a reading wishlist. It's a small compilation of cover art that inspires me.

2010-12-17T13:08:00.000-08:00

Did you catch Google's tribute to Jane Austen yesterday? Probably not, if you were checking your computer in the US. The Washington Post takes a look at the controversy. Oh Google. Oh Jane.

2010-12-14T09:29:00.000-08:00

Not to over-do it or anything, but this video is a darling downer after my recent post on rejections. If you recognize the form of it from So You Want to Get a PhD in the Humanities, please look at Millinerd's take on the same.

Book Lists

2010-12-14T08:49:00.000-08:00

It's that time of year when book bloggers, reviewers, and readers of any public forum gather their top ten books of 2010. An odd time to do it, you might think, as there are still a few weeks of reading left to the year. But people are buying books now, you see, for the season of giving is at hand. And if you don't know what to give the literati in your midst, these lists should provide some sort of guide.

I am not making a list because I have hardly read anything but the fast-growing ZOVA catalog this year. Preceding my panel at Steamcon with Lisa Mantchev, I read her debut novel Eyes Like Stars, and along with everyone else on the planet finished up the Hunger Games trilogy with Mockingjay - for which, unlike with the first two, I did not provide a blog review.

In the absence of my own rigor, here are some lists from the more attentive world:

The New York Times Best 10 of 2010.

Amazon's list of the best from January to June.

and Amazon's list of best Comics & Graphic Novels.

Felix Gilman on Omnivoracious lists his top ten read in 2010. How we love him.

The Millions has been asking readers for their own lists of bests from 2010.

Indie booksellers share their favorites with NPR.

Laura Miller lists her bests at the Salon.

There are many more where these came from, but I think I'm much more interested in the lists people have for 2011. Not to rush the coming of a new year, but it is just around the corner, and 'twill be the season for unattainable resolutions. Anyone know what they'll be reading next year?

Unique to Renegade: A Day of Crafting

2010-12-13T08:58:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I joined my mother and sister on our semi-annual foray into the world of DIY crafters. Strangely enough, two of the largest craft fairs in L.A. were selling on the same weekend, so we got two fairs for the price of one trip. Unique LA spreads its wares on the top floor of the California Market Center. Amidst the booths of various sellable delights, they handed out free drinks and offered free photo ops with a yeti. Renegade, held in the Los Angeles Historic State Park, was smaller than last time we'd been there, but there was also more room to browse. Many vendors had roped family and friends into helping them so they could display at both sites. I took as many pictures as I could - which is rare for me. Here are a few:

We went to Renegade later in the day, but that meant the sparkly lights showed all the prettier.

The Weekend Store, Unique LA.
We always spend some time here. If you don't own a piece of her jewelry, you haven't been to a craft fair in LA.

I didn't get the name of this vendor, but I love the durability of these re-purposed book-marks.

Hmm . . . Didn't get this name either. Just loved the colors of this display.

Shoppers resting their feet.

Word Art!

London Manori.
I see these every year. Can I have the whole pile for a centerpiece?

Love Nail Tree.
The design of some of these sites is fascinating. Here, wooden structures were strung from the pipes in the ceiling. Their t-shirts and necklaces spoke "steampunk" rather more than they do "let's change the world." But who knows? Maybe we can do both?

Rock Scissors Paper.
Always a favorite. Not only are their products clever and darling (and fabulously designed), these women are utterly delightful. And check out that paper wheel!

We'll be back again next time around. For either or both of them, of course. If you're still struggling over Christmas presents, I'd suggest running down the vendor lists on the Unique & Renegade websites, linked above. I can pretty much guarantee that you will find something.

Rejections

2010-12-10T21:47:00.000-08:00

It may or may not be common knowledge that I work with books in a sort of publishing fashion. (No, I do not personally take submissions. No, I cannot refer you to an agent.) While I talk about books on this blog a lot, I don't generally say much about my work. That's mainly because this is a personal blog written mainly for people I personally know, and because of this I have felt free to express potentially alienating opinions (in the past, not so much recently) as well as observations and reflections on the life of faith or the current state of the Church (always and forever, no public eye shall silence me). When you do that sort of thing, it can be inappropriate to mix in your professional business.

But there are some things I do think ought to be said aloud somewhere.

As an amateur writer, I sat in creative writing courses for several years being told - as all writing students are told - that you have to receive a lot of rejection letters before you get accepted by a publisher. They don't really tell you what to do if you don't get accepted at all. They kind of pretend that otherwise inevitable future doesn't apply for this particular graduating class.

But it is quite probable that your manuscript will not be accepted, and when it isn't, you have to take a look around you at your other options. What surprises me is how rarely those options are either: a) radically revise the manuscript so that it is a viable work of fiction for the publishing houses you're aiming at, or b) find another hobby. The options frequently involve finding a publisher small enough to take your work regardless of its content. Now, I work for a small publishing firm. But our print runs are big enough that we care about the content. We care about it very much.

Frequent readers of this blog may recall that I am something of an academic snob (possibly read: elitist?), and this means I take canon very seriously. The amateur writer generally considers the purpose of a publishing house to be the printing and distribution of lots of books, especially their own. (Remember, when I refer to the amateur writer, I am also speaking of myself. There's an unfinished novel that's been sitting on my desktop for about five years now, and I am quite certain it is Penguin's purpose in business to publish it with one of their very beautiful covers.)

This is wrong. The purpose of a publishing house is actually much simpler: it is to tell the world that someone other than the author or the author's friends and family think this book is worth reading. That is, a publishing house is the first filter in the formation of the contemporary canon of public literature.

If you have received multiple rejections, you really must consider the fact that your manuscript either needs considerable revision, or it is just not what the public is looking for. The most likely reason for a rejection letter is that the editor who picked up your submission has already read multiple submissions that sounded almost exactly like yours. The second most likely reason is that your writing isn't very good.

Those of you who have read the last two sentences and objected, saying "My story is wholly unique! My writing is above the fold!" well, then you can be one of the members of the third reason: your writing, although unique and well-formed, unfortunately does not fit into a strong enough market for that particular publisher at that particular time. Perhaps you have written a brand new take on the vampire phenomenon; but new as your take may be, the vampire market is too saturated to bear an addition, however revolutionary. Perhaps your book introduces cyborgs to the zombie crowd, but the zombie craze has yet to descend from its peak; it is too early to convert zombie fiction readers into cyborg fiction readers. There are any number of reasons.

I have a weird sort of faith that if your book is very good then a good publisher will pick it up.

Doors

2010-11-29T08:46:00.000-08:00

Father Stephen writes about doors. I have always loved doors. They can be beautiful works of art, magical opportunities to enter or be freed from. This post reminds me of when I took shelter from the rain in a Prague cathedral full of tourists.

The Cast of Harry Potter Speaks the Freedom Language

2010-11-22T22:08:00.000-08:00

Movie Trailers - Movies Blog

Book Links

2010-11-17T18:30:00.000-08:00

More book links today!

Lonely planet compiles the best bookshops around the world. Have you visited any of them?

Not quite book news, exactly - but Amazon will be launching a new film studio sort of thing in which amateur filmmakers and scriptwriters can submit their work and just maybe get some funding for it.

The casting for Baz Luhrmann's Great Gatsby has been the subject of considerable internet gossip. Good to hear the role of Daisy Buchanan has gone to the brilliant starlet Carey Mulligan. Though I must confess that the disparity in age between her and DiCaprio seems just a bit . . . odd.

Book Links

2010-11-16T21:06:00.000-08:00

Screenwriter Steve Cloves talks about the process of adapting all (but one) of the Harry Potter films for the big screen over at the NYT. A fitting trailer for the fast-approaching release of Deathly Hollows, Part One.

The new Barnes & Noble Nook Color shipped out today, and Gizmodo gives us a wee introduction to the techno-infant.

Penguin has at last released their new line of hardcover children's classics Stateside . . . through Anthropologie?

2010-11-16T18:09:00.000-08:00

The trouble with listening to Psalm's album while you're trying to do anything else is that it refuses to be background music. I'm in the middle of an oceanic whirlpool, a siren-beast-woman sucking down the hapless pirate lad in the middle of the unsuspecting theatre (can you tell I'm reading teen fantasy again?) - and I keep pausing to breathe in the notes, little and big, of "Silent Song" and "Songs of Angels." Thank you, Psalm.

New Release!!!!!!

2010-11-14T21:20:00.000-08:00

If anyone happens to have a ticket to Tel Aviv in just over a week, I'll gladly take that off your hands for you. One of my favorite artists (and college roommates and top of the list of most fabulously beautiful people in the world) is releasing her second album on November 25th. The album release party just happens to be on the other side of the world from me. Oh. Well.

In the meantime, at least I can listen to the music in advance! Hear Psalm along with her (incredible) accompaniment here.

Steampunk Day Something: Finishing Books

2010-11-11T22:29:00.000-08:00

I finished Scott Westerfeld's Leviathan the other night, and it was excellent. The major characters were given just enough time to develop on their own before they met up with each other and we started to see them through each others' eyes. I finally got used to people walking around the inside of a flying whale. I finally also got used to thinking of metallic legs rather than wheels/those-treaded-conveyer-things on a tanker as being a good thing. I also got used to the characters, the tone, the general world of it all, so that when I set it down upon its final page and picked up Boneshaker by Cherie Priest a few moments later, it came as a wee bit of a shock. There's the difference, you see, between YA lit and adult lit. I don't know what it is exactly, because they're both beautifully written books (and beautifully designed, too - Keith Thompson's phenomenal illustrations in Leviathan vie with Boneshaker's incredible graphic design and formatting). But whatever paves the path between the two sections of the library, that is what lies between these two novels. I set down Leviathan feeling like a daring, clever adventurer. I picked up Boneshaker and felt like a grown-up. (In the best possible way. But still.)

I am still making my way through the latter. For Westerfeld fans - or newcomers - just know that you'll have to read this one with the sequel waiting in the wings. Because this is no stand-alone introduction to the series. It's a proper launching pad. And I'm so very excited to continue with it - once I've gotten a hold of a copy of the second one, of course.

Steampunk Day Four: We Begin Our Dissertation

2010-11-05T22:08:00.000-07:00

So, I've actually been reading Leviathan, pictured and posted below, and I find myself continually approaching it as an academic. It's hard not to, since the book re-imagines the origins and development of the first world war. There's so much cultural, social, historical, philosophical richness to those origins. Who could resist a little intellectual elaboration?

I scribbled about four pages worth of thoughts on steampunk's revisionist historicism as a method of preservation against eschatological fears (among other things). Then I read this post over at Millinerd, and I get a whole other wave of thoughts on steampunk as a way of infusing post-enlightenment history with the aesthetic consciousness it originally lacked. I have no idea if I'm off-base with this or not, but we have wandered around for so many years regretting the apparently ugliness of the inheritance of the enlightenment. Could steampunk be a way of unconsciously (or otherwise) re-imagining that brief history with the beauty it lacked? It would explain why it focuses on that specific span of time between all that business with the French and WWI.

Or should I just cut it out and keep reading?

Steampunk Day Three, Just a Quick Link

2010-11-05T13:51:00.000-07:00

Scott Westerfield picked up on the steampunk train because he is smart about stories and creative with his brain. Mucho kudos to him for that. But as much as you should read his books (Leviathan, for a start, which is sitting by my bedside even now), you should also read his blog. If nothing else, read it for phrases like "RATHER MORE BAD" referring to costumed Storm Troopers as opposed to aristocratic nobility, all in response to that Charles Stross article that's got steamers all fabulously defensive of their genre. Gah. He's delightful.

Charles Stross, on the other hand, is not. At least not in this post. We'd probably have some lovely conversations over even lovelier tea in any other context. But really, only someone very short-sighted would be so condescending both to history and to fanboys all in one fell swoop - and on the internet, no less! The irony will come around in about a hundred years when Stross's grandchildren look at our generation and call us dictatorial barbarians with no sensitivity or intelligence or sense of democratic well-being, and then criticize their own novelists for romanticizing our own period. My dear one, it is fiction. This is about as nutty as previous linkage to readers getting up in arms over the difference in vampire skin conditions between paranormal authors. Not to mention the fact that the moment you start thinking your own generation is so much better than the last one, you fail to learn from it.

Steampunk Day Two, Featuring Felix Gilman

2010-11-03T19:38:00.000-07:00

Felix Gilman, author of The Half-Made World, was discussing the trend toward anachronistic fiction over at Omnivoracious yesterday. (Sidenote: If you are interested in trends in the book industry and you don't follow Omnivoracious, you are doing yourself a disservice. It's Amazon's book blog, and they do a fabulous job of letting you know all the most relevant book buzz in the most unpretentious and jovial sort of way.) I had seen the cover for The Half-Made World somewhere else last week and was half a click away from posting it to my Pinterest board featuring lovely cover designs when something (squirrel?) distracted me. Serious failure. This cover just makes me love cover art all the more.

I double-perked up about the book when I noticed the Ursula K. LeGuin blurb on the front. Sometimes when a notable author blurbs your book that just means you got lucky. Or you found yourself a really awesome publicist/agent/editor/spy who managed to blackmail said notable author into making up something about how great your book is. But there are certain authors whose names actually tell the reader something about your book. If Ursula K. LeGuin has blurbed you, you have a special piece of fiction on your hands. Hear it: Special.

All this I noted before reading the aforelinked post over at Omni. Everything Gilman says about the move toward steampunk and the possibilities in contemporary fiction just make me want to read his book all the more. It's not a long post, but this paragraph in particular struck me as hitting the nerve of the thing. It's especially relevant because he's mostly addressing the "weird, weird west" element of steampunk that is the featured theme of this year's Steamcon (see previous post regarding reason for my post-fest on steampunk in the first place).

Read on:

. . . all of this stuff--steampunk generally--is fiction about the future, for people who can’t really believe in the future right now. The future is closing off, the natural world dying, technology no longer looks very optimistic to a lot of people. SFF looks back to the birth of modernity, the birth of technology, and imagines how things might have started off differently--what went wrong--how things might have been better, or maybe worse -- but either way it imagines alternative paths, there at the beginning. And if that’s what you’re into, then America, the west, the frontier, is inevitably where you’ll end up. The most open and optimistic of beginnings, the moment of greatest perceived potential; and the moment when the original sins of civilization are at their starkest.

I have to admit that steampunk is most appealing to me in the context of (anachronistic) Victorian England, but this makes so much sense that I can't imagine why I never though of it myself. Read that last line again: "the moment when the original sins of civilization are at their starkest." That sounds to me like the heart and soul of a great novel.

Steampunk Day One

2010-11-01T19:16:00.000-07:00

In about two and a half weeks, I will be making the trek to Seattle to join a hoard of rather fascinating people celebrating a fast-growing subgenre of fantasy/sci-fi most commonly known as Steampunk. As a publisher, I will be sitting on panels acknowledging the importance of the sub-genre, the growth of the sub-genre into it's own genre proper, and a number of other things I haven't figured out yet.

The truth is that I know very little about steampunk in general. What I do know, I know as a not-so-distant observer of culture. I know as an expert in my field - the book industry. I know as much as anyone else who has visited steampunk blogs, webshops, and bookstore shelves with the curious fascination that comes over one who feels too old to join a new trend but young enough to realize that I would have eaten it up ten years ago.

Even so, when I mention steampunk to friends/family/acquaintances, I realize that I do, actually, know a lot more than I give myself credit for. Much of the world still hasn't heard of the movement - if I may be so bold as to dub it so. I may not yet have donned the ubiquitous goggles, and I may not yet own a bronze-ribbed corset, but I could at least begin to answer the question "In what way is steampunk a modern myth?" Which is a good thing, since I'll be discussing that very topic at Steamcon in three weeks.

In the meantime, I'd like to use this blog to chart the development of my learning. I will be taking a three week intensive dip into the steampunk world in preparation for the great convention. It won't be very difficult; I've been studying Victorian literature and culture since high school. I have examined the various moods and possibilities of modern mythology since I first stepped foot in the Edman Tower at Wheaton, where Dr. Hein opened up for us wide-eyed collegiates the anagogical mysteries of A Canticle for Leibowitz, Lilith, and Till We Have Faces. In so many ways, this will just be a freshening up. Regardless, I'd like to take you with me.

To start, I'll link you over to a recent critical post over at NPR. This article is more interesting for the reader comments than it is for the content. While you're at it, take a look at the main site for Steamcon itself. Have fun. :)

Twilight Keeps Buzzing

2010-11-01T18:47:00.000-07:00

Anne Rice gives her thoughts on the Twilight series, and everyone is up in arms on one side of the fence or another. Which is funny, 'cause I don't see these lines as being very critical:

['Twilight']’s based on a really silly premise: that immortals would go to high school. It's a failure of imagination, but at the same time, that silly premise has provided Stephenie Meyer with huge success," Anne said. "The idea that if you are immortal you would go to high school instead of Katmandu or Paris or Venice, it’s the vampire dumbed down for kids. But it's worked. It's successful. It makes kids really happy.

Sure, calling the Twilight books "silly" isn't very flattering, but "it's worked" and "it's successful" and "it makes kids really happy" sound pretty good to me, considering the vast expanse between Anne Rice's version of vampires and Stephenie Meyer's. The article later concedes she even referred to the concept of Twilight as "almost a stroke of genius." So...why all the fuss? There's a point at which sales figures outweigh any idealistic purism you might have for a genre. I can moan and groan all I want about the absurdity of The Da Vinci Code. Or the inanity of Eat, Pray, Love. After a few million copies fly off the shelves, my convictions just sound a bit...well, pretentious.

So I'd like to tip my hat to Anne - center of so much fuss herself lately - for giving credit where credit is due. There's just no sense arguing with a phenomenon.

2010-10-29T12:50:00.000-07:00

Dear World,

God provides. Don't believe me? Well . . . he does. That's all I can say.

On a strangely not unrelated note, I've been thinking about how Harry Potter, or more specifically, Hogwarts, has set the cultural stage for the successful rise and dominance of Steampunk as a legitimate and widespread aesthetic. Just stick that in your cap and chew on it. Or . . . something.

Developing Healthy E-Habits

2010-10-27T09:15:00.000-07:00

The morning is already thick with book news. It was only a matter of time before a full-fledged children's e-reading system hit the market, and it looks like today is the day. I am typing this with the sound of a creepy voice reading "Jamberry" from the NOOKKids website in the background.

I know, simple interactive e-readers have been around for kids for a while now, but none of them have been mainstream. They've been overpriced, under-quality devices with a very limited library. Now with about 12,000 titles ranging from Rick Riordan's popular series (which has been available on e-readers since the beginning) to Go, Dog. Go!, the new color-based Nook has youthful legs. Of course, unless the techno-savvy parents who are considering these devices for their children have unlimited resources, there is one very obvious concern: What parent is willing to spend $150 dollars to give a sensitive, easily damaged, touchscreen e-reader to their three year old? The last thing we want to do is teach children not to pick up their books because they might hurt them. This is why we teach them to read with board books and tough paperbacks. So, in a practical sense, how are parents going to handle this? Or will they bother at all?

I might ask why bother with this development at all, but I already know the answer. We do it because we can. That seems to be a great impetus of most modern technology. Little of it is really helpful or even essential.

People have been wondering about children's e-reading for a while. I don't know anyone in particular who has been waiting for this break-out with baited breath. None of the five-year olds I've met with have begged me to give them an update on the latest digital media for their demographic. But we've expected it. It was inevitable. And it's just like Barnes & Noble to come up with the latest feature that will add to their list of perks without ever actually setting them above the market (shall we say book lending anyone?). Color is cool, but the Nook people have a way of releasing the newest thing ahead of anyone else just to get those initial sales. I assure you, before the novelty has worn off, Kindle and perhaps even Kobo will come out with a color device that will function more smoothly and work more accessibly - all because they took a little time.

I am being generous with the e-culture, of course, because I know that more inevitably than color screens, future generations will read almost exclusively through pixelated monitors. To balk against it will be as futile and absurd as objecting over the development of the steam engine. But I will say for the record, because many of you are with me on this, that the sight of Jamberry on that screen, pausing mid-creepy-voice narrative for a capture the berries game was beyond depressing. Our children will have very quick brains, able to capture and conceptualize information at an alarming speed. That is certainly a good thing. But they will have lost the ability to ruminate, dwell, contemplate, and even be careful.

Not to mention - which is a whole separate argument - that the spread of technology like this only serves to further broaden the gap between developing nations and our own. But as I said, that is a whole other argument - and certainly not one which is intended to suggest halting the flow of progress so that our sister nations can catch up with us.

Oh, the changing world. Who can keep up with it?

YA Shelves

2010-10-27T09:08:00.000-07:00

Here's an excerpt from an article on dystopian fiction over at Popmatters:

It’s possible YA shelves act as a sort of magic 8 ball for the rest of the literary scene because they are so unbiased. Few bookstores break their YA sections into defined genre shelving. Sure, there are series shelves, and some very broad genre shelving, usually associated with age breakdown. Beyond these, though, most YA books are shelved in alphabetical order. Magic realism lives next to humor, which cuddles up to romance, which nudges sword and sorcery. Most teens, too, are open about their reading choices—when was the last time you heard a teenager claim they prefer Jack Q. McWriterson’s less mainstream, more critical earlier work?

I knew there was a reason I loved that stuff. Have I not always been talking about genre-melding? The beauty of the young adult section is that sci-fi, suspense, and serious all sit right next to each other, on an equal playing field. Of course, they have their cover art to distinguish them, but there's no implicit division of worth or quality based on their location. Thank you.

2010-10-22T22:50:00.000-07:00

This is my idea of investing: http://www.cnbc.com/id/39340301/

Philippians 3. 12-14

2010-10-11T11:35:00.000-07:00

Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, though I have assurance of salvation through the sanctification of the Spirit of God. We live in a time-bound world. We obtain nothing, nor is perfection a thing to be grasped. We live, and life is a process. Change is, in fact, proof of life.

But I press on to make it my own. What is it? Knowing Him and the power of his resurrection, becoming like him in sufferings and death, that by whatever means (because life is a process) I may attain the resurrection from the dead (because death in Christ is also life in Him).

I make this my own because Christ bothered to make me His own. He went to a lot of trouble for me, too. This is not about evening the score. What other response can you give to the Hound of Heaven than hot-blooded pursuit?

Brothers and sisters, I haven't made it yet. Because life is a process, of course, and because my failures can be counted just as well as my successes. But one thing I do: failures and successes both, I forget. They're in the past, and don't do me much good anymore - being past. I forget these things because I'm no longer responsible for them, though I may live with their consequences. I am responsible for what I do now. With this in mind, I put them behind me where they belong. And I strain forward to what lies ahead.

I press on. Which is the same as pressing into. Press forward, into the Spirit of God who lives within and without, who paves the forward way with a Will. There is a prize ahead, and it is my high calling. I press on.

9 Things I Wish I Could Do:

2010-10-10T14:55:00.000-07:00

1. sew all the clothes in anthropologie myself
2. decorate cakes
3. carve ornate furniture
4. oil paint
5. play Bach
6. speak three other languages fluently, particularly Russian, Italian, and Greek
7. fashion books by hand (working on that one)
8. make people feel welcome
9. shop at thrift stores

Hogwarts Humor

2010-09-29T23:09:00.000-07:00

This is absolutely my favorite thing the internet has produced in for-ever. Check out what it looks like when Hogwarts gets Wi-Fi!!

2010-09-28T09:27:00.000-07:00

The New York Times discusses recent developments in west coast libraries. Is privatization taking over our public literacy and education? This article makes it sound like a bad thing, but there have been other examples of such developments working better than we'd like to admit.

2010-09-25T18:38:00.000-07:00

Recently, literary legend Neil Gaiman posted a photo on twitter of Diana Wynne Jones and Robin McKinley that he'd taken when the three of them crossed paths at Diana's home one pleasant afternoon. The photo was much squealed over, for what fantasy fan would not want to be in the room at such a meeting of minds? Robin subsequently blogged about the post, which led to Leila, my go-to YA librarian blogger, linking to it, which led to me clicking and scanning and oohing and aahing over one thing and another. The real gem in all this (because the only people who can really, truly appreciate three such writers sharing conversation and tea are those three writers themselves) is that I stumbled across the first three chapters of Robin McKinley's next book, Pegasus. You may read them here.

Dreams

2010-09-23T10:52:00.000-07:00

Last night, I dreamed that Dr. Lundin and I were musing over the development of humor in a young mind while reclining under a summer tree waiting for the principle to unlock my apartment. I had just saved the entire student body from being confined in the main building by happening to have the second key for a small window. After filing most of the students out between the panes, we rested there. My boat to the mainland wasn't leaving for a while, and I had temporarily lost my passport anyway. He told me he was teaching a summer course on punctuation, and I begged to audit. The schedule was convenient, and I forgot I wasn't a student. At last, the truth behind the elusive ellipses would be discovered! Then I woke up and realized I had slept in . . . again.

Limited

2010-09-22T22:20:00.000-07:00

I have always been fascinated by limited edition books, books as art, cover graphics, unique bindings, etc. So you can imagine my fascination and delight when I came across Puffin's limited edition collection of Treasure Island, The Secret Garden, James and the Giant Peach, and several others. It reminds me of the Penguin video made in response to the ebook phenomenon during the series of clips made for the publisher's 75th birthday (yes, that's this year) in which some Penguin designers discussed the increased importance of cover graphics in the digital age. We will be much more likely to consider a physical book worth spending money on if we find it beautiful on the outside as well as within.

Penguin has long taken that seriously, and this is yet another testament to how much so. My only sorrow (apart from the fact that the Lauren Child edition of The Secret Garden is already sold out) is that these are products of Penguin UK - not Penguin USA. Deep, deep sigh.

2010-09-21T11:06:00.000-07:00

Okay, this is not nearly as interesting or important as Amanda's work in Madagascar, linked below, but . . . I sooo want to see this movie.

2010-09-21T10:29:00.001-07:00

Check out Amanda's most recent blog post on her work with Operation Smile this past week. You can see pictures and read more about it here.

2010-09-17T16:51:00.001-07:00

Oh, Coralie Bickford-Smith, how I love everything you do.

Remembering

2010-09-11T15:23:00.000-07:00

I tried posting this as a Facebook status, but it was too long. Apparently, Facebook has limits. I'd be frustrated, except for the awareness in the back of my mind that something requiring this many characters probably shouldn't be relegated to a forum of glib, occasionally clever, momentary comments on a social networking site. The blog, awkward and ethereal though it may be, proves a better shelf.

It occurred to me this morning that fourteen and fifteen year olds probably only know why this day is a big deal because they've been told about it. Not because they remember it. Which doesn't make me feel old, actually. It just keeps me fascinated by the workings of time and the nature of history. Like when I first realized I was not only alive when the Berlin Wall fell, but old enough that I could easily have remembered it if I'd been paying any kind of attention.

It's the sort of realization that inspires me to turn on the news - though a few minutes of that quickly dispels the inspiration. One thing I remember vividly about the events of 9/11 was how surprised I was at the number of people who just 'woke up and turned on the TV'. The likelihood of me just happening to wake up and turn on the news is about as likely as me waking up and deciding to go for a jog. It's not completely unlikely, of course. It happens once every three or four years. The likelihood of me doing so on the precise morning of a national disaster, well, that's a little closer toward the impossible. It was interesting, though. Amidst all the emotional turmoil, national feeling, shock, awe, confusion, and what-have-you, there was this mental poll going on in my head. 'How many of you woke up and turned on the TV?'

Everyone shares where they were when they heard the news. I was in my morning psychology class. Most people, including the sloppy, lazy, Freudian 'professor' with her 7-11 soda and uncombed hair, were late to class. That is, if they bothered showing up at all. The 'professor' (whose name I have chosen not to remember she was so completelyhorriblyawful) immediately launched into a conversation about the planes and the towers, and I had no idea what she was talking about. It was a full half hour of her rambling before I realized she was discussing some sort of attack that had happened that morning that she had witnessed after she just 'woke up and turned on the news'.

There is some information that can only be delivered with care. If information of a certain tender nature is not delivered with a special kind of honor, reverence, dignity, and mourning, it will take much longer for the receiver to process than it should. It reminds me of the first time I came home from college for Christmas. I went to church and was lovingly greeted by my dearest friends. The service was starting in a matter of moments when one of them plopped next to me, giving me a big hug and welcome home. The first words out of her mouth were 'Did you hear about Levi?' Her face was glowing with her first greeting. She spoke with a kind of eagerness that made me half expect Levi to pop up behind her saying, 'I'm visiting your church because I love the Lord and have found peace at last!'

Levi was a friend from high school whom we'd all been praying for for years. He was a ballroom dancer, and I took algebra II with him, occasionally passing notes between desks on our graphing calculators. I used to give him rides home in the gold 280 Z. He always seemed a little disgruntled, at odds with life, or himself, or something. The kind of kid that you remember to pray for years later. 'Did you hear about Levi?' 'No! What!' I am filled with sudden excitement, readiness for joy, an anticipation of long-awaited good news.

'He was stabbed to death in his dorm room at school. No one knows why.' Another friend walks up with a big smile to welcome me home. The service starts. We're hugging and smiling and singing and I'm wondering, 'What did she just say?'

There are ways to deliver all kinds of news. Maybe that's why people turn on CNN the moment they wake up, so that a professional can deliver it to them in impersonal tones the moment it happens. Sitting in my psychology class, having my grungy gnome of a teacher allude to the planes and the fall of the towers like we all knew what she was talking about - not the way to go. Amy DiBello, my English prof, made up for it later on that day. She had us write it out. We sat in some silence, and later we talked it through. There is a way to honor a tragedy. I am not sure if I've learned that way myself, but I know it when I see it. It's something other than pity. It's reverence for an experience close to you that may or may not be your own. There are words, like 'murder' and 'attack' and 'death' and 'grief' that should be spoken slowly and with a careful eye to the person who hears, to watch their minutest reaction, to know whatever change in heartbeat or bat of eye signals 'slower yet,' or 'now keep quiet'.

Almost ten years now, and we argue over mosques that do or do not honor the dead. I wonder if perhaps the passing of time unlearns our reverence. Our awareness. Our closeness to these things. And I wonder how to learn them again.

2010-09-11T14:40:00.000-07:00

When I grow up, I want to be Marilynne Robinson. It's not gonna happen, of course. But I guess it's something to strive for, right?

Mockingjay

2010-09-08T13:23:00.000-07:00

Finished reading Mockingjay yesterday. Much as I utterly love these books, this third and last one did, in fact, bother me a bit. Apart from the unnecessary reliance on death and destruction this book resorts to - in measures wholly different from the first two, it seems - there was something generally dissatisfying about the main character's attitude throughout the whole. Laura Miller dissects this feeling in her article at the Salon, here. Don't read it if you haven't read the books! Spoilers beware!!

More Other Blogs

2010-09-04T09:32:00.000-07:00

Emily, I'd ask you to add this to your list, but I think Jenny B will have to take this one. The other blog I would write if I wasn't already blogging five times over (more or less) would be one on maps. I have maps hanging in my bedroom in Long Beach and a very well-framed map hanging in the guest room that occasionally bears my vague sense of ownership over at Emily's in Oxnard. They give me the same sense of security, familiarity, and comfort that a full bookshelf does. My maps are not the bright blue and red kind that you get for free from AAA. They are usually sepia toned, whether by accident or design, and feature places I care about, like Rome and Edinburgh. They are all gifts (though now that I think of it, I don't think I technically own two of them).

The mapping blog would discuss the various necessaries of a map, which truthfully I know nothing about. It would mostly go into the history of things, narrowing in on clever and perhaps even fanciful anecdotes about various characters and events in the lives of one or another map. There would be book reviews, critical comparisons from east to west, interviews of geography experts, and reproductions of maps both actual and fantastical. Posts on the relevance of maps appended to fantasy novels. Posts on the creation of maps during Imperialism and their effects on European worldview. DIY projects involving discarded maps. Maps in elementary schools. The translation of maps online. The pros and cons of the GPS mindset.

There is so much one could do!!!!

Blogger blog blog...

2010-09-03T22:30:00.000-07:00

I know. I hardly post at all for months, and then three rapid fire posts in a day. What can I say? Guest blogging over at the Freesparrow blog got me inspired, I guess.

Anyway, just wanted to drop a note to say that I have reorganized (and added to) all the links on the left. You now have a summarized version of my Google Reader subscriptions, at your fingertips. You'll find them sorted, in general, by topic. From authors I'm following either because I publish them or, as in the case of Shannon Hale, because I wish I published them - to the book blogs that keep my eye more or less fixed on the industry's pulse. Okay, we all know I follow Penguin and Chronicle because I wish I was them. You'll be able to watch Amanda's gradual developments in Madagascar, take a look at causes I care about, and much more!

It's a veritable link-fest. Whatever a link-fest is.

Other Blogs

2010-09-03T21:54:00.000-07:00

Everyone has a blogger they follow that they'd really like to be friends with, but aren't. (Can I explain how hard that sentence was to construct?) You know, like the cool kid in school you wanted to be best buds with. But weren't. Anyway, there are two blogs I follow that are written by very different women living radically different lives. One of them I have always known I wanted to be friends with. Someday I will comment on her blog in a non-stalkerish way and express that fact. Not yet.

Today, I realized for the first time that I do, in fact, wish I was friends with the other one as well. I post links from her blog all the time, so I hesitate to give away the source of so many of my blog's more interesting features. Oh well. It's only fair: http://bookshelvesofdoom.blogs.com/