Misadventures in Spelling

A letter to dyslexic children from Vice President Nelson Rockefeller

2011-03-17T15:23:00.000-07:00

Shortly after I was diacnosed with dyslexia, my mother sat me down and read me a letter from former Vice President Nelson Rockefeller to dyslexic children. I remember feeling very empowered after hearing the letter. In the middle of a very stressful and confusing time in my life, I caught a glimps of hope that maybe life didn’t have to end after getting labled dyslexic.

I’m now in the middle of writing a young adult novel staring a dyslexic teenager. In the novel, she is read an excerpt of this same letter that inspired me so much as a child. It actually took me quite a while to track down the passage. So I decided to post the full text here. I’m trusting Rockefeller will approve of me continuing to spread his message.

So without further ado: A letter to dyslexic children from Vice President Nelson Rockefeller.

For I was one of the “puzzle children” myself—a dyslexic, or “reverse reader”—and I still have a hard time reading today.

But after coping with this problem for more than 60 years, I have a message of encouragement for children with learning disabilities—and their parents.

Based on my own experience, my message to dyslexic children is this:Don’t accept anyone’s verdict that you are lazy, stupid, or retarded. You may very well be smarter that most other children your age.

Just remember Woodrow Wilson, Albert Einstein, and Leonardo da Vinci also had tough problems with their reading.

You can learn to cope with your problem and turn your so called disability into a positive advantage.

Dyslexia forced me to develop powers of concentration that have been invaluable throughout my career in business, philanthropy, and public life.

And I’ve done an enormous amount of reading and public speaking, especially in political campaigns for Governor of New York and President of the United States.

No one had ever heard of dyslexia when I discovered as a boy, along about the third grade, that reading was such a difficult chore that I was in the bottom one-third of my class.

None of the educational, medical and psychological help available today for dyslexics was available in those days.

We had no special teachers or tutors, no special classes or courses, no special methods of teaching—because nobody understood our problem.

Along with an estimated three million other children, I just struggled to understand words that seemed to garble before my eyes, numbers that came our backwards, sentences that were hard to grasp.

And so I accepted the verdict of the IQ tests that I wasn’t as bright as most of the rest of my class at the Lincoln School in New York City.

Fortunately for me, the school (though it never taught me to spell) was an experimental, progressive institution with the flexibility to let you develop your own interests and follow them.More to the point, I had a wise and understanding counselor in Dr. Otis W. Caldwell, the headmaster.

“Don’t worry,” he said, “just because you’re in the lower third of the class. You’ve got the intelligence. If you just work harder and concentrate more, you can make it.”So I learned, through self-discipline, to concentrate, which in my opinion is essential for a dyslexic.

While I could speak better French than the teacher, because I’d learned it as a child, I couldn’t conjugate the verbs; I did flunk Spanish—but now can speak it fluently because I learned it by ear, later, at the Berlitz School.

My best subject was mathematics: I understood concepts well beyond my grade level. But it took only one reversed number in a column of figures to cause havoc.

When I came close to flunking out in the ninth grade—because I didn’t work very hard that year—I decided that I had better follow Dr. Caldwell’s advice if I wanted to go to college.I even told my high school girl friend that we would have to stop dating so I could spend the time studying in order to get into Dartmouth.And I made it by the skin of my teeth.

I made it simply by working harder and longer that the rest—eventually learning to concentrate sufficiently to compensate for my dyslexia in reading.

I adopted a regimen of getting up at 5 a.m. to study, and studying without fail. And thanks to my concentration and the very competitive nature I was born with, I found my academic performance gradually improving.

In my freshman year at Dartmouth, I was even admitted to a third-year physics course. And in the middle of my sophomore year, I received two A’s and three B’s for the first semester. My father’s letters were filled with joy and astonishment.

I owe a great debt to my professors and to President Ernest M. Hopkins. I had met Dr. Hopkins earlier and was so impresses that I made Dartmouth my goal. Most of all, however, I think I owe my academic improvement to my roommate, Johnny French.

Johnny and I were exact opposites. He was reticent, and had the highest IQ in the class. To me, he was that maddening type who got straight A’s with only occasional reference to books or classes. He was absolutely disgusted by my study habits—anybody who got up at 5 in the morning to hit the books was, well, peculiar.

Inevitably, Johnny made Phi Beta Kappa in our junior year, but my competitive instincts kept me going. We were both elected to senior fellowships and I made Phi Beta Kappa in my senior year.Johnny, of course, had the last word. He announced that he would never ware his PBK key again—that it had lost all meaning.

Looking back over the years, I remember vividly the pain and mortification I felt as a boy of 8, when I was assigned to read a short passage of Scripture at a community vesper service during summer vacation in Main—and did a thoroughly miserable job of it.

I know what a dyslexic child goes through—the frustration of not being able to do what other children co easily, the humiliation of being thought not too bright when such is not the case at all.
My personal discoveries as to what is required to cope with dyslexia could be summarized in these admonitions to the individual dyslexic:
- Accept the fact that you have a problem—don’t just try to hide it.
- Refuse to feel sorry for yourself.
- Realize that you don’t have an excuse—you have a challenge.
- Face the challenge.
- Work harder and learn mental discipline—the capacity for total concentration—and
- Never Quit.

If it helps a dyslexic to know I went through the same thing…
- But can conduct press conferences today in three languages…
- And can read a speech on television (Though I may have to rehearse it six times…With my script in large type…And my sentences broken into segments like these…And long words broken into syllables)…
- And to win Congressional confirmation as Vice President of the United States…

Then I hope the telling of my story as a dyslexic child could be an inspiration to the “puzzle children”—for that’s what I really care about.

What I'm Writing

2011-02-11T09:46:00.000-08:00

I’ve been meeting several other aspiring writers lately, usually though my other correctly spelled blog where nobody knows I’m lysdexic. I’ve been talking to one of my new writing buddies quite a bit about my current project (The latest attempt at a YA novel with a dyslexic main character). In a recent email, she said, “You seem really knowledgeable about the issue, and very sensitive about it. Are you a special ed teacher yourself?”

Instead of emailing her back with a simple NO, I’ve decided to post my full response here.

I'm not a special ed teacher, I'm dyslexic. I had a lot of suport as a kid, several hundred hours of tutoring and an endless stream of audio books, but I didn't really get to the point where I could read actual books until I was in my 20's. I still listen to ten audio books for every one book I read. I think my inability to read as a kid drove me to invent stories of my own. Even though there were years when I never really expected to ever learn how to read, I've always wanted to be a writer.

Learning disabilities never really go away. That's the main thing I want to convey in this book. Stories about dyslexia all go the same way: kid can't read, kid is diagnosed with dyslexia, everyone lives happily ever after, the end. But that's not true. I've known for a long time that I needed to write an honest story about dyslexia, but it's a hard story to tell. This book is actually my third serious attempt.

A couple years ago, I gave up and started writing other contemperary YA stories about literate characters. I learned a lot about writing and story structure in the process. Some of the stuff I wrote was crap, but the story I'd been working on up until a month ago had a lot of promise.

Then three weeks ago, it just hit me. I figured out how to tell this story in a way that will work. So I tabled my old project and have been writing like a mad woman ever since. This project is far less autobiagraphical than my earlier attempts, which works better for the overall story arch, but also makes me kind of nervious. I want to be honest and accurate, even though I'm totally making stuff up.

Dyslexia is genetic, so I have a ton of dyslexic relatives. They were pretty much my only beta readers on my earlier attempts, which is good and bad. I definately want other dyslexics to look at it and say, "yes, that's accurate." But the functionally illiterate aren't generally the best judges of effective story structure. I'm sure I'll attempt to con one or two of my relatives into looking this book over, but I'm not writing it for them. I want people that don't know anything about dyslexia to read this story and relate to the characters. Thus, I need you.

Aren't you excited. You now have a critique partner who can't spell.

Joke of the Day

Dyslexics of the world UNTIE.

Free Book Giveaway

2011-01-27T08:41:00.000-08:00

Now that I’ve decided to start blogging here again, I have to figure out how to manage two blogs at once. Instead of posting something on both blogs everyday, I’m going to aim to have two or three blog posts per week on each site. I will try to taylor the posts so this blog focusses primarily on issues related to dyslexia, reading, spelling, and to some extent writing.

My other blog (My Life In Fiction) will focus more on book reviews and witing. When there are big happenings in the works, I’ll try to post them in both places. One “big happening” I want the readers of this blog to know about is a contest I’m having on my other blog. If you want to join, head on over and you might just win a free book.

I’m Writing Again

2011-01-26T11:53:00.000-08:00

I never really stopped writing. I just stopped writing here.

Since it’s been a while since I’ve blogged here, let me re-introduce myself. I’m a dyslexic engineer who dreams about being ya author. I started this blog when I was working on a book about dyslexia—trying to build a platform and all that good stuff.

The thing is, dyslexia is complicated. I’m dyslexic. All my family is dyslexic. I know a lot about it. But I’m not always sure how to write about it. After a few failed attempts, I started writing about non-dyslexic characters. Then I got to the point where I was ready to start querying my books about non-dyslexic characters.

That’s when it hit me. Sreaming “I CAN’T SPELL” all over the internet might not be the best move for an aspiring writer. If an agent or editor googled me, did I really want THIS blog to be the first thing they saw? I didn’t take this blog down or anything. I mean people love dyslexia jokes, even without posting in almost a year, I’m still getting as many as fifty hits a day. I just started another blog where I actually run spell check and pretend like I’ve “read” all the audio books I listen too.

But I started writing again—a new project, about a dyslexic fifteen year old. It’s the best thing I’ve ever written, and I’m not just being egotistical. This story is good. I needed to write other stuff and listen to a couple hundred more audio books to figure out what I was doing. But this is MY STORY. It’s the story that I was born to tell. And I’ve finally found the words to tell it.

So having a “platform” might not be such a bad thing now. Having a popular “dyslexia blog” is probably really good, if I’m going to be querying a “dyslexia book” soon. Not to soon though. There is a lot of revising and editing in my future. But there will also be a lot of thinking about dyslexia in my future. So I might as well write about it here.

Joke of the Day

What do you get when you cross a dyslexic, an insominac, and an ignostic?

Someone who stays up all night wondering if there's a DOG.

ADD And Loving It

2010-12-03T08:39:00.000-08:00

Last night, I watched a documentery on PBS called “ADD and Loving It”. It was about the symptoms and treatments for Adult ADD. The largest myth the program tried to debunk was the idea that all people have a little ADD and that ADD isn’t really a condition at all. While I know these are “myths”, deep down I still kind of believe them. Not because I don’t think people have ADD, but because I can’t even begin to imagine what it would be like to not have ADD.

I am sevierly dyslexic. I was diacnosed when I was very young and have had the benifits of extensive treatment/support my entire life. I have managed to lead a successful life dispite my dyslexia. But I still know that dyslexia isn’t a “good” thing. I can imagine a world where letters have meaning, and I’m more than a little envious of it. There have been many times in my life that I’ve wished I didn’t have dyslexia. But I’ve never wished I didn’t have ADD.

I don’t think of ADD as a condition, but a personality type. Pretty much all my relatives have ADD, as do many of my friends. So I think of it as normal. But more than that, I think of it as solely a positive. Dyslexia has its downsides. In general knowing how to read is always better than not knowing how to read. But what’s wrong with being completely incapable of turning off your brain? What’s wrong with always thinking about at least three things at any given time? What’s wrong with having a tendancy to get so focussed on one topic that you loose track of everything else? And come on, a little compulsive figiting never hurt anyone.

Yes, I am a textbook example of ADD. And yes, I’ve known what ADD is and that I obviously have it since I was very young. I just don’t think it’s bad. I’ve never thought it was bad. The list of “succesful people” with ADD is ten-million miles long for a reason. Once properly channelled, the so called symptoms of ADD make success easier—not harder.

I’ve never taken ridalin. When I was a kid, it was obvious ridalin wasn’t going to teach me how to read. So my parents chose to focus all their attention and money on fighting my dyslexia and they just ignored the whole ADD thing. In fact, many of my ADD symptoms were major assets in helping me compensate for my dyslexia. Now that I’m relatively literate and dyslexia is no longer significantly disrupting my life, do I want to start taking ridalin? Of course not! I like my ADD. And I really can’t imagine what it would be like to live without it. Can the brain actually slow down? Why would anyone want that to happen? I just don’t get it.

Joke of the Day

On last nights documentery there were several questions about ADD that were addressed.
While holding up a sign that read “Does ADD increase the likelihood of Dyslexia?” the host asked “Does ADD increase the likelihood of diareah?”
I’m still laughing about that one.

Spellwright

2010-06-25T11:34:00.000-07:00

Last night I went to a book reading/signing with Blake Charlton, author of the fantacy novel “Spellwright”. “Spellwright” is an adult fantacy novel, it’s crazy I know. But adults who love fantacy don’t have to settle for Harry Potter and Bella Swan, there are actually some fantacy books written with adult characters. “Spellwright” is one of them.

I haven’t read this book yet, but based upon what I learned at last nights reading, the character of Nicodemus has dyslexia. Nicodemus is a wizard who lives in a world driven by words. Spells and incantations have controll over every aspect of the universe. If Nicodemus can’t spell these words correctly, he can through the universe into chaos.

This is not the first dyslexic character in a fantacy series. Percy Jackson is also dyslexic. But Percy’s disability has little impact on the story and feels more like a shout out to the learning disabled then a potent comentary on the effect of words and language.

“Spellwright’s” author, Blake Charlton, is also dyslexic. He drew upon both his experiences in special ed growing up and college at Yale to create the character of Nicodemus. In addition to being an author, Charlton is also currently in medical school at Stanford. His understanding of human phisology and cognative developement have effected both his portrayol of Nicodemus, and his creation of the Spellwright world.

I look forward to reading this novel and want to champion the accomplishments of Blake Charlton. A successful and brilliant man, who is proving to the world that he can do many things, even if he can’t correctly spell his spells.

Joke of the Day

What do you get when you cross a dyslexic, an agnostic, and an insomniac?

Someone who stays up all night wondeirng if there is a dog.

A few Mispelled Words

2010-05-07T09:12:00.000-07:00

I started a new blog over at http://katherinescott.blogspot.com last week. It’s going strong, so if you haven’t checked it out yet please do so now. And if you aren’t following it yet, but you are following me here, then definately start following me over there.

Content wize my new blog is pretty much exactly the same as this blog. Meaning it is filled with book reviews and random musings and bad jokes and other fun stuff. The only difference is that I’m running spell check on my new blog. My spelling isn’t that bad, so if felt like false advertising to have this entire blog be focussed on bad spelling.

But now that my new blog is up and running I’m getting some comments that people miss the bad spelling. So for all of you longing for errors, here is a list of words that I often have a hard time spelling correctly.

tommorrow

yesturday

committy

perentious

definate

akward

sincerily

stabalize

Ok, I can’t think of any other hard words. See, my spelling is practically perfect so you should just go read my properly spelled new blog.

Joke of the Day

A boy asked his teacher, "How do you spell ichael?"
"Do you mean Michael?" the teacher asked."No, I already have the M down."

I’m Moving

2010-05-01T22:23:00.000-07:00

It’s time to admit the truth. This blog is supposed to be about spelling, and it’s just playing not. Only 8 out of 150 posts have had anything to do with spelling. What was I thinking when I tried to start a blog about spelling? I’m not even good at spelling.

I’ve done a little better at blogging about dyslexia. 31 of my 150 posts have been about dyslexia. But 20% isn’t a very strong showing. And coming up with that many dyslexia related posts hasn’t been easy. So I’ve decided it’s time to move. I am starting a new blog, that is officially not about spelling. When I come up with a spelling (or dyslexia) related post, I’ll put it hear. Given my past track record that will happen maybe once every couple of weeks. But all my other non-spelling related posts will be appearing on my new blog http://katherinescott.blogspot.com. Currently this new blog has zero followers. It’s taken me a while to get the 45 followers I have here. So please jump over and start following my new blog. PLEASE!

If you didn’t catch it the first time, that’s http://katherinescott.blogspot.com.

In case you are wondering, I do plan to run spell check on my new blog. So the “where’s waldo” for spelling errors is over. Sorry if you loved reading bad spelling. Don’t feel to bad, even running spell check, I’ll probably still let a hominim or two slip through the cracks. I will be keeping the joke of the day going on my new blog, so if you are a fan of bad jokes, you can still get your daily fix. Since it’s a new blog, I may (will) be repeating some of the jokes that have previously appeared on this blog. Do you realize how hard it is to come up with a new joke everyday?

So please stop reading this blog right now and jump over to http://katherinescott.blogspot.com and start following me there asap.

Joke of the Day

I’m moving to mars, so if you have any boxes…

The Cool Kids

2010-04-30T08:27:00.000-07:00

I recently read “Nineteen Minutes” by Jodi Picoult. It’s a courtroom drama about the aftermath of a school shooting. Naturally popularity and bullying were both major themes in the novel. I also tend to read a lot of YA, and based upon these books it’s easy to assume that every single teen in the world desprately wants to be popular. And if you’re not popular, well then you probably hate yourself enough to contimplate things like mass murder.

But now, thinking back, I can’t even remember who the popular kids at my high school were. And I certainly never wanted to be friends with them. I do remember in junior high one of the super cool boys asking me out in the middle of class. I was an uber dork and it was probably supposed to be some sort of prank. But when I turned him down, I was being honest. I really didn’t want anything to do with that guy. In fact, I spent a lot of my teen years actively trying to be unpopular.

I was a “smart kid”. I took all honors and AP classes and participated in enough extra caricular activities to ensure a properly well rounded college application. All of my friends were equally achedmically motivated, many of them going on to Ivy League schools. My cluster of friends didn’t include many cheerleaders or football players, but I did sit at the same lunch table as the student body president and the yearbook editor.

I had a fairly large group of friends, but I didn’t really like all that many of them. The constant pressure to succeed combined with standard teen angst made most of my friends extreamly shallow and superficial. They all seemed so fake, it drove me crazy. Now looking back, I guess it’s possible that I may have really enjoyed getting to know some of the other kids at my high school. But at the time, I assumed everyone else was worse. My friends were the “smart kids” the “nerds”. Surely the jocks and cheerleaders would be infinitely more caddy, right?

Now that I’m an adult, I like my friends. I’ve always been a social person, and have a lot of friends that I hang out with on a regular basis. They were all dorks in high school who grew up to be well educated successful adults. But they aren’t shallow and superficial anymore, they’re just people with interesting thoughts whom I enjoy talking to. I recently took an informal pole of my adult friends. Very few of them have anything more than a vague memory of who the “cool kids” were at their high schools. Most of them assume they were teased or bullied a little, but nobody had any memories scaring enough to stick.

So maybe the old addage is true. The nerds do grow up to be happy adults, and the popular kids grow up to long for their high school days of success. So where does that put YA literature? Peer pressure, angsiety about fitting in, and bullying are all real issues that teens deal with. So completely removing them from fictional media would be disingenuous. But not every teen wants to be popular, I never did. And none of my current friends ever did either.

So what about you? Can you remember who the cool kids were at your high school? If one of them talked to you in the halls, would it have made your day? Or would you have hidden in fear? Or would you have simply not cared?

Joke of the Day

A dyslexic kid asked his mom if he could go to McDonalds for dinner. His mom said, “Sure, but you have to spell in before we go.”

The kid thought about it for a minute before replying, “I changed my mind. Can we go to KFC instead.”

Modern Tragity

2010-04-29T08:49:00.000-07:00

If you read my query letter that I posted yesturday, you know that I recently wrote a "very loose" adaptation of Romeo and Juliet. When I finished it, I thought about trying to do a series of other Shakespeare adaptations. One of the first plays I looked into was Othello. I quickly decided that Othello was way to depressing, and I just started writing non-Shakespeare inspired stories.

But I went and saw a production of Othello over at Portland's Artist Reportory theater earlier this week, and it made me think again about how this classic tale could resinate in modern society. I like to believe that American's aren't all that racist anymore. I'm sure there are still bigots hiding out, but society at large attempts to be color blind. We have an African American president, so a mixxed race love story wouldn't have to be tragic.

But what if Othello was muslum? In the post-911 American there is a lot of aprehension towards people of middle-eastern discent. And given the recent Arizona law, it seems like even a Hispanic ethicity could inspire tragity. It seems that Shakespeares works really are timeless. In the past 400 years have we made any progress at all? Or will we always be ready to accuse that which we don't understand?

Joke of the Day

Why were the early days of history called the dark ages?

Because there were so many knights.

Query Letter

2010-04-28T08:57:00.000-07:00

So I've gotten to the point where I need to send out my next round of query letters. I think that my letter is pretty good. But getting feedback from other writers can't hurt. So here it is. After reading this letter, would you request a manuscrip? If not, what should I do to improve these 264 words of pleading?

Dear Agent,

CAMP LIFE is 58,000 word YA novel. It is a loose adaptation of ROMEO AND JULIET set at a high school summer camp.

Jocelyn Davis is an insecure young woman who is cast as Juliet in the camp play, even though the only part she wants to play is popular. Hunter Richman is a fervently worshiped athlete who spontaneously decides to cast away his jersey for the part of Romeo simply because he thinks the girl playing Juliet is cute. Jocelyn and Hunter developed a close friendship on stage, which complicates their lives off stage.

As Hunter and Jocelyn begin to enter one another’s worlds, Jocelyn befriends the camps mean girls, and Hunter forms an unlikely friendship with Bradley, an openly gay teenager playing the part of Fryer Laurence. When one of Hunter’s old friends starts picking on Bradley, Hunter comes to Bradley’s defense. As a result, Hunter is both physically assaulted and publicly humiliated. In order to extinguish rumors regarding his sexual orientation, Hunter starts dating Jocelyn.

Being Hunter’s girlfriend elevates Jocelyn to the top of the social totem pole. When Jocelyn realizes one of her new friends has a serious eating disorder, she begins to question her values and realizes sometimes it’s important to stop acting. But what tragedy exists in a reality where teenagers admit their real feelings? When the final curtain falls, can Hunter and Jocelyn ever hope for a happily ever after?

CAMP LIFE is my first novel. I hope you will be able to work with me to bring it to publication.

Sincerely,
Katherine Elliott Scott

Joke of the Day

How do you know if there's an elephant in your refrigerator?

There are footprints in the jello.

A Little Oregon History

2010-04-27T13:38:00.000-07:00

I’m now in the research faze of book one of a time-traveling MG series I’m planning to write. I’m planning on having the first book by set 800 years back in time among the Ancestrial Puebloans, around the four corners area. Unfortunately, I live in Oregon, not Colorado. And I wont be able to head to the Southwest until June. So in the mean time, I’m entertaining myself by traveling around Oregon.

Last weekend I went camping at Champoeg State Park. While the park does have several miles of bike paths, and a tranquil oak grove next to the river, it’s primary function is historical landmark. In case you didn’t grow up in Oregon, and didn’t learn about Champoeg in 3rd grade, I’ll fill you in on the details.

On May 2nd, 1843, 102 men (approximately 50% of all adult white males living in the Oregon Territory at the time) gathered in Champoeg. At this gathering, the men discussed the need for a more unified government. Many fir traders were settling and taking up farming, and families were beginning to move into the area. Some semblance of law needed to govern these early settlers.

So the men voted. Should they stay under the gerisdiction of the Hudson Bay Company, and the British crown, or should they form a new provincial government and become a territory of the United States of America. The vote was 52 to 50 in favor of joining the US. After the vote, a deligation was sent to bring word of the decision to Washington. Three years later, on June 15, 1846, the US signed the Oregon Treaty with the UK officially making the Oregon Territory a part of the United States.

I’m not currently planning to expand the Champoeg story out into a full volume in my time traveling series. Still I can’t help but revel in the reality that if just two men had voted differently at that gathering 167 years ago, I may now be Canadian. Isn’t history fasinating.

Joke of the Day

What do Alexander the Great and Kermit the Frog have in common?

The same middle name.

The Great Outside

2010-04-26T09:02:00.000-07:00

I don’t particularely enjoy doing yard work. But I do love spending time outdoors. There is something about being in nature that revitalizes me the way nothing else can. Maybe a part of my body remembers my hunter/gatherer ruits. Because I always feel the most human when I’m surrounded by wilderness.

Last weekend I went camping. It was a totally last minute plan, and I ended up just heading to a state park 30 miles away from my house. Even if the local wasn’t very exotic, I still slipped into a tranquil state the second I stepped into the woods.

The more time I spend outside, the less I want to live inside. Everytime I go camping, I find myself yerning to stay there forever and simply write off city life completely. The funny thing is that, once upon a time I did live out of a backpack. My first job out of college was “wilderness guild”. There were a lot of things about that job that I loved, and that I’ve missed every day since I quit.

But I did quit that job. Seven months of life in a tent was all I could handle, then I moved back to the city and returned to school to become a civil engineer. I went from living with the trees and animals to designing and building cities. I remember feeling really lonely when I spent all my time hidden in the mountains. And I do have a lot of friends in my city life. I guess I’ll just have to be content with the knowledge that next weekend can bring with it another journey outside.

Joke of the Day

Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson went on a camping trip. After a plesent day of hiking in the woods, they settled down in their sleeping bags. Holmes woke in the night and nudged his friend awake. “Watson, look up and tell me what you see.”

Watson blinked awake. “I see a fantastic panorama of coutless stars.”

“And what does that tell you?” Holmes asked.

Watson pondered for a moment. “Astronomically, it tells me that there are millions of galaxies and potentially billions of planets. Astrologically, I observe that Saturn is in Leo. Horologically, I deduce that the time is approximately a quarter past three. Theologically, I can see that God is all powerful and that we are small and insignificant. Meterologically, I suspect that we will have a beautiful day tommorow.”

“That may all be true,” said Holmes. “But it also tells us that someone stole our tent.”

Plugged In or Tuned Out

2010-04-23T10:16:00.000-07:00

I’m not a ludite. I have a blog, obviously I use the internet. Still I’m shocked at how plugged in our society has become. I have a cell phone, that can make and recieve calls. That’s pretty much the only thing it can do. Having an iPhone or a blackberry might be nice, but cell coverage that includes internet is really expensive. I can’t bring myself to pay an additional $70 per month just so I can check facebook on my phone.

I do have a facebook account. But since it isn’t on my phone, I only check in once every week or two. I also have three email accounts. I check all of those anywhere from 2-5 times per day. One of them is gmail, so everytime I check that account I also open my g-reader to catch up on all the blogs that I follow. I spend anywhere from 15 to 90 minutes of each day reading emails, blogs, and occationally facebook.

This seems like enough for me. The other 23 hours of each day, I’m just out living my life. Maybe if I lived in a very remote area and depended upon the internet to provide all my human contact, I’d spend more time plugged in. But I’d probably want a real life of my own there too.

Maybe I am behind the times, because I can’t even begin to comprehend why people would want to spend 10 hours per day on twitter. Still I always find it sad when I hear people say they are going to unplug for a day or worse an hour. Seriously people, there is a whole wide amazing world out there. And disconnecting long enough to go see it shouldn’t feel like a chore.

Joke of the Day

You know technology has taken over your life, if you rotate your screen savers more frequently than your automobile tires.

An Example of How to Make Bad Art

2010-04-22T08:35:00.000-07:00

Last night I saw “Mike’s Incredable Indian Adventure” at Portland Center Stage. I normally don’t like to give bad reviews, but to be completely honest, the play wasn’t great. Even if I didn’t love the production, I did empathise with the story.

Here is the basic premise. A wannabe actor/director/producer grew up with a silver spoon shoved up his ass and never made any meaningful art for himself. He didn’t even manage to make any unmeaningful art. He basically just wasted a lot of time. Then he was invited to direct a Neil Simon musical in India. The producer was sleezy and it was obvious that the show would be horrible. So the guy agreed to direct the play and then hired a friend to film the entire thing, thinking he’d make a documentary fill about putting on a really bad play in India.

The play in India was really bad, but when he got home and watched the footage, he realized that the film footage was even worse. There was no theme to the documentary, no point at all really, just a lot of craptastic footage. So he started interviewing people and trying to learn about the rolls of America and India in the new global economy and frame his story somehow that way. That just gave him lots more footage, but still no real point. Then after 10 years of failing to pull a documentary out of all his footage, he decided to make a play. The play that I watched last night.

It was a play about a film about a play. And it really had absolutely no point. I felt like I wasted an evening watching it. But much more than that, I feel like this guy wasted a decade making it. I may not be a wannabe actor/director/producer, but I am a wannabe writer. I understand the way people can get caught up in an idea and stay caught up in it long after the project has lost its potential. So please, fellow writers and creative types, don’t be like Mike. If you have a craptastic idea, give yourself a couple of months to try and make it into something. But if it continually spirals further and further into pointlessness, learn to say goodbye and get yourself a new idea.

Joke of the Day

How do you shoot a purple elephant?

With a purple elephant gun.

How do you shoot a white elephant?

Hold it's trunk until it turns purple, then shoot it with a purple elephant gun.

Why Censorship is Bad

2010-04-21T08:41:00.000-07:00

The debate of what is appropriate in childrens and YA novels started the day the first child picked up a book and it will likely never end. Everyone has their own opinion of what is acceptable for kids and what isn’t. But what happens to the kids that are subjected to censorship? What kind of worrped view of reality to they develope?

This is a true story of a conversataion I once had with a kid I used to babysit. The kid was ten years old, was home schooled, and was not alloud to read Harry Potter for religious reasons. His entire life was censored.

One day I was babysitting said kid and he saw a group of totally harmless perfectly normal teenagers. He then turned to me and said, “Those are really bad kids. I heard them say bad words. It’s a slippery slope and that type of behavior leads to things like watching R rated movies. If my friend was here, I’d get my bb-gun and teach those kids a lesson.”

Yes that’s right. This extreamly sheltered kid thought that watching R rated movies was the worst activity imaginable, but shooting people that’s just good clean fun. Seriously people, just let your kids read Harry Potter. A well rounded view of the world has to be better than staulking kids with bb-guns just cause they were over heard saying sh*#?t.

Joke of the Day

What's black and white with 16 wheels?

A zebra on rollerskates.

Dreaming of Tomorrow

2010-04-20T09:16:00.000-07:00

I LOVE planning things that will never happen. Many of the stories that I write have at least one character a lot like me. This is because most stories in my head begin as daydreams about my own future. I did this a lot as a kid. When I was a teenager, I would daydream about my own kids and what they would act like as teenagers.

When I was seriously dating my now husband, but not yet engaged, I planned about a million different weddings. Our actually wedding was awsome, and almost completely organized in my head by the time he bothered to get me a ring. Right now I’m daydreaming about two things. One that will happen, and one that wont.

I’m dreaming about winning the Powerball, cause it’s now over $200,000. I love that it only costs $1 to dream. And in all honesty, dreaming about finding ways to spend $200,000 is probably a lot more fun than actually winning. Sure getting up and going to work everyday isn’t “fun” it’s “work”. But being that rich would probably make a person feel very isolated and alone.

I’m also dreaming about going on vaccation. I’m thinking about all the kick ass vaccations I would take if I did win Powerball. But I’m also thinking about the vaccation I am planning for this summer. I’m going on a three week, six thousand mile, road trip. My husbands college reunion is in NY, and we live in OR. So we decided we are going to drive there. AWESOME. There are so many national parks between OR and NY, which ones should we stop at? Where is the worlds largest ball of twine? Can we visit that too?

Planning this vaccation isn’t a new hobby for me. I’ve planned a lot of vaccations that I’ve never been on. In some ways I think I enjoy planning vaccations even more than being on vaccation. Sometimes I’ll even start reading guild books and plotting non-existant travels in my mind while I’m on vaccation. I’m crazy, I know, but all these plans have made me very good at geography.

Joke of the Day

Two men got out of their cars after they collided at an intersection. One took a flask from his pocket and said to the other, "Here, maybe you'd like a nip to calm your nerves." "Thanks," he said, and took a long pull from the container. "Here, you have one, too," he added, handing back the whiskey. "Well, I'd rather not," said the first. "At least not until after the police have been here."

Listen Up - Part 5

2010-04-16T09:43:00.000-07:00

This week is all things audio. I’ve already talked about my early ruse to memorize books in order to trick people into thinking I could read. I’ve talked about my discovery of audiobooks and how they completely redefined my childhood. I’ve talked about how I listened to my text books on fast forward during college. And I’ve talked about my eight year audio book fast after I graduated from college during which time I forced myself to learn to read.

But onto the present. I really hate silence. That’s not true, sometimes when it’s really truly quiet I love it. I love getting lost in my own head and inventing new worlds to entertain myself. I love making up stories and filling the silence in my head with my own words. What I hate is white noise. I’m so used to listening to everything around me, that things like buzzing lights and whirring fans often make me wonder if I might be a little bit autistic on top of being a lot dyslexic.

I have a very very hard time focusing on “life” without something in my ears. So I’m plugged into my iPod about 12 hours a day. I listen on the way to work. I listen while I’m at work. I listen on the way home. I listen while at home. There are about 5000 songs on my iPod, and lot of the time I listen to those. But I also listen to audiobooks.

People have a hard time believing me when I tell them that I comprehend audiobooks while also dealing with every other detail of my life. But I do. I remember listening to books-on-tape before bed as a kid and memorizing the last word I heard before I fell asleep. I would rewind the next day and find the exact word where I fell asleep so I’d know where to restart the tape. I’m just a good listener. So yeah. In the past year, I’ve listened to about 150 books. I don’t think I could recite any of them back to you. I gave up on the whole memorizing books thing shortly after getting diaconosed with dyslexia. But I could definitely tell you all the minor details of the plots.

I concider myself very lucky. I was introduced to audiobooks very young. And I was never alloud to believe that being dyslexic would stop me from achieving all my goals. I have had nothing but achedemic success. As an adult, I have succeeded in my carrer, developing a reputation as having a strong attention to detail and the ability to keep large amounts of data organized in my head.

I’ve never thought of myself as stupid. And I know learning disabilities don’t have anything to do with intelligence. But I really don’t think I’m all that “smart” either. I’m just a really good listener. If I’d learned how to read in first grade like a normal person, maybe I’d be better at zoning out and selective listening. But I’ve never been normal, and I probably never will be. In the long run, dyslexia hasn’t been much of a disability at all. Cause I can read now. Even my spelling is improving. And you probably can’t listen nearly as well as I can.

Joke of the Day

What's another word for syninim?

Listen Up - Part 4

2010-04-15T08:13:00.000-07:00

This week is all things audio. I’ve already talked about my early ruse to memorize books in order to trick people into thinking I could read. I’ve talked about my discovery of audiobooks and how they completely redefined my childhood. And I’ve talked about how I listened to my text books on fast forward during college. So what happened when I graduated from college? Shockingly, I quit RFB&D. I decided to stop listening.

I went totally cold turkey. No audio books period. I didn’t have proffessors expecting me to read 100 pages by tommorrow. If I wanted to read a book for fun, I could suck it up and read it. I’m glad that I forced myself to do this. By the time I graduated from college I’d listened to thousands of audio books and had a very deep seeded love of literature. So I finally bit the bullet and truly forced myself to learn how to read.

But what were my ears supposed to do while I was reading. I’d been plugged into audio books for my entire life. I’d trained myself to not simple hear, but actually memorize texts rattled off on fast forward. I couldn’t just turn my ears off. They were to keyed into everything around me.

The first thing I did was find NPR. I needed to hear words, to dedicate a section of my brain to memorizing facts at the same time as I was busy doing differential equations. Oh yeah, did I mension that one year after I graduate from college I went back to college. My first degree was in anthropology. My second was in civil engineering. I didn’t have RFB&D to help me out in engineering school, so I didn’t bother reading any of those text books. I just listened in class and flipped through my text books for example problems while doing my homework.

On top of considering all things, I also started listening to a lot more music. There are currently 5000 songs on my iPod. It’s not like I hated music before that. I had a couple hundred CD’s back before MP3s became the rage. But once the audio books went dead, I found the silence overwellming. So I filled it with any sound I could find.

Eventually I gave up. Just over a year ago I put an end to my audio books ban. I haven’t re-upped my RFB&D membership. Instead I’ve found Library’s 2 Go. Library audiobooks downloaded directly to my iPod. Can someone say awesome. Yeah, there is a reason I’ve listened to about 150 books in the past year. But I’ll talk more about that tommorow.

Joke of the Day

What does Santa call his wife on his tax return?

A Dependent Clause.

Listen Up - Part 3

2010-04-14T09:13:00.000-07:00

This week I’m talking about all things audio. I’ve already talked about my early ruse to memorize books in order to trick people into thinking I could read. And I’ve talked about my discovery of audiobooks and how they completely redefined my childhood. But the audio world didn’t really open up for me until I found RFB&D (Recordings for the Blind and Dyslexic). I’m not sure exactly when the decition was made to lump dyslexic people in with blind people in the world of audio books for the disabled, but I love whoever made that decree.

The thing that separates RFB&D from other audio book distributors is textbooks. As a member of RFB&D, I was able to get any book with and ISBN # on tape, including text books. So I guess I should go back and talk about text books before I found RFB&D.

When I was a kid, my mom’s reading rule was pretty simple. She would read absolutely anything alloud to my brother or I that we asked. This consisted of all our textbooks (elementary school, junior high, and high school). Since she wasn’t in class with us, she would fain confusion at all the complicated parts and ask us to explain the text to her. Somehow she managed to always ask about the topics that later showed up on tests and quizzes. Did I mension my mom was a teacher?

But there was one catch. My mom cut us off at the end of junior year. She wouldn’t be going with us to college, so for senior year we had to be on our own. Somehow, my brother survived this edict. He read all his text books during his senior year, then he managed to read all his text books in college while double majoring in philosophy and poli-sci. He didn’t break down and join RFB&D until the reading in law school became to much for him to handle.

Not me. I joined RFB&D during my sophomore year of high school (when my brother was a senior). Just watching him try to read his own history book gave me heart palpitations. I definately needed an audio alternative. And it was revolutionary. The audio textbooks didn’t talk back like my mom. And the special RFB&D tape recorder had variying speeds so I could listen to my AP Physicis book at Alvin & the Chipmonks speed. And I could do fun things like play video games at the same time.

Obviously, by the time I made it to college, I could perfectly comprehend text books on fast forward while simoltaniously beating Super Mario Brothers. I may have been a good listener back in elementary school. But high speed text books elevated my listening skills to a whole new level. I’m sure I learned things in my actual classes, but I think above everything else, the sharpest skill I came away with was my ability to listen. Memorizing lectures without taking notes was a piece of cake after all those Nintendo enhanced homework sessions.

When I graduated and stepped out into the literate adult world, my piss pour reading skills were such an afterthought they didn’t even matter. I could listen better than anybody! But I’ll wait until tomorrow to tell you about that.

Joke of the Day

How many letters are there in the alphabet?

24, because E.T. went home.

Listen Up - Part 2

2010-04-13T08:42:00.000-07:00

This week I’m talking about all things audio. Yesturday, I wrote about my listening habits before I was diacnosed with dyslexia. Now I’ll talk about how I listened post diacnosis.

So I was diacnosed with dyslexia at age 8. Then at age 9, my family moved. I think I wasted most of my time in third and forth grade climbing trees and hecking the neighbor kids. But the thing I remember most clearly about my families move shortly before my 10th birthday, was my discovery of audiobooks.

It took me a while to make friends at my new school. So I had a lot of free time on my hands. Fortunately, my new house was only a couple blocks away from the public library. I may have undergone a couple hundred hours of private tutoring by then. But that just meant I was starting to get down letter combonations like ch and th and all that fun stuff. I was still years away from picking up a good book and actually reading it. So my parents showed me which shelf in the library held all the audio books.

I fell in love immediately. I would go to the library two or three times a week to check out more books-on-tape. Since I couldn’t read the dust jackets, there was no way for me to know which books I would enjoy. So I decided to just listen to them all. I worked through the audio section systematically, checking out each audiobook in alphabetical order. It took me about six years. But by my sophmore year of high school, I’d listen to every single audiobook the Lake Oswego Public Library had to offer.

During that six years of hard core listenage, I also managed to graduate from tutoring. That happened when I was 12. At that point in time I knew everything there was to know about phonix and could sound things out well enough to survive. Meaning I could sound things out well enough to read the assignments on the board, or to write myself a note and then read it again later. I read about as well as the average second grader. But I didn’t read books. Why would I want to do that? I was listening to an average of 200 books a year. Who had time to read amidst all that listening? Certainly not me.

Joke of the Day

Dyslexics of the world UNTIE.

Listen Up - Part 1

2010-04-12T22:20:00.000-07:00

Even though this is supposed to be a blog about dyslexia, it seems to mainly be a blog about all the books I read. That may seem odd, after all dyslexic’s aren’t supposed to read. But I am very good at listening, and often listen to five or six audio books per week. I’ve mentioned listening and audio books in past posts. But I’ve never really blogged in detail about the act of listening. This is mainly because I have a lot to say on the subject. So I’ve decided to dedicate this entire week to the topic of listening. Here we go…

I am a very audiotory person. The things I hear have a much larger impact on my thinking and understanding than the things I see. Sometimes, I almost feel blind. Not that I can’t see. But that I hear like a blind person. I see things with my ears. To me, noises matter – a lot. This isn’t because I have vission problems. I am nearsited, but wearing glasses has never felt like a dysablity, it’s more of an excessory. No, my sensitivity to sound is definitely linked to my late onset literacy.

If I had learned how to read when I was six like a normal person, I would have developed normal listening habits. But I didn’t learn how to read in first grade. And when all my friends were busy memorizing their ABC’s, I was busy memorizing absolutely everything I heard. I was so desprate to stay afloat without reading, that I forced my ears into overdrive. Now as a fully literate adult, that can and does read on a regular basis, I’m still incapable of turning off my ears.

I was diacnosed with dyslexia at the beginning of third grade. This may sound relatively early, many people make it into high school or even adulthood before getting diacnosed. But I’m actually amazed that I tricked people for that long. My older brother was also diacnosed at the beginning of third grade (when I was just starting first grade). At the time, my parents were told that dyslexia is genetic and there was a very good chance their daughter was also dyslexic.

So what do I remember about the beginning of first grade? I remember all the discussions about whether or not I should skip straight to second. NOBODY knew that I couldn’t read. My father, brother, and several extended family members are all dyslexic. Dyslexia was on everyones raydar. And I had them all fooled into thinking I was some kind of child prodigy or something. It’s so crazy, I often find myself questioning my own memories.

But this is one thing I do remember. I always listened very carefully. I listened to everything, but especially books. My mom read me a lot of stories as a kid, and I memorized all of them. I didn’t just know the words. I knew when to turn the pages, and even how fast to track my finger across the squiggly lines. So why couldn’t I properly identify all 26 letters in the alphabet at the start of third grade?

This is another thing I remember. I didn’t want anyone to know. Now, it seems like admitting to my kindergarden and first grade teachers that I couldn’t understand anything they were saying would have been a good idea. But back then, my inability to read was my deepest darkest secret. I had to fake it. I had to keep the myth alive. I had to let everyone believe that I could read. And the only way to do that, was to listen. So I did. I listened so hard and so long that I couldn’t stop. It’s no wonder I listened to eight audio books last week. But more about that tommorrow.

Joke of the Day

A biology teacher begins his lecture, "Today we are going to talk about DNA."

A dyslexic student in the second row gets a confused look on his face. The teacher notices his expression and asks, "Jimmy, do you have a question?"

"No," says the student. "I just can't figure out what the National Dyslexia Association has to do with biology."

Returning to Normalcy

2010-04-09T08:23:00.000-07:00

Today is the last day of my furlough. I'm heading back to work on Monday. It's funny, when I first found out that I was going to have two weeks off work, I had all these plans to write 24/7. The problem with that plan was that I'm currently at the research stage, not the writing stage, of my next project.

I did do some research. But for the most part, I was just really board for the first couple of days. It's been a typical Portland spring, lots and lots of rain. So I couldn't even go outside and enjoy myself. All I was doing was reading dull non-fiction books, and kids books. A lot of the kids books that I read were good, but I'm obviously not the intendend audience. So they didn't help much with the whole not feeling board thing.

Then this week, I just started reading really good books. I didn't really do anything at all. I barely found time to fold the laundry, and I really should vacum. But I read several wonderful books that engaged my mind and made me happy that I didn't have to get off the couch and head into work.

I am glad that I'm heading back to work next week. Cause I like getting paid, and it is good to have social interaction with people who aren't imaginary from time to time. But still, this fortnight of unemployment hasn't been to bad.

Here is a list of all the books I read (or listened to) in my two weeks off. In case you are curious, I recomend Juliet Naked, After, A Dirty Job, and Changeless. The rest were okay, but most of them lose their appeal once a person graduates from elementry school.

Beezus and Ramona by Beverly Cleary
The Sign of the Beaver by Elizabeth George Speare
The Anasazi Culture at Mesa Verde by Sabrina Crewe & Dale Anderson
Amber Brown is Not a Crayon by Paula Danzinger
Juliet, Naked by Nick Hornby
The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
Call it Courage by Armstrong Sperry
Wingfield by Amy Sedaris, Paul Dinello & Stephen Colbert
Sandstone Spine: Seeking the Anasazi by David Roberts
The Magic Tree House Series (Books 1-4) by Mary Pope Osborne
After by Amy Efaw
The Magician's Nephew by C.S. Lewis
A Dirty Job by Christopher Moore
The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood
Anasazi: Ancient People of the Rock by Donald G Pike
Changeless by Gail Carriger

Okay, 19 books in 13 days is just sick and wrong. Even if more than half of these books are for children. I definately need to go back to work!

Joke of the Day

What do you get when you cross a librarian with a lawyer?

You get all the information you want, but you can't understand it.

Soulless

2010-04-08T09:52:00.000-07:00

The kindle edition of Changeless by Gail Carriger was just released today. If I wanted to read it in paper, I could have rushed over to B&N and bought it a week and a half ago. But alas, I preordered the Kindle edition on Amazon and didn't think I needed a paper and electronic version of the same book. So I'm only one chapter into Carriger's latest adventure. But since Changeless is a sequil to Soulless, I figured I'd have today's blog post be a review of the first book in the Parasol Protectorate series - Soulless.

Title: Soulless
Author: Gail Carriger
Series: The Parasol Protectorate
Genre: Steampunk
My Rating: 4.5 stars
Back of Book Description: Alexia Tarabotti is laboring under a great many social tribulations. First, she has no soul. Second, she's a spinster whose father is both Italian and dead. Third, she was rudely attacked by a vampire, breaking all standards of social etiquette.

Where to go from there? From bad to worse apparently, for Alexia accidentally kills the vampire -- and then the appalling Lord Maccon (loud, messy, gorgeous, and werewolf) is sent by Queen Victoria to investigate.

With unexpected vampires appearing and expected vampires disappearing, everyone seems to believe Alexia responsible. Can she figure out what is actually happening to London's high society? Will her soulless ability to negate supernatural powers prove useful or just plain embarrassing? Finally, who is the real enemy, and do they have treacle tart?

My Review: For the most part I enjoy reading Paranormal and Fantacy. I'm a fan of Harry Potter, Bella Swan, Artimas Fowl, and several other kids that have fallen into sorts with the supernatural. The first time one of these stories comes out it seems fresh and exciting and new. Then before you know it there are a million and one YA books about lusty vampires and they all seem exactly the same.

Soulless, is refreshingly new and different from other Paranormal stories currently flooding the market. For one thing, none of the characters are kids. Alexia, the herroin, is in her late 20's. Also the story takes place in Victorian London, not a modern high school. One thing that I really enjoyed about the world of Soulless is that everyone knows there are Vampires and Werewolves and Ghosts milling about. Given their long lifespans, many supernaturals have achieved great wealth and hold prominate positions both in London Society and in Her Magesties government.

Apparently, the abillity to survive a transformation from regulare human to supernatural being requires an abbundance of soul. While some artists and actors have great excesses of soul, other people have none at all. Alexia is one of the petrenatural, soulless beings. This puts her at odds with the supernatural forces and gets her into many thrilling scrapes along the way.

On top of all the exciting supernatural creatures, and a few mad scientists with crazy steam powered inventions, this book is also full of Victorian charm. Alexia is likely to be far more shocked by a poorly selected hat than a rogue vampire attempting come in for a drink. But enough about that, I really must get back to my reading. So far, I'm enjoying book 2 in the series just as much as I liked book one. And I can't wait to see what happens next.

Joke of the Day

Three vampires went into a bar and sat down.

THe barmaid came over to take their orders. "And what would you gentelmen like tonight?"

The first vampire said, "I'll have a mug of blood."

The second vampire said, "I'll have a mug of blood."

The third vampire shook his head at his companions and said, "I'll have a glass of plasma."

The barmaid wrote down each order, went to the bar and called to the bartender, "Two bloods and a blood light."

Escapism

2010-04-07T13:39:00.000-07:00

The retirement home where my grandmother lives has been hit be a bad flu epidemic. So many old people are sick there, that the county health department has put the entire retirement complex on quarenteen. No outside visitors are alloud into the building, and all residence are confined to their own rooms. No interaction with other residences is alloud. This has been going on for several weeks and it will be at least one more week before the quarenteen is lifted (longer if anyone else gets sick).

Naturally, all the residences are going a bit batty with bordom. What 90 year old wants to be put in solitary confinement just because their neighbor has the sniffles? My grandmother is in remarkably good spirits. When I talked to her yesturday, she explained that she has been reading a lot. She then went on to tell me about all the great books she has read in her recent weeks of retirement home prison.

I don't have the health department dictating my travel or stopping me from engaging in face to face contact with other human beings. But I still understand how boring life can get sometimes. The crappy state of the economy makes travel to exotic lands more difficult. And sometimes the face to face people around me don't have all that much of interest to say. So I appreciate my grandmothers understanding. It doesn't matter if we are locked in by a thretening disease, or empty bank account, or a mundane life, escape is always as easy as opening the pages of a good book.

Right now I'm treating myself to a vacation to Christopher Moore's "Dirty Jobs". It's great to get away and hang out with the merchent of death.

Joke of the Day

If all the smokers in the world were laid end-to-end around the world, three-quarters of them would drown.

Cutting the Soul Out of a Story

2010-04-06T10:05:00.000-07:00

I listen to A LOT of audiobooks. And there is nothing I hate more than an abridgement. As a matter of principle, I refuse to listen to abridged books. What erks me, is when there is a book I'm interested it that is only available as an abridgement. Why are people going through the effort of recording audiobooks, and then only bothering to record half the story? I don't understand. Who listens to these abridged books? Why do people feel the need to make them?

My loathing of abridged audiobooks is somewhat related to my dislike of movie adaptations of books. I don't have much of a problem with people watching a story as opposed to reading a story. For example, watching a well made film of Hamlet or Romeo & Juliet could quite possibly be a truer and more rewarding experience than simply reading Shakespheare's words. The reason for this is quite obvious. Shakespheare intended for his works to be performed, and no good film crew would dare to cut anything.

It's the cutting that I hate. Most stories are orginally penned in prose not dialog and stage direction. That means, any film adaptation has to select which parts of the story to tell on the screen. And only very short books can be told in their entirety in a two or three hour film. So in addition to determining how to create a set that matches the imagary the prose bring to mind, film makers must also determine which scenes to cut from the story entirely.

The Harry Potter films are an example of well made film adaptations. The cinemetagraphy is beautiful, and does a good job of bringing the world of Hogwarts to life in a manner similar to that which would be imagined while reading the story. Also the movies closely track the books and do not intentionally stray from the written storyline. I have read all the books multiple times, and have seen all the movies which have been released. My husband, on the other hand, has watched the movies but he has not read the books. In the car ride home after watching one of the movies, my husband inevitably starts asking me tons of questions. "Ok, who was that character?" "Now where did that come from?" "What was Harry talking about when he said...?"

I don't have any problem answering these questions. And after I do answer them, the film begins to make sense for my husband. What he's doing is pulling all the information that was cut from the films out of me, instead of pulling it out of the book itself. So if someone were to watch the Harry Potter movies without reading the books or interviewing someone who had read the books, the story wouldn't make complete sense. It would be the same as listening to an abridged audiobook. It would be comperable to reading "cliftnotes" and not bothering to read the story at all. The major plot points might be there, but the original richness of the story would have been lost. Cutting, and abridging always steels a part of the story that the original author and publisher felt was necessary. Cutting and abridging almost universily makes stories worse.

So I was plesently surprized when I recently watched and loved the new "Alice and Wonderland" movie. It's not a remake of Lewis Carrolls masterpiece. It doesn't cut and paste dialog from the book into a film. It doesn't attempt to smash a beloved story into a two hour film. Instead it takes all the wonderful richness of that beloved classic, and then respins it into an entirely new and entirely different story. The key idea behind the film is that Alice visited Wonderland and had all the adventures described in Carrol's book at the age of seven. Then 13 years later at the age of 20, she visits Wonderland again. Many of the characters are the same, but their needs and modivations have changed. Alice has grown and experienced new things. This new film isn't a attempted remake of a novel, which is dombed to pail in comparison to the original. Instead, this film is an unwritten sequil, which is able to enhance the original story without destroying it. So even though, I normally hate film adaptations of books. I recommend watching "Alice in Wonderland."

Joke of the Day

A famous Viking explorer returned home from a voyage and found his name missing from the town register. His wife insited on complaining to the local civic official who appologized saying, "I must have taken Lief off my census."

Travel Writing

2010-04-05T09:35:00.000-07:00

I just finished reading "Sandstone Spine: Seaking the Anasazi" by David Roberts. It is a narrated account of three adventurist enthusiusts 18 day trek over Comb Ridge - 100+ mile rock ridge in Norther Arizona/Southern Utah. I read it, because on the trek the climbers came across many Anasazi ruins and the accounts of the history of the people who built the ruins, their place in history, the relationship between the various sites, and the original Anglos that discovered the sites all compaired to the text in archologic journals. The only difference is that having the archeology sprinkled between hard core rock climbing anticdotes made the overall read more engaging.

But I expect there aren't that many people busy researching the Anasazi who enjoy reading rock climbing adventures. So this book made we wonder about the overall market for travel writing. Doing a quick count, I have 35 travel books on the shelf in the room I'm currently sitting in. But these books are all published by people like Lonely Planet, National Geographic, and AAA. They are guild books designed to aid in actul travel, and fall into an entirely different genre than travel memoir.

I like Bill Bryson's travel memoir books, "A Walk in the Woods" and "In the Sunburned Country". But I think that mainly has to do with my liking Bill Bryson. Despite it's blockbuster status, I really didn't like "Eat Pray Love" all that much. "Sandstone Spine" was the first book by David Roberts that I read, and I don't have any plans to run out and devour the rest of his works.

From reading "Sandstone Spine" I gaged that in addition to writing several full length travel/adventure memoirs, he has also done a lot of writing for magazines like "Outdoor" and "Climbing". This makes a lot more sence to me. Die hards can read a few thousand words about cool artifacts that require hard core rock climbing prowis to view and before you know it, they've booked a trip to Southern Utah.

Similar travel memoir works well in periodicals about yatching, or deep sea diving, or wine tasting, or what ever. But when I reading full length books like "Eat Pray Love" I find myself thinking, if I spent a year in Italy, India, and Indonesia, I wouldn't have wasted all my time doing that. Why don't you tell me about the good stuff? Oh wait, that's right. You never bothered to look at the good stuff.

So what do you think? Is travel/memoir a viable genre? Am I not giving it a fair shot? What travel/memoirs have you read that have inspired you?

Joke of the Day

A man and his wife were driving across the country and were nearing a town spelled Kissimee. They noted the strange spelling and tried to figure how to pronounce it - KISS-a-me; kis-A-me; kis-a-ME. They grew more perplexed as they drove into the town.

Since they were hungry, they pulled into a place to get something to eat. At the counter, the man said to the waitress: "My wife and I can't seem to be able to figure out how to pronounce this place. Will you tell me where we are and say it very slowly so that I can understand."

The waitress looked at him and said: "Buuurrrgerrr Kiiiinnnng."

One Week Down

2010-04-02T08:18:00.000-07:00

Well I've survived my first week on furlough. I feel like I haven't acomplished anything. I went to the beach and the art museaum. I took my little sister to the children's museaum. I helped my brother move. I went for a hike in forest park. I went to the library and started more seriously researching the ancestrial pobleaons for my upcoming book. Plus I listened to five audio books.

That might sound like a lot. And I know that if I'd been working I wouldn't have gone to the beach of helped my brother move. But I still feel like I normally accomplish more in a week outside of work than I've managed to accomplished this week with absolutely nothing to do.

I have one more week of furlough (unless my boss decides to extend it). I'm hoping that next week I'll get a little more done.

Joke of the Day

Blond jokes are always short so men can understand them.

March Madness (literary style)

2010-04-01T07:45:00.001-07:00

The mental shift from writing YA to writing MG, means that the books I read for market research are now a lot shorter. As a result, not counting non-fiction books I read for research, in March I listened to 23 audio books. I read two books on my kindle. And I read two books on paper, for a grand total of 27 books. Below is a short discription of each.

Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson – YA – A powerful story about a girls battle with anorexia, told in a haunting voice. See longer review here.

Going Bovine by Libba Bray – YA – A very funny tale about a boy with mad cow disease who goes off on a crazy adventure in search of a magic cure.

In a Sunburned Country by Bill Bryson – Travel/Memoir – The more of Bill Bryson’s books I read, the more I find myself wishing I knew him. His books are all so witty and funny in a way that makes me want to drink a few beers with the author (but not necessarily venture into the outback alone).

The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett – MG – A heart warming classic that is almost enough to make a person eager to do yard work on a spring day.

Soulless by Gail Carriger – Steampunk – This is a very funny story filled with vampires, wearwolves, ghosts, and abominations, and of course of a fair dosage of stonch Victorian manners too.

Cross My Heart and Hope to Spy and Don’t Judge a Girl by Her Cover by Ally Cater – YA – The second & third books in the Galiger Girl series are just as filled with exciting girl spy’s as the first. The books are completely unbelievable in a fun way that will surely make the imaginations of tween girls reel with excitement.

Appointment with Death by Agatha Christie – Mystery – Unlike most Agatha Christie novel’s the dead body didn’t show up until almost 2/3rds of the way into the story. Instead all the suspects and there motives were observed before anyone died. This didn’t make it any easier for me to pick the correct killer.

Beezus and Ramona by Beverly Cleary – MG – A beloved classic for a reason. See longer review here.

The Hunger Games & Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins – YA/SciFi – A gripping though sometimes troubling story about a brave young girl put in a horrific situation. See longer review here.

Amber Brown is Not a Crayon by Paula Danzinger – MG – A fun story about a spunky third grader. This book wasn’t published until I was in high school, so I missed it as a child, but found it an enjoyable form of market research now.

Inkheart by Cornelia Funke – MG/Fantacy – An exciting story about story books that can be read to life, with the unfortunate result that fictious villans magically pop into reality.

The Luxe by Anna Godbersen – YA/Historical – This book is basically Gossip Girl set in the 1890’s. It’s characters are pretensious and callow, but still entertaining.

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Seth Grahame-Smith – Steampunk – It’s about what I expected, Austin’s classic filled with brain eating zombies. I enjoyed it, but haven’t yet felt the need to run out and buy Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters.

Juliet, Naked by Nick Hornby – Drama – A reclusive former singer songwriter, an obsessed fan, and a relatively normal 39 year old woman all caught in a bazaar love triangle. What isn’t to love?

Bird by Bird by Anne Lamont – Writing – I’d heard all the useful tips in this book before. In general, I’ve found that I rarely enjoy reading “how to write” books. I’ve never been all that interested in reading the directions on anything. It feels to much like cheating, and I’m having fun figuring out how to write novels without too many how to books to distract me.

The Boyfriend List by E. Lockhart – YA – This book was better than I thought it would be based on the title, but it still wasn’t anything overly exciting. I’m starting to get sick of YA romances, so I guess it’s good I’ve decided to switch to writing MG books, so I can read them for a while instead.

The Silent Boy by Lois Lowry – MG/Historical – This tale set in 1910 about a nine year olds unlikely friendship with a developmently disabled boy sheds a touching light on historic thoughts about mental health and disability.

Lamb by Christopher Moore – Comedy – The gospel according to Biff is just as funny as it is sacreligious. See longer review here.

Heart of a Shepherd by Rosanne Parry – MG – This story about an eleven year old boys struggle to help his grandparents keep his family’s range afloat when his parents are off fighting in Iraq is both timely and powerful. I fell in love with the characters and often cried even when Brother had the strength to keep himself composed.

A Brief Chapter in My Impossible Life by Dana Reinhardt – YA – This is a powerful story about an adopted teen’s reunion with her birth mother. It questions definitions of family and shows great love without any annoying lustfilled romance.

Love You Hate You Miss You by Elizabeth Scott – YA – A alcholoic teen comes out of rehab and tries to pull her life together and accept the reality of the death of her best friend who died while driving drunk just before Amy went into rehab.

Barrel Fever by David Sedaris – Comedy – I am a big fan of David Sedaris, but I think I like his later stuff better than this early work.

The Sign of the Beaver by Elizabeth George Speare – MG/Historic – This book won the 1984 Newbery Award for a reason. It is one of the best stories I’ve read in a long time. I doesn’t matter if you are ten or eighty, this story about a young white settler who is schooled in the ways of the forest by a Native American boy during the summer of 1768 is worth reading.

Wherever Nina Lies by Lynn Weingarten – YA – I love the voice of this character. The story was told in a charming and funny way. But the story itself wasn’t as delightful as the storytelling.

Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac by Gabrielle Zevin – YA – When a 16 year old girl hits her head and forgets everything that happened to her in the past five years she begins to question everything about herself and who she is. Who are her friends? And how shallow was she? This YA book examines the peculare lives of teens in a way that stands above many other YA novels.

Joke of the Day

A kindergarten teacher asked the children just before she escorted them to the library, "And why is it necessary to be quiet in the Library?"

A girl smiled and said, "Because people are sleeping."

Restless

2010-03-31T09:02:00.000-07:00

I've never been all that good at sitting around with nothing to do. I've only been on forlough for three days, and I've already flowen the coupe. Yesturday, after I finished folding the laundry and vacuming, I decided to go to the beach. I was really rainy, and even hailed a few times, but my beach trip was still preferable to sitting around the house board.

I drove the 90 miles west from Portland to the coast, then since the weather didn't lend itself well to building sand castles or playing in the surf, I just turned south on 101 and drove for several hours enjoying the senery out the car window.

There were a few sun breaks long enough for me to get out and look around a bit. At one point I attempted to go for a walk on the beach. But the tide was super high (porbably because of all the rain). When one big wave came in, I had to race up the steps to a beachfront hotel to avoid getting caught in the water. The wave covered 100% of the sand. After that, I figured enjoying the view from my car's windshield was probably the way to go.

While I was driving, I also listened to "Juliet, Naked" by Nick Hornby. The more books of his I listen to, the more I find myself loving Nick Hornby. All of his novels are so different from one another. It seems the only unifying theme is that they are all highly entertaining. He creates very believable and interesting characters.

So I had a lovely day. And just to make my land locked readers jealous, here are a few pictures I took during the sunbreaks.

When I got home last night, my husband asked me "What are you doing tomorrow? Driving to Seattle?"

A trip to Seattle does sound like fun. But I think I'm going to be good and try to stay in town today. I'm thinking maybe a trip to the art museam this afternoon after doing some research at the university library might be a more prudent use of my time.

Joke of the Day

How can you tell if a chicken has ADD?

It gets distracted by that exciting yellow line, and doesn't make it across the road.

Call Me Domesti-Kate

2010-03-30T08:51:00.000-07:00

Thanks to the crappy state of the economy, I am on furlough for the next two weeks. When I told my husband, the first thing he said was, "Great, now the house will be clean and there will be lots of really great food for dinner."

This may sound very chovenistic, but normally my husband totally wears the apron in our relationship. I'm not very good at noticing dirt. So when we are both working, my husband does more than 50% of the domestic work.

To my own credit, I did load the dishwasher and do two loads of laundry yesterday. But I also went to the library and got 14 books about Ancient Peobloans. At the end of this furlough, I doubt our house will be any cleaner than it was last week. But hopefully I will have made a big dent in my research for this book I'm trying to write.

Vocabulary the Pest

2010-03-29T10:14:00.000-07:00

Over the past few years, I’ve done a pretty good job of familiarizing myself with the young adult book market. But the new historical fiction series I’m starting stars a nine year old, not a sixteen year old. So now on top of brushing up on my archeology, I also have to learn about the exciting world of children’s literature.

After visiting a couple of bookstores and doing some on-line research, it appears that children’s books fall into three basic catigories. First there are picture books. Then there are “early reader” chapter books. These books are typically 3,000 to 10,000 words and contain very simple and repetitive language. Even though the text is divided into short chapters, there are often illustrations on almost every page. These books are geared towards children just starting to read on their own, typically between kindergarden and second grade.

After the “early readers”, books jump directly to “middle grade”. Middle Grade books are described as being for 9-12 year olds. They are books for tweens and often involved middle school aged characters, think Harry Potter. MG books can be as short as 25,000 words, but often extend to 45,000 words or more.

Since I hope to have my series star a nine year old, it was originally hard to tell where my series would fit. Is it an early reader or middle grade? I desided to search for other well known books with 8-10 year old characters. After visiting multiple book stores, I can attest that “Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing”, “Harriet the Spy”, “Amber Brown is Not a Crayon”, and “How to Eat Fried Worms” can all be found in the middle grade section.

To give myself an idea of what type of language is used in these books, I picked up a bunch of younger spectrum MG books to examine sentence structure, word length, ect. I started out by reading Beverly Cleary’s classic, “Beezus and Ramona”. Naturally the first thing I noticed was that Ramona is a gazillion times cooler than Beezus. I actually pity any kid that identifies with Beezus. No nine year old should be that uptight.

The second thing that I noticed while reading “Beezus and Ramona” was how difficult the story was to read. There were many complex compound sentances that strung together so many clauses I had to stop and go back in order to figure out what was happening. I have to admit that as a child I was a huge Ramona fan. I loved Ramona. I wanted to be Ramona. And I eagerly listened to every Ramona tale my parents were willing to read me. But I think this reading of “Beezus and Ramon” last weekend may have been the first time I ever successfully read a Beverly Clearly book to myself.

In “Beezus and Ramona” the character of Beezus is nine and the character of Ramona is four. I remember my parents reading me Ramona books before bed when I was in kindergarden. And I expect most second and third graders would love to read about Beezus and Ramona on their own, assuming they can decode all the words. But this book doesn’t just have long complex sentances. It also has tons of multisylabic words. Beezus is constantly getting exasperated with Ramona. Seriously, how many seven year olds do you know that even know what exasperated means? And how many of them would want to keep reading after they found that word on the second page of a novel about a four year old?

I am extreamly dyslexic, and obviously had a different early reading experience than the average child. When I was in second grade, I didn’t know the alphabet and wasn’t reading anything. Still, I’m sure I wouldn’t have been capable of decoding “Beezus and Ramon” until I was well into high school. I don’t think I ever fell more than five or six years below grade level, so I seriously doubt there are very many modern second and third graders who can read this book without difficulty. I still remember shedding tears as an eleven year old when I continued to struggle and fail to read about Ramona.

I know many people think putting large words in children’s literature helps kids develop vocabulary. But I still think authors writing for young readers should think about readability when considering word selection. Forget about the agrivation of a pesky little sister. I can tell you, there is nothing more exasperating for an early reader than being unable to unlock your favorite book. I loved Ramona Quimby as a kid. I still love her now. She’s quirky and funny and overflowing with life. But Beverly Cleary was my least favorite author as a kid. I hated not being able to read her books more than all the others.

Obviously, kids today want stories more exciting than “See spot run.” But I would like to make a promise to all my future readers. I will never use the word exasperate in a novel whose intended audience is under the age of ten. I will limit my sentances to two clauses. And I will consider both familiarity and phonix when using words with more than three sylables.

Joke of the Day

Why is monosylabic such a long word?

Modern Story Telling

2010-03-26T08:41:00.000-07:00

This past week I had the last class in my 10 week writing class. I haven’t blogged much about the class, ‘cause I generally find other peoples notes on writing classes boring and figured nobody cared.

But this morning I was reading Steph In The City’s blog about how nobody reads books anymore and everyone watches movies, and it made me think about my writing class. The purpose of the class was plotting. Students brought in outlines and talked about holes in story structure. The idea is that simply workshopping scenes doesn’t do any good, if that scene doesn’t belong in the story to begin with.

But here is the real crux of the class. The teacher, Marc Acito, began by lecturing on the basic three act format of movies. Screen plays are very formulaic. Sure they can have any number of plot lines, but they always start with an establishing shot, then about 5% of the way into the story there is an away we go moment. Then 25% of the way in there is a huge left turn (Start of Act 2). The point of no return comes at the stories midpoint. Then at the 75% point all hope is lost (Start of Act 3). The climax happens about 95% of the way in and the final details are wrapped up in the last few minutes.

It doesn’t matter if you are watching an action movie, a romantic comedy, or a Disney cartoon. That is the formula for which all movies are based. If a screen play doesn’t follow the 3 act structure, it wont find a major producer. Marc’s idea is that since movies are the major medium through which stories are currently told, a book is more likely to resonate with a reader if it follows this structure.

I actually think that he’s right. When I read classics that have tons of backstory, or drag out long after the climax, it tends to agrivate me. They are often really good stories, but are told in a format that no longer resinates. We are now a people who see the world via the silver screen, and have a hard time comprehending stories told in other formats.

That being said, I’ve all but completely given up on movie watching. There was once a time when I watched tons of movies, when I would have already seen every film nominated for an achedimy award. But that time is long past. I almost never go to the movie theater and simply wait for things to come out on video. I belong to netfilx, but I don’t have cable, so I find myself mainly order dvd’s of TV shows. I typically read (or listen to) 20 books per month. But I rairly watch more than two movies per month.

When a movie comes out that is based on a book, the added media attention often clues me in that I should check out the book. But it never makes me want to see the movie. If given the choice between a book and a movie, I know the book is always better. The only time I ever watch movies based on books is when I’ve read and loved the book and want to see what they did with the movie version. Naturally this always leaves me feeling very disapointed.

What do you think? Am I alone on my solitary island of perfering books to movies? Or will others come back around and discover that no amount of CGI can compete with your own imagination?

Joke of the Day

A clear conscience is a sign of a bad memory.

Hey You Guys

2010-03-25T10:27:00.000-07:00

I’m busy researching the native peoples who lived in cliff dwellings in the Colorado Plato 800 years ago. I plan to feature these people in the first installment of the time traveling children’s adventure series I hope to write.

So far, the most difficult problem I’ve found is trying to figure out what to call these native people. The historic word used to discribe them is Anasazi. This term has recently gone out of fassion. It is a Navajo word that means “ancient enemy”. Pollitical correctness dictates that we can’t call these people enemy, so the term Ancient Puebloan has been applied instead.

I find it very entertaining that a Spanish term has been used to replace an un-politically correct native term. I guess the justification is that the Ancient Puebloans moved out of their cliff dwellings about 700 years ago, and Europeans didn’t arrive in this continent until 200 years later. So the Spanish were never the “enemy” of these people, they just oppressed their decendents.

So who are the decendants of these ancient people? Clearly not the Navajo. The Navajo are actually Athabaskan people, and are very closely related to the Chippeway. The Navajo didn’t migrate from the Northeast to the Southwest until after European settlers began moving into the Northeast in large numbers. So the Spanish may have actually arrived on the Colorado Plato before the Navajo.

The people that did desend from the ancient cliff dwellers are the Hopi, Taos, Zuni, Keres, and other modern Puebloan peoples. The most logical term used to discribe the ancient cliff dwellers is “Hisatsinom”, which means “ancestor” in Hopi. The problem is that calling the Ancient Peobloean people “Hisatsimom” would liguistically exclude the Taos, Zuni, and others from their lineage. So for the time being the politically correct term for a native peoples who “disappeared” centuries before Europeans arrived on this continent is Spanish.

Here is another fun names for native peoples fact I’ve learned. The term “Navajo” is a Hopi word that means “newcomers”. It’s not quite as bad as “enemy” but it’s still a big streatch from “Dine” the word the Navajo use for themselves, which means “the people”.

I have no idea what I’m going to call the people in my book once I get around to writing it. But I am having a good time learning about them.

Joke of the Day

New evidence has come out to prove that dog is man's best friend. Put your dog, your cat, and your spouce in the trunk of your car and drive around for an hour. Then open the trunk and see which one is happy to see you.

Characters Gone Wild

2010-03-23T09:40:00.000-07:00

The debate of what is “apropriate" in YA literature will never end. Personally, I don’t have a problem with edgy topics – when they are handled properly. People make mistakes, it’s a big part of being human and a huge part of growing up. Smart people learn not only from their own mistakes but also from the mistakes of others. If a kid sees their older sibling suffer the consiquences of poor choices, hopefully they will be less likely to make the same choices when they come of age.

Similarly, a well written book can shed light on the reality of teenage behavior. That doesn’t mean YA books should be preachy, it just means that when a character makes poor choices they should experience the uncomfortable consiquences in a natural way. Some of the best YA books I’ve ever read have covered topics as “edgy” as eating disorders, drug/alcohol addiction, teen sex, death of a loved one, rape, and suicide. The books that I do have a problem, are the books that present a world view saying these things are okay. Bad behavior shouldn’t be rewarded.

I recently read an article Bad Romance (or, YA & Rape Culture) that explains in great detail how the book Hush, Hush teaches teen readers that rape is okay. When I read the book, I never found myself thinking about rape, but I did find myself hating Nora. She was the classic “to stupid to live” character. Her life was literally in dange, someone tired to killer her multiple times thoughout the story, and she didn’t do anything about it.

Nora lived in an issolated farm house on the outskirts of town. Her single mom had to travel for work, so Nora was often left home alone for weeks at a time. When her killer/staulker starts appearing in her bedroom, she didn’t tell her mom. Why? Because then her mom would want to quit her job and they might even have to move into town. Wouldn’t those be good things? The article I linked to gives lots of great examples about how Nora’s improper dealings with scary lab partner/suspected killer reinforce rape culture.

The crazy thing is that Hush, Hush is a very popular book. It hasn’t quite reached Twilight status, but it’s getting there. And it’s the first book in a series. In a few years dark angles may replace vampires as the paranormal heart throbs in vogue. I have to admit that I read Hush, Hush in one sitting. It is very gripping, and managed to keep me up until 2:00 am. All that danger and distruction did encourage me to keep reading. It wasn’t until I finished the book that I stopped to think, “Wow, I really hated that heroine. In fact, I kind of wish she had died. It would have served her right.”

My feeling that a stupid heroine deserves to die, might not be to far from the idea that a stupid girl deserves to be raped. And I don’t think that. If this was real life, I wouldn’t think Nora deserved to die either. I just think this book did a very bad job of realistically showing the consiquences of poor choices. If Nora had been raped or maimed, or somehow forced to suffer from her lack of self preservation instincts, at least that would send a message to readers – hey don’t act like this. Instead, she escapes the pearls surrounding her to make room for a sequil. And the only lesson learned is that scary deadly dark angles are hot.

Joke of the Day

A schoolgirl was thrilled when she found a book in the library called How to Hug?

It turned out to be volume eight of an encyclopedia.

Nap Time

2010-03-22T09:05:00.000-07:00

The news that Spain is considering making the siesta an official national cultural tradition is a bit of a joke. Animal activists perposed the idea after a resent move to elevate the status of bull fighting. But the nappers may be onto something. Perhaps the rest of the world should follow Spain’s lead and start napping more frequently.

A resent study from Berkley shows that napping increases brain functioning. Perhaps if we all napped for an hour or two after lunch we would be more productive during the final hours of the afternoon.

The brain is a muscle. When it is overstressed, it gets tired, just like any other muscle in the body. And a good strong brain workout should cause just as much fatigue as a trip to the gym. Napping is then the body’s way of resting the well excersized brain muscle.

Personal experience tells me that the connection between nap-time and cognative development is real. As a dyslexic child, reading always made me extreamly sleepy. I would try and try and try to sound words out. Then I would need a nap. After I took the SAT, I think I slept for about a week.

My grandmother has recently begun to show evidence of the need to nap as well. She has alsimers disease, and has slowly been loosing her memory for about ten years. At a recent appointment with her doctor, my grandfather mensioned that she has been napping for several hours everyday. The doctor didn’t think this was any sign of a physical problem. Instead he reminded my grandfather that my grandmother is constantly excersizing her brain muscle as she tries to remember minor details of her life. It’s no wonder she’s so sleepy.

My grandmother recently moved from an independent living apartment in a retirement home to an assisted living apartment in the health center of her retirement home. In her new apartment she is in a less stressful environment, where she is not required to remember as many aspects of day to day life. The result – less naps. As early as a week after moving into her new place, my grandmother stopped requiring as many naps.

So if you don’t need a siesta every afternoon, does it mean you’re so smart that your brain can handle any task you throw at it? Or does it mean you’re so lazy, you’re barely even breaking a cognitive sweat? I’m with Spain on this one. I say, lets start thinking, and lets start napping. Who’s got a pillow?

Joke of the Day

A patient went to see the doctor and had a series of tests run. The doctor came back with the results and said, “Well, it’s not good. I have bad news, and I have worse news.”

“Oh no,” said the patient. “Give me the worse news first.”

“You have advanced liver cancer. I expect that you have about six weeks left to live.”

“Oh my goodness, that’s horrible. What’s the bad news?”

“You have alsimers,” said the doctor.

“Yeah, that is bad news. But at least I don’t have a terminal illness.”

My Perfect Life

2010-03-21T20:43:00.000-07:00

I may be thirty years old, but I’m still trying to figure out what I want to be when I grow up. There is one fictional future that I’ve thought about a lot over the years, and recently I’ve decided to just go for it.

So here is a little background on what my life has looked like for the last 30 years. I’m dyslexic and spent most of my early education generally sucking at all things literary. Math and science don’t require much reading, so I always excelled in both areas in school. When I went to college I thought I was going to do pre-med or pre-engineering or maybe just majoring in something highly practical like math.

Then I started taking humanities classes and found out how utterly fasinating they were. A big part of me wanted to be an English major. But I could bearly read, and had to get all my text books on tape. Listening my way through the random English class was one thing, but actually majoring in English without reading felt way to much like cheating. So I majored in anthropology instead. Anthropology is a very fascinating subject. I’m very interested in people and how they tick and loved the puzzle of uncovering ancient cultures through archeology.

I thought about getting a PHD in archeology. But most of my interest was in stone age & bronze age sites, and for general safety reasons moving to the middle east in 2001 didn’t seem like the best life plan. On top of that, I always had this nagging voice in the back of my head that I was selling myself short.

Math and science always came easy to me. And reading clearly didn’t. What if I had the ability to discover some great scientific breakthrough. Would it be fair to humanity to waste that talent on a social science? I know this sounds very egotistical, but at age 21, these were the thoughts in my head.

So a year after I graduated from college, I re-inrolled and earned myself a second degree. This time in civil engineering. I’m glad that I forced myself to give math a serious try. Mainly because it showed me that I’m not all that special. There are a lot of people who could never be engineers, who can’t comprehend linear algebra, and just playing don’t get physics. But there are also a lot of people who can. I’m smart enough to be an engineer. I spent less time studying in engineering school then I did in my anthropology days. And I’ve been gainfully employed as an engineer ever since I graduated. But I know lots of engineers who think in a more scientific way than I do. I’m never going to uncover some great scientific breakthrough. Really, as far as science nerds go, I’m pretty average.

Lately I’ve been entertaining myself by writing YA novels during my free-time. It seems like a nice marrage of my two halfs. I get paid to work as an engineer, and I still have a creative outlet. But when I grow up, I don’t really want to be an engineer or a part time YA novelest. When I grow up, I want to write archeology based children’s adventure stories.

There is this series that I’ve had in my head for years, about this time traveling nine year old who stumbles upon ancient ruins and artifiacts and is then wisked back in time to discover the hidden cultures of the forgotten past. It would be so fun to write that. Way more fun then being a normal archeologist. Way more fun than any other life I can think of for myself. I could travel around the country/world visiting archeology sites, researching ancient cultures, and interviewing scientists. Then I could write books about them for elementry school kids, and skip the tedium of spending decades shifting through the dirt.

So I’m just going to go for it. This summer I’m going on a road trip, and am putting Mesa Verde on my list of stops. In the mean time I’m doing all the internet and library research I can about the ancestrial puebloan people who lived in the Colorado plato 800 years ago. Everything I’ve written up until now has been easy and research free. Writing historical fiction for kids wont be easy and it definitely wont be research free. But it will be me. It’s a perfect blend of my roughts in archeology, my maticiulous engineer’s ability to track detail, and my imaginative writers side. I finally know what I want to be when I grow up. And I’m so excited to get started.

Joke of the Day

A budist munk walked up to a hotdog vender and order a dog with everything. The hotdog vendor took a twenty dollar bill from the munk and handed him his hotdog. "That hotdog only cost $3, and I handed you a 20. Don't I get any change?"

The hotdog vendor looked up at the munk and said, "Change comes from within."

What I See In My Crystal Ball

2010-03-19T15:48:00.000-07:00

Even though I gobble up audio books like candy, I still have a lot of real books. Growing up I always liked the idea of one day having a “library”. Yeah, it turns out I have more books than can fit in a single room, so there are book cases in pretty much every room of my house.

Of all the books that I own, my favorite is called “The Children of 2002”. It’s a children’s book that was written in 1902 that predicts the future of how kids will live in the new melenium. There are lots of steam powered flying cars and other complex gadgets still based in old technology. It’s like the original steampunk. Obviously, it’s an awesome book.

I have no idea what kind of gadgets the kids of 2110 will grow up with. And everything I can predict is based on computer technology that will be obsilete in a couple of decades. Still, I feel very comfortable predicting the future of books.

In 2110, I expect very few people will have a “home library” and floor to ceiling bookcases in multiple rooms, that will be about as common as travel by zepilin. Why, because like it or not, e-books are going to change the world.

The rise of digital media is about as drastic a change as Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press. Newspapers and magezines are rapidly becoming obsolete as more and more people get their news online. And even though e-books currently make up 3-5% of the market share, I expect that by 2020 they will make up more than 50%. And by 2110, 99%. Just consider this. iTunes was launched in April of 2003, 7 years ago. Now tell me when was the last time you bought a CD? I think I bought my last CD about 6 years ago.

I’ve had a kindle for about 7 months. The number of paper books I read hasn’t dropped all that much. I’m still gifted books that I want to read, and there is a Border’s a block away from my office that sucks me in on more lunch breaks than it probably should. The real surprise is how much more I read period.

Anyone who reads this blog knows I listen to an average of 3-5 books per week. But since I got my kindle, I’m also reading an average of 1 e-book per week on top of that. But I rarely read more than 2 paper books a month.

I just keep my kindle in my perse and pull it out whenever I have some downtime. I don’t have to head to the bookstore, or my home library to find something to read. I can buy a new book and have it delivered to me in 30 seconds. So if I finish a book half way through my commute (I commute by train) I can buy and start a new book imedately.

They say that like 20% of the population reads 80% of the books. I may read/listen to 100+ books per year, but there are a lot of people out there who read 2 books per year. It may take a long time for the very sparatic readers to get e-readers. Probably that wont happen until every phone comes with an e-reader app. But I expect within the next 5-10 years at least 75% of the people who read 50+ books per year will own an e-reader. And once that happens, e-books will make up the largest chunk of the book market. And Walmart can cover the rest.

Joke of the Day

Why did the librarian slip and fall on the library floor?

Because she was in the non-friction section.

The Ultimate Taboo

2010-03-18T08:31:00.000-07:00

I am not easily offended. In everyday life, it takes a lot to ruffle my feathers. It also takes a lot to offend me in literiture. I read and enjoy books with bad language, teen sex, drug and alcohol abuse, ect. I’ve read enough mysteries and thrillers, that the random appearance of a dead body doesn’t faze me. When it’s well written, I don’t even mind stories that deal with rape or suicide. But the one subject I simply cannot stomach is the murder of children. More spacifically children murdering children.

My least favorite book of all time is LORD OF THE FLY’S. When I read it as a teenager, the story haunted me for months. Even now, a decade and a half later, thinking about the sacrifice of Piggy puts a bad taste in my mouth. The idea presented in LORD OF THE FLY’S, that civilization is only a thin mask over savage human tendancies and a group of children stranded on an island would instictually turn to canabalism, goes against every fiber of my belief system. I genuinely wish William Golding never wrote that book.

I cannot and will not belief that it is natural or instinctual for humans to savagely kill one another. The natural tendancy to come together and for relationships is the reason civilizations have rizen in the first place. And the instinct to protect the safety and interests not of ones self, but of ones loved ones, rests at the very core of humanity.

So, naturally, I was shocked when I recently read THE HUNGER GAMES. All I knew going into the story was that it is imensly popular. That it’s doing for YA/SciFi what Twilight did for YA/Paranormal. I did not expect to find this generation’s LORD OF THE FLY’S. In THE HUNGER GAMES, instead of a group of British school boys getting stranded on an island, a futuristic oppressive government creates an arenea and throws a group of children into it to fight to the death as a form of entertainment.

The question in THE HUNGER GAMES becomes, “Will the young heroine, Katniss, be able to fight and kill other children to keep herself alive?” Sadly the answer is yes. In this best selling children’s book, young Katniss brutilly murders other children in order to save herself. To give the author Suzanne Collins some credit, Katniss also fights to protect her friends. And she comes to realize that her true enamies aren’t the other children in the arena, but the adults the invented the hunger games and created the arena.

I did have the flu when I read this book. Still I hope I’m not the only person who’s body wretched and vomited while reading this savagry. I hope THE HUNGER GAMES haunts today’s teens as much as LORD OF THE FLY’S haunted me in my youth. I hope I’m not the only person who understands there is nothing natural or instinctual about children murdering other children. I hope that humanity can keep this the ultimate taboo.

Joke of the Day

I went to a bookstore and asked the saleswoman, "Where's the self-help section?"
She answered, "If I tell you, it will defeat the purpose."

D’arvit!

2010-03-17T08:43:00.000-07:00

Happy St. Pattrick’s Day. When thinking about what Irish related topic I wanted to post on today, I got to thinking about the Artimas Fowl series. They are set in Ireland – well Ireland and the center of the earth. Since all the lepricon’s have moved into the center of the earth to avoid the mud people (humans). The think I want to say about Artimas Fowl is it’s introduction to the elfin sware word d’arvit.

Avoiding potty language in kids books is always entertaining to me. I don’t mind when fowl language appears in YA novels at approprate times. If a character is set up to be a bully or a jerk and is yelling at someone, and occational nasty word thrown into dialog seems realistic. And it’s not like teens don’t already know these words.

But I often find myself enjoying the new and made up curse words. These tend to feel vary authentic when said by frustrated kids who don’t like to get in trouble. Cursing out a friend at school may earn a kid detention, that they don’t want. So why not invent a new way to get one’s point across without resorting to f-bombs.

In Artimas Fowl, the elves all said d’arvit all the time. It was never translated, but clearly not a nice thing to say. When not dealing with supernatural creatures, I enjoy the use of French vulgarity. People often say, “Pardon my French”. So why not actually sprinkle in a few merde, pute, and chiant’s?

Here are a few more PG exclatives that I enjoy.

Holy Shiite Muslim!
Son of a Hampster!
What the Hellen Keller?
Farfignugen!
Oh my gobstoppers!

What’s your favorite kid friendly curse word?

Joke of the Day

An aging man lived alone in Ireland. His only son was in Long Kesh Prison, and he didn't know anyone who would spade up his potato garden. The old man wrote to his son about it, and received this reply, "For HEAVENS SAKE, don't dig up that garden, that's where I buried the GUNS!!!!!"At 4 A.M. the next morning, a dozen British soldiers showed up and dug up the entire garden, but didn't find any guns.

Confused, the man wrote to his son telling him what happened and asking him what to do next.

His son's reply was: "Just plant your potatoes.”

When Life Parallels Fiction – In a Bad Way

2010-03-16T13:25:00.000-07:00

So my current WIP is called BROKEN. It’s about a teenage girl who suffers a serious sports injury and ends up having the rest of her life fall apart as well. In the end when all the king’s horses and all the king’s men put her back together again, she’s not the person she used to be.

I’m enough of a cluts to have been hurt before. And writing about pain hasn’t been all that difficult. But I am fortunate enough to need to draw back on old memories. It’s been almost a decade since my last major life altering injury.

But last weekend, my husband broke his foot. This injury isn’t going to change his life forever. It was a clean break, and he should be fine in a month. Plus he has a desk job, so the only negative effect it will have is on his hobbies.

Still, I feel bad for the guy. He’s normally a very active person, and I know taking up perminate residence on the couch is killing him. And to make matters worse, I keep trying to harvest story ideas from him. “Okay, describe in detail exactly what if felt like when you broke your foot. How did you react? What went through your head? What were the physical reactions to the rest of your body?” Maybe I’m not the best nurse in the world.

Joke of the Day

A guy lost both his left arm and his left leg in a car crash.

He's all right now.

The Over Share

2010-03-15T09:23:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite TV shows is House. One of the recent episodes featured a sick blogger. This blogger put every detail of her life in her blog. So the doctors were able to dicnose her illness by reading her blog and finding clues to here simptoms there.

I’m normally not one to over share, and I try to keep the personal anticdotes I put in my blog to a minimum. But I was really sick all of last week. This lead to me cutting back the number of posts I did. But maybe I should have been sharing all the exciting details of the 168 hour flu. Maybe I didn’t have gastroenteritis like my doctor said. Maybe I had some other crazy desease and it will only be discovered if I over share in this blog.

So here are the details you don’t want to hear. Drunk sorority girls really know what’s up. It’s important to have someone hold your hair back while worshiping the porcilin gods. I got puke in my hair last week, and it was discusting!

Lower on the grows factor. It is possible to survive for a week eating nothing but dry toast. And if you pick playing enough toast it doesn’t taste so bad on the way back up. My first, I think I’m better now, meal was spaggetti. Marinara sause does not taste good on the way back up.

Aren’t you glad I over shared?

Joke of the Day

Hello. Welcome to the Psychiatric Hotline

If you are obsessive-compulsive, please press 1 repeatedly.
If you are co-dependent, please ask someone to press 2.
If you have multiple personalities, please press 3, 4, 5, and 6.
If you are paranoid-delusional, we know who you are and what you want. Just stay on the line so we can trace the call.
If you are schizophrenic, listen carefully and a little voice will tell you which number to press.
If you are manic-depressive, it doesn't matter which number you press. No one will answer.
If you are anxious, just start pressing numbers at random.
If you are phobic, don't press anything.
If you are anal retentive, please hold.

Wintergirls Review

2010-03-10T17:08:00.000-08:00

Title: Wintergirls

Author: Laurie Halse Anderson
Publisher: Speak
My Rating: 5 Stars

Summary from Bookbrowse: “Dead girl walking,” the boys say in the halls.

“Tell us your secret,” the girls whisper, one toilet to another.

I am that girl.

I am the space between my thighs, daylight shining through.

I am the bones they want, wired on a porcelain frame.

Lia and Cassie are best friends, wintergirls frozen in matchstick bodies, competitors in a deadly contest to see who can be the skinniest. But what comes after size zero and size double-zero? When Cassie succumbs to the demons within, Lia feels she is being haunted by her friend’s restless spirit.

In her most emotionally wrenching, lyrically written book since the multiple-award-winning Speak, Laurie Halse Anderson explores Lia’s descent into the powerful vortex of anorexia, and her painful path toward recovery.

My Review: This is one of the most powerful stories I've ever read. It is told from the point of view of an 85 pound anorexic girl shortly after her best friend dies of bolimia. Lia is obsessed with food, and the story is told from her lyrical crazy voice that makes all her obsessions seem honest and believable. Cassie's ghost haunts Lia throughout the story, tempting her to commit fully to her personal hunger strike and join her best friend in death. Only when Lia is on the brink of her own death does she realize choising to eat is choosing to live.

There are lots of YA novels that tackle serious issues. But this is the only book I've ever read that I honestly believe could save a girls life. It should be required reading at every eating disorder clinic. But more importantly, it should be required reading at every junior high school, so girls can see the reality of eating disorders before they become wintergirls.

Personally, I love to eat. And I still loved this story. It is a told from an often silent voice, that deserves to be heard. I would recomend this book to anyone and everyone.

Joke of the Day

What's another word for thesarouos?

Run Over By a Truck

2010-03-09T08:26:00.001-08:00

I'm sick, and if I write more than a couple sentances I'm just going to whine at you. Yesturday, I never made it out of bed to blog. Today I'm up, but barely. I think I'm just going to go back to bed now. Maybe I'll have something worthwile to post tomorrow. If I'm still alive.

Joke of the Day

One afternoon, a man went to his doctor and told him that he hasn't been feeling well lately. The doctor examined the man, left the room, and came back with three different bottles of pills.
The doctor said, "Take the green pill with a big glass of water when you wake up. Take the blue pill with a big glass of water after you eat lunch. Then just before going to bed, take the red pill with another big glass of water."
Startled to be put on so much medicine, the man stammered, "Jeez Doc, exactly what is my problem?"
The doctor replied, "You're not drinking enough water."

How to Write Good

2010-03-05T08:47:00.000-08:00

1. Always avoid annoying alliteration.
2. Never use a long word when a diminutive one will do.
3. Employ the vernacular.
4. Eschew ampersands & abbreviations, etc.
5. Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are unnecessary.
6. Remember to never split an infinitive.
7. Contractions aren't necessary.
8. Foreign words and phrases are not apropos.
9. One should never generalize.
10. Eliminate quotations. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "I hate quotations. Tell me what you know."
11. Comparisons are as bad as cliches.
12. Don't be redundant; don't use more words than necessary; it's highly superfluous.
13. Be more or less specific.
14. Understatement is always best.
15. One-word sentences? Eliminate.
16. Analogies in writing are like feathers on a snake.
17. The passive voice is to be avoided.
18. Go around the barn at high noon to avoid colloquialisms.
19. Even if a mixed metaphor sings, it should be derailed.
20. Who needs rhetorical questions?
21. Exaggeration is a billion times worse than understatement.
22. Don't never use a double negation.
23. capitalize every sentence and remember always end it with point
24. Do not put statements in the negative form.
25. Verbs has to agree with their subjects.
26. Proofread carefully to see if you words out.
27. If you reread your work, you can find on rereading a great deal of repetition can be avoided by rereading and editing.
28. A writer must not shift your point of view.
29. And don't start a sentence with a conjunction. (Remember, too, a preposition is a terrible word to end a sentence with.)
30. Don't overuse exclamation marks!!
31. Place pronouns as close as possible, especially in long sentences, as of 10 or more words, to the irantecedents.
32. Writing carefully, dangling participles must be avoided.
33. If any word is improper at the end of a sentence, a linking verb is.
34. Take the bull by the hand and avoid mixing metaphors.
35. Avoid trendy locutions that sound flaky.
36. Everyone should be careful to use a singular pronoun with singular nouns in their writing.
37. Always pick on the correct idiom.
38. The adverb always follows the verb.
39. Prepositions are not words to end sentences with.
40. No sentence fragments.
42. Also too, never, ever use repetitive redundancies.
43. Use words correctly, irregardless of how others use them.
44. If you've heard it once, you've heard it a thousand times: Resist hyperbole; not one writer in a million can use it correctly.
45. Last but not least, avoid cliches like the plague; They're old hat; seek viable alternatives.

Joke of the Day

See entire post.

I Officially Rock

2010-03-04T08:52:00.000-08:00

My blog won an award. I can’t believe it. I didn’t think anyone actually read this. And to make things even better, it’s the 10 Happy’s Award. As the winner of this award, I’m supposed to list ten things that make me happy, then post links to other blogs that make me happy that I want to besto this award onto.

I would like to start by thanking the good people at Camp Kahdalea (where I spent several summers in my youth). I don’t think any Kahdalea people read this blog, and I’m sure the camp director didn’t invent this award. But at camp, the words “Give me 10 Happy’s” inflicted terror into every camper’s ear that heard them.
Punishment for saying a “non-camp word” (i.e. any swear word, or other insult that was intended to break down the loving accepting nature of camp) was 10 happy’s. The speaker of the non-camp word would have to do ten push ups while saying a happy word with each push-up. Rainbows, and butterflies were universally accepted to be the first two happy’s. The remaining eight were often chosen to butter up the enforcing councelor, so future happy’s wouldn’t be given.

So here are my 10 happy’s:

Rainbows
Butterflies
Audio books
Spell check
Weekends
Friendship
Family
Chocolate
You (If you are reading this, you make me happy)
Camp (I don’t go there anymore, but the novel I’m querying is called CAMP LIFE so obviously I still think about it. And it can’t be left off a 10 Happy’s list.)

Now to pass my award on to future recipents. I guess I should start by saying who gave it to me. That would be Matt over at Pensive Sarcasm. Matt is actually desperately trying to make it to 100 followers. If you become his 100th follower you will win a price, as will the person who told you about his blog (i.e. me). But since he already has 79 followers, and I only have 39, I doubt I’ll be winning the referral award. Still, his blog is filled with happiness and joy, so you should check it out.

The blogs that make me happy are:

Girl About Town by Genevieve. Gen has been really bad about posting lately, but she’s in my writing critique group and one of my best friends. So I’m awarding her anyway. Maybe now that her blog’s a winner, she will start posting again. No pressure or anything Gen.

Somnambulist Zine by Martha. Martha has cushing disease, which isn’t very happy. But she’s one of the funniest people I’ve ever met, and her Freak Atlis does a good job of shedding a new light on pituitary disorders. Hopefully her brain surgery will go well. That would be happy.

Livre Diva by Maryweather. Right now I’m the only follower of Maryweather’s blog. That just seems tragic. You guys need to go check her out. Maryweather is in my writing class, and generally fabulous. Being her friend makes me happy.

Jon’s Life or Other Odd People Doing Odd Things. Jon just started blogging like two months ago, and he’s suddenly all over the internet. His posts are always quiet sparkly, and his enthusiasm definately makes me happy.

Watch Me Practice by Tina. She reads, she writes, she even spells stuff right. And her posts never make me sad.

Joke of the Day

Don’t sweat the petty things and don’t pet the sweaty things.

Once Upon A Time…

2010-03-03T10:04:00.000-08:00

The first sentance of a novel is the most important. It’s the first thing a reader is going to look at. And if it sucks, there is a good chance your potential reader wont make it to the second sentance. Here are a few opening lines I enjoy. What is your favorite opening line?

The guy walking towards me is good-looking in an obnoxious way, like he’d play the hot jerk in a TV movie about why drunk driving is bad or how it doesn’t pay to cheat on the SATs. (Wherever Nina Lies by Lynn Weingarten)

By 1899, we had learned to tame the darkness but not the Texas heat. (The Evolution of Capernia Tate by Jacqueline Kelly)

So she tells me, the words dribbling out with the cranberry muffin crumbs, commas dunked in her coffee. (Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson)

I lie all the time. (Naomi and Ely’s No Kiss List by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan)

Some memories are slippery. (Sweethearts by Sara Zarr)

My plan was to focus my senior year on information I could use after graduation when I set out for Planet Earth from the Pluto that is Trout, Idaho Population 943. (Deadline by Chris Crutcher)

Oh crap. (How to Not Be Popular by Jennifer Ziegler)

If things had been different, I’d be called Nataliya or Natasha, and I’d have a Russian accent and chapped lips year round. (Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac by Gabrielle Zevin)

They call me King Dork. (King Dork by Frank Portman)

My sister Cass ran away the morning of my sixteenth birthday. (Dreamland by Sarah Dessen)

“That’s the worst idea I ever heard.” (Going Too Far by Jennifer Echols)

Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much. (Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J.K. Rowling)

It was 7 minutes after midnight. (The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon)

Snowman wakes before dawn. (Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood)

Everyone thinks it was because of the snow. (If I Stay by Gayle Forman)

The secret is how to die. (The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown)

It’s hard to imagine what my parents were thinking when they decided to name me Shakespeare. (Spanking Shakespeare by Jake Wizner)

The best day of my life happened when I was five and almost died at Disney World. (Going Bovine by Libba Bray)

I’ve never been to a funeral until today. (I Heart You, You Haunt Me by Lisa Schroeder)

I was born with water on the brain. (The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie)

I had two goals that summer; to get the lead in the camp play and to get to third base. (Camp Life by Me, yet to be published)

Joke of the Day

A Fruadian slip is when you say something but you mean your mother.

Lamb by Christopher Moore

2010-03-02T16:34:00.000-08:00

Over the past year I’ve blogged a lot about the numberous books that I listen to or read. When averaging five books per week, it often seems that books are the only thing on my mind. But I haven’t really done official book reviews before. I also haven’t blogged on Tuesdays before. I’ve been doing the blogging three days a week on MWF thing for a while now.

Well, I’ve desided to try more official book reviews, which should give me enough to say to up my blogging frequency to five times a week. If you all hate my reviews, let me know and I’ll cut back to three days a week. So let us begin.

Title: Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff
Author: Christopher Moore
Publisher: Harper Collins (Feb 4, 2003)
My Rating: 4 stars

Back Cover: The birth of Jesus has been well chronicled, as have his glorious teachings, acts, and divine sacrifice after his thirtieth birthday. But no one knows about the early life of the Son of God, the missing years - except Biff, the Messiah's best bud, who has been resrrected to tell the story in this divinely hilarious yet heartfelt work "reminiscent of Vonnegut and Douglas Adams" (Philadelphia Inquire).

Verily, the story Biff has to tell is a miraculous one, filled with remarkable journeys, magic, healing, kung fu, corpse reanimation, demons, and hot babes. Even the considerable wiles and devotion of the Savior's pal may not be enough to divert Joshua from his tragic destiny. But there's no one who loves Josh more - except maybe "Maggie", Mary of Magdala - and Biff isn't about to let his extrodinary pal suffer and ascend without a fight.

My Review: I liked this book, but I didn’t love it. It’s funny, in a sacriligious tongue in cheek kind of way that I expected to love. I’ve read a few other Christopher Moore books and generally think of him as a top notch humorist. I do recommend Lamb and am glad that I got a chance to listen to it. But since I didn’t love it, I’ll list the hang up I had with it.

The story primarily focuses on the first 30 years of Jesus’s (who was called Josuha according to Biff) life, before he became his big bad massia self. Between the ages of 13 and 30, Josh and Biff traveled to the east to seek wisdom from the magi who visited Josh at his birth. The adventures that take place in Afganistan, Tibet, and India are quite funny, but they don’t have a big overarching force driving them forward. The book follows a standard quest model similar to The Odessy or Candid.

Obviously several small stories strung together in a quest is a story structure that works. One of my examples was written before the original Gospels. But it doesn’t do as good a job of gripping readers as single story lines do. Christopher Moore is so funny that the laughs were enough to keep me reading. But there were many points in the story where it would have been easy to put the book down. In fact, I listened to this book over the course of two days, which means at one point in time, I did put it down to sleep. This is something that I rarely do.

Still, I have to recommend Lamb. Unless you are a super devote Christian who would be offended by the truth of the son of man’s adolescence.

Joke of the Day

Why are all the ink spots crying?
Their father was in the pen.

February Recap

2010-02-28T19:45:00.000-08:00

In February, I either wasted a lot of time, or was very productive. Depending upon how you look at things. I wrote negative 40k words this month. I was almost 45k words into the rough draft of THE SECRETS OF SMITH HALL at the end of January. Then I realized that my story had zero plot and zero hope of finding a plot so I started over. Now I'm about 5k words into BROKEN. While I was pushing the delete button (not really, I saved my old work and just started a new blank file) I was also managed to read/listen to 25 books this month. 25 books in 28 days, that has got to be some kind of a record, even for me. The exact stats are that I read 1 paper book, I read 8 books on my kindle, and I listened to 14 audio books. Here is a quick account of each of the books I read this month. I didn't intend to go crazy into paranormal, but it sort of happened anyway.

13 Reasons Why by Jay Asher – Young Adult – This powerful emotional story involves a teenage boy recieving a set of audio tapes from one of his classmates just after she committed suicide explaining the series of events that lead to her own death. It’s a dark and gripping and tragic tale.

Vladimir Tod Series (books 1-4) by Heather Brewer – Young Adult/Paranormal – This is a fun vampire series. It has more of the traditional vampire lore and less of the sparkly love story. Vladimir Tod, the young vampire, is an intersting character. The story doesn’t get really gripping until the later novels.

Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan – Young Adult – The book is even better than the movie. I does a great job of jumping back and foreth between Nick and Norah’s heads and showing how easy it is to misunderstand a person’s meanings when you are just beginning to meat and fall in love with them.

The Time Paradox by Eoln Colfer – Middle Grade/Fantacy – This is the sixth book in the Artemis Fowl series. All of which are fun to read. In this one 15 year old Artemis travels back in time and ends up coming face to face with 10 year old Artemis. In addition to being an exciting adventure, it illistrates how much Artemis has matured over the course of the series.

Whale Talk by Chris Crutcher – Young Adult – This is a great “boy book”, filled with sports and fighting and overcoming racism and other predudices. Chris Crutcher is a bit of a ledgend in the boy book genre. I’m not sure how many more of his books I’ll read, but I did find this story very captivating.

Going Too Far by Jennifer Echols – Young Adult – This is the ultimate bad girl/good boy love story. A seventeen year old child deliquent falls in love with a nineteen year old cop. Both characters had interesting complexities to their personalities which unfolded over the corse of the story. But I still found the whole thing hard to believe.

Hush Hush by Becca Fitzpatrick – Young Adult/Paranormal – This book is very gripping. It will keep you guessing until the very last page. Unfortunately, I didn’t find any of the characters all that likable. The main character, Nora, was expecially exaperating. She is constantly lying to people when she finds herself in mortal danger, thinking the best option is to pretend everything is fine and sluth out the truth herself. Really, when unknown forces are trying to kill you, is that the best way to go. Can someone say to stupid to live?

The Princess Bride by William Goldman – Fairy Tale – This book is just as funny as the movie. All the great lines that people always quote from the movie come straight from the book. It’s also a pretty short book, only three CD. I now wish that my parents had read me this book as a bedtime story instead of just showing me the classic movie.

Looking for Alaska by John Green – Young Adult – I have luke warm feelings for this book. I like the characters, I felt like there was enough going on to keep the story moving. But when it’s all over, there is nothing that makes it stand out above the half a dozen other books I read that week. It’s just an interesting story about some high school kids at bording school.

Once Dead, Twice Shy by Kim Harrison – Young Adult/Paranormal – This haunting adventure was a lot of fun. It reminded me of the showtime show Dead Like Me, which was cancled way to soon. I felt like I understood everything that was going on for the entire story, but then the end through me a huge twist. A twist that is going to make the second book in the series, which comes out this May, just as exciting.

Slam by Nick Hornby – Drama – In this story a 16 year old teen dad gets life advise from a live sized poster of stakeboarder Tony Hawk. It’s a funny story that tackles hard issues from an interesting perspective.

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle – Middle Grade/Fantacy – This classic adventure didn’t captivate my imagination quite as much as its more recent competition. The story is interesting, but I found the character of Meg really whiney and kind of annoying, so I didn’t care as much about her quest.

Wondrous Strange by Lesley Livingston – Young Adult/Fantacy – This story involves the real life fairy folk of Puck and Oberon and others interacting with a seventeen year old actress playing Tatania in a production of Midsummer Night’s Dream. The modern adventure set within the peramiters of Shakespeare’s fantastical world worked really well. I found myself rooting for both the humans and fairfolk as they struggled for balance in the relms.

Dunk by David Lubar – Young Adult – This is a really fun story about a teenage boy mad at life who dreams of becoming a bozo at a dunk tank, so he can properly yell at the world. The story has several fun twists and turns along the way. David Lubar is starting to become one of my favorite YA writers.

Wings by Aprilynne Pike – Young Adult/Paranormal – In this story, Laurel is a fairy instead of a witch, vampire, or angel. It’s a very cute story that is super G rated. Laurel is in high school but elementry school girls in love with fairy tales could get just as much enjoyment out of this story as teens.

King Dork by Frank Portman – Young Adult – This book is about a total loser who refers to himself as King Dork, what’s not to love. It has a really great voice, and by the end of the story there were some exciting twists. Unfortunately, a book about a kid with zero friends can be a bit dull, and the story took a while to really get going.

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith – Classic – An interesting protrat of imigrant life at the dawn of the twentieth century. See a longer review here.

Spanking Shakespeare by Jake Wizner – Young Adult – This is one of the funniest books I’ve read in a long time. The character of Skakespeare, his parents are freaks, is helarious. This story has one of the best voices around in YA fiction. To acsent the great comedy, several of the side characters deal with very serious and complicated issues that end up dragging Shakespeare into a meaningful story without destroying his wit.

Castration Celebration by Jake Wizner – Young Adult – Not quite as funny as Spanking Shakespeare, but close. I can’t wait for Jake Wizner to write a third book. He is quickly becoming one of my favorite authors. I mean really, how can you go wrong with teens singing show tunes about castration?

Sweethearts by Sara Zarr – Young Adult – Sara Zarr is really good at writing stories about teenagers with horrifying pasts. The hidden nightmear of Jenna’s childhood is reveiled slowly as she deals with a ghost from her past transferring to her high school. I liked the character development, and Jenna’s growth, but actually found the horrifying nightmear much tamer than I’d expected given Jenna’s frayed emotions.

Joke of the Day

What's the difference between an accountant and a dectective solving the Case of the Stolen Book?

One's a bookkeeper and one's a bookcaper

Movie ≠ Book

2010-02-26T08:33:00.000-08:00

Last night I saw “The Lightning Thief”. Let me start by saying that I love Percy Jackson. I read all five books about a year ago and have been talking them up ever since. I was thrilled when I heard about the movie, because I’m enough of a realist to know movies always increase book sales. And seriously, people need to read these books.

But the movie wasn’t very good. I understand that books always need to be abridged to fit into a two hour movie. But they cut out the villian. Seriously. The movie version of “The Lightning Thief” is the equivalent of making a Harry Potter movie and cutting out Voldimort. For just this one movie, all that did was lower the stakes and make the ending seem really dirivitive (so no big deal). But it also set it up to be almost impossible to make a movie of the second book in the series. Every single part of the over arching storyline was cut. So I can’t recomend that anyone see “The Lightning Thief” but I do recomend reading the books. Cause Percy Jackson is a very cool kid.

This made me think about other movie adaptations of books. There is sort of a universial truth that the book is always better than the movie. So why is it that so many people think they can watch a move and get away with not having to read the book? The Harry Potter movies do a pretty good job of tracking to the actual story. That’s because J.K. Rowling is enough of a superstar to have veto power, and she forced her screen writers to stay true to her vission. But even those movies are more of a clift notes verssion that really wouldn’t make much sence to someone who hadn’t previously read the books.

I have a writer friend, who sold the movie writes to his book eight years ago. Several different Holywood screenwriters have attempted to adapt this novel into a movie, and the rights have been re-optioned several times. But his book is both funny and action packed. And nobody has been able to figure out how to cut a 100k word novel into a 2.5 hour movie without cutting the action, the suspence, and/or the comedy. The result is that his producer finally hired him to write the screenplay.

I don’t think very many authors are given the oppertunity to write their own screenplays. And I know that this author is still struggling to figure out how to properly abridge his story. I expect when he’s done, the movie still wont be as good as the book. Because the universal truth is a truth. The movie is never as good as the book.

So don’t be a cop-out. A paper back is cheeper than a movie ticket, and will entertain you for 10 hours instead of two. So put down your remote, and go read a book. I recommend the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series. It has a really great villian that you wont find in the movie. Plus Percy is dyslexic and that’s cool too.

Joke of the Day

Why are builders afraid to have a floor 13, but publishers aren’t afraid to have a chapter 11?

Library Love

2010-02-24T08:23:00.000-08:00

I can't remember the last time I checked a "book" out of the library, but I'm guessing it probably contained more pictures than words. But that doesn't mean I don't frequent my local public library. I've just somehow convinced myself that all those books filling 90% of the space don't exist. Instead I focus solely on the audio section. Free audio books, can someone say paradice.

Between the ages of 10 and 15 I systematically listened to every audio book available at the Lake Oswego Public Library. Listening to an average of 200 audio books a year definately affected my education. It also helped me fall in love with the public library system, even if I couldn't read any of the books housed inside.

I took a eight year sabatical from audio books after I graduated from college. Somehow, I convinced myself that I'd never learn how to read for myself unless I went cold turkey on audio. Since I didn't have class related deadlines, I could labor through actually books. The process wasn't as painful as I'd expected. The love of literature sparked by all those audio books in my childhood, gave me the drive to break down and start reading.

About a year ago, I decided that enough was enough and it was time to start listening again. This decision came when I realized I'd somehow gone from listening to 200 books a year, to reading 20 books a year. If I wanted to get an idea of market trends, and important part of any writers life, I had to start listening again.

Remembering my orderly processes through the LO library goinig in alphabetical order by author, I set myself a goal of listening to every audio book available in the Hillsboro Public Library. Well, I've been attacking the library for a year now, and figured I'd give an update. In the past year, I have listened to about 70 library books. I have also listened to about 35 other books (through audio bookworm) and read about 35 books (e-book and paper). 140 books a year is pretty good. I no longer feel like a slacker.

But I'm not working through the library in any kind of systamatic order. My new found ability to read means that I can read jacket covers and reviews and try to pick out books that I think I'll actually enjoy. I currently have eight audio books checked out from the library and six more on hold.

Still there is a mild fear hiding in the back of my mind. What will happen when I get through all the books in the library? It took me about six years as a kid, and I listened to a lot of stuff that I didn't particularly enjoy. I expect it will take me two or three more years to get though all the library books I'm currently interested in. Then I'll have to haunt the new releases and/or start spending more time/money at Powell's.

What about you? Do you frequent your local library? Have you ever tried to read all the books inside?

Joke of the Day

Why is the alphabet in that order?

Is it because of the song?

Tragic Loss

2010-02-22T14:16:00.000-08:00

It’s the end of an erra. My iPod died last night. Believe me, this event has lead to much crying and nashing of teeth.

We had good times, me and my iPod. Hundreds of audio books were consumed on that device. Thousands of songs. And now it will sync no more.

Don’t worry. Today during my lunch break I went out and bought a brand new iPod. I’ve got to listen to those library books before the library wizards delete them off my computer. I can’t be sitting around without a working mp3 player.

I thought about burying my aged iPod in the backyard. But it doesn’t seem environmentally sound. So I took advantage to recycling program discount instead. The good people at Apple can tear my sad little iPod appart, and see if there are any usable parts left inside.

My new toy is actually an iTouch, which mean in addition to dispencing all the audio books I can dream of, it also has web capabilities. Maybe soon I’ll be blogging from my iPod too. Wouldn’t that be spiffy? Perhaps some good will come out of this tragity after all.

Joke of the Day

Alcohol and calculus don’t mix.

Never drink and derive.

Could the classics make it today?

2010-02-19T13:00:00.000-08:00

I recently listened to A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith. This was actually my second listening of this story. The first time I listened to it I was fifteen years old. At that time, I absolutely loved it. I had in my mind that it was one of my favorite books, so I decided to go back and listen to it again.

These were my thoughts going into the story at age thirty. Twelve cd’s, wow, that’s pretty long. Most books are six to eight. (I just checked on-line, this is a 528 page novel). I started listening anyway. Ready to fall into a story so wonderful I’d relish the extra word count. But wait, is that third person omnicient? Seriously? That has to be the most annoying point of view ever imagined. But I like Francie, she’s a cute kid. So I’ll try not to think about how much better this book would be in first person and just go with the omnicient.

Then the back story started coming in waves. We aren’t talking, only give back story that is required to help with the progression of the front story. We’re talking, a two hour long side trip into the ancestry of the main character, that she’s not even present for because she hasn’t been born yet. Eventually the story came back around to eleven year old Francie, and stuck with her until she turned seventeen. Six years seems like a lot to cover in one book, isn’t that what series are for?

I have read enough current books, and enough blogs by current publishing insiders, to know this set up would have a vary hard time finding publication today. Books that span generations don’t work. And nobody likes an omnicient POV, nobody. But in 1943 the rules were different, so Betty Smith’s little tale did find publication.

Here is the thing though. “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn” is a really good book. By the time I finished it, I’d fallen in love with Francie all over again. It doesn’t surprize me one bit that this was one of my favorite novels as a teenager, cause it addresses growing up with a truth few stories match. It also offers a glimps into a world that no longer exists with an honesty modern historical fiction cann’t match. And the result, “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn’s” current amazon rank is 4,312.

In comparison, If I Stay by Gayle Forman, is a YA novel that came out last year and seems to be doing everything right. It spans one day with very minimal back story sprinkled in. It is first person from the point of view of a girl in a coma. It has a great voice, and deals with issues current teens care about. I recently read it and loved it. But “If I Stay’s” amazon rank is 5,005. And my guess is in another 67 years, Betty Smith will still be outselling Gayle Forman.

I’m not sure what this all means. I expect that if “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn” had 200 fewer pages of back story and was told in first person, I’d still be a fan. It definately would have been easier for me to get into it at the beginning. But I’m not convinced the current literary push towards short attention span readers is a good thing. Maybe I only noticed all the current rules “A Tree Grows In Brooklyn” broke, because I’m in the process of attempting to enter the writing world. And maybe a current novel could span multiple generations in third person omnitient and touch modern readers just as easily. Or maybe, just as Brooklyn has changed greatly from the world little Francie grew up in, the writing world has changed too and the short attention span novels are here to stay.

Joke of the Day

Charles Dickens walks into a bar and orders a martini. The bartender looks up at him and says, "Sure thing. Olive or twist?"

Finding a Place to Write

2010-02-17T13:42:00.000-08:00

This weeks Road Trip Wendnesday over at YA Highway asks the question, where do you write. I have two answers to this question.

Answer #1: The train. I live in the suburbs of Portland, but work downtown. This means I have a 45 minute comute by lightrail to and from work each day. That’s an hour and a half each day that I’m sitting on a train with nothing better to do than write. I bring my laptop with me to work, and write during my commute each day. On days when a story idea nags at me all morning, I often pull out my laptop during my lunch break and write then too.

Answer #2: Bed. I desided to convert our guest room into my home office. There isn’t a desk in there. There is just a bed that only gets used a few times a year. I like sitting in bed and writing. I also like being able to spread notes to myself all over the matrass and not have to worry about cleaning them up when I want to go to sleep. I find the guest bedroom is a wonderful office. We do have a desktop computer at a real desk in another room of our house, but I’ve never written at that computer. How uncomfortable. I sit at a desk eight hours every day. When I get home and want to write, I’d much rather lay in bed.

What about you? Where do you like to write?

Joke of the Day

Never say anything bad about a man until you’ve walked a mile in his shoes. By then you’re a mile away, and you’ve got his shoes. So you can say whatever you want.

Romance without Spell Check

2010-02-14T17:28:00.000-08:00

My husband is a very good speller, most of the time. But every year on valantines day, he gets a kick out of giving me a little spell check free romance. Last year he got me a boquet of flours. It was a very lovely arrangement of whole wheat, buck wheat, corn meal, and all purpose white. I actually loved the boquet of flours or than I would have liked some traditional flowers. Cause I knew he'd put some thought into a special gift, even if it was humorous.

This year he decided to make me a very sweet card. This is an exact quote of what the card says:

"Too Kate: Hapy Valintine's Dae. Plese Bee Myn. Luv, Warren"

Isn't that thoughtful. Okay, maybe now he's just making fun of me.

Joke of the Day

Jim asked his friend, Tony, whether he had bought his wife anything for Valentine's Day.
"Yes," Tony said. "I bought her a belt and a bag."
"That was very kind of you," Jim said. "I hope she appreciated the thought."
Tony smiled. "So do I, and hopefully the vacuum cleaner will work better now too."

Literature Loving Characters

2010-02-12T16:36:00.000-08:00

I’ve recently read several really great books that star well read characters. Three of these books have been YA books with male protagonists. The bookworm boy is rarely represented in fiction, but it makes sence that boys who read books would enjoy reading about boys that read books. The way that these authors brought literary refrences into the novels was a lot of fun.

In SLEEPING FRESHMAN NEVER LIE, Scott goes out for the school paper hoping to get face time with his latest crush. Only she ends up leaving the paper staff after one issue. Scott really wants to write book reviews, but ends up getting stuck working as a sports reporter instead. The guy can’t win. But he does have lots of commentary on the horrible book reviews that do appear in the paper and lots of ideas about the books he would review if given the chance.

In KING DORK, Tom hates CATCHER IN THE RYE. Every English teacher he’s ever had has forced him to read it and he is just playing sick of Holden Caulfield. That is until he finds a beat up copy of Catcher in his basement, that belonged to his deseast father. Tom attempts to get to know his father by decoding the criptic notes written in the margens of his dad’s copy of Catcher. Oh and Tom’s life tends to mirror Holden’s a lot too. Drat.

But my favorite novel about a well read teen is SPANKING SHAKESPEARE. The main character in this novel is named Shakespeare, his parents are freaks. Shakespeare isn’t really all that much of a reader, but he does have the hots for a very well read girl. As a result he writes her a 16 stanza poem that compairs himself to several literary masters with the final conclusion that Shakespeare needs to get laid. It’s one of the funniest passages I’ve ever read. You should definately go buy this book, but I’ll tease you with one of my favorite stanzas.

Shakespeare (the first) while writing King Lear
Got totally hammered guzzling beer.
And in between poems, word has it that Keats
Liked to cavort betwixt oft-soiled sheets.

So what about you fellow writers, do any of your characters like to quote passages from Catcher, or write pornographic poems about Keats? If not, I think you’re slacking.

Joke of the Day

What’s big and gray and wrote gloomy poetry?
T.S. Elephant

Crap, I’m Boring

2010-02-10T08:35:00.000-08:00

Anyone who follows this blog with any frequency knows I have a serious addiction to audio books. Last weekend I listened to five books and wrote nothing. I’m aweful, I know. But during all this listening, I had an opiffany. Unfortunately, it wasn’t a very good one.

I have this problem, where I keep getting sucked into boring novels with good voices. You know the type. The narrator has an awesome voice and there are lots of really funny scenes. So you start reading, thinking the story is going to be fabulous. Then you get to the end and realize that the story line was way overdone, incredibly predicable, and now you feel like an idiot for wasting an entire Saturday reading this drivil.

Here is the really sad thing though. The book I’ve been working on for the past two months is totally one of those stories. I like the characters, I have some fun scenes. I think I might even be able to suck in some readers with a funny enough opening. But in the end, my story is a total waste of time. I don’t want to piss off my future readers. But I can’t force an interesting plot into the world I’ve created without rewriting EVERYTHING.

So that’s what I’m doing. I’m starting over and changing everything. I am keeping three of the characters from the story that I’ve been writing. But I’m making them seniors in high school instead of freshman in college. And I am throwing crap at them that wouldn’t make any sence in the story I already wrote, but will hopefully not waste my readers time.

I haven’t actually started writing this new story yet. But I’m hoping that it will be worth reading when I’m done. I guess it’s good that I realized the book I’ve been writing is boring 50k words into the rough draft and not after I’d hashed out 8 or 9 more drafts.

Joke of the Day

Punctuation Parable

Dear John,
I want a man who knows what love is all about. You are generous, kind, thoughtful. People who are not like you admit to being useless and inferior.You have ruined me for other men. I yearn for you. I have no feelings whatsoever when we're apart. I can be forever happy - will you let me be yours?
Gloria

Dear John,
I want a man who knows what love is. All about you are generous, kind, thoughtful people, who are not like you. Admit to being useless and inferior.You have ruined me. For other men, I yearn. For you, I have no feelings whatsoever. When we're apart, I can be forever happy. Will you let me be?
Yours, Gloria

100 and Counting

2010-02-07T21:40:00.000-08:00

I started this blog just over a year ago. In the past year, I’ve managed to come up with 100 posts that had little or nothing to do with spelling. Why did I ever think a blog about bad spelling was a good idea? I’m not to worried about my lack of spelling related posts, because a lot of the things that I have come up with haven’t been to horrible. I doubt anyone other than my mother has read all 100 posts. If you’re a newer follower and don’t want to go back and read all 100, here are links to my top 10.

10 – Happy Holidays: Sometimes pictures speak louder than words. And the 15 foot snowman I built last year was so cool, I’m almost willing to forgive my husband for buying that forklift.

9 – Multi-Tasking: My secret is reviled – how I listen to so many audio books.

8 – What is Dyslexia: Why read wikipidea, when you can see my definition right here?

7 – Is Listening the Same as Reading: I’ve blogged a lot about the wonderful world of audio books, but I think this post does the best job of showing my love/hate relationship with full cast audio.

6 – Being an Illiterate Author: Occationally, I’m forced to stop and notice how much of a freak I really am.

5 – The Secret of Writing: I still like to talk to my imaginary friends, what about you?

4 – How Do You Spell Your Name: I feel making it to my senior year of high school before I learned to spell my own name qualifies me for some sort of metal.

3 – Servival Skills: It’s not that hard being illiterate, you just have to know how to cope.

2 – Users Guild to Spell Check: With ten easy steps, your spelling can be as good as mine.

1 – Famous Dyslexics: The list is suprizingly long. It just goes to show, living outside the box isn’t always a bad thing.

Joke of the Day

Check out my Dyslexia Jokes post to see a complete list.

Teen Angst - It's Not Just for Girls

2010-02-04T20:31:00.000-08:00

I started writing a new novel about two months ago. Because I'm a total pantser, I started writing the very first second I heard a new character's voice in my head and I spent about a month and a half writing non-stop with no idea where I was going. I now have about 45,00o words. The scenes I've written surround a group of friends, and so far I've written chapters from six of these characters points of view.

I'm now at the point where I need to start writing my real story. Which means I need to figure out what my story is actually about. Who is the narator? What is the plot? What is the point? These are the questions I've been asking myself for the last couple of days. Don't worry, I'm not going to keep all six point of view characters. That's just way to crowded and messy.

I thought I might tell the story from Haley's point of view. She's a major character, I like her a lot, and many of the scenes I've already written have been from her point of view. Also, given what I've already written, Haley's clearly the primary female character. The problem is that while Haley does grow and change over the course of the story, nothing that happens to her is all that profound. Her life seems blessed. I really like Haley, but I feel like an entire book about her might be kind of boring.

Then there is Kyle. I love Kyle. He's a total mess, which makes me love him even more. A novel told from Kyle's point of view could be really fun to write. And I think it would have a better chance of engaging/captivating readers than a story written from Haley's point of view. The only problem is that Kyle is a boy. And this story is YA. And everybody knows that only girls read YA, right?

I was discussing the idea of writing my story from Kyle's POV with a writer friend. When I said that this could be a "boy book" I was actually laughed at. But I've read some really amazing books with male narators. Many of my favorite books of all time have had male narators. And I've heard multiple people within the publishing industry say that there is a shortage of boy books. So I did a little unscientific research.

First I looked at amazon. Based on their sales rankings 53 of the top 100 YA novels have a male main character. 53%, more than half, how can that be possible? Is this because there are fewer books with male protagonists available, so they end up selling better than their female counterparts? Or does this mean that the myth that only girls read is truly a myth?

I decided to look further. Next I examined my own reading habits. I am a little OCD and actually keep a detailed list of all the books that I read. Of the last 200 novels that I read, 86 had male protagonists. 43%, less than half, but still a lot. But I read from a variety of genres, so I limited my permiters. 102 of my last 200 reads had a protagonist under the age of 20. Out of those 102 books, 42 had a male protagonist. 42%, almost exactly the same as the stats for all genres.

But these statistics might be a little misleading. Of my 42 books with a boy MC, 7 starred a guy named Harry Potter, 5 stared a guy named Percy Jackson, and six stared a guy named Artimis Fowl. And out of the 60 girl books on my list, only 4 stared a girl named Bella Swan and 3 stared a girl named Ever. So 72% of the Paranormal/Fantacy books I've read recently have had male MC's, and 22% of the non-paranormal YA books I've read have had male MC's.

I don't think this means that boys can't appear in YA novels though. Cause "The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian", "The Awesome Adventures of Fan Boy and Goth Girl", "King Dork", "Sleeping Freshman Never Lie", and "The Misfits" are all really good books. I read them all and loved them all. And I expect that there are a lot of teenage girls that have also read them and love them. And I also think there are a lot of teenage boys who like to read, and they are so desprate to find novels they can relate to, that they have forced 53% of the books on amazons YA best seller list to star boys just like them.

So that is that. I'm convinced. I'm writng a book about a geeky boy named Kyle, who I totally love, and nobody can stop me.

Joke of the Day

A hungry lion was roaming through the jungle looking for something to eat. He came across two men. One was sitting under a tree reading a book; the other was typing away on his typewriter.
The lion quickly pounced on the man reading the book and devoured him. Even the king of the jungle knows that readers digest and writers cramp.

Extra Time on Exams

2010-02-03T09:39:00.000-08:00

I recently stumbled upon an article about a dyslexic Yale student who wasn’t allowed extra time on this medical licencing exam. I don’t know all the details of the case, but it did make me think about IEP’s (individual education plans) and the way extra time on exams can affect dyslexic students.

As a kid I got very little extra help from the public school system. My parents hired a private tutor for me as soon as I got diacnosed with dyslexia and pressured the school to keep me mainstreamed as much as possible. By the time I got to high school, I’d become so good at working the system that nobody seemed to notice or care that I couldn’t read. Bonehead English was the only non-honors/AP class in my schedule.

But when it came time to take the SAT, I did pull the IEP card to get myself some extra time. I took the SAT twice, once with regular time and once with extended time. My math score stayed the same for both exams (I actually cut back the amount of time I spent on the math sections when I had control of the clock). But my verbal score went up by more than 100 points when I had time to read the questions. That was what I wanted to show colleges, that I knew how to speak English, I just read really slow.

The thing is, there comes a time in a persons life when reading slow stops being a good excuse. I’m not given extra time to get my work done now that I have a job. And I’d be apprehensive about a doctor who needed extra time to read my medical charts. So I actually think it’s a good thing that the medical board refused to give that Yale student extra time. Eventually, you just need to learn how to read.

While in college, I got all my textbooks on tape. But I never asked any of my professors for extra time on exams. I could have had it if I asked, but most of the time I finished early. I have to take my engineers licencing exam pretty soon, and I would never dare to ask for extra time. If I can’t pass the test, I shouldn’t be alowed to stamp construction plans. And time shouldn’t have anything to do with it.

All this discussion of tests reminds me of a few years ago when I considered getting an MBA. I gave up on the idea before I got around to applying, but I did take the GMAT. My results shocked me. My verbal score was higher than my math score. How does a dyslexic engineer do better on a verbal exam than a math exam? The only answer I can come up with is that I learned how to read. I spent a lot of time figuring out how to pass exams without reading the questions as a kid. Now that I can read the questions, the tests seem really easy.

Hopefully, that Yale med student has learned how to read too. There’s no reason why a dyslexic can’t be a doctor. But I hope that my doctor can read my charts without to much extra time.

Joke of the Day

When it comes right down to it, dyslexics have more nuf.

Listening Log

2010-02-01T08:05:00.000-08:00

Since I was in Spain at the time, I didn't do a month end reading review at the end of December. You didn't miss out on much. Thanks to my OCD writing habits, I only read/listened to seven books in December. I picked things up a little in January and read/listened to fourteen more books. So here is a quick review of the twenty-one books I've consumed in the past two months. If you care about the stats, I read one of these books in paper form, I read four on my kindle, and I listened to sixteen.

PS, I Love You by Cecelia Ahern - Chick-Lit - Why watch the movie, when you could read the book? I haven't seen the movie, but got about as much out of the book as I expected from watching previews. It was touching, and sentimental, and sappy. I liked it, but I didn't leave any kind of a lasting impression. It's just a cute love story with a sad beginning and a hopeful ending.

Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood - Sci Fiction - I'm normally not a big SciFi fan, but after reading this book, I feel like I should become one. It was one of the best books I've heard in a long time. The post apocolitic future reality was artfully depicted, and the backstory was revield in a way that made it easy to suspend my disbelief. I honestly hope that high school kids are forced to read this book in fifty years. 'Cause it deserves to join the great SciFi classics like Ferinhight 451, 1984, and Brave New World. Even if you don't normally like SciFi, I recomned this futuristic tale of deseat and inspiration.

Doing It by Melvin Burgess - Young Adult - The British tend to be a lot more vulgar about a lot of things. I've read enough YA books to know they often push boundrys and tackle edgy subjects. But this books felt like reading porn. OMG, it was really graphic. I did find all the crazy British kids snogging entertaining, but if I was the parent of a teenager, I wouldn't want my kids to read this novel.

One Two Buckle My Shoe by Agatha Christie - Mystery - I like Agatha Christie. Did you know she's dyslexic. Well you do now. I was so sure I'd guessed the killer half way though, but the ending totally threw me. I was way off. But still very well entertained.

Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List by Rachel Cohn & David Levithan - Young Adult - I really liked this book. It's funny and honest and raw. The characters in this book are freshman in college, so it makes it a natural comp title for my WIP. I would love to one day write with as much wit as Cohn & Levithan.

Artemis Fowl (books 1-5) by Eoln Colfer - Middle Grade/Fanticy - I haven't gotten to book six yet, and book seven is due out this summer, but so far I'm loving this series. It's similar in genre to Harry Potter, but takes a very different approach. Artemis is a tween criminal mastermind on a mission to take over the world. He discovers the existance of faries and then regularly exploits them in his diabolical plans. Eventually he befriends the faries and joins forces with them to save the world several times. It's a fun series, and I like having a bad guy human surrounded by lots of good guy dwarfs, sprites, and evles.

If I Stay by Gayle Forman - Young Adult - This book is very touching. It's about a teenage girl who's family gets in a car accedent. Her body is in a coma in the hospital, but her spirit is able to move around and observe her concerned friends and loved ones. Her entire family dies in the car crash, and she has to decide if she wants to stay and live her life as an orphan, or let go and follow her family. I may have cried while listening to this, but that doesn't mean I didn't enjoy it.

Capt. Hook: The Adventures of a Notorious Youth - Young Adult - This book is all about the young James (not yet Hook) in prep school with the young Darlin. In it James is the hero/victim and Darlin is the villian/bully. At the end of the story James finds the curage to stand up for himself and steels a ship before sailing away to Neverland.

Boy Meets Boy by David Levithan - Young Adult - This homosexual teen romance takes place in an unrealistic utopian high school were the football quarterback is a drag queen that gets elected homecoming queen. Oddly, the story read exactly like all the other YA romances out there, with a love quadralatera between the MC, their ex-boyfriend, their new crush, and their BFF. The only difference was that all four characters were male. Maybe that was the point. That teen angst exists everywhere, even in a town where the cheerleaders drive motorcyclels.

Sleeping Freshman Never Lie by David Lubar - Young Adult - This is a really cute book about a geeky kid who flounders through his freshman year of high school feeling completely lost only to discover he has everything he needs. I like stories that glorify the geeks and probably would have loved Sleeping Freshman Never Lie when I was fourteen. Heck, I even enjoyed it at thirty.

The Astonishing Adventures of Fan Boy and Goth Girl by Barry Lyga - Young Adult - This book was funny, but the ending left we wanting more. It didn't really seem to have much of a point. It just ended. But I loved the voice of the MC, and I always enjoy stories of the terrors of high school told through the eyes of a dork. So I enjoyed this read despite it's ending.

Shadowland by Alyson Noel - Young Adult/Paranormal - This is the third book in the Immortals series. I really liked the first book in the series, but found both the second and third book left something to be desired. The MC keeps on making dumb choices that cause problems with the story. I know that everything can't be perfect in a story, there need to be complications. But do they all have to stem from the MC's stupidity. It's hard to care about a character when everything that goes wrong is her fault. But I'll probably end up reading book four when it comes out anyway.

Manhattan Heat by Alice Orr - Romance - This is a Harlequin Romance novel that I got at a white elephant gift exchange at X-mas. The plot was simple and predictable, but I don't really think many people read romance novels hoping for complex storylines. The thing that surprized me about this book was how tame it was. There is more sex in most of the YA books I read then there was in this. Most of the story was just sexual tension, and then there was one graphic scene towards the end.

Sleeping Beauty by Arthur Quiller - Fairy Tale - After rereading this tale, I'm convinced that my WIP wont be a modern adaptation of this classic. But the story itself is still fun to read.

All's Well That Ends Well by William Shakespeare - Classic - Another great comedy filled with mistaken idenities and chastity of maidens.

The Guy Not Taken by Jennifer Weiner - Chick-lit - This is actually an accompilation of short stories, all about girls with crackpot dads that lead to a general mistrust of men. Some of the stories had good characters, but as soon as I got into one, I'd be thrust into the hands of another. I've never been a fan of short stories and would have enjoyed this book better if it had focussed on just one of the character sets.

How to Not Be Popular by Jennifer Ziegler - Young Adult - This book is hellarious. It's about a girl who's family moves all the time. She hates always having to say goodbuy to her friends, so she makes a plan to not make any friends at her new school. She does everything she can think of to act buzzar and scare everyone away. Not suprizingly, this encourages the shallow bitches to leave her alone and the interesting nice kids to befriend her instead. I stayed up all night reading this book on my flight to Spain. I laughed so hard in some spots that I woke up the other passengers on the plane.

Joke of the Day

I’m reading an interesting book about anti-gravity. I just can’t put it down.

Reflection

2010-01-29T08:52:00.000-08:00

My writing overentusiasm has slowen down a bit. I started writing THE SECRETS OF SMITH HALL in the beginning of December. I wrote like gang busters for three weeks, then went of vaccation, then came home and started writing like crazy again. Right now I have about 45,000 words. I have a detailed outline of the entire story and have written 26 of the 36 chapters, so I’m 72% complete. If I pushed myself really hard, I could probably finish my rough draft by mid February. But I’m no longer in a big rush.

This isn’t the first book I’ve written. Granted I haven’t published anything else yet, but I’ve done enough writing to know how large the gab is between the first draft and the final draft. If 10k of the 45k words I’ve already written appear in the final draft I’d be surprized. Even if I haven’t written the ending yet, I can see it in my head. And now I’m starting to wonder if that’s really the story I want to tell.

It’s not that I don’t like what I’ve written, or where it’s going. I like my characters a lot, and think this story has a lot of potential. I’m just more willing to take time to reflect and read other things and contemplate how I want this to look in a final draft. The mad rush to finish a first draft does feel all that important. What is the point of writing a first draft in two months if I know I’m gonna have to revise it for at least six more months. Maybe I should just take a breath and write the best story I can.

So that’s what I’m doing. I’m reflecting. I’m reading. I’m writing. I’m living. But I’m not rushing.

Joke of the Day

A writer comes home to a burned down house. His sobbing and slightly-singed wife is standing outside. “What happened, honey?” the man asks.

“Oh, John, it was terrible,” she weeps. “I was cooking, the phone rang. It was your agent. Because I was on the phone, I didn’t notice the stove was on fire. It went up in second. Everything is gone. I nearly didn’t make it out of the house. Poor Fluffy is--”

“Wait, wait. Back up a minute,” The man says. “My agent called?”

Copying Classics

2010-01-27T09:14:00.000-08:00

CAMP LIFE, the novel I’m currently querying, is a loose adaptation of ROMEO & JULIET set at a high school summer camp. Copying Shakespeare has more advantages than just making it easy to describe my novel in one sentance. I probably read R&J a dozen times while I was writing CAMP LIFE. Every time I got caught up on a plot point, I just went back to the bard.

When I finished CAMP LIFE, I thought about doing a sort of series. I didn’t want to reuse any of my characters in future novels. But I thought about adapting more of Shakespeare’s plays. So each book in the series would be another classic retold. My question was which play to remake next. SHE’S THE MAN and TEN THINGS I HATE ABOUT YOU are teen movies adaptations of TWELTH NIGHT and TAMING OF THE SHREW respecively, so I didn’t really want to do either of those. HAMLET and MCBETH are both seriously bloody and seemed a bit grusem for a YA novel, so I voted them out as well.

I thought about trying to remake OTHELLO. Then I reread OTHELLO and remembered how depressing it is. I thought about doing a comedy and looked into A COMEDY OF ERRORS and AS YOU LIKE IT. Either of those stories could be adapted to modorn teens, but I wasn’t in the mood to write about mistaken identity or cross dressing. MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING is probably the easiest story to retell, cause kids these days are great at gossiping. But my heart just wasn’t in it. None of the stories floating around in my head mirrored Shakespeare. So I desided to write my own story and forget about copying the classics.

THE SECRETS OF SMITH HALL is my current work in progress. In it one of my main chracters gets mono and ends up sleeping through about six chapters. The other characters begin to refer to her as Sleeping Beauty, and the nickname sticks even after she recovers. So that’s got me thinking again. Maybe this book wants to be a remake of SLEEPING BEAUTY. CAMP LIFE may have been Shakespeare, but now I’ve moved onto the Brothers Grimm.

I need to read up on my fairy tales. Haley is only asleep for six chapters, and the only plague spreading over the land is teen angst and immature behavior. So a lot of rewriting would be needed to force this story into the adaptation catigory. I don’t have any current plans of completely recreating a Grimm fairytale, but I hope to tie a few more fairytale themes into Smith Hall.

I’m not sure if I’m unoriginal, or just to well read. But there’s really no such thing as a new idea. So for now, I guess I’ll keep copying the classics.

Joke of the Day

There was once a young man who, in his youth, professed his desire to become a great writer.
When asked to define great, he said, "I want to write stuff that the whole world will read, stuff that people will react to on a truly emotional level, stuff that will make them scream, cry, howl in pain and anger!"

He now works for Microsoft writing error messages.

To Read or Not to Read

2010-01-25T11:54:00.000-08:00

Of course I think that the general public should read. And if you’re illiterate, you should be listening to as many audio books as you can get your hands on. But what about writers, should they read too? More spacificially, should writers read books similar to the ones they are writing?
There are two philosophies on this topic. One is that in order to keep your writing fresh and new, you shouldn’t read your competiton. That way your prose wont be influenced by anyone else. The opposing camp claims that you will never know if you’re writing is fresh and new if you don’t read books by other people. Maybe someone else already wrote the unoriginal story in your head. And if you aren’t well read, you wont know how unoriginal you are.

I tend to fall more into the second camp. I think being well read is always a good thing. And having an idea of one’s market is important. As testiment to my love of books written by other people, I read more than 100 books last year. And more than 75 of them were read in the second half of the year. But I wasn’t writing when I was reading all those books.

Now that I’m deep in the trenches of my next novel, I’m finding it hard to find time to read. I bought a dozen books that are comp titles to my WIP on my kindle to take with me to Spain/Morocco over X-mas. But I only read half of them on the trip. So now I have all these great books on my kindle that I feel obligated to read. But when am I ever going to find the time to read them. I’m writing during every free second.

It’s easier for me to find time to listen than it is for me to find time to read. I typically listen to four audio books for every one print book I read. But when my mind is swarming with ideas about my own characters it’s harder to care about the characters of others. So I find myself listening to music a lot more than audio books. My second problem is that I can’t find every book in audio. Most of the books I’ve been listening to lately have been YA so they are in the same genre as my WIP, but that’s about the extent of their similarities.

Last week I listened to the first two books in the Artimas Fowl series. I expect the next three books I listen to will be the last three books in the series. It’s this fun paranormal kids series with human Artimus interacting with picksies, lepercons, and fairies. The thing I like about this series is that Artimus is a villan, which is a nice change of pace from the Harry Potter norm. But I don’t write fantacy, or paranormal, or anything supernatural. I enjoy reading it, but it’s not doing anything to improve my understanding of the YA non-paranormal market.

To make matters worse, the book I’m currently writing is more of a boy book. I do have a major female MC, but she’s a total tomboy and all the other major characters are guys. When I’m not listening to YA-paranormal, I’m listening to totally girlsentric YA. Having listened to more girl power novels than I can stomach may be why I decided to attempt to write a boy book. So maybe I do know the YA market. I’ll try to stop feeling guilty that I’m not reading all the non-paranormal boy books currently living on my kindle.

Joke of the Day

A linguistics professor was lecturing to his English class one day. "In English," he said, "a double negative forms a positive. In some languages, though, such as Russian, a double negative is still a negative. However, there is no language wherein a double positive can form a negative."

A voice from the back of the room piped up, "Yeah, right."

You Don’t Have to Flounder Alone

2010-01-22T09:57:00.000-08:00

In Wednesday’s post, I mensioned that I just started a new writing class. I received several comments left by other asspiring writers claiming that they were jealous. This shocked me. If you want to take a writing class, what’s stopping you? There is no reason for anyone to be jealous of me.

My surrpize lead me to think it might not be a horrible idea to let other writers know what opportunities are out there. I live in Portland, Oregon and can really only speak to the opportunities for aspiring writers here. Since it rains something like 364 days a year in Portland, lots of Portlanders spend their time indoors reading. Where you have lots of readers, it’s easy to find lots of writers. So there may be more opportunities here then there are in other place. But my guess is, if you looked hard enough you could even find writing groups in bright sunny cities like Miami.

The first thing I did when I started taking my writing seriously was join Willamette Writers, a Portland based network of writers. For just $36 a year, I get a helpful newsletter and the opportunity to attend insightful monthly meatings where successful writers talk about the ins and outs of the profession. Plus I get to claim I belong to the same club as Chuck Palahniuk, Chelsea Cain, and Phillip Margolin. This makes me feel like a total bad ass – even though I’m not one. The Willamette Writers also holds a conference each summer that cost more than $36, but is attended by lots of agents and editors so I’m not complaining.

I also belong to a writing critique group that meets once a month. We swap chapters and give each other useful feedback and all that good stuff. I met all the members of my critique group through Willamette Writers and have beniffited a great deal from being a part of that group.

Beyond Willamette Writers, there are a lot of other places where people hoping to improve their writing craft can take classes. I have found that I really like The Attic Writers Workshop, this hole in the wall attic space in east Portland where experienced writers pass on their wisdom to writers earlier in their journeys. The class I just started is a story structure class at the Attic taught by the always hellarious author/playwrite Marc Acito. Out of the thirteen students in my class, two already have agents, three are facing a blank first page of their first novel, and the rest of us live somewhere in between.

This is the third class I’ve taken at the Attic. I’ve never taken any writing classes anywhere else. But I’ve made my way onto enough writer list serves that I get emails about other classes from time to time. I know that several of the local indie bookstores offer workshops for writers lead by local authors. These can be one day events or several week courses. There are also several author lectures at local libraries. These tend to be geared more toward the reader, but are sometimes focused on writing.

Beyond the basic machanics of writing, the main thing I’ve learned by taking classes and attending events lead by big name best sellers is that writers are all just people. The act of writing is very solitary, and most people that make a full time career of writing get lonely. So they like hanging out with other writers and talking to other people. If you start staulking Dan Brown you might be awarded a restraining order. But attending networking type events with reputable professional writers is a great opportunity for you to learn, and them to change out of their PJ’s.

Joke of the Day

A writer died and was given the option of going to heaven or hell.
She decided to check out each place first. As the writer descended into the fiery pits, she saw row upon row of writers chained to their desks in a steaming sweatshop. As they worked, they were repeatedly whipped with thorny lashes.
"Oh my," said the writer. "Let me see heaven now."
A few moments later, as she ascended into heaven, she saw rows of writers, chained to their desks in a steaming sweatshop. As they worked, they, too, were whipped with thorny lashes.
"Wait a minute," said the writer. "This is just as bad as hell!"
"Oh no, it's not," replied St. Peter. "Here, your work gets published."

The Theme of My Life

2010-01-20T08:50:00.000-08:00

Last night I started a new writing class. Well, I’m a kind of slow learner and I actually took the exact same class a year and a half ago. But a new term started yesturday, so lets pretend like I’m gonna learn something new.

The teacher left us last night with a question. What is the point of your story? Once the plot and characters and everything else is stripped away, what is your book actually about? I thought about this question last night and the second I came up with an answer, it hit me. My last book was about the exact same thing. Every book I’ve ever started has been about the exact same thing. Ever curnal of an idea that I haven’t even begun to write is about the exact same thing. The plots and characters can be totally different, but my writing is always my writing. And I only seem to have one point.

So here it is. Being a misfit is okay. Simple right? Basically, I think that all people, but teenagers especially, are really good at casting themselves in fake identities. Pier pressure and societal norms and familial obligations and a million other things constantly tell us who we are supposed to be. But people are all different and you might not be that perfect person that everyone is supposed to strive toward. And that is okay.

If you have a million friends, who don’t know you because you keep yourself locked deep inside, life can be really lonely. Happiness might not lie at the center of the in crowd or in the flashist office in town. Accepting the reality of your own identity and learning to love that person is the key to growing up. And if you’re really lucky you may even find one or two other misfits who dig the real you.

That’s it. That is what all books by Katherine Elliott Scott are about. The false identities my characters take on are all different. And the people they are inside are even more divers. But the struggle is the same. Life is life. And being a misfit is still okay.

Joke of the Day

What did the hydrogen atom say to the heleum atom?
I got my ion you.

Spreading the Gospel of Audio Books

2010-01-18T09:52:00.000-08:00

I know that some people have a hard time processing information heard aloud, and that audio books aren’t for everyone. But I expect there are a lot more people who could beniffit from audio books than are currently listening. So I’m just going to step up on my soap box for a moment and tell you how much I love them.

As a dyslexic, I have listened to thousands of audio books in my life, and read hundreds. At least 95% of all the books I’ve expereinced were read alloud to me – either by a teacher, parent, or audio book reader. Audio books taught me how to love literature long before I was able to read books for myself.

Now that I can and do read, I still spend a lot of time plugged into audio books. In 2009 I consumed 115 books. But 83 of them came to me in audio. If I limited myself to paper and e-books only, I’d never be able to read more than 50 books a year. There just isn’t enough time in a day.

For people new to the world of audio books, let me share some good audio book sorces. The absolute best place to get audio books is RFB&D (recordings for the blind and dyslexic). This service is only available to people with a print related disability. It is a result of the American Disability Act and provides every book with a isbn number registared with the library of congress in audio – including text books. If a book is not available in audio, the library of congress will hire someone to record it for you. There is no way I ever would have survived college without RFB&D. If you’re blind or dyslexic and aren’t a member of RFB&D, you are selling yourself short.

If you don’t qualify for RFB&D, the next place to look for audio books is your local public library. Libraries always have an audio book section. Even the standard print reader can check out an audio book or two and listen to it in the car. Author, Steven King, admits in his memoir ON WRITING that he listens to about 10% of the books he “reads” while driving. Do you really think you’re better than Steven King?

If you live in Oregon and want to up your listening anti, you can utilize Library 2 Go. With an Oregon State library card, you can check out up to six audio books at a time and load them directly onto your I-pod. At the end of the check out period the files automatically deleate from your computer. My father, who is also dyslexic and enjoys a good audio book just as much as the next guy, just went out and bought an I-pod because he was jealous of all the great books my brother and I were listening to. If you don’t live in Oregon, you should check with your own library. I expect many other states provide similar services.

If you want to actually pay for all your audio books. Audible is an on-line bookstore connected with Amazon that features downloadable audio books. I don’t find ethical issues in frequenting the library and have never actually used this service.

One for cost audio book service that I do use is Audio Bookworm. This site is a netflix for books on cd type service. For $28 per month, you can recieve up to two audio books at a time. Audio Bookworm doesn’t have as large of a total selection as Library 2 Go, but they do have more recent best sellers. Also since you don’t have to worry about books being checked out by other patrons it’s easier to get the titles you crave. The one downside of Audio Bookworm is that the most books are 8-12 CD’s long and need to be shipped in a small package, so they spend a lot of time hung up in the mail.

If you to are an audio book fanatic and get your audio books from another sorce, please let me know what it is. I’m always on the prowl for a good listen. And if you aren’t a listener, WHY NOT? You are definitely missing out.

Joke of the Day

A person who speaks three languages is called tri-lingual.

A person who speaks two language is called bi-lingual.

A person who speaks one langauage is called American.

Say What?

2010-01-14T21:41:00.000-08:00

I write in first person. Third person can work well for adult/literary books. But I write YA. And teenagers NEVER say what they're really thinking. So I the world of lying back stabbers, jumping inside a characters head is a handy tool. But every story has multiple sides, so I like jumping in the heads of more than one character. The result, I write first person with multiple POV characters. I switch narrators at chapter breaks, cause I want to be nice to my readers - plus I'm lazy.

Having multiple point of view characters does provide an extra challange. They all have to sound different. But since I'm writing YA, they also all have to sound like teenagers. I could write an entire novel of "um, yeah, like, oh my god, I'm totally screwed." But that could get annoying really fast. In order to determine the variability in my characters voices, I decided to make word clouds (with the help of the kind people over at http://www.wordle.net/).

Below are six different word clouds based on the vocabularies of six different narrators.

Joceyln and Hunter are the two POV characters from CAMP LIFE. The novel I'm currently querying. My WIP, THE SECRETS OF SMITH HALL, currently has six POV characters. Haley, Austin, and Kyle do most of the story telling and the other narrators pop in infrequently. So I only made the three word clouds for that book. Then I also made a word cloud of my own voice from, THE GIANT IN THE ATTIC ,the memoir I'm currently procrastinating.

These all look totally different right? Maybe I should work on expanding my vocabulary.

Jocelyn from CAMP LIFE

Hunter from CAMP LIFE

Haley from THE SECRETS OF SMITH HALL

Austin from THE SECRETS OF SMITH HALL

Kyle from THE SECRET OF SMITH HALL

Me from THE GIANT IN THE ATTIC

Joke of the Day

Workplace Vocabulary Words:

Blamestorming - Sitting in a group, discussing why a deadline was missed or a project failed, and who was responsible.

Crop Dusting - Surrepticiously passing gas while passing through a cube farm.

Prairy Dogging - Heads popping up over cube walls to look out for preditors.

Road Trip Wednesday: You’re Writing – Who Knew

2010-01-13T13:20:00.000-08:00

I hadn’t decided what I wanted to blog about yet for today, when I saw that this weeks Road Trip Wednesday over at YA Highway was on the topic of peoples reactions when they hear I’m writing a novel. So I figured I’d play along and just blog about that.

People’s reactions tend to vary depending upon how they know me. Since I’m dyslexic, some people that know me well were suprized when I first started writing. But I’ve always been extreamly imaginative, so most of my close friends and family members simply accepted my writing as a given.

The surprize is more likely to come from people that I know professionally. I’m an engineer by day. I think my inability to read is what pushed me to toward math and science as a kid. I didn’t want people to think I was stupid, so I wasted a lot of time honing my mental math skills. Then when I got older I realized that engineering was something I’m pretty good at.

I’m a total geek and get along well with most engineers. But as a whole, we aren’t normally an overly literate lot. I have a couple of engineering friends that enjoy reading, but not many. They’re more likely to be into video games or something really cool like that. Clearly they need to mastered the art of listening to audio books and playing video games at the same time like me.

I do sometimes get blank stares from my engineering friends when I tell them I spend all my free time writing novels. But I think I get even more shocked expressions when I tell my writer friends that I’m an engineer. Many non-writers think that it’s something they could do if they tried. But most non-engineers admit that they don’t understand what I do all day.

Joke of the Day

What do you get when you cross an elephant and a mountain climer?
Nothing - you can't cross anything with a scaler.

Back to the Ordanay

2010-01-11T12:29:00.000-08:00

I had a great time in Spain and Morocco, but lets be honest, vaccation is not real life. It’s like this weird paralel universe, where lifes most troubling choices involve which museam to visit first.

I got home at 2:00 am on Saturday, January 2nd. But I didn’t return to normal life then. Instead I returned to crazy hecktic work life. Apparently my co-workers are all totally lost without me. Plus I had an enormous deadline on Tuesday, January 5th and another big deadline on Friday, January 8th. So at 11:00 in the morning on the 2nd, I got the phone call asking me when I’d be coming into work.

I worked Saturday afternoon, all day Sunday, and put in ten plus hour days every day last week. Spending every waking hour at the office did wonders for helping me get over my jetlag. But it didn’t do much to return me to reality. I’m so not a workaholic, and my reality rairly involves spending twelve hours at the office on a Sunday.

But now my projects are done. And life can finally return to normal. Over the weekend I finally found the time to unpack and do my laundry. It rained a lot while I was on vaccation, so some of my socks seriously needed washing.

I also wrote a lot last weekend. I left my laptop at home during my trip, and didn’t have time to write last week while in overworked engineer mode. But this past weekend, I added almost 10,000 words to my work in progress. I’m starting to really like my characters. I’m a total pantser and started this story with no idea where I’d be going with it. But now that I’m 40k words into the rough draft, I’m starting to make plans about my ending. I think this is gonna be a good book. I’m excited to see how it turns out.

It is a little odd though. My life has been so hectic lately, and now that everythings back to normal, I’m living in the minds of fictional teenagers. I may not be the average engineer, but I’m really happy. I’m good at my job, but I hate working overtime. Staying up all night writing stories, though. That’s pure bliss. And now that things have calmed down at the office, I might even be able to crank out another chapter during my lunch break. It’s nice being back in reality.

Joke of the Day

Why were the mathematition put 239 beans in her bean soup?

Because otherwise it would be to farty.

Tales from the Moroccan Marketplace

2010-01-06T14:26:00.000-08:00

I desided I wanted to buy a painting, so I headed into a stall in the Marrakesh Souk selling paintings.

“Bronger,” the shopkeeper greated me.

I did not respond, but lifted one of the paintings to examine it.

“Hello, do you like this?” the shopkeeper came up beside me and handed me another painting.

I smiled and examined the painting he gave me.

“Are you from London?” the shopkeeper asked.

“No,” my husband shook his head. “Guess where we are from.”

“Are you from Australea?”

“No.”

“Canada?”

“No.”

“I know, you are from Africa like me.”

“No.”

“Are you from Mars?”

I smiled at the shopkeeper. “Yes, he is from Mars.” I gestured toward my husband. “But I am from Venus.”

The shopkeeper laughed and handed me another painting to look at.

“Is this you?” My husband pointed to the signature at the bottom of the painting.

“Yes, yes, this is me. You are psycic.”

“No, not pscycic,” my husband shakes his head. “I am American.”

“American?” The shopkeeper beams at us. “I love American.”

I had always thought the rest of the world hated Americans. Half of the time I just lied to people and said I was Canadian. “Why do you love America?”

“Because President Obama has brown skin like me.” The shopkeeper put his hand out next to mine and pointed to the backs of our hands. “See dark, light, my skin is just like Obama.”

“But we are not different.” I take the shopkeepers hand and flip it over. Then I place my own palm next to his. “See we are the same.”

“Yes, yes, we are the same.” The shop keeper puts his hand over mine. “In Africa we see proficy, praise to Ala, in hand. Can I look at your hand?”

“Yes,” I blush as the shopkeeper begins to read my palm.

“You have a very long life line, you will live to see your grandchildren. But I see confusion in your hand too. You tell me, do you have a hard time making up your mind?”

“Yes,” I laugh.

“Praise Ala, I knew it,” the shopkeeper claps his hands. He touches his hand to his cheek and turns his head. I bend forward and kiss the air an inch away from his cheek.

“Hey, hey, hey,” my husband shakes his head at the shopkeeper. “Lets look at these paintings.”

“Ah yes, which one do you like?” I look through a dozen paintings and find the one I like best.

“How much?”

“Normally 500 dirham, but for you my beautiful friend, 400 dirham.”

“No,” my husband shakes his head. “100.”

“What? This is a good quality oil painting. You can dump water on it even. See, see.” The shopkeeper grabs a jug of water off the floor and dumps it on the painting. “See, very good quality, 350.”

“120.”

“You think I’m trying to cheat you? This is nice painting. You don’t want to buy, just to insult me.”

“120 max.” We turn and walk out of the shop.

The shopkeeper calls after us and we continue walking. He puts the painting in a bag and runs after us. “Ok, my friends, sold. 120 dirham.”

We give him the money and continue on our way.

Joke of the Day

What is a mathimatican's favorite item of clothing?

My sister in laws answer - A two-two

My brother in laws answer - An alge-bra

My husbands answer - A three-three (I have no idea what he's wearing most of the time maybe this is why)

Wordless Communication

2010-01-04T12:19:00.000-08:00

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. After visiting the Museum of Reina Sofia in Madrid, I agree with this sentament. The museum is Spain’s national museam of modern art, and contains an entire wing dedicated to the works of Pablo Picasso. Picasso appears at the top of nearly every list of famous dyslexics. Viewing his masterpieces close up, shows how an illiterate mind can tell an onforgettable tale without words.

One of Picasso’s most known masterpieces, the Guernica, is on display at the Sofia Museam. This painting shows the horror and massicar at Guernica during the Spanish Civil War.

At the Sofia Museam, there is also a lesser known series of Picasso paintings that depict woman crying. The Sofia contains the “Woman Crying”, “Head Crying”, “Hankerchief I”, “Hankerchief II”, and "Hankerchief III”. Depicted below is “Weeping Woman” which matches this series but is on display in a London museam not a Madrid Museam.

The aggany present in this woman’s face, as well of the many faces in Guernica tell as story that could bearly be parralled with ten thousand words, let alone one. Seeing this artwork fills me with hope.

Pablo Picasso was an amazingly gifted man, with a unique vission of the world around him. He found a way to communicate the ideas in his mind without using words. This is a good thing, because as a dyslexic reading and writing weren’t his strong suits. Not everyone is able to paint like Picasso, and not everyone is able to read. But somehow, we all find a way to tell our stories.

Como Se Dese Confused?

2010-01-02T10:37:00.000-08:00

I'm back, did you miss me?

I just returned from a wonderful two week vaccation in Spain and Morocco. According to the "why are you reading this blog?" pole (which is still open so if you haven't voted yet there is still time), there are more people reading this blog that are interested in dyslexia than to little old me. So I'll try to skew my vaccation recap to look like a discussion about literacy.

Let's get something clear. I can bearly speak English, and am totally hopeless when it comes to learning foreign languages. It's not that I think English is better than other languages, or that I want to be insulting to people of other cultures by refusing to learn their language. I'm just not very good at it. So most of my attempts at forieng comunication fail.

I still love traveling. Everytime I go somewhere I come home wishing I had the means and time to travel more. And these past two weeks in Spain and Morocco have been marvelous - even if I didn't know how to talke to anyone.

Spain wasn't to bad. I took Spanish in highschool. That doesn't mean I can speak it, but I at least know how to ask people "donde esta el bano?" and if I'm really lucky and they answer with lots of pointing I can even compreheand their answers. My husband also studied Spanish in HS and my father in law is nearly fluent. So when my one linguisted limitation reared its nasty head, there was usually someone else around to help me out.

So why is it that I accedentily ordered an Octopus Omlette on day for lunch in Madrid? Nothings more appetising than a mouth full of tenticles in the morning. Other than my inability to read the menus, I didn't have much trouble in Spain.

Things were more complicated in Morocco. There people speak Arabic, and reading that is so far beyond my capabilities there really isn't even a reason to try. Before Morocco became an indipendent nation, it was a French colony, so the western language people speak there is French. I know three words in French, thank you, yes, and no. That and sign language was my only defence in navegating through the exciting city of Mereckesh.

My sister in law did study abroad in Paris while in college, so she managed to searve as a translator when we did inportant things like purchase train tickets. When we were lucky enough to find restarants with French menus she helped out there too. I am happy to say I didn't eat a single octobus while in Morocco, and you can't really go wrong with a lamb kabab.

The market venders in Morocco did display the most amazing ligusitic capablities I've ever witnessed. Nobody can claim that the people in the developing world aren't inteligent. And it doesn't matter where you're from or what language you speak, the vendors in the Mereckesh Souks can sell you their goods.

Anytime a westerner walked by one of their stalls they would hollor out a greating in French. If you don't respond, they'll pop into English, the Spanish, German, ect, spouting greatings in every language under the sun. My brother in law speaks Russian. Just for kicks he did all his barganing in one stall in Russian, claiming to be from St Petersburg. The vendor had no probles selling his items.

We may have better roads and cleaner drinking wather than they have in Morocco. But I've lived in the United States for 30 years and I can bearly read English. Yet there are hundreds of intellegent Moroccans that have found a way to make a living and support their families by learing how to say "Do you like this scarf? I'll give you a good price," in more than a dozen languages.

Joke of the Day

An American traveling in Spain stopped at a local restarant for dinner. While sipping his sangaria, he noticed a sizzling, scrumptions looking platter being served at the next table. Not only did it look good, it smelled wonderful. He asked the waiter, "What is that you just served?"

The waiter replied, "Ah senoir, you have excellent taste. Those are bull testicles from the bull fight this morning. A delicacy."

The American shrugged his shoulders. "What the hell, I'm on vacation. Bring me an order."

The waiter shook his head, "I'm sorry senor. There is only one serving per day because there is only one bull fight each morning. If you come early tomorrow andd place your order, we will be sure to save you this delicacy."

The next morning, the American returned to place his order. That evening he was served the delicacy of the day. The meal was delicous and he enjoyed every bite, but he finished far sooner than he would have liked. He called the waiter over. "This was wonderful, but much smaller than the plate I saw you serve yesterday."

"Si senor. Sometimes the bull wins."

Happy Holidays

2009-12-17T10:54:00.000-08:00

I'm traveling for the holidays and wont be back until January. While I'm away, I thought I would leave you with a few winter photos from last Christmas. Don't you wish you had a fork lift so you could build 15 foot tall snowmen too?

While I'm gone, please vote in my why are you reading this blog pole.

Joke of the Day

Not only do I own a forklift. But I used it to build a 15' snowman. Aren't you laughing yet?

Why are you reading this?

2009-12-15T16:39:00.000-08:00

2009 is almost over. I’ll spare you a holiday greeting card version of my annual highlights. But since I started this blog in January, it seems like a good time to step back and assess this blog. Mainly I’m currious what people want to read.

I think that most of my readers fall into one of three catigories: people who know me, other bloggers, and people who google dyslexia jokes. But I’m wondering what you all want to read.

When I started this blog, the idea was to write about dyslexia. The problem is that there’s only so much to say about bad spelling. After a couple months, I ran out of ideas and started blogging about what ever I felt like.

There are three other dyslexia related blogs that I’ve found. If you are here because you’re interested in dyslexia, you might want to check them out. Dyslexia Advantage runs bios on famous dyslexics. They tend to have one post every week or two. Teh Dyslexic Storyteller posts dyslexia related news articles and commentary of special education advances about once a week. And Eide Neurolearning Blog posts about once a week mainly research results from learning style studies. As far as I know, I don’t have any cross-over followers with those blogs. And for the most part I expect very few if any of my readers care about dyslexia. Well except for the readers who like to make fun of dyslexics, but we’ll get to that later.

The vast majority of people who “follow” this blog are other bloggers. I know that I have a lot of annonomous readers that don’t publicly follow because they don’t have blogger accounts. But let’s be honest. There are a lot of wannabe writers on blogger, and a lot of us follow each other. In addition to being a dyslexic, I’m also a wannabe writer. I’m actively querying my second novel (my first novel was more of a learning experience and I doubt anybody wants to read it). I’m 25k words into the first draft of my next novel (this is the one I started two weeks ago). I am also slowly tinkering with a memoir, about dyslexia – hence the creation of the blog.

There are A LOT of blogs about writing. Tips on writing. Tips on the publishing industry. Horror stories of aspiring writers trying to navegate the publishing industry. The list goes on. I haven’t tried to make this into a writing blog, just 'cause I don’t want to be the same as everyone else. But if most of my readers are other writers that like reading writing blogs, maybe I should add more writing related posts. Is that what you want?

I do read a lot. Well that’s kind of a lie. I listen a lot. In 2009, so far I have read 27 books, and I have listened to 80 books, for a total of 107 books consumed, and I still have two more weeks to go. Since I spend so much time reading/listening, a lot of what I think about is influenced by what I read. So this blog has included a lot of book reviews. Do you like them?

Then there are the jokes. Back in June I did a post of dyslexia jokes. It’s never recieved a single comment, and I didn’t think anybody cared about it. Then in September I finally broke down and signed up for google analytics. It turns out 40% of the people who view this blog find it by googling the words “dyslexia jokes” – I’ve made it to number one on recomended pages for that search. To appease my joke loving readers, I’ve started including a joke of the day with my regular posts. But only 10% of the people who read my dyslexia jokes go on to read any other posts. So I’m not sure if anybody cares about my joke of days. Do you like them? Or can I stop scrambling to come up with new jokes all the time?

So I’m just gonna ask you. Why do you read this blog? (Note: this pole is now closed. The results are listed next to the choices. If you would still like to vote, please leave your response in the comments section.)

Do you care about dyslexia? (36%)
Do you care about writing? (21%)
Do you enjoy my book reviews? (5%)
Do you like my jokes? (11%)
Are you my mom and you just like me? (11%)
Do you even know why you’re reading this blog? (16%)

I’ve posted this pole in the side panel. Please vote! If you are reading for an unlisted reason, please let me know in the comments section. Now that I’m approaching my second year of blogging, I want to give my readers what they want. Thanks for your input.

Joke of the Day

Two friends are discussing politics on Election Day, each trying to no avail to convince the other to switch sides.

Finally, one says, "Look, it's clear we are opposed on every issue. Our votes will cancle each other out. Why not save ourselves some time and both agree not to vote today?"

The other agrees enthusiastically and they part.

Shortly after that, a friend of the first one who overheard the conversation says, "That was a sporting offer you made."

"Not really, this is the third time I've done this today."

The Gift of a Great Story

2009-12-14T13:37:00.000-08:00

I was thrilled when my brother suggested, “Let’s just all give each other books this year for Christmas.” Even if you don’t have relatives dictating that you give nothing but books, a great novel can make a great gift – and can fit into most budgets. I tend to read a lot. So far in 2009, I’ve read or listened to 106 books. I will spare you a complete list. But here are a few of my favorites if you need some help with your holiday shopping.

For the young artist on your gift list: A Day With No Crayons by Elizabeth Rusch – This beutifully illistrated picture book is about a young girl who colors on the wall and has all her crayons taken away. She then learns how to see colors everywhere in the world around her and creates art out of everything she touches from leaves in the park to old shoes in her bedroom. Combined with an assortmant of creative art supplies, A Day with No Crayons is the perfect gift for the budding artist in your house.

For the young adventurer on your gift list: The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan – This middle grade adventure novel is the first of five books in the Percy Jackson and the Olympian’s series. This exciting series perfectly blends modern Manhatten and Ancient Greece in the next chapter of Greek mythology. The movie of the Lightning Thief comes out next spring. Help the demi-gods in your family read about the magic of Olympus before they see it on the big screen. See a longer review of the series here.

For the rapidly aging teenager on your gift list: Along for the Ride by Sarah Dessen – This YA novel is the opposite of the classic coming of age tale. An 18 year old girl who grew up to fast goes on a quest to live an entire childhood in one summer. The story encourages teens to hold onto their youth, while acknologing the complexity of growing up. See a longer review of all nine of Sarah Dessen’s novels here.

For the Science Fiction buff on your gift list: The Host by Stephanie Meyer – This is the first novel in Meyer’s next series. Instead of staring Vampires on the Olympic penisela, it’s about an invading parisitic alien species that takes over the Earth, and one sympathic alien that goes native and finds a home among a cell of rebel humans. I enjoyed The Host a lot more than the Twilight series, and can’t wait until the next book in the series is released. (Note: Unlike Twilight character’s in this story are adults and while teens can enjoy it, this is not a YA novel.)

For the bleeding heart on your gift list: Grace by Richard Paul Evans – This heart felt tale of a modern little match girl is sure to bring a tear to your eyes. When a fourteen year old boy discovers that one of his classmates is being physically and sexually abused by her step father, he helps her run away from home and hide out in the clubhouse in his backyard. The story might be set at Christmas, but it doesn’t have a happy ending.

For the unussal thinker on your gift list: Look Me in the Eye by John Elder Robison – This is a memoir by a very interesting man with aspergers syndrome. I’ve had the pleasure of knowing several people with aspergers in my life, but still learned a great deal by reading this book. I hope the memoir I’m currently writing about my life as a dyslexic will one day come close to the caliber of this book.

For the know it all on your gift list: A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson – This non-fiction book is a cliftnotes version of all scientific history. It begins with the big bang and ends with the evelusion of man. It doesn’t cover anything in detail, but provides a nice refresher to basic scientific study of the last few centuries.

For the partier on your gift list: I Like You by Amy Sedaris – This humerous hospitality book includes great recipies and party throwing tips that will have you rolling on the floor with laughter. Combined with a sporting apron, it’s the perfect gift for the consument host.

Joke of the Day

A guy bought his wife a beautiful diamond ring for Christmas.

After hearing about htis extravagant gift, a friend of his said, "I thought she wanted one of those sporty four-wheel-drive vehicles."

"She did," he replied. "But where was I going to find a fake Jeep."

Look Mom, I Can Spell - Almost

2009-12-11T10:52:00.000-08:00

Lately I’ve been impressed with the quality of my own spelling. When I started this blog, I decided not to run spell check, so that my non-dyslexic readers could experience the pleasure of sounding out everything they read. While my spelling isn’t always accorate, I did endure nearly four hundred hours of one-on-one phonix training as a child. So my guesses are always phonetic.

But here’s the thing. My spelling has improved. A lot. By cutting Wednesday’s post into word and running spell check, it appears I misspelled 10 out of 477 words. 98% accuracy isn’t perfect, but if that post was a spelling test, I would have gotten a high A. And the words that I did misspell were all really close. Spending 30 seconds running spell check, and I could have been error free.

I’ve noticed my improved spelling in my fiction writing too. I completed the first draft of my first novel about eight years ago. At that time, I misspelled about 25% of the words I attempted to write. I would have to stop and correct my spelling at the end of each sentance. And it would often take me ten or fifteen minutes to figure out the correct spelling of the words I wanted to use. But I can’t even remember the last time I made it to step ten in the dyslexic’s guide to spell check. Now my fiction is just as accurate as this blog. I type a couple paragraphs, zip through spell check, and move on.

I know that I still misspell a lot of words that the average twelve year old can write with no problem. But I railrly feel self concious about my spelling. I can limp along well enough to get my point across. And my failures tend to fall close enough to the mark that they are easily corrected.

So I was a bit shocked when my husband started making fun of my grocery list yesturday. It turns out, of the fifteen items I put on the list, two were spell correctly. His favorite was pretselz. Apparently that isn’t how it’s spelled.

I’m not sure why I can spell revelation without problem, but I still haven’t learned how to spell cheeze. My guess is practice. I’ve been spending more and more time writing. And after correcting the same word a hundred times, my guesses slowly move closer to the mark. But I never worry about making my grocery lists legible. Perhaps I just need to write a cook book. Then I might figure out how to spell orenges.

Joke of the Day

A boy asked his teacher, "How do you spell ichael?"

"Do you mean Michael?" the teacher asked.

"No, I already have the M down."

Background Music

2009-12-09T08:38:00.000-08:00

I tend to be a pretty good listener. The whole not knowing how to read thing, forced me to hone my listening skills as a kid. For years, I had an almost perfectly audographic memory. I no longer remember everything I hear, mainly because I no longer try to remember everything I hear. Still I’m always very concious of the sounds around me. Things like buzzy lights drive me bonkers, and I’m always eves dropping on the conversations of straingers.

In order to block out all the unwanted noises in my life, I spend a lot of time plugged in. Unless I am engaged in an active conversation with another person, I’m almost always listening to my I-pod. That's the main reason why I’ve listened to more than 80 audio books in the past year. But I do have several thousands of songs on my I-pod too.

I normally don’t like to read anything while I’m writing. I get very involved in the books that I read, and I never want my own prose to be influenced by the works of others. So I just yo-yo between reading/listening to 5 books a week, to listening to nothing but music and writing my own books.

Oddly, it is easier for me to ignor background music than electronic white noise. But music does effect my mood. So when I am actively writing, I like to have a soundtrack to my life. I’ve met several other writers who create playlists to write to that put them in the proper state of mind while writing. But I’m more interested in making a writing playlist to listen to during the parts of my day that I can’t write – like when I’m at work.

My last novel Camp Life centered around a production of Romeo & Juliet. It isn’t West Side Story, but I still felt like listening to show tunes was a good way to put me in a properly theatrical state of mind. The result, I listened to show tunes 24/7 for almost a year. I’ve memorized the scores to quite a few shows I’ve never even seen.

Now I’m writting a new novel staring a bunch of geeky college kids. So what do modern nerds listen to? I’m thinking alternative rock. I’ve started to assemble a playlist of Cobra Starship, Belle & Sebastian, Weezer, and Bowling for Soup, but I’m not sure what else to add to it. What obscure tunes do I need to track down in order to keep myself in a properly geekalisious state of mind?

And what about you? What do you like to listen to while you’re writing? Or living?

Joke of the Day

How many punk rock musicians does it take to change a light bulb?

Two: Once to change the light bulb and the other to smash the old bulb on his forehead.

Bit by the Writing Bug

2009-12-07T08:23:00.000-08:00

When I wrote Camp Life (the YA novel I’m currently querying) I was super OCD about it. I wrote an average of 3-5 hours a day, not only when I was working on the first draft but also while revising. As a result, eight months after I wrote the opening sentence I completed the fifth draft. I like Camp Life. It was a fun story to write, and when I come back to it almost a year after I finished it, I still enjoy it.

But what about this past year? I haven’t written squat. I mean, yeah, I do have almost 45K towards the rough draft of The Giant in the Attic. But it’s still rough, and it isn’t even finished yet. And I’ve been working on it longer than it took me to finish writing and editing Camp Life.

In November I decided to start writing a new fiction project. The Giant in the Attic is memoir. I have lots of story ideas floating around in my head. So I figured if I just picked one and started writting the OCD behavior would return. But it didn’t work. I couldn’t get into the story I was trying to write, so it felt really flat and boring. Writing fiction was suddenly even more of a chore than writing memoir. So I gave up on that project and decided to just wait until a new project slapped me upside the head and forced me to write it.

Well, on December 2nd that happend. Things like NaNoWriMo don’t seem to work for me. When I want to write, nothing can stop me. So word count gimics really don’t add much modivation. And when I don’t want to write, I can’t get excited about gimics. But in the past five days I’ve written 13,000 words towards my next novel.

I’m not going to tell anyone what it’s about yet, because I’m totally pantsing this. I really don’t know what it is about. I have no idea where I am going with these characters. I’m only 50 pages into it, so I’m still meeting the characters. But I’m back to writing during every free second I can find. And I’m back to loving writing. Sometimes it’s good to be OCD. And even without any stupid gimics, I'll probably hit 50K well before months end - not because I have to, but because I need to.

Joke of the Day

A visitor to a certain college paused to admire the new Hemingway hall that had been build on campus. "It's a pleasure to see a building named for Ernest Hemingway," he said.

"Actually," said the guide, "it's named for Joshua Hemingway. No relation."

The visitor was astonished. "Was Joshua Hemingway a writer, also?"

"Yes, he wrote a check."

Holidazed

2009-12-04T15:00:00.000-08:00

Last night while most Oregonians were busy watching the Ducks beat the Beavers in a civil war fight to the Rose Bowl, I was watching Holidazed. Holidazed is a twisted christmas play currently showing at Portland Artist Repretory Theater. It’s a sometimes heart warming and always hilarious story about a middle class family who takes in a pegan street kid for the holidays.

Last night was the third time I’ve seen the show. I also watched it twice last year. Even the third time around, I was moved from belly laughs to tears. I would highly recommend this play to anyone living in the Portland area. And if you don’t live in pdx, I recommend talking to your local theater company and suggesting they buy the rights to show Holidazed next season. I know the writers are interested in expanding to other cities.

I know this, because I know the writers. Holidazed was co-authored by Marc Acito (author of the novels How I Paid for College: A Novel of Sex, Theft, Friendship & Muscial Theater and Attack of the Theater People) and C.S. Whitcomb (screen writer of more made for TV movies than I can list). I’ve met Cynthia at a number of local writing events, and I know Marc because I took a ten week writing class from him last fall. The reason I saw Holidazed twice last year is that one of our classes overlapped with the dress rehearsal, so we got to take a class fieldtrip to the show.

Marc is one of the funniest people I have ever met. I want to share one thing he taught me about comedy. Laughter open’s people up – literally when you’re laughing, your mouth is open. Be it a book, movie, or play, audiences tend to stay somewhat detached from the story. People can be entertained, without being moved – until they start laughing. Laughter opens an audience to the possibility of a deeper emotional tie to the characters, because they are already feeling something.

That’s why I’ve cried all three times I’ve seen Holidzed. Because I was laughing first. So when the story took a serious turn the tears couldn’t help but flow. And when in the next sceen it bounced back to comedy, I just laughed even harder. If Holidzed was a totally straight play without a single joke, it could still have been touching, but I doubt my emotional response would have been as strong.

Not all people are funny, and there is nothing worse than bad comedy. But when serious topics, like homeless twelve year olds at christmas, are addressed through comedy the emotional responce can be amazing. In my own writing, I need to work more on making my readers laugh before I ask them to cry. Speaking of my own writing, I just started a new book. I’ll give you more details on that later.

Joke of the Day

What does a snowman eat for breakfast?
Frosted Flakes

November Reads

2009-12-01T21:39:00.000-08:00

At the beginning of November I set a goal to not read or listen to anything for the entire month. I didn't exactly survive the experiment. Over the course of the month I listened to 6 books. But In October I listened to 18 books, plus I read 6 others. So while my fictional fast may have been a bust, I at least got a fictional diet. The six books I listened to this month weren't bad, so even though this will be a shorter post, I figured I'd still give you an end of month book review.

These are the six books I listened to in November in the order I listened to them.

The Host by Stephanie Meyer - Science Fiction - This was also the last book I listened to in October, and it is a really great book. Out of the 100+ books I've read so far this year, this book was my favorite. It is the first book in Meyer's new series, which means the ending leaves the door wide open for future adventures. It isn't quite Snape killed Dumbledore now wait two years to find out why, but I still recomend waiting until after the entire series is published before diving in if you suffer from impaciants like I do.

When I first started not reading, the only characters I could think about were the ones in "The Host". I spent about a week thinking about all the things that could happen in book two of the series and cursing the fact that I had started a series before book two came out. Then I just broke down and desided to relisten to book one again, a week after I had listened to the first time. I think I sort of have it out of my system by now, I haven't listened to it a third time or anything. But I will likely be in line at a bookstore at midnight on the day "The Sole" (book 2 in this series) comes out.

Jinx by Meg Cabot - Young Adult - I keep trying to be a Meg Cabot fan, but it really isn't working out that well for me. I did like Avalon High, but The Queen of Babble was only okay and How to Be Popular was sadly predicable. I would probably give Jinx about 3.5 stars out of five. It isn't a horrable book, it's just kind of cute. The teenage witch who doesn't want to be a witch has too normal of a life - for a witch that is. That's the main problem I have with all of Meg Cabot's books, her characters are all nice - sort of like vanilla ice cream. Sure nice is a great characteristic among actual people, but normal life is boring which is why we read books. And when I pick up a YA novel about a cursed teenager who is a witch but doesn't know it and causes all sorts of havic on her friends and family, I want Harry Potter and not the Princess Diaries. And lets face it, Meg Cabot's most famous novel is the Princess Diaries, and everything else she writes is just as nice.

The Shack by William P. Young - Spiritual - I read this book more out of curiosity than anything else. It is the latest thing to rock the christain world since the NIV bible, and I wanted to know what all the hype was about. I ended up liking it a lot more than I expected to, and I felt oddly pleased that so many christians are getting excited about it. Because it presents a version of god very close to what I've always believed in, and I rarely think of my religious views as main stream. A longer review of this book is available here.

Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld - Young Adult - This book stressed me out. Maybe it is overstating things to blame all my stress on this book, because I was under a huge deadline at work at the same time as I was listening to it. But my anxiety was high the entire time I listened to this book and for several days after I finished it. The narator of this book is a total doormat who has a lousy life and it is entirely her fault because she never does anything about it, and I do think her high anxiety level helped to boost my own. I thought about this book a lot for about a week after I finished it, so I can't really say that it was bad. Causing an emotional response in the reader is normally very good. But I mainly just wanted to slap the MC upside the head and tell her to grow a backbone, so I guess I didn't really like it all that much either. Plus feeling super stressed out isn't exactly the emosional response I hope for when picking up a YA novel.

The Imimitable Jeeves by P.G. Woodhouse - Classic/Comedy - I listened to this book to help cheer myself up after my "Prep" induced panic attack. There really isn't anything stressful about Barty Wooster, so I think Jeeves was a good listening choose until things calmed down for me at work. I've read several of P.G. Woodhouses books, and they are all basically exactly the same. The situations are slightly different, but not very, so everytime I pick up another of his books I spend the first three chapters asking myself, "did I read this two years ago?" Still frivalis comidy can be great for ones mental health when facing a major deadline.

You Suck by Christopher Moore - Comedy - Once I finished the project that was driving me bonkers at work, I sort of lost the desire to listen for a while. I spent almost two weeks just day dreaming about the characters in my old novel and listening to music and generally embracing reality before I got around to listening to any books again. When I did, the first book I picked up was You Suck, which I blogged about on Monday. I don't feel the need to rehash it again, except to say that it is really funny and holds true to the classic vampire lore while being absolutely nothing like any of the other vampire books currently topping the best seller lists. It is actually a sequil to Blood Sucking Fiends but I didn't realize that until I was half way through the book, and it works perfectly well as a stand alone. But if you do want to read it, starting with the first book might not be a horrible idea. It at least makes more sence then reading the books in reverse order, which is what I'll likely do.

Joke of the Day

Why does the elephant use his trunk as a bookmark?

So he always nose where he left off.

Blood Lust

2009-11-30T18:40:00.000-08:00

What is the big deal with vampires? Dracula was first published in 1897, and it seems that vampires have been a frequent icon in popular literature ever since. Dracula was not the first vampire tale ever told. And today vampires are the hottest thing around.

Back in the 90’s Buffy put a new more feminist face on the vampire story. Then Bella came along and quickly implanted sparkly vampires into every teenage girl’s fantacy. I have to be honest, I didn’t particularly like Dracula when I read it back in college, and I never watched Buffy. I did enjoy the Twilight series, it might not be high art, but it is definately entertaining.

I watched New Moon a week ago and enjoyed that a lot too. The CGI of the wolves was a bit corny, and the actor playing Jacob is a lot hotter than the actor playing Edward, which detracted from the Edward is the hottest man alive plot point. But for the most part I felt that it stuck to the plot of the book and entertained sufficently.

Last weekend I also caught my first eposode of The Vampire Diaries. Granted I did see a mid-season episode without any pervious context, but I wasn’t thrilled with what I saw. From the one episode I caught I figured out that some of the vampires are good and others are bad and they are living among humans and fighting for blood and justice. While these TV vampires don’t glitter in the sun, they do match more of the Twilight world rules than the Dracula world rules. Mainly I just felt like Vampire Diaries is trying to ride the Twilight money making wave, and the show wasn't adding anything new or interesting to the world of vampires.

Today I listened to a completely different vampire novel – You Suck by Christopher Moore. You Suck is nothing like Twilight, it attempts to be a humorous version of Dracula and I half expect Moore has never read anything written by Meyer. If you love Twilight but generally hate horror, You Suck probably isn’t for you. But if you enjoy a humorous spoof on horror that pokes fun at human fears and desires, then you will probably love You Suck.

Here is a longer list of comparisons between the vampires of Meyer and Moore

YOU SUCK

Bodies go lifeless (effectively dead) at sunrise

Passionate biting sex

Shave a cat before drinking its blood to avoid a mouth full of hair

Can drink from humans without killing them

Vampire gets drunk after feeding on drunken homeless guy

Vampires need human minuons (normally goth teenagers) to do their bidding during the day

The humane way to hunt is to eat terminally ill patiants shortly before they would die anyway

TWILIGHT

Bodies sparkle in the sun

Steamy hand holding but absolutely no sex before marrage

Hunting for mountain lions in the woods without getting remotely dirty

Biting a human can lead only to death or transformation and is always painful for human

Nobody does drugs or drinks alcohol in Forks

Vampires must keep their identities hidden under all costs

The humane way to hunt is to eat animals

Joke of the Day

What does a vampire fear most?

Tooth Decay

Thanks-Jiven

2009-11-27T20:13:00.001-08:00

I love the fact that the largest non-religious holiday in American is a celebration of gluttany. My ansestors might not have attended the first Thanksgiving, but I made sure to eat enough this year to make up for their 18th century imigration status. Yesturday, I entertained 20 hungery friends and relatives. We didn't hold back on anything, and a good time was had by all.

Our dining room can't seat 20, 12 maybe, but not 20. But considering the youngest person at our gathering was 17 (and I was the second youngest person) sticking a kids table in the kitchen didn't seem like a viable option either. So we simply moved all of our livingroom furniture into the garagae and set up a giant table for 20 in the living room. Having all of our couches in the garage worked great, because we purchased a second used oven at a smoking low price and hooked it up to our dryer plug-in in the garage. So not only could people sit around and cabits out there, they could cook too.

The appetizer course in the garage consitsted of squash soup, smoked salmon, cheeze/crackers/cold cuts, veggies/dip, apple/carmle, dried fruit, olives, and pickles. And naturally some genrous porsions of wine too.

Once social hour carport style was over we dug into the real feast. Our thanksgiving dinner consisted of a smoked turkey, a deep fried turkey, a ham, two kinds of stuffing, mash potatoes, gravy, yam/apple casoral, green bean caserol, grilled asparagous, cranberry chuttney, orenges, corn bread, rolls (homebaked), butter (home churned), and more wine. It was delicious.

After dinner we played a few cut throat card games while our food digested before digging into desert. Which consisted of pumpkin pie, apple/cranberry pie, strawberry/rubarb pie, and ice cream. Once all the pie was eaten we played somemore cards before crawling off to collaps into food comas.

Instead of spending black Friday at the mall, I had to move all my livingroom furniture back into my house. But now the couch is were it belongs, my refrigerator is overflowing with yummy left overs, and I still love thanks-jiven.

Joke of the Day

What did the turkey say right before it was roasted?

"Boy, I'm stuffed."

Attack of the Day Dream

2009-11-25T10:13:00.000-08:00

So far November has been a bit of a whirl wind as far as the wonderings of my mind are concerned. At the beginning of the month I set myself a goal of not reading or listening to any books for the entire month of November. My feeling was that this would force me to think about a new book and I would eventually start writing a lot more.

I did start writing a new book during the first week of November, but it never went anywhere and after about 5000 words and an outline I gave up. I may come back to the idea sometime down the line, but I just didn't care about any of the characters and I couldn't modivate myself to write about it.

I also got really board at work. I've gotten so good at multi-tasking that not listening to audio books while working is difficult. After a week of unispiring music, I gave up and started listening again. I continued to attempt to write for another week before I scrapped my new story all together.

Then all of a sudden, creativity set in. I started thinking about my old characters, from my last book. The novel that I wrote last year is YA and stars an entertaining group of 16 year olds. In my mind these kids are now all 19 - and they are still fabulously entertaining. I really don't want to write down what I'm thinking about right now. Sequils never work - if a long story is written as a series it can be gripping and powerful, but when a book works well alone it should stay alone. Sequil for the pure sake of sequil tends to read really flat and boaring.

To make matters worse, I've rewritten my last book in my mind. Not the whole thing - I just decided to kill off the mother of one of my main characters. In the book that I wrote, this characters parents our divorsed. But for the sake of my new daydream it works way better if his mom is actually dead. So I'm just letting her be dead in my mind now, but she can stay alive and neglectful in the book I already wrote.

So here I am, November is almost over, my mind is spinning with lots of great characters going on great adventures. I've only listened to five books this month (I read or listened to 24 books in October), and I still don't have a new book to write. But I'm not board - so I'm not complaining.

Joke of the Day

I'm trying to daydream but my mind keeps on wandering.

The Creative Dyslexic - A Result of Brain Geometry

2009-11-23T13:27:00.000-08:00

A new study was just published in the Harvard Medical Journal that corrilates a decreased lower posterior corpus callosum area of the brain with dyslexia and ADD. What does that mean? Well according to the good people over at Harvard the corpus callosum is the part of the brain that connects the right and left hemispheres. So it helps to coordinate thoughts between the two sections of the brain.

When the lower posterior corpus callosum is deminished in size, it causes an increase in divergent thinking. Since the two parts of the brain are less linked, the mind is able to further develope divergent thoughts. In other words, the brain is naturally more creative. Studies have shown that people with smaller corpus callosums are more creative than people with standard corpus callosums. So the question is no longer are you left brained or right brained, but instead do you two brains know how to communicated?

Having a diminished corpus callosum is not the cause of dyslexia or ADD. The world has many highly creative people with tiny corpus callosums who read great. But this latest study indicates that the percentage of dyslexics with diminished corpus callosums in higher than that of the non-dyslexic population.

This doesn’t really surprize me. My experence has always been that brain weirdnesses come in clusters. When ever one thing is off, the possibility of everything else being wacked is greatly increased. Also looking at the list of famous dyslexics makes it easy to recognise we tend to be a creative group. Still it is nice to know that the nerds over in Boston are doing their part to add proof to my speculation. Plus it makes me feel good about myself knowing there is one more official advantage to sucking at reading.

Joke of the Day

One person with ADD said to another, "I got a new cookbook, but I could never do anything with it."

The other person with ADD replied, "So the reciepies all contained unussual ingreedence?"

"Exactly, every single one said 'Start with a Clean Dish'."

New Global Economy

2009-11-20T08:36:00.000-08:00

I know that up until this point, this has not been an economics blog, and venturing into that field might not be what my readers want, but it seems like I end up talking to people about economics almost every day. So I’m tempted to bring the debate online.

I’ll start by grounding myself. I was raised in an upper middle class family, I have multiple college degrees (anthropology and engineering), and both my husband and I are currently employed as engineers. I’m kind of a snob, and its easy for me to think – I want a beach house, I want a yatch, I want, I want, I want. So then I think about possibly making less money and I have to frown.

To make matters even worse, the company that my husband works for recently announced their plan to move all their manufacturing facilities to China. Design work will still be done in the US, and currently my husband’s job appears secure. But when 80% of the companies US employese are laid off, it is hard to take comfort in that security. So I understand the reality of the rising unemployment rate, and I personally know multiple people with Ivy League educations whose jobs are being outsourced.

But then there is another part of me that says, stop acting like such a snob. This isn’t only a problem that I face. It is a problem that all American’s are facing. We are a country full of spoiled brats. There are certain things that are basic needs – food, clean drinking water, basic shelter. Many people in the world are currently living without these things. And out sourcing is bring much needed jobs and capital to the developing world and will as a result greatly increase the quality of many human’s lives.

Cable TV on the other hand is not a basic human need. And owning a yatch is certainly not required for servival. Maybe if we as American’s stopped feeling entitled to all of the things that 95% of the world population would never even dream of, we will be happier living in this new global economy.

Even though I was raised deep in the trenches of the upper middle class, I have had the opertunity to meet several people that refer to themselves as idependently poor. These people have always made money somehow, working as artists, doing odd jobs, and repairing and reselling damaged goods. These people might not have hundereds of thousands of dollars tucked away in their 401K’s, but that just means that they didn’t feel as much pain when the stock market popped. But for the most part I would say that all the independently poor people that I know are far happier than the people who own multiple pieces of vaccation property that they never have time to visit.

I never want to go without food or water, and I tend to get cold easily so having shelter would be nice too. But I’m already happily living without cable TV. If my husbands job is outsorced, we will be able to servive on my income until he finds something else. And while we are both employed, we need to remember to invest our money wisely so that we will have both the security to live through a rainy day, and the flexibility to eventually stop working. And we don’t need to go buy a yatch.

I do want a beach house and a yatch, because I’m sure at some level I will always be a snob. But I also want the people in China to have enough food to eat, and I want the people in South America to have clean drinking water. And I want the joy in my life to come from the people I interact with and the experiences I embrace – not the size of my 401K. Being independently wealthy might be a pipe dream, but I think I could be really happy independently poor.

Joke of the Day

The economy is so bad a picture is now only worth 200 words.

To Read or Not To Read

2009-11-18T18:38:00.000-08:00

Yesturday, Natalie Whipple over at Between Fact and Fiction had a post about how everyone can and should be a reader. Her message was that people who don’t think they like to read, just need to hunt more diligently for a book they will love. Her post reminded me of an experience I had when I was 16 years old.

Let me set the scene for you. I was an uber-dork – took all honors and AP classes, captain of the mathletes, ect. Except that I read at a second grade reading level, so I was stuck in bonehead English instead of honors English. I got all my text books on tape, and I also listened to three or four books for pleasure per week. At the time I filled all my audio book needs via RFB&D (recordings for the blind and dyslexic). This meant that I had to know the author and title of a book before I ordered it from RFB&D, so I was always on the lookout for good book recomendations.

Now enters my friend Nathan. Nathan was also an uber-dork – took honors and AP everything (including English), captain of the chess club, ect. For some reason I thought since Nathan managed to get a hire grade than me in Physics, he might be a reader too. So I asked him, “have you read any good books lately?”

His answer, “I like reading Calvin & Hobs, does that count?”

I was floored. Nathan was smart, he probably taught himself how to read when he was four or something. But he didn’t do it. He didn’t read. He just did his homework, and then built robots and stuff like that in his spare time. I couldn’t understand why anyone who could read wouldn’t want to. There was nothing in the world I wanted more than to be able to read. I just couldn’t get it.

Now let’s fast forward about fifteen years. I am now married to yet another uber-dork. He is an electrical engineer by day, and in his free time he enjoys fishing, woodworking, restoring antique farm equipment, and inventing zany new contraptions in his shop. The guy is definitely smart, and way to productive for his own good. But he doesn’t read. In the six years I’ve known him, I’ve seen him read exactly one book – and I wrote it. He doesn’t like watching movies either, and the only TV show he likes is Mythbusters.

When we go on long car trips, my husband never complains when I subject him to audio books. His problem with reading is simply that it requires sitting still, which he hates to do. So I write books, and my husband invents new fangled fishing loors. We are both entertained, so it shouldn’t really matter that we have different hobbies. Still, when I read a really good book that I know he would love it always pains me a little bit – knowing that he will never read it.

And as for me. I’m still a dorky engineer who is constantly plugged into audio books. Only now I am capable of reading dust jackets and usually do a pretty good job of finding titles to keep myself entertained, without depending on the recomendations of the non-reading computer nerds I live with.

Joke of the Day

Once there was a lady in on an airplane with a poodle. The man sitting next to her was smoking a big cigar, even though they were on a no smoking flight. The lady was seated in an exit row, so she opened the airplanes door and threw out the man’s cigar. The man then grabbed the poodle and through it out the door. The pilot saw what had happened and quickly did a loop-d-loop and the poodle landed on the wing of the plane. In the poodles mouth was the brick from Monday’s joke.

A Change of Plans

2009-11-16T11:27:00.000-08:00

I have decided to shelve the book I’m suppsedly writing indefinately. This really isn’t a very big sacrifice, concidering I’ve only written about 5000 words. Basically I’ve decided that writing when I’m not in the mood is never a good idea. Not because my time is precious or anything like than, but simply because the things I come up with are total crap.

I heard the first sentance of my last novel in a dream. I woke up the next morning and started writing. I didn’t stop until I had a completed novel that I felt happy with eight months later. At first there was only one voice in my head, asking me to tell her story. But as I wrote, I began to hear other voices and the stories cast of characters fanned out and came to life. Writing was fun, writing was addictive. Even when I wasn’t writing I spent every waking hour thinking about the characters in my novel.

I finished that book about a year ago. Since then I’ve written about 2/3rds of a first draft of a memoir, I’ve written this blog, and I’ve read or listened to more than 100 books written by other people. But I haven’t caught that addiction to writing again. I haven’t dreampt up a new story that I felt an uncontrolable urge to write down.

That doesn’t mean I haven’t thought about anything. In the past year, I’ve invented about a half a dozen casts of characters. Some have been interesting, and some have been ordenary. But their stories have all had major problems that told me without question that a book about their lives could never find a market. They weren’t stories ment to be written down, they were just stories meant to entertain me.

The book that I started two weeks ago in my half hearted attempt at NaNoWriMo, wasn’t about a character who has taken over my conciousness. Instead it was a plot that I thought might have a market and consisted of characters that I didn’t know or care about. The result is simple. I don’t care about this story. Writing feels like a chore, and everything that I write is flat and lifeless. Nobody will want to read what I’m writing right now. I don’t even want to read what I’m writing right now. So why am I writing it?

Last weekend I went camping – yes in November. I know I’m insane. I didn’t bring anything to read or write, I just hung out in the rain and did a lot of day dreaming. The story I invented for myself over the weekend had nothing to do with what I’m supposed to be writing. It also wouldn’t work as a novel. But it entertained me during a wet rainy weekend.

So I’m just going to take a step back and trust myself. I’m only 30 years old, and I daydream 24/7. Obvoisly, I will write another novel. But I don’t need to force it. When a character wakes me up at night begging me to write – I will. But when I find myself board with my own writing, well then maybe I should just read a book and think about something else for a while.

Joke of the Day

Once there was a man who decided to build a house. He carefully counted out all of the bricks he needed before he began construction. But when he was finished with the house, he had one brick left over. So he threw it in the air.

The Shack

2009-11-13T08:51:00.000-08:00

I have broken my own rule. I set a goal for myself to not read or listen to any books for the month of November. While I’m not doing NaNoWriMo, I figured a fiction fast would get my imagination churning enough that I would be more motivated to write. That was the idea. It lasted a week. The problem is that my day job currently consists of a lot of data entry and other monotimous tasks that tend to become mind numbing fairly quickly. I tried listening to music, for a whole week I tried. But that entire week I felt like my mind would explode, I was just so board. Then I broke down and started listening to audio books again. And what do you know, I’m back to loving data entry. It’s a great background activity to listening. My current plan is to listen to audio books while at work, but to focus my free time on writing (not reading or listening) while at home. I’m not writing anywhere near NaNoWriMo type word counts, but I’m writing more than I did in October. And I feel much more content.

Since I’m busy breaking rules, now I’m going to break another big rule – I’m gonna talk about religion. Because one of the books I listened to this week was “The Shack” by William P. Young. The book came recomended to me by a nun, an evangelical prodostant, and a devout egnostic. It is a good book, my guess is that most people in the world who consider themselves Christians will really like this book. It is well written, thought provoking, and it questions modern consepts of religion just enough to enable people to rexamine their faith without fully destroying it.

My own reaction to the book was surprisingly positive. I never felt offended while listening to it, and I often felt myself agreeing with its message. But I don’t tend to think of myself as Christian. This doesn’t mean I’m a devout athiest either. I often describe myself as a resent convert to hethenism. When I was a kid, I was a total nerd. I got straight A’s in everything, including Sunday school. I didn’t know how to read, so I aquired an audio version of the bible. Then I memorized it. In Sunday school when the other kids memorized individual bible verses, I would show up having memorized entire books.

Being a non-reader, I’ve always had a strong tie to the idea of oral tradition. I have never questioned the idea that in the first century AD, very few people knew how to read. That doesn’t mean that people didn’t know the scriptures, it means that people memorized the stories and told them alloud – the same why I still listen to audio books while doing data entry. I, therefore, deduced that none of the New Testimate could be properly understood if the entire Old Testimate wasn’t first memorized. The early Christians were all just as devout of Talmudic scholars and the average orthodox Jew of today. And the sudtle refrence to Talmudic scripture in the gospils and appisles weren’t intended to be suttle.

So I know my scriptures. I have also done a fair amount of study into the men who wrote them down and their political and religious motivations for writing them. But I don’t call myself a Christian. Not because I don’t believe in God, because I do. I just don’t like the way so many Christian’s spout hate in the name of God and try to scare people into faith. Most of modern Christianity is entirely alien to the concept of God I discovered by memorizing the Bible as a kid. But I liked “The Shack”. There is one line in it where the character of Jesus says, “I’m not a Christian.” And I have to admit that line made me smile.

Anyone reading “The Shack” should go into it knowing that three of the major characters in the books are the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit – it is a very religions book that can only be enjoyed or understood from a religions point of view. But God the Father is a fat African American Woman, and most of the other common conceptions precented in contemperary religion are questioned. I beat enough ordained ministers at bible trivial games as a kid to know that I’m familiar with the scriptures. And while “The Shack” doesn’t quote the bible, it really doesn’t contridict it either. And the African American Female God that lives in a shack in the woods, is more like the Holy Father whose stories I memorized in my youth, than the wrathful God Christian’s so often quote when preaching hatered.

So if you are a nun, or an evangelocal prodistant, or an devout egnostic, I would recommend “The Shack”. It is an interesting read about a broken spirits face to face encounter with God. It uplifts, and encourages thought, and attempts to puts a new more loving face on a creater that never wanted to be seen as wrathful.

Joke of the Day

Bob and a rabbi and a priest are walking together. Bob turns to the rabbi and asked, "I know in your religion you aren't supposed to eat pork, but have you ever tasted it?"

"I must confess," the rabbi replies. "There was one time when I did taste pork."

Bob then turns to the priest and asked, "You are supposed to be celebate, but have you..."

The priest cuts him off and admits, "Yes, there was one time I succome to my temptations."

The rabbi then turned to the priest and said, "It's better than pork, isn't it."

The Rise of the E-book

2009-11-09T19:12:00.000-08:00

I follow enough publishing industry blogs to know that a lot of people are seeing e-books as the end of reading as we know it. Barns and Noble resently released the Nook, their new e-reader sure to give Amazon's kindle a run for its money that will also help the worlds largest book store stay in business when people start refusing to shop in book stores.

But tonight on my comute home, I heard a story on NPR that brought the end of paper books into reality sooner that I had suspected. I have always thought that e-books would surpass paper books in market share once kids started getting e-readers at school instead of paper text books. Once school children become used to reading e-books and ever student has an e-reader the transition away from paper books will be impossible. Not only will kids in school consume all their pleasure reading on their school issued e-reader but they will then grow up to be adults fully committed to the idea of e-reading.

Well according to the good people at All Things Considered, there is a private school in Massicusits that has gotten rid of all the paper books in their school library. All the kids have laptops and kindles and the library is investing only in e-books and online refrence material. Right now this is just one private school in New England, but how long will it take before all the public schools across the country are following suit. When kids can't get paper books at their school library - the e-book is here to stay.

I feel so thankful that I got a kindle for my birthday last summer. I would hate to be bested by a bunch of spoiled brat kids.

Joke of the Day

You know technology has taken over your life when you consider your many gadgets friends, but you forgot to send your father a birthday card.

Good Writing vs Good Story Telling

2009-11-08T15:54:00.000-08:00

When I grow up, I want to be an author. So becoming a good writer should be at the top of my to do list. But lately I've been thinking that good story telling is infanately more important. How many times have I heard people say, Stephanie Meyer or Dan Brown or some other mega best selling author is a bad writer. These nagative comments could come out of gelousy, or they could be based on the occational poorly constructed sentance. By lets be honest, does it matter? Nobody cares if Dan Brown can't write like William Faulkner - because he can tell a story like Dan Brown.

An authors ability to come up with an interesting story idea that is unlike anything else and then to tell it a gripping and exciting way is what makes readers buy books. If the grammer is all wrong and the writing is so overly flowery that it becomes distracting people will notice. But who really freeks out over the occational adverb? I honestly don't think there is all that much of a difference between the quality of writing in the average high school students English paper and the average best selling novel. The difference is all in the story telling.

So what is involved in good story telling? The characters need to be interesting and relatable. The plot has to be fast paced enough to keep the reader interested. The events need to be original enough that the story stands out against the many other tales available. If the story teller can touch the reader/listeners emtions via laughter, sorrow, fear, ect that's great too. And that is really it.

Maybe that is what people mean when they talk about good writing. The ability to make characters come to life on the page, to grab the readers and not let go, and to make an emotional connection with the audience. So where does sentance structure come in? My answer is, no where. Stringing words together in coherent sentances has nothing to do with great books. Great books are always well told accounts of great stories.

So I'm giving up on becoming a great writer. My spelling sucks, and I often think in run on sentances. All I want to do is make up stories. Sometimes I make up stories that are seriously boring. Usually I have enough forsight to not write those stories down. My latest novel is a modern adaptation of Romeo and Juliet set at a high school summer camp. It's a fun story, but I don't know how great it is. I mean, obvoisly it's not totally original - it is a remake of Shakespere after all. But I'll keep dreaming, and I'll keep writing, and with a little luck oneday I will become a great storyteller.

Joke of the Day

A dyslexic entered a spelling bee and came in SALT.

10,000 Hours to Success

2009-11-06T08:41:00.000-08:00

I’m undergoing a fiction fast and not reading or listening to any books for the entire month of November. This means that I can’t blog about all the books I’m currently reading. So instead, I’ll blog about a book I read last summer. “Outliers” by Malcolm Gladwell is all about what it takes to become an expert at anything. Gladwells answer: 10,000 hours of practice. Gladwell hypothosises that natural ability has almost no impact on success, and that completing 10,000 hours of practice means everything.

Regardless of the truth of Gladwell’s book, it seems to take the world a year to catch onto trends. “Outliers” was published last November, and now all of a sudden everywhere I turn I hear people talking about the 10,000 hours rule. Since I was apparently ahead of the curve on the tipping point for this trend (seeing as how I listened to “Outliers” six months after it was published instead of twelve) I’ll add my voice to the growing debate now.

I do disagree with Gladwell on one major issue. I think that natural tallent matters a lot at the beginning. If the 10,000 hours rule is true, I would be tempted to claim that people without natural talent are weeded out after the first 1,000 hours. In the amiture levels there is a lot of emphisis placed on natural ability and the people who don’t have inharent talent are almost never given the opportunity (or modivation) to put in the practice. So successful people are vertually always naturaly talented in their chosen field – they just practiced a lot too.

Now lets look at the 10,000 hours rule. The only example I’m going to use here is myself, if you want better examples, read Gladwell. I am an engineer by trade. I have been working in this field for 4.5 years, before that I had 3 years of engineering school. Assuming I currently spend 40 hours per week 50 weeks per year engineering, and I spent 20 hours per week 36 weeks per year while in school, I have currently spent 11,160 hours practicing engineering. Am I an expert engineer? Hard to say. Clearly I know more than I did back when I was in school, but I still depend on the expertice of many of my co-workers in some areas. Do I have natural talent in engineering? Probably – if I didn’t I would have been weeded out my first year of engineering school.

Next field – writing. I’ve written two novels, one that sucked and one that I think is good and I am currently querying. I’m also half way through a memoir, I wrote a bunch of papers back in high school and college, plus I’ve been writing this blog for about a year. My guess is that all this time writing adds up to about 3,000 hours. No where near 10,000. So I shouldn’t be considered an expert writer yet. That is probably a good thing – I’m sure there are lots of tricks to the trade I still need to learn.

But what defines an expert writer? I think I have natural talent, I would have quit writing a long time ago if I didn’t. But I’m also a fast writer. Back in college I used to average 20 minutes per page when writing papers (10 page paper = make sure to start in at least 3.5 hours before its due). I would estimate that I spent approximately 800 hours writing my last novel, and I honestly think it is good. So do I need to write 8 more books to finish my 10,000 hours before I can get anything published? Or does that just mean that my eighth novel is going to be the one that moves me from a midlister to a best seller?

A standard four year college education gives people about 3,000 hours of practice. Two more years of graduate school only amounts to 5,000 hours. Obviously on the job learning happens in every profession. But people get jobs all the time who aren’t “experts”. When it comes to the arts is there also room for income involved with on the job learning? Can a writer continue to grow their craft while a published mid-list writer? Can a painter have a few small gallery shows early on before breaking into the major museaums? Can a musician tour small venues before they top the bill board charts? Logic would say yes. Even Gladwell would say that artists often do get paid before they become experts. It is that early oppertunity/encouragement that enables artists to reach their 10,000 hours.

So I’m setting myself goals I hope are realistic. I want to be a writer. I want to find an agent and publisher for my latest novel. I believe that it is the best novel I can currently write. But I also trust that it isn’t the best book I will ever write. I hope that this novel makes is solidly into the mid-list. And I hope that as I continue to write, I will one day become an expert capable of a spot on the top of the New York Times Best seller list. But I’ve only done 3,000 hours. I’m not there yet. I just don’t want to believe 10,000 hours is required to get an agent.

Joke of the Day

A doctor, a civil engineer, and a consultant were arguing about the worlds oldest profession. The doctor said, "In the Bible it says God created Eve from a rib taken from Adam. Clearly surgery is the worlds oldest profession."

THe civil engineer then said, "But before God created Adam, he created the order of the heavens and the earth out of the chaos. THis was the first and most spectacular application of civil enigineering. So mine is the oldest profession."

Then the consultant said, "But who do you think created teh chaos?"

The Trouble With Tracking

2009-11-04T08:40:00.000-08:00

The practice of dividing students into leveled tracks is making its way back into national debate. The current problem people are finding with tracking is racial and economic discrimination. The idea is that leveled tracks often work well for the very best and very worst students, but don’t properly serve the vast middle. As a result affluent students are often pushed into higher tracks over poor or minority students who may be equilly capable of success. Well, I’m a white girl who grew up in an affluent suburb and then went onto a pristigious college, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have strong opinons when it comes to tracking.

I’ve never been a member of the vast middle and don’t know what kind of injustice is being inflicted on those students. But I can tell you all about strattling the fringes. When I was in elementry school tracking wasn’t questioned by anyone, it was simply a given. The problem was that nobody knew where to put me, so they cut me into peices and stuck a limb in every box.

In fifth grade, I was placed in five different tracks. I was constantly being pulled out of my main classroom as I was carted around from one special class to another. On Thursdays I only spent 20 minutes in my mainstream classroom. I remember the anomily of those fifth grade Thursdays, because those were the days that my time in the special ed classroom and my time in the talent and gifted program overlapped. One of the TAG kids would have to walk down to the resource room and pick me up.

I consider myself lucky. Somehow in the 1980’s, when a kid had a very high IQ and didn’t know their ABC’s people paid more attention to the high IQ. The other special ed kids didn’t understand me, but the TAG kids accepted me without questions. I was their resident Rain Man, and provided them with endless entertainment. By the time I got to high school, bonehead English was the only non-honors class in my schedule. My time in special ed was short lived and the world chose to listen to me when I insisted that I wasn’t stupid – just illiterate.

I still wonder about kids today. I know one student currently deep in the confineds of special education. Everytime I talk to her, I’m shocked by how little she knows. It’s like she is a teenager trapped in the mind of a small child, but her developmental disabilities aren’t that sevier. I know her, and I know she could achieve much much more if she really tried. But she doesn’t try, and the system doesn’t expect her too. She was placed in the basement track, and nobody expects her to achieve anything.

How many learning disabled children with high IQ’s, boundless determination, and no comprehension of the alphabet are getting slouted into special ed only to be forgotten. I don’t think they give IQ tests in elementry schools anymore. Does anyone even know that these children belong in half a dozen tracks, not just one?

Joke of the Day

A man walks into a bar and orders a drink. The bartender is a robot that askes, "What is your IQ?" while preparing the cocktail. The man replies "150" and the robot proceeds to talk to him about global warming, string theory, nano technology, and quantum physics. The customer is impressed, so after he finishes his drink he leaves and then reenters. This time when the bartender asks him his IQ, the man says 100. The robot then talks to him about NASCAR, gun control, supermodels, and baseball. Again when the man finishes his drink he leaves and reenters. This time he tell the robot bartender that his IQ is 50. The robot replies very slowly, "So...ya gonna...vote...to reelect...the mayor?"

NaNoWriMo

2009-11-02T17:02:00.000-08:00

November is officially National Novel Writing Month. It involves thousands of people all across the country attempting to write an entire novel in the course of one month. It also leads to lots of agents hating the month of December when they recieve submissions for lots of frantically written and completely unpolished novels. I do have a lot of respect for the writers who view NaNoWriMo as an inspiration to finish their rough draft and then go on to spend several more months pollishing their manuscript. Still I haven’t signed myself up for NaNoWriMo and I don’t plan on finishing my next novel before November 30th.

But I have decided to allow the NaNoWriMo hype to inspire me to write. Here is a brief history of my writing life. Back in April of 2008 I got a book idea and sat down to write myself a few notes about it so that when I found the time to write I wouldn’t forget my idea. Once I started writing I got totally obsessed and couldn’t stop. Four months later I completed the first draft of CAMP LIFE. I then spent the next four months polishing and repolishing so on Dec 31st 2008, I finished my 5th draft. I then passed it off to a bunch of beta readers and finally got around to picking up their comments and finishing the 6th draft in July. I started submitting CAMP LIFE to agents in August.

In January of 2009 I started writing THE GIANT IN THE ATTIC, my memoir about how I became an illiterate author. Since I’m totally egomanical, I’m sure that this book will one day make me millions. Unfortunately, writing non-fiction isn’t all that fun. So in 10 months, I’m only half way through the first draft. Instead of completing a draft a month, lately I’ve been writing about a chapter a month. But I’ve been reading/listening to five books a week, so that counts for something right? I do plan on finishing THE GIANT IN THE ATTIC, because I think educating the world about dyslexia is important. But I don’t plan on finishing it anytime soon. Instead, I need to face the truth about myself and just write some more fiction – cause that is actually fun.

So in owner of NaNoWriMo, I started my second novel on November 1st, 2009. I have no plans or expectations of finishing it on November 30th. But I am making a few life changes during the month of November to encourage myself to write. First – I deleated all the audiobooks from my I-pod and will not listen to a single book until December. I am also going to leave my kindle at home for the entire month of November and instead take my laptop with me on the train to and from work. This absence of fiction will most likely drive me completely insane. Fortunately, I tend to lean toward the creative form of crazy. Once I’m unable to fill my imagination with the fiction of others, I’ll be forced to come up with my own. Who knows, maybe I will have a draft done before November 30th after all. I’ll keep you posted.

Joke of the Day

Once there were three men in the desert. One had bread, one had water, and one had a car door. The one with the water and the one with the car door asked the one with the bread, "Why do you have the bread?"

He said, "So if I get hungry, I can eat it."

The one with the bread and the one with the car door asked the one with the water, "Why do you have the water?"

He said, "So if I get thursty, I can drink it."

The one with the bread and the one with the water asked the one with the car door, "Why do you have the car door?"

He said, "So if I get hot, I can roll down the window."

October Reads

2009-10-30T07:05:00.001-07:00

My audio book adiction has not subsided. I may have read/listened to 19 books in September, but that was nothing. In October I read/listened to 24 books. The exact numbers are 18 audio books, 3 e-books, and 3 paper books. Here is a quick review of each.

How To Be Popular by Meg Cabot – YA – Exactly what you would expect given the name. It is a predictable story with very one dimentional characters. Fun, but not overly thought provoking.

Ordinary Ghosts by Eireann Corrigan – YA – A teen boy who deals with lots of teen issues in a very different manner than what is commenly found in YA books for girls. Longer review here.

That Summer by Sarah Dessen – YA – Another great Sarah Dessen novel. This one is about a girl whose sister gets married shortly after her father gets divorced and her idea of family is turned upside down. Longer review here.

Someone Like You by Sarah Dessen – YA – This YA adventure is about a girl whose best friend is pregnant with her dead boyfriends baby. At the same time the MC breaks out of her overprotective parents clutches by dating a reble. Longer review here.

Keeping the Moon by Sarah Dessen – YA – One of my favorite Sarah Dessen novels. This one is about a loner girl who spends the summer with her aunt and ends up finding herself in the process. Longer review here.

This Lullaby by Sarah Dessen - YA - A mean girl who regarlaly uses and abuses he men in her life is tamed by the love of a kind hearted boy. Longer review here.

Before I Die by Jenny Downham – YA – A sixteen year old girl with terminal lucimia works her way down a list of things she wants to do before she dies that aren’t normally provided by the make-a-wish foundation.

Can’t Wait to Get to Heaven by Fannie Flag – Women’s Fiction – Overly preachy, gave up half way through. Continuation of Elmwood Springs story. Longer review here.

The World Is Flat by Thomas L. Friedman – Non-Fiction – A fairly dry account of the current economy. Insightful, but not as entertaining as I was hoping.

The Red Necklace by Sally Gardner – Historical Fiction (faint hints of steampunk) – A fast paced story about the French Revolution and the love between a mistical gypsy boy and a doomed aristicratic girl.

The Goose Girl by Shannon Hale – Fairy Tale – A heartwarming remake of a Brother’s Grimm classic. A princess who's finds herself and her ability to lead after her title and power are stollen.

Olive’s Ocean by Kevin Henkes – Childrens – A unique view of children dealing with death as one 12 year old girl processes the death of one of her friends.

Animal, Vegitable, Miricle by Barbara Kingsolver – Memoir – An interesting account of a family that spent a full year eating no food grown more than 100 miles from their home. Longer review here.

Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner – Non-Fiction – An interesting take on economics that is more peculiour statistics than economics. Very similar to Malcolm Gladwell books.

Number the Stars by Lois Lowery – Children’s/Historical Fiction – A touching account of the nations of Denmark’s mission to smuggle all their Jewish residence to Sweeden during WW2, told from the point of view of a ten year old girl.

The Host by Stephanie Meyer – Young Adult/SciFi – Another gripping forbidden love story. This one is an invating alein falling in love with a human, as opposed to Meyer’s better known human/vampire love story. I actually like the Host better than Twilight and am looking forward to the release of the next book in the searies.

Paradise Lost by John Milton – Classic – Reading this felt way to much like homework. It may be the grounding of a lot of modern western thought, but it still reads like a text book.

Adventure Capitalist by Jim Rogers – Travel – I would love to go on a three year vaccation through 158 countries, and the economy lesson was somewhat insightful. But for the most part this book made me more jealous than inspired.

I Like You by Amy Sedaris – Hospitalty/Humor – Laugh out loud funny! Amy Sedaris may be even more entertaining than her brother. And it sounds like she throughs great parties.

Naked by David Sedaris – Humor/Memoir – I actually like David Sedaris’s early stuff better than is more recent stuff. It is hard to sympathis with a guy wining about being a gazillionair. But a fat guy hanging out at a nudist colony is pretty funny.

Masterpiece Comics by R. Sikoryak – Graphic Novel – A marrage of classic literature and classic comics that is highly entertaining. Longer review here.

Saving Fish From Drowning by Amy Tan – Women’s Fiction – A gripping tale that sheads light on the country of Berma/Myamair. Unlike Adventure Capitalist, this story made me glad I was at home reading and not being held captive in the jungle.

A Mad Desire to Dance by Elie Wiesel – Literary – A glimps inside the pyschoanalys of a crazy jew. The story was interesting but it wasn’t exactly Night.

Counting on Grace by Elizabeth Winthrop – Historical Fiction – A touching account of a twelve year old mill girls strugle to obtain an education and fight for child labor laws.

Joke of the Day

Why did the librarian slip and fall?

Because she was in the non-friction section.

Keep Your Preaching in the Pulpit

2009-10-28T08:16:00.000-07:00

Ever since “Fried Green Tomatoes” took the world by storm back in the mid 90’s, I’ve been a fan of Fannie Flagg. But I wasn’t able to bring myself to finish “Can’t Wait To Get to Heaven”, it was just to preachy to stomach. In this addition to the Elmwood Springs sogga, Aunt Elner dies and goes up to Heaven where Neighbor Dorthy is God. Something about being told the meaning of life over a piece of pound cake rubbed me the wrong way.

Normally religion in literature doesn’t bother me all that much. As a kid the Chronicals of Narnia were some of my favorite stories, and they are so overly Christian they might as well be called the Gospil According to Aslan. My early faith may have been shaped more heavely by the words of C.S. Lewis than the apposil Paul, but I never cared because I always loved the stories.

Two of my other early favorites were Candid and The Pilgrams Progress. In those books the Christianity isn’t even symbolic, it’s just right there in the open to see and deal with. But I never felt like I was being told what to think or feel, I was just experiencing an epic tale. In the same way as I’ve never felt tempted to convert to peganism when I read Homor.

I’ve never had a problem with religions symbolism in fiction. Religion has always played a big part in human culture and often drives people’s thoughts and actions, so it should hold a place in the things we read and write. Many of my favorite books have had characters that were Orthodox Jews, or Budists, or Hindus, or Muslums. I like learning about different people whose experineces are different than mine, and containing religion in literature is an important part of that.

What bothers me is when one character gives another character a sermon, that is so poinient I know it’s really just the author preaching to the reader. That is what I can’t stand. And that is why I put down one of my favorite author’s latest book midstride. I didn’t even dissagree with the sermon, I just didn’t want to be preached at.

Joke of the Day

Jesus and Moses went golfing. When they got to a lot water hole, Moses laid his ball up before the water for the easy shot. Jesus looked at the pond and announced, "If Tiger Woods can do it, so can I." Then he hit his ball straight into the pond. He turned to Moses and said, "Part the water so I can get my ball."

Moses did as Jesus asked, and Jesus went down and got his ball. After retreaving his ball he did not lay it up for an easy shot over the water trap but instead announced, "If Tiger Woods can do it, so can I." He swung again, and landed in the water again. And again he asked Moses to part the water.

Moses was now feeling frustrated and encouraged Jesus to lay up for the easier shot. Jesus would not listen and again hit his ball straight into the pond. This time when he asked Moses to part the water, Moses said no. So Jesus walked out on the water to get his ball himself.

The group behind them caught up and looked out to see Jesus walking on the water and asked, "Who does he think he is, Jesus?"

Moses turned to the golfers and replied, "He is Jesus. He thinks he's Tiger Woods."