Great Month for Ad-Men Fans!

I admit to still catching the occasional rerun of the ‘60s TV sitcom Bewitched, and to being happy that the late-‘80s drama thirtysomething is finally being released this month on DVD.

Combine those series into AMC-TV’s retro-‘60s drama, Mad Men, and you’ll find me over the moon at tomorrow night’s Season 3 premiere. For a full immersion, I’m going to add an ad agency-based book -- either Peter Mayle’s memoir-ish Up the Agency, or Joshua Ferris’s workplace satire, Then We Came to the End.

Book-itecture

Via The Elegant Variation comes a referral to Curious Expeditions’ Librophiliac Love Letter. The page is graphics-intensive and loads slowly. But then, its “Compendium of Beautiful Libraries” rewards your patience one hundredfold.



(Left) One of my favorites: Real Gabinete Portugues De Leitura Rio De Janeiro, Brazil







(Right) The most intriguing: Hereford Cathedral Chained Library, Hereford, England

Some Fun Now

From the Foreword:

As she would say, "We had such fun!"

From the Introduction:

Those early years in France were among the best of my life. [...I...] had such fun that I hardly stopped moving long enough to catch my breath.

I wasn't even to the official first page of Julia Child's My Life in France yesterday before those and two more passages poured pure joy onto the page. "Joy" isn’t my dominant impression of Julia Child; "serious" fits better.

"Serious" describes me, too. So maybe it took all those references to fun to prepare me this morning for Jill and Kevin's wedding video (audio alert).

It'll either annoy you or bring you to tears. Me? Tears. (of joy!)

Making God Laugh

The joke goes: “If you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans.”

Even if you’re The Pope?

Benedict XVI left on Monday for a two-week vacation in a chalet in the Italian Alps. He fell Thursday night and broke his wrist, and had surgery on Friday to repair it and apply a cast that he’ll wear for a month.

The biggest impact?

…giving up writing by hand, which he had planned to spend much of his time doing during his traditional summer vacation.

A Boss by Any Other Name

Intrigued by workplaces, I tend to mine discussions and articles for nuggets that resonate, especially regarding generations or sites outside my own experience.

This, for example, from MSN/CareerBuilder's recent 10 Worst Work Habits:

Using your supervisor's first name […is] common in many industries.

Merely "common"?

The only time I've addressed a boss by anything other than a first name was as a teenage babysitter. (Now, bosses' bosses -- that's a different story and helps me to get into the mindset. Even when promoted to report to a former boss's boss, changing the reference was like growing into adulthood and trying to call my parents' friends by their first names.)

So of course, now I'm interested in finding a workplace where first names aren't allowed, or creating a character in a normal workplace who doesn't allow it...

ABC3D

Marion Bataille’s ABC3D is a book of the alphabet -- done pop-up style in red, white, and black ... and one mirror.

The design is clever, though he uses only about 12 concepts and repeats several of them across different letters. But what is extraordinary is how he surprises the reader with similarities among letters (E/F, sure; but wait until you get to O/P/Q/R!) -- and within letters (there's a mini-me in G!). He makes me want to learn about typography and alphabet history.

Watch a video of the book (audio alert) below. Note: It shows the entire book (in a little over a minute) but, in my opinion, doesn't "spoil" it. I watched the video and immediately put the book on hold at my library. And I still may get my own copy!

What Goes Around...

I bought peonies ($8) and a quart of strawberries ($5.50) this morning at the farmer’s market.

“Thirteen-fifty,” the purveyor said.

I handed her fifteen dollars and she gave me a dollar and fifty cents.

I hesitated. “On second thought, I’ll take another quart of strawberries.” I gave her a twenty-dollar bill and, smiling at the circularity, said, “And here’s your fifty cents back.”

She made change for my twenty and smiled right back. “And here’s your fifteen dollars!”

Welcome Summer

Superbug Slapdown

Headline in a newsletter I received yesterday:

[The American Society of Health-System Pharmacists] Backs Legislation To Curb Antimicrobial Resistance

Take that, bacteria! viruses! fungi!

Finally -- some fines or jail-time for microorganisms that insist on surviving via evolutionary mutation!

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(It is a serious problem; the House bill seeks funding for a public-health plan to better monitor, treat, and prevent infections by drug-resistant bugs.)

Too Much Tension!

A couple missteps early on, then a growing confidence...



...and a big finish!

Susan Boyle moves on to the May 30 (Saturday) finals of Britain's Got Talent 2009.

(And I take some time to figure out this video's narrative tensions ... and map their numerous sensory manifestations in my body!)

Reading Lessons

I read more to learn than to be entertained (learning = entertainment!) and two recent novels have lessons I'm still thinking about.

One is Kathryn Stockett's phenomenal debut, The Help. Narrated from 1962 Mississippi by two black domestics (the "household help") and a young white aspiring writer -- all of whom see things differently than the people around them -- it's about race, class status, gender roles, friendship, and the definitions of family. It's full of emotion, film-quality imagery, palpable suspense ... with subplots so seamlessly woven that I only noticed when they intersected and it became apparent how perfectly they'd been set up. The novel is compelling -- and even life-changing, if the fictional editor's advice about writing is extended to a metaphor for living:

"Don't waste your time on the obvious things. Write about what disturbs you, particularly if it bothers no one else."

And so these three narrators -- and author Kathryn Stockett -- did.

Another is also a terrific fiction debut, Abraham Verghese's Cutting for Stone. It's the story of Marion Praise Stone, born in 1954 Ethiopia of Sister Mary Joseph Praise (an Indian Carmelite nun) and Thomas Stone (an exceptional British surgeon), and (temporarily conjoined) twin to brother, Shiva Praise Stone.

Set mostly in and around a mission hospital in the capital city of Addis Ababa, the first hundred pages are riveting and the next 400 are fascinating, tender, and funny explorations of family, immigration, politics, loyalty, and the practice of medicine and surgery. With something to keep in mind when struggling in difficult work:

I grew up and I found my purpose and it was to become a physician. […] I chose the specialty of surgery because of Matron, that steady presence during my boyhood and adolescence. "What is the hardest thing you can possibly do?" she said when I went to her for advice on the darkest day of the first half of my life.

I squirmed. How easily Matron probed the gap between ambition and expediency. "Why must I do what is hardest?"

"Because, Marion, you are an instrument of God. Don’t leave the instrument sitting in its case, my son. Play! Leave no part of your instrument unexplored. Why settle for 'Three Blind Mice' when you can play the 'Gloria'?"

[…] I was temperamentally better suited to a cognitive discipline, to an introspective field -- internal medicine, or perhaps psychiatry. The sight of the operating theater made me sweat. The idea of holding a scalpel caused coils to form in my belly. (It still does.) Surgery was the most difficult thing I could imagine.

For more (no spoilers), see my comments in LibraryThing's Reading Globally Africa Theme Read. And NPR has a nice podcast of Abraham Verghese reading one of my favorite passages -- the descriptive, touching, and very funny performance of a vasectomy. Which brings to mind another takeaway from Cutting for Stone: Verghese's entreaty that healthcare personnel return to the bedside -- and remember the presence of the actual patient there, instead of industrial medicine’s increasing emphasis on patient as data in a computer -- a la:

Q: "What treatment in an emergency is administered by ear?"
A: (See the comments)

What Kind of Writer Are You?

In his terrific restaurant memoir, Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly, Anthony Bourdain describes several types of cooks:

You’ve got your Artists: the annoying, high-maintenance minority. [...] so ethereal and perfect that delusions of grandeur are tolerated.

Then there are the Exiles: people who just can’t make it in any other business, could never survive a nine-to-five job, wear a tie or blend in with civilized society -- and their comrades, the Refugees, [...] for whom cooking is preferable [to other work].

Finally, there are the Mercenaries: people who do it for cash and do it well. Cooks who, though they have little love or natural proclivity for cuisine, do it at a high level because they are paid well to do it -- and because they are professionals.

I see, in those descriptions, several types of writers. The literary Artists whose originality and perfection stop my breath and force me to endure beats of despair until I accept that such will never be me. The Exiles (whom I don't understand) and the Refugees (whom I'm currently aligned with, although reconsidering). But overall, being a practical person at heart (with an enormous love of literature) and good at execution, I am, I suppose, a Mercenary.

Cooking is a craft, I like to think, and a good cook is a craftsman -- not an artist. There’s nothing wrong with that [...] Practicing your craft in expert fashion is noble, honorable and satisfying. And I’ll generally take a stand-up mercenary who takes pride in his professionalism over an artist any day. When I hear “artist,” I think of someone who doesn’t think it necessary to show up [...]. More often than not artists’ efforts [...] are geared more [to themselves...] than satisfying the great majority of dinner customers.

What kind of writer are you?

Beautiful

Two years ago, it was cell-phone salesman Paul Potts.

Now last Saturday, it’s Susan Boyle, unemployed and dreaming to dream.

Cover (back)Story

I like behind-the-story stories -- seeing the moment that sparks an idea, seeing an accumulation of moments that combine into new meaning … and then seeing what story evolved from the inspiration. (Hence the link to M. J. Rose’s Backstory in my blogroll.)

And from the opposite end, I like seeing how a finished story is reflected in a title and book cover. I haven’t discovered a source for titles yet, but did enjoy Barnes & Noble Studio's (caution: audio alert) short-lived video-interview series, Cover Story, and its discussion thread.

And now I’m over the moon about a blog on book covers by the graphic-design firm, Fwis. It’s admittedly focused on the visual art, but literary and publishing details do pop up in the comment threads or by following the links to designers’ websites. Go. Enjoy!

Hints of Unreliability

In his New Yorker review of John Wray’s Lowboy, a novel acclaimed for its evocation of schizophrenia, James Wood examines the details that lead readers to believe in a narrator’s unreliable point of view:

In standard third-person narration, a tiny slippage often suffices to alert us to a character’s fiction-making. For instance, if I were describing the New York subway, in the third person, from the point of view of a sixteen-year-old boy, and I wrote, “The doors closed after ten seconds and the station fell away,” […it] would be unexceptionable. If, however, I wrote, “The doors closed after exactly ten seconds and the station fell resignedly away,” the two adverbs might stiffen the reader’s posture. Who is this boy, for whom exactitude is so maniacally important, yet who also sees the world so lyrically? And if I wrote, “The train fit into the tunnel perfectly,” or “He decided to get out at Columbus Circle. To his surprise it happened very simply,” the reader would sense a world of mental difficulty, in which trains may not always fit properly into tunnels and a teen-age boy may not always negotiate the exiting of a train.

Wood has engaged me into accepting this fiction, and such a character, by the time he excerpts a passage from the novel:

The train pulled into the next station and the car began to fill with halfdead people. That’s the tiredness, thought Lowboy. They want to curl up on the ground and go to sleep. He yawned at them as they came in, showing them his teeth, and some of them yawned back.

Psychologists say that empathy increases the contagiousness of yawns. I must say, I’m yawning.

Believe Nothing, Laugh Often...

…when you view this overview of book publishing, created by the Digital Marketing Team at Macmillan:

Hatched!

After last year’s trauma, it’s good news now: the Norfolk Botanical Garden’s (NBG) pair of American Bald Eagles have welcomed their first and second hatchlings!

Meanwhile, here’s what’s likely happening inside the third egg as that chick completes incubation and begins to emerge. One of the coolest aspects of all this is that, though the eggs were laid over a span of seven days last month, the eagles delayed incubation of any until all had been laid, which “[slowed] early embryo development, helping to compress the time between hatch dates” and eliminate any feeding advantage that the earliest hatchling gets.

View the goings-on at the nest over the spring and summer via NBG’s Eagle Nest-cam, linked in my blogroll.

What Kind of Writer Are You?

Take a look at today's issue of PW Daily, an e-newsletter from Publishers Weekly ... scroll down to the final item, "Picture of the Day."

In the photo, which writer are you?

Are you holding up your work proudly or keeping it half hidden -- too modest, too cool, too afraid -- or not even showing it at all?

I'm probably the woman in the second row, third from the left. I'm not happy about that.

But I can learn from my friend, Denise -- who showed up this morning bearing her latest published piece like she was headed for that front row. Congratulations! -- D, your enthusiasm is inspiring!

For Public Consumption

Illinois law now requires first-time offenders convicted of drunk driving to install a device and prove sobriety before starting the car (and then re-prove it periodically during the trip).

Warm up your writing by describing your character going through the motions of starting the car in private ... and then jump to a scene where a boss or dream-date unexpectedly demands a ride.

Books as Artist Date

Take the curious and meaningful moments of a life, assign a keyword to each, then organize them alphabetically by keyword -- encyclopedia-style. The result is Amy Krouse Rosenthal’s thoroughly original memoir, Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life. A few of her clever and tender observations run several pages, most are a paragraph, some a mere sentence. Here’s one:

CREAM SAUCE
I love any kind of cream sauce. My mother hates cream sauce but craved it when she was pregnant with me.

Notice where your thoughts go ... to the contradiction and coincidence? To yourself and your own mother? That's Rosenthal at work, turning her ordinary life into something universal and creatively engaging. Reading the book felt to me like an Artist Date -- a little playdate that fills my mind with imagery and energy -- companion creative tool to Morning Pages, both of which Julia Cameron presents in The Artist's Way.

Maybe I’m unique with books as Artist Dates; I'm still experimenting to discover what makes one vs not one. In the process, I've tagged some possibilities from my library. I'm eager to find more.

Whatever, the Encyclopedia has engaged me, and my muse is eager to start listing and categorizing in a sheer sense of play.

Earworm

I love it. I hate it. I love it.



I hate it!

Story Workshop

Who'd have thought the New Yorker published horror stories?

Yet James Salter's excellent, "Last Night," from the November 18, 2002 issue, nearly qualifies. Read it here -- or listen online, where the 20-minute story is introduced by writer Thomas McGuane and Fiction Editor Deborah Treisman, and then followed by a discussion of the story's subtext and set-ups, which in my reading made the surprises well-earned.

Virtual Mentors III

I wouldn't have thought today's quote was necessarily true, thus its intrigue. But the reference to readers in the final sentence, a la "If a tree falls in a forest... ," clinches it.

From Flannery O’Connor's Mystery and Manners:

When you can state the theme of a story, when you can separate it from the story itself, then you can be sure the story is not a very good one. The meaning of a story has to be embodied in it, has to be made concrete in it. A story is a way to say something that can’t be said any other way, and it takes every word in the story to say what the meaning is. You tell a story because a statement would be inadequate. When anybody asks what a story is about, the only proper thing is to tell him to read the story. The meaning of fiction is not abstract meaning but experienced meaning.

Virtual Mentors II

Today's quote comes from an online workshop I took years ago with author and writing coach Gloria Kempton. It's not a recommendation to write toward a market, but rather an insight into the psychology of reading:

The trick to creating great characters is to make the character as much like the reader as possible so that there's immediate identification -- while at the same time making the character different enough so as to make the reader curious to find out more, since unconsciously he really knows he's reading about himself.

Virtual Mentors

Upcoming: a few writing-related favorites from my quotes file, posted one a day to facilitate composting.

Today's, from The Paris Review interview with the late Christopher Isherwood, speaks to turning a real person into a fictional character:

When you’re writing a book, you ask yourself: What is it that so intrigues me about this person -- be it good or bad, that’s neither here nor there, art knows nothing of such words.

Having discovered what it is you really consider to be the essence of the interest you feel in this person, you then set about heightening it. […] trying to create a fiction character that is quintessentially what you see as interesting in the individual, without all the contradictions that are inseparable from [the] human being, aspects that don't seem exciting or marvelous or beautiful. The last thing you're trying to do is get an overall picture of somebody, since then you'd end up with nothing.

Good things grow from details...

The Surf Ballroom

Snapped a few years ago during a trip to Iowa, this photo shows where Buddy Holly (“That’ll Be the Day”), J. P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson (“Chantilly Lace”) and Ritchie Valens (“La Bamba”) performed just before boarding a tiny plane 50 years ago, the day the music died.

Forgo literal death for now, and consider something abstract or figurative that you watched die. Can you point to a physical place where it happened?

Darrel

I’ve blogged previously about The Oxford Project which, through photographs and interviews with the residents of tiny Oxford, Iowa, provides confirming evidence that everybody has an interesting life story.

But further, it suggests that people are complex characters in their interesting stories.* Consider this quote from a 75-year-old man named Darrel:

We lost one of our daughters to cancer two years ago. I still talk to [her] every day. She had a great sense of humor. Always did, even as a little girl. The loss of a child is about as bad as it gets. The last thing [she] said before she died was, “I love you, Dad.”

Darrel’s comments break your heart, yes? In a novel, he’d be a 100%-sympathetic character. But in real life, a few pages earlier in the book, we saw another side of him (and that daughter) through the words of a 35-year-old woman named Robin:

I met Karen when I worked at a theatre in Amana [Iowa]. A week later, we went on our first date. When I told my mom, I think she cried, but in front of me, all she said was that she was disappointed. Mom told my brother Ben, “You need to hate the sin, not the sinner.” My grandfather Darrel and I don’t talk.

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*aha: maybe the complex part begets the interesting part?

Abundance -- Proving Itself

OMG, see??

I just blogged about (re-)establishing a trust in abundance:

I'm stingy with pleasures, including books, saving them up instead of gobbling them up. But by giving myself permission (a mandate, really) to savor a bunch of books, I had opportunity after opportunity to notice that each time I finished one, another (two others? ten?) appeared in its place.

I no sooner posted that, then finished the lush Barefoot Contessa Back to Basics -- than I stumbled onto this thread about unique fictional narrators … and a dozen new books that call to me.

Sideways points of view* intrigue me; I love the twist of perspective that inspires a fresh look.

------------

*Yes, they’re easy to overdo. Witness Dan Wiencek’s satirical “Thirteen Writing Prompts” in the hilarious McSweeney's Joke Book of Book Jokes:

Write a scene showing a man and a woman arguing over the man’s friendship with a former girlfriend. Do not mention the girlfriend, the man, the woman, or the argument.

A husband and wife are meeting in a restaurant to finalize the terms of their impending divorce. Write the scene from the point of view of a busboy snorting cocaine in the restroom.

Still … aren’t you tempted to try? :)

2009 Reading Preview

How, you’ve asked, did my 2008 reading challenge change me?

A couple ways come to mind, the first being that I learned how to (duh) read a lot. Not to read fast, mind you; I’m still slow, I sub-vocalize. But yet to read a lot. Mostly, I reallocated evenings to reading instead of wishing there was something good to watch on TV. By finding minutes to read whenever I waited in a line or for an appointment. And especially by paying attention -- if I wasn’t making progress in a book, I learned to eliminate distractions and dig in deeper until the pages took hold. If they didn’t (no time for that! either in the Challenge or in life), Plan C was to ease up by alternating the book with another, more engaging read … or finally by cutting bait altogether and abandoning the book to a pile for the Friends of the Library sale.

Second, I learned to trust in abundance. I'm stingy with pleasures, including books, saving them up instead of gobbling them up. But by giving myself permission (a mandate, really) to savor a bunch of books, I had opportunity after opportunity to notice that each time I finished one, another (two others? ten?) appeared in its place. (Ah, abundance: so many lessons still there for me. It was, after all, the stimulus for beginning this blog two years ago.)

Good changes!

And yet.

All that reading diverted me from my family ... friends ... homekeeping ... this blog. And my writing. For a year, I spent no time in the energy of my favorite magazines -- New Scientist’s curiosity, Martha Stewart Living’s lush images, O Magazine’s fun. While meantime, the deep immersion in long works (especially novels) explored ideas rather than incited them. My imagination turned dusty, a rare idea blowing through like tumbleweed.

Only recently have I felt a hint of humidity returning. Part of it must be a satisfaction at finally having read some of the books that are basics in literature or popular culture (Alice in Wonderland, for God’s sake!). Part of it is probably the year’s accumulation of some very good reading that is starting to compost. Whatever, a bit of it escaped in a little creative burp while I was in the driver’s seat on a road trip over Thanksgiving … and I suddenly connected the premises of two of my (languishing) writing projects and merged them into something new. Huh!

I have no better transition into this year’s reading than to simply admit I’ve taken on the 999 Challenge. Not for the volume of reading this time, but because organizing and list-making are forms of play to me. Heck, it was fun just to gather the Challenge books that I already own onto this separate shelf.

How about you? Any readerly learnings from 2008? Any solid or semi-solid plans for 2009?

2008 Reading Recap

Woohoooo, I slid in under the wire and finished my 888 Challenge yesterday:

Read 8 books in each of 8 categories during 2008

My reading list follows below and includes ratings and links to reviews I’ve written. (Edited to add: I've removed 12 review links that were problematic; will repost them when the code is repaired.) Brief comments about every book can be found on my Challenge thread.

That volume of reading is unprecedented for me; my previous annual high was 48 books. (I do confess to nearly a year’s worth of unread magazines at this point, though, heaped in three towering piles.) But what raised the difficulty factor even more was my desire to read predominately from the shelves and stacks of to-be-read (TBR) books that are overtaking my house ... and I finished with the proportion at exactly 50% (32 books) from TBRs. They’re each indicated by “#” in the list, and it’s why so many seemingly older titles are included.

Biography/Memoir
•Dewey: The Small-town Library Cat That Touched the World by Vicki Myron (****) (See review)
•Ex Libris by Anne Fadiman (*****)
•I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings# by Maya Angelou (****)
•Look Me in the Eye by John Elder Robison (****)
•Lucky Man# by Michael J. Fox (****)
•Not Quite What I Was Planning: Six-word Memoirs (****)
•The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch (****)
•The Longest Trip Home by John Grogan (****) (See review)

I’ve Started and Want to Finish...
•A Christmas Carol# by Charles Dickens (****)
•A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius# by Dave Eggers (****)
•A Thousand Splendid Suns# by Khaled Hosseini (***)
•Everything is Illuminated# by Jonathan Safran Foer (****)
•Like Water for Chocolate# by Laura Esquivel (****)
•The Song Reader# by Lisa Tucker (***)
•The Poisonwood Bible# by Barbara Kingsolver (*****)
•The Time Traveler's Wife# by Audrey Niffenegger (****)

By My Favorite Writers
•Airframe# by Michael Crichton (***)
•Testimony by Anita Shreve (*****) (See review)
•The Gate House by Nelson DeMille (***) (See review)
•The Gold Coast# by Nelson DeMille (****)
•The Man in My Basement by Walter Mosley (***)
•Until the Real Thing Comes Along# by Elizabeth Berg (***)
•What Now? by Ann Patchett (****)
•When You Are Engulfed in Flames by David Sedaris (****)

Children's/YA
•A Tree Grows in Brooklyn# by Betty Smith (*****)
•Alice's Adventures in Wonderland# by Lewis Carroll (***)
•Confessions of a Closet Catholic by Sarah Darer Littman (***)
•Dope Sick by Walter Dean Myers (***)
•Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! by Laura Amy Schlitz (*****)
•Holes# by Louis Sachar (***)
•The Book Thief by Markus Zusak (*****)
•When We Were Romans by Matthew Kneale (****) (See review)

Nonfiction
•A Whole New Mind by Daniel Pink (****) (See review)
•Bottomfeeder by Taras Grescoe (****) (See review)
•In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan (***) (See review)
•The Omnivore's Dilemma# by Michael Pollan (*****)
•The Power of Now# by Eckhart Tolle (***)
•The Tipping Point# by Malcolm Gladwell (*****)
•The Zen of Eating# by Ronna Kabatznick (***)
•This is Your Brain on Music# by Daniel J. Levitin (***)

Anthologies
•Flash Fiction# ed by James Thomas (****)
•Labor Days# ed by David Gates (***)
•Letter to My Daughter by Maya Angelou (***)
•Letters to a Young Doctor# by Richard Selzer (*****)
•One Minute Stories by Istvan Orkeny (***)
•The Best of the Bellevue Literary Review (*****)
•The Day I Ate Whatever I Wanted by Elizabeth Berg (***)
•Where I'm Calling From# by Raymond Carver (*****)

On Writing
•78 Reasons why Your Book May Never Be Published and 14 Reasons Why It Just Might# by Pat Walsh (****)
•Fingerpainting on the Moon# by Peter Levitt (***)
•Journal of a Novel# by John Steinbeck (****)
•If You Want to Write# by Brenda Ueland (***)
•Page After Page# by Heather Sellers (***)
•The Anatomy of Story by John Truby (*****)
•The Situation and the Story# by Vivian Gornick (***) (See review)
•Writing Mysteries# edited by Sue Grafton (***)

Discovered on LibraryThing!
•Food 2.0: Secrets From the Chef Who Fed Google by Charlie Ayers (**)
•Gardens of Water by Alan Drew (****)
•My Husband's Sweethearts by Bridget Asher (****) (See review)
•Schooled by Anisha Lakhani (**) (See review)
•Simplexity by Jeffrey Kluger (***) (See review)
•The Music Teacher by Barbara Hall (****) (See review)
•The Story of Forgetting by Stefan Merrill Block (***)
•The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett (****) (See review)

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My Overall 2008 Top 10:
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer
Ex Libris by Anne Fadiman
Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! by Laura Amy Schlitz
Testimony by Anita Shreve
The Best of the Bellevue Literary Review
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan
The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
Where I'm Calling From by Raymond Carver

Images of the books (including some off-challenge reads) appear below.

Next Post: 2009 Reading Preview

Meter

I listened this morning while -- for some reason -- a radio station's traffic reporter spelled her name on air:

L-E-S-L-I-E

K-E-I-L-I-N-G.

I wish my name had that kind of rhythm!

Season's Greetings

I wish I'd noticed this nativity scene earlier … before last weekend's warm weather erased the foot of Chicago snow beneath the palm trees.

Ah, well.

Greetings on this fifth night of Christmas!

Vacation Reading

So I’m headed on vacation to gaze at the ocean. But while most girls would obsess over which clothes to pack, I’m far more interested in choosing which books to take!

Six remain to be read for my 888 Reading Challenge, and five of them made it into my suitcase (the carry-on, mind you; I can’t risk them in checked baggage):

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens -- I’ve seen most film versions but haven’t read the book (nor -- gasp! -- anything by Dickens)

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith -- I read this in childhood but can’t remember a thing about it; am looking forward to seeing what comes back as I re-read

Labor Days ed by David Gates -- I love stories set in workplaces, and this is an anthology of work-related short stories and novel excerpts

Letters to a Young Doctor by Richard Selzer -- personal essays by the surgeon forerunner to today’s Atul Gawande

Fingerpainting on the Moon by Peter Levitt -- combine the ocean with this book about artistic creativity … and who knows what might happen??

Of course, I’m still debating about a couple more…

Certain Things Must Happen

The plan isn’t foolproof. For it to work,
certain things must happen.

So begins Jack Handey’s bank heist piece in the Shouts and Murmurs column of this week’s New Yorker magazine.

He lists a series of highly unlikely (yet clever and hilarious!) coincidental events that must occur for a certain robbery to succeed. Improbable as the events are, a writer might be able to weave one or two of them into a story -- taking care to make them motivated and believable -- and end up with a rollicking good tale (for example, Ocean’s Eleven).

But if a writer substitutes “plot” for Handey’s opening reference to “plan,” the list becomes an effective refresher on the problems of deus ex machina and coincidence in fiction.

It's All Good

I miss the easiness of warm summer mornings. I'd pull on shorts and a t-shirt, then walk for coffee, thinking about stories.

But fall is good, too.

A Life in Cards

From the Chicago Tribune: The Topps Company will soon sell 90 baseball-style trading cards that document significant moments in Barack Obama’s life.

It’s a great exercise for anyone, especially a writer: What are 90 of the most significant people, places (be specific), moments, actions, and utterances of your -- or your character’s -- life? What image represents each? What stories emerge?

Search Power

The U.S. Government’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) continually tracks patterns of infectious diseases, including annual outbreaks of influenza. Data is gathered from a network of doctors, correlated by the CDC, then released weekly via FluView, which details the rates and geographic patterns of illness (scroll to see map at end). It’s a long-established process that tootles along.

Now enter Google -- specifically, google.org, a philanthropic arm created to glean socially important meaning from Internet-search trends. From the blog:

Our team found that certain aggregated search queries tend to be very common during flu season each year. We compared these aggregated queries against data provided by the [CDC], and we found that there's a very close relationship between the frequency of these search queries and the number of people who are experiencing flu-like symptoms each week. As a result, if we tally each day's flu-related search queries, we can estimate how many people have a flu-like illness.

Google data correlates strongly with CDC data, and can be tallied faster and with fewer resources -- automatically, even. For now, it’s fun to compare it against well-known disease patterns and trending processes. But the real excitement is its potential in epidemiology, if disease variations, including pandemics, emerge.

Who'da thunk?

Multi-dimensional Character

I resist negativity on this blog and aspire toward a playful space for creativity. So I won’t rant about the over-mortgaged homeowners in this article from the International Herald Tribune. Instead, I’ll fit one of them into a writerly challenge:

[Kenny], a data security specialist, moved into Mountain House [California] last year, buying a foreclosed property on Prosperity Street for $380,000. But the decline in values has been so fierce that he too is underwater. He has cut his DVD buying from 50 a month to perhaps one, and is waiting until the Christmas sales to buy a high-definition television. He does not indulge much anymore in his hobbies of scuba diving and flying.

The challenge: give Kenny some sympathetic character traits.

Original Story, v2

If you enjoyed my post about commonalities among submissions to writing contests, you're in luck: WritersWeekly publisher Angela Hoy has pulled all the pieces together from the Fall 24-hour Short Story Contest.

Take a look -- read the story prompt, consider the original story you'd write, then look at the commonalities among the submitted manuscripts and read the winning entries. (Interesting ... I liked the 3rd Place entry best in both the Summer and Fall contests.)

By Dad

Snipped from an online conversation about libraries:

Person A:
[My] library has just recently switched over to giving you a receipt with the due date, rather than stamping it in the book (I kind of miss that, not sure why).

Person B:
I miss the old stamping of the book, too. That, and the old circulation card with your name and due date from grade school.... It gave a sense of history to the book and its readers. You could actually see who had an interest in the book--and perhaps you even knew the person.

Me:
That reminds me ... when I was in grad school in the '90s, I requested my dad's PhD dissertation (from the '40s) through inter-university loan. I loved seeing the names/locations and dates of people who'd checked it out.

Person B:
WOW! What a wonderful feeling it must have been. And a fine tribute. What was the subject?

Me:
Title: "A Study of the Relationships Between the Secondary School Science Curriculum and the Contemporary Culture Pattern in the United States, 1918-1940"

My mom typed its 650+ pages (through several revisions), including formatting 75 data tables ... on a manual typewriter of course, through three carbons; think of how strong a typist’s hands used to have to be.

I now have Dad's personal carbon copy, and someone's eventually going to have to pry it from my cold, dead hands :) I confess that I’ve still only skimmed it. But I'm in the midst of a looong-book reading challenge (one 500+ page book each month) and still need a couple titles to fill it out...

Master Metaphorist

With the death yesterday of fashion snark Mr. Blackwell, so goes a master of the metaphor.

His descriptions were as over-the-top as the celebrity fashions he satirized, but admit it: there’s perfection in his evocation. Take a moment to visualize these:

1. A peeled grape on the end of a pipe cleaner.

2. She dresses like the centerfold for the Farmer's Almanac.

3. Half sequined scarecrow, half gaudy acrobat. Is it Abe Lincoln in drag? I'll leave it at that!

4. A boutique toothpaste tube, squeezed from the middle.

5. In layers of cut-rate kitsch, [her] look is hard to explain…she resembles a tattered toothpick -- trapped in a hurricane!

Now match Mr. Blackwell’s descriptions to the celebrities (answers in the comments):

a) Celine Dion (2003)
b) Goldie Hawn (1969)
c) Mary Kate Olsen (2007)
d) Martha Stewart (1999)
e) Elizabeth Taylor (1966)

As in Rain Man

From John Sutter, the attorney-protagonist in Nelson DeMille’s forthcoming novel, The Gate House:

…the last will and testament, along with related papers, sometimes revealed a family secret or two -- an institutionalized sibling, an illegitimate child, two mistresses in Manhattan…

Mmm, juicy. And as Sutter goes on to indicate, the reveals are not only shocking, surprising, saddening -- but often amusing.

How might such a revelation open up one of your stories?

Original Story

Writers Weekly runs a quarterly, prompt-inspired Short Story Contest, wherein participants receive a prompt and word-count requirement, then immediately have a mere 24 hours to conceive, write, and submit their short stories.

The prompt from the recent summer competition:

The bells on the door were still echoing as she stepped further into the old toy store. The owner winked at her and turned back to his black and white television set. She reached under the rack on the back wall and pulled it out. It was just where she'd left it last week. She approached the counter and put the item down.

He turned to her, grabbed the item with surprise, and said, “This is NOT for sale...”

The contest guidelines note that a story doesn’t need to include the prompt literally, it only needs to “touch on the topic in some way.” As far as judging: “While good writing is a must, originality plays a huge role.”

So -- take a few minutes to riff on some ideas from the prompt above. The contest is closed, you won’t have to write the story … just imagine something original that it could involve.

Then take a look at the commonalities that judges found when reading the submissions. Are your ideas there?

Now read the text of the three winning stories … not completely unique, but yes, distinctive -- due largely to the writers having followed some part of the prompt that resonated, rather than staying literal to all of it.

Are you still an original? Then you might be a great fit for the winter contest on January 23.

P.S.: Banned Books Week

Banned Books Week having ended, I looked through The American Library Association’s most recent long-list of banned and/or challenged books -- their top 100 of 2000-2007, compiled from 3,869 challenges*.

A number of the titles are familiar -- I’ve bolded those I’ve read (11) and italicized those I own but haven’t yet read (4) -- and others intrigue me anew. If I were in my twenties, they’d inspire me to activism; if I were a parent or grandparent, they’d inspire my reading for the next year. Heck, they inspire me anyway; I guess all publicity is good.

How about you?

1 Harry Potter by J.K. Rowling
2 Alice series by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
3 The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
4 Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
5 I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
6 Scary Stories by Alvin Schwartz
7 Fallen Angels by Walter Dean Myers
8 It’s Perfectly Normal by Robie Harris
9 And Tango Makes Three by Justin Richardson/Peter Parnell
10 Captain Underpants by Dav Pilkey
11 The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
12 The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
13 Forever by Judy Blume
14 The Color Purple by Alice Walker
15 The Perks of Being A Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
16 Killing Mr. Griffin by Lois Duncan
17 Go Ask Alice by Anonymous
18 King and King by Linda de Haan
19 Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
20 Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
21 The Giver by Lois Lowry
22 We All Fall Down by Robert Cormier
23 To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
24 Beloved by Toni Morrison
25 The Face on the Milk Carton by Caroline Cooney
26 Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson
27 My Brother Sam Is Dead by James Lincoln Collier
28 In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak
29 His Dark Materials series by Philip Pullman
30 Gossip Girl series by Cecily von Ziegesar
31 What My Mother Doesn’t Know by Sonya Sones
32 Angus, Thongs, and Full Frontal Snogging by Louise Rennison
33 It’s So Amazing by Robie Harris
34 Arming America by Michael Bellasiles
35 Kaffir Boy by Mark Mathabane
36 Blubber by Judy Blume
37 Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
38 Athletic Shorts by Chris Crutcher
39 Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya
40 Life is Funny by E.R. Frank
41 Daughters of Eve by Lois Duncan
42 Crazy Lady by Jane Leslie Conly
43 The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katherine Paterson
44 You Hear Me by Betsy Franco
45 Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
46 Whale Talk by Chris Crutcher
47 The Adventures of Super Diaper Baby by Dav Pilkey
48 The Facts Speak for Themselves by Brock Cole
49 The Terrorist by Caroline Cooney
50 Mick Harte Was Here by Barbara Park
51 Summer of My German Soldier by Bette Green
52 The Upstairs Room by Johanna Reiss
53 When Dad Killed Mom by Julius Lester
54 Blood and Chocolate by Annette Curtis Klause
55 The Fighting Ground by Avi
56 The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien
57 Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred Taylor
58 Fat Kid Rules the World by K.L. Going
59 The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big, Round Things by Carolyn Mackler
60 A Time To Kill by John Grisham
61 Rainbow Boys by Alex Sanchez
62 Olive’s Ocean by Kevin Henkes
63 One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
64 A Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Newton Peck
65 Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson
66 Always Running by Luis Rodriguez
67 Black Boy by Richard Wright
68 Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George
69 Deal With It! by Esther Drill
70 Detour for Emmy by Marilyn Reynolds
71 Draw Me A Star by Eric Carle
72 Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
73 Harris and Me by Gary Paulsen
74 Junie B. Jones series by Barbara Park
75 So Far From the Bamboo Grove by Yoko Watkins
76 Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
77 Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes by Chris Crutcher
78 What’s Happening to My Body Book by Lynda Madaras
79 The Boy Who Lost His Face by Louis Sachar
80 The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
81 Anastasia Again! by Lois Lowry
82 Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret by Judy Blume
83 Bumps In the Night by Harry Allard
84 Goosebumps series by R.L. Stine
85 Shade’s Children by Garth Nix
86 Cut by Patricia McCormick
87 Grendel by John Gardner
88 The House of Spirits by Isabel Allende
89 I Saw Esau by Iona Opte
90 Ironman by Chris Crutcher
91 The Stupids series by Harry Allard
92 Taming the Star Runner by S.E. Hinton
93 Then Again, Maybe I Won’t by Judy Blume
94 Tiger Eyes by Judy Blume
95 Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel
96 Nathan’s Run by John Gilstrap
97 Pinkerton, Behave! by Steven Kellog
98 Freaky Friday by Mary Rodgers
99 Halloween ABC by Eve Merriam
100 Heather Has Two Mommies by Leslea Newman

* Per the ALA: “Research suggests that for each challenge reported there are as many as four or five which go unreported.”

"Coma": Japanese Bestseller?

A New Scientist article looked at the rates of human organ donation in various countries (see chart) and argued against the presumption that higher rates are due to national policies of "presumed consent" (a person is in the donor pool unless he opts out) vs "informed consent" (a person is out unless he opts in).

The writer theorized (based on experiences in the world's donation-leader, Spain) that rather than the law, high rates are the result of "efficient transplant coordination and the way families are approached," and went on to describe some of those factors.

All well and good and believable.

But for me, a huge question remains: What's going on in Japan??

Orphan Mail

You run an errand at the post office and, on your way out, notice an unattended little stack of envelopes on a side counter in the lobby. They're obviously forgotten, so you take a peek: the first looks like a credit card payment; the others are a utility payment and something to the Disabled American Vets. One has a stamp; the other two don’t have postage.

You look around, see no one, and consider taking them to one of the clerks at the counter. Instead, you pull out your new roll of stamps and, as a little pay-it-forward courtesy, affix postage and drop the envelopes in the mail slot.

Oops, bad idea. Very bad idea.

What’s the story?

Banned Books Week

The 27th annual American Library Association (ALA)-sponsored Banned Books Week begins Saturday, September 27 and extends through October 4.

To commemorate, I'll be reading the frequently challenged I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou ... and reading it in public as much as possible.

You might have some banned (or more likely, today, challenged) books among your own to-be-reads (or to-be-rereads). In addition to the ALA lists, take a look at the LibraryThing member project, BannedBooksLibrary -- click on See Library to browse its catalogue of more than 500 titles. Or browse at the University of Pennsylvania's Banned Books Online, a source for books that have been banned somewhere, at some point -- but are now freely and digitally available. (I’ve downloaded Jack London’s Call of the Wild and might get to it next week, too.)

What banned or challenged book are you going to read next week?

Tote bag available at the ALA Store.

Book Horror

From a post in an online forum:

Right at the moment, while I'm having my [apartment] painted, I have many boxes of books stored in the little bathroom [...] in the shower stall. I live in fear that somehow that shower is going to come on and drench my books.

Go ahead, writers -- be Stephen King.

The Basics

I keep returning to a certain web space -- the writer's section at author Meg Waite Clayton's website. But I don't understand why. What draws me to a space for beginning writers? Haven't I internalized that material, and more, in these years of writing?

So I shrug it off ... and then visit again, and shrug.

And visit.

Until, finally, I pay real attention to the words in that first box on the screen. And I'm flooded with the sense of freedom and optimism I felt as a beginning writer: that writing can be simple ("Open a journal or your computer and start writing") and that writing can be fun ("What have you got to lose?").

Lesson (re)learned. And, periodically, reinforced through Meg's blog, 1st Books: Stories of How Writers Get Started (see blogroll).

Second in a Series...

...of writerly Labor Day observations, this one prompted by my feeling a bit tucked away from "real life," especially as it relates to "real work."

It's from John Steinbeck's Journal of a Novel, the collected daily letters he wrote to his editor while drafting East of Eden:

Writing is a very silly business at best. There is a certain ridiculousness about putting down a picture of life. And to add to the joke -- one must withdraw for a time from life in order to set down that picture. And third one must distort one's own way of life in order in some sense to simulate the normal in other lives. Having gone through all of this nonsense, what emerges may well be the palest of reflections.

Virtual Vacation, Day 3

And every vacation needs some entertainment, yes? How about a movie -- a thriller! -- say, “The Googling”? In five parts:

I “Google Maps”
II “Google Moon”
III “Google My Maps”
IV “Google SMS”
V ...eep, a cliffhanger! (not yet released)

Then, for some laughs before falling asleep, go retro with a few of the 2(ish)-minute episodes of Stupid Game Show Answers.

Virtual Vacation, Day 2

If you prefer man-made scapes to natural ones, and have access to iTunes (via your computer even if you don’t use an iPod) -- search the iTunes Store for the Discovery Channel Video Podcasts. Then scroll through the archives and download “FYI” episodes. Enjoy the 1-2-minute tours around the Brooklyn Bridge, Empire State Building, Kennedy Space Center, Eiffel Tower, Great Wall, and Egyptian pyramids.

Virtual Vacation

Not traveling over this holiday weekend? ... yet craving an end-of-summer getaway?

Go virtual!

For the next three days, I’ll link to transporting sites that shake you loose from your day-to-day routine. And unlike real vacations -- that go poof! the moment you return home -- you can take these little breaks again and again, any time.

Now ... where better to begin than an immersion in nature?

Herewith, Beautiful Places in HD. Each 3-4-minute video includes an extended period of sounds from nature, evocative of the closing moments of CBS's Sunday Morning program. The photo above is clipped from the Redwood National Park episode.

Bon voyage!

I Used to Believe

One reason to wander around at I Used to Believe is to be reminded of the childhood perspective -- or any naive, or out-of-context perspective. From the site:

I Used To Believe is a funny and bizarre collection of ideas that adults thought were true when they were children.

But another is the quick opportunity to analyze different ways of communicating the same thing. Choose one of the site's most common beliefs, and read through the multiple entries describing the same belief. Notice that the entries are rated quite differently by the site's visitors (readers). Take a look at those with the highest ratings (they're shaded in blue and marked "rated beliefs") and notice how the writing goes beyond exposition by incorporating techniques of craft: sometimes an arc; a setting; a scene; dialogue.

Crazymaking

I overheard a man tell of a moment that occurred while watching a film with his three-year-old daughter:

Onscreen, two dinosaur eggs hatched and the tiny young dinosaurs emerged. Suddenly, a huge dinosaur came out of nowhere and snatched one of the babies in his jaws.

My daughter was horrified. “Daddy! What’s he doing?!”

I didn’t know what to do, so I hugged her. “Don’t worry, he’s just taking the baby somewhere safe.”

Oh, no no no.

I know a bit about this man and know he had an honorable intention: to ease his tiny daughter through a terrible moment. But his immediate response was in direct conflict with a longer-term goal.

She’s obviously a smart kid -- she interpreted that violent scene spot-on and reacted appropriately. Assuming she was old enough to deal with the film’s content (a big assumption), the moment offered her dad an opportunity to help her cope with what she saw. But if her dad’s response did quiet her, it was probably due less to comfort and more to a stunned confusion from having her reality denied and rewritten. It’s called crazymaking, and what she learns is to not trust herself.

Worst Firsts

Edward George Bulwer-Lytton wrote it worst (and first), in his 1830 novel, Paul Clifford:

It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents -- except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.

But since 1982, hundreds of writers have intentionally crafted opening sentences terrible enough to be awarded Winner, Runner-up, or Dishonorable Mention in the annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest. This year’s winner, by Garrison Spik of Washington DC:

Theirs was a New York love, a checkered taxi ride burning rubber, and like the city their passion was open 24/7, steam rising from their bodies like slick streets exhaling warm, moist, white breath through manhole covers stamped "Forged by DeLaney Bros., Piscataway, N.J."

I gathered five favorites from the 2008 awards -- favorites because, ironically, there's something great in each:

Joanne watched her fellow passengers -- a wizened man reading about alchemy; an oversized bearded man-child; a haunted, bespectacled young man with a scar; and a gaggle of private school children who chatted ceaselessly about Latin and flying around the hockey pitch and the two-faced teacher who they thought was a witch -- there was a story here, she decided. (Tim Ellis, Haslemere, UK) [Ack, it's the writerly truth!]

"Let's see what this baby can do, Virgil," said Wyatt, as he floored the Charger, brushing a Dart out of the way, sideswiping an oncoming Lancer, rear-ending a Diplomat, and demolishing a row of Rams before catapulting head-on into the sheriff's Viper -- realizing that we'd indeed missed the turn-off to Abilene and ended up instead, in Dodge City. (Paul Curtis, Randburg, South Africa) [Clever!]

Like a mechanic who forgets to wipe his hands on a shop rag and then goes home, hugs his wife, and gets a grease stain on her favorite sweater -- love touches you, and marks you forever. (Beth Fand Incollingo, Haddon Heights, NJ) [Hey, it’s effective!]

Carmen's romance with Broderick had thus far been like a train ride, not the kind that slowly leaves the station, builds momentum, and then races across the countryside at breathtaking speed, but rather the one that spends all day moving freight cars around at the local steel mill. (Bruce Portzer, Seattle, WA) [Again, great imagery and symbolism!]

Bill swore the affair had ended, but Louise knew he was lying, after discovering Tupperware containers under the seat of his car, which were not the off-brand containers that she bought to save money, but authentic, burpable, lidded Tupperware; and she knew he would see that woman again, because unlike the flimsy, fake containers that should always be recycled responsibly, real Tupperware must be returned to its rightful owner. (Jeanne Villa, Novato, CA) [What a small, true, detail!]

But your mileage may vary. So please, enjoy the whole 2008 list. Then look at the 25 previous Grand Prize winners, read the rules for entering, and bookmark the submission page your own 2009 entry.

Synchronicity

Hoo boy, watching the Olympics Synchronized Diving does something to my mind … it’s a magnet that pulls all the atoms in my brain into weird and perfect alignment.

I do love visual patterns and themes! When it occurred to me that the design of a certain pink TV kitchen was no accident, I realized other people enjoy them, too. I've since paused to take a snapshot whenever I’ve noticed examples.

Some are pleasing because they’re understated -- see how the colors of Murphy Brown’s clothing, hair, and skin are repeated in the lamp, the vertical blinds, and the background windows. Some are pleasing because they're coincidental -- like these three June issues that arrived together in the mail.

But others join the over-the-top collection:

from the 1970s Mary Tyler Moore show...

...the Ellen show...


...and Vera Bradley stores, where clerks coordinate the sack and tissue to whatever noisy pattern you’ve purchased.



Together now: shake your head to re-scatter the atoms ... you'll want to be ready for next week’s Olympics synchronized swimming!

Fast Forward

From a 1969 LaZBoy furniture ad, this image fit my child-self's vision of a newlywed couple's typical evening at home.

How is it the same (and different) from the couple's typical evening today, as they approach their 40th wedding anniversary?

Henry Bemis

What bibliophile doesn't freak while watching The Twilight Zone episode about a bookish man whose dream of unending time and unending books comes true?

Freak again: take a look at CBS's website, which streams video of classic TV shows, including that Henry Bemis episode.

Zero-Sum Game

A summer-story prompt, overheard from a teenage caddy:

When golfers drink beer, the happy guys get angry and the angry guys get happy.

Go.

On- and Off-Stage

From Maureen Ryan’s Chicago Tribune article about tonight’s second-season premier of Mad Men:

[P]art of what makes Mad Men special is its affinity for the slow burn. There are secrets and contemplative moments. Some of its most evocative scenes show characters sitting and thinking. “You get to see what you don’t get to see on most TV shows,” [series creator Matthew] Weiner said. “You get to see them with [their public] faces and then finally, you get to see them alone.”

I like both aspects mentioned here. First, the slow burn -- which also draws me to Lost (its first season, especially) -- that the camera stays on a character for a long minute while the story deepens and then moves forward solely through an evolving expression.

And second, that this slow burn leaves air for the private moments that clarify character. It reminds me of an early passage in Uncle Tom's Cabin, where a senator votes to pass the Fugitive Slave Law, prohibiting assistance to runaway slaves even in northern states. Not many pages later, he personally gives money and transportation to an escaping slave couple. A simple question is: are people’s truer characters revealed by what they do when others are watching ... or by what they do when no one is looking? The complex answer: you need to see some of each to even suppose.

Quickies

There are the six-word memoirs to prompt little flashes of inspiration in your story-telling, and discussion threads of six-word stories (scroll through for links to similar sites).

But if you’re writing a steamier story, or have a romantic subplot in need of complications, try letting your mind wander through these eight-word sex memoirs (contains audio and text, mild adult content).

Too Cute

Well done! -- Photoshopping a Cute Overload screen into this fancy-pants scene...

...makes the men's interior monologues practically write themselves.

Go on, take some dictation.

Background

It was an accumulating series of comments.

First was a passage in the soon-to-be-released novel, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society:

I have been looking at a book about artists and how they size up a picture they want to paint. Say they want to concentrate on an orange -- do they study the shape direct? No, they don’t. They fool their eyes and stare at the banana beside it, […] They see the orange in a brand-new way. It’s called getting perspective.

Similarly, A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future suggested that while my left brain is busy analyzing something, my right brain takes in the essence of what I’m really interested in -- the something else.

Then there was someone’s passing comment -- that she always pays more attention to the extras in a scene than to the stars.

So I'm interested: that man on the very far right.*

What’s his story?


* photographed at the International Museum of Surgical Science

Playing Tourist

My husband and I had a little staycation.

His choice: a Schaumburg Flyers minor league baseball game. A neat thing: taking a book along to read between innings (heck, between batters!).

My choice: a visit to the International Museum of Surgical Science. A neat thing: learning that ants served as the original surgical sutures. From the exhibit: “Around the 10th century BC, [suturing] called for an ant to be held over the wound until it seized the wound edges in its jaws. The ant was then decapitated and the death grip from the ant’s jaws kept the wound closed.” !!

Then we walked through Chicago’s utterly beautiful Gold Coast neighborhood (scroll down), to have lunch at FoodLife in Chicago’s Water Tower Place shopping center. A neat thing: using the Dyson Airblade hand dryer in the restroom, amazing!

Our mutual choice: a river cruise narrated by a docent from the Chicago Architectural Foundation (CAF). A neat thing: seeing the Marina City towers and thinking of my friend L, who suggests that their design is an homage to corn, the king of the Midwest (which, if it isn’t true, should be).

Another neat thing: we’ll keep the vacation mood going by ending an upcoming workday or two with a CAF Happy Hour Tour.

Ingenious

Contrary to the title, When You Are Engulfed in Flames is David Sedaris’s sixth collection of essays … not a survival guide. Except maybe for one passage:

…I’m still reluctant to put anyone out. Once someone sent a cake to my [hotel] room, and rather than call downstairs and ask for silverware I cut it with my credit card and ate the pieces with my fingers.

Clever and neat! At best, I’d have stabbed out the messy border of a piece using the handle of my toothbrush.

Linked

More fun with complex characters.

Yet mere randomness doesn't make for satisfying complexity. Why is this combination surprising? … and then, why is it believable?

Oil Rig

I'm lucky: I'm not unduly affected by the rising gasoline prices. (In fact, I welcome their long-overdue prompt of conservation.) But the prices will eventually mandate more of these rigs, or at least differently located ones.

What if living and working on one for 18 months was your next job?

Conceive a week's worth of entries from your gratitude journal -- three things, each day, that you find you appreciate out there.