tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-281690092024-03-19T06:41:58.907-04:00Telecommuter TalkRamblings of someone who was a telecommuting editor, then wasn't, and still has grand delusions of being a writer.Emily Bartonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13971084813206845680noreply@blogger.comBlogger749125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28169009.post-21497148089314292812014-11-08T11:58:00.002-05:002014-11-08T11:58:25.930-05:00New BlogI've started a new blog, blogging under my real name and everything. You can visit me at <a href="http://emilysbrainworks.wordpress.com/">Emily's Brain Works</a>. Not sure yet if I want to say goodbye completely to good old Telecommuter Talk, but it seems it was time for me to move on. The new blog won't be all that different, and I hope you'll visit me there.<br />
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Thanks to all those of you who have stuck by me here all these years. It's been a great adventure.Emily Bartonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13971084813206845680noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28169009.post-90451177570744899932014-06-14T23:34:00.000-04:002014-06-14T23:38:37.357-04:00Annoying PeopleOkay, so maybe a minister's wife shouldn't be focusing her attention on people who annoy her. I mean, I know I'm supposed to be loving and forgiving and all. Most of the time, I try to focus on the positive, to see the good, and to let go of the negative, reining in all the desire I have to complain about everybody and everything. I mean, I've read all the articles about how damaging and exhausting all that negative energy is. Still, it doesn't stop me from observing annoying people. And, you know, the digital age and social media have made it easier than ever for annoying people to be more annoying than ever. So, here's the list of some of the people I find most annoying.<br />
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1. The Arguers. You know these people. If it's windy outside, and you comment on it, the first thing they say is, "No it isn't." And they just won't let it go, even as trash cans, lawn furniture, and small dogs go swirling by. Every time you post a Facebook update, you wait for them to come back with some long refutation (usually in an email) that leaves you thinking, "You have time for that?" You wait for the day when you post a photo of yourself, and they come back with a comment telling you that it can't possibly be you.<br />
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2. The Puppy Dogs. For some reason, these people desperately, desperately want you to like them. You haven't seen them in years, and you thought you made it pretty clear that you really didn't like them. Maybe never saying a word to them and never inviting them to do anything just wasn't clear enough, though. Now that they are social media experts, they ask you to sign up for every pal, chirp, tack, chain, ivy (you name it, they're on it), and they just keep haranguing you with requests until you finally give in. You don't like them any better online than you did in real life, but you feel a little sorry for them, so you don't "unpal", "unchirp", etc. Probably they're just using you to pump up their stats, but then, that's kind of pathetic, too.<br />
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3. The Gadget Addicts. These people never put their phones or tablets away and respond to every single text (which by the way, has some absolutely obnoxious "ring tone"), every tweet, every FB update, every email (if they're still bothering with those) when they're at the checkout register/at a restaurant with their family/sitting in a meeting with you/at a party/at a live performance, etc. Am I the only one who sometimes wants to grab a telephone and throw it across the room? Some people have jobs that are so important (presidents and prime ministers, doctors, intervention therapists, ministers, e.g.) so I will sometimes overlook this obnoxious behavior, but, really, I know there aren't that many presidents and prime ministers, doctors, intervention therapists, and ministers in the world. Also, probably even a president could wait till s/he's through a checkout line before responding to a text. Notice I don't even mention people and their gadgets while driving. There's another word for them, and it's worse than "annoying".<br />
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4. The Narcissists. These people have new "profile pictures" featuring their latest favorite "selfie"s every time you log on to their favorite social media sites. I mean, I know I have a tendency to change my profile picture every 5-10 years or so, which probably is annoying, too, but still. Really, you look exactly the same as you did an hour ago. Get over yourself already; nobody else is nearly as fascinated as you are. Speaking of profile pictures, please don't put up a profile picture of a child, unless that child was you at some point in your life, because those are fun to see. Pictures of you with your child? Those are great fun to see, too, but pictures of nothing but your child? If I haven't seen you in twenty years, I want to see pictures of you, not some child I've never met. Besides, there's nothing more annoying, at my age, than trying to figure out who this person is who wants to friend you, hoping to see a photo that resembles someone you might remember knowing, and seeing a picture of an unrecognizable 5-year-old.<br />
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5. The Bandwagon Jumpers. Speaking of "selfie" and "friending", I despise those terms. I'm tempted to despise everyone who uses them, as well as everyone who started talking about "googling" before anyone else even knew what Google was; everyone who posts something about each new episode of (fill in the blank here with <i>Game of Thrones</i>, <i>Orange is the New Black</i>, <i>House of Cards</i> or whatever is going to be hot next week), especially when they use in-the-know language associated with the shows; everyone who raced out to get a copy of <i>50 Shades of Grey</i>, and everyone who is running out to see <i>The Fault in Our Stars</i>. But then I would have to despise some people who are near and dear to me, including myself, so I won't despise them. I will remind them, gently, though, that bandwagons are annoying. We can continue to enjoy them, but let's do it in the closet where the annoying people can't find and join us.<br />
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6. The Gun Worshippers. Despite all the, daily it seems, mass shootings in this country, they insist on putting up ridiculous quotes like, "Cars kill more people than guns. We need car control more than we need gun control." The latest, I've discovered from a young friend of mine, is, "Saying guns kill people is like saying a spoon made someone fat." Okay, so I long ago got over the notion that this country will ever have true gun control, and really, if you insist on having guns in your home to protect yourself from the millions of deranged killers out there just itching to break into your home and kill you, who am I to argue, just because I've never known a single person who saved themselves from some deranged killer by owning a gun? I'm not going to argue if you insist on keeping a pet rattlesnake, poison intact, either, but don't come crying to me if someone you love gets bitten (or shot) and dies. I am going to argue, though, with your annoying, illogical reasoning when you try to defend an object whose sole reason for existing is to kill by comparing it to other objects designed for other purposes.<br />
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Okay. I think that's all the complaining I'm going to do for now, its being so exhausting and all. I'm off in search of all the non-annoying people out there who give me faith in humankind. Or maybe I'm just off to spend some time with dogs and cats.<br />
<br />Emily Bartonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13971084813206845680noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28169009.post-78837219447794512922014-06-13T10:39:00.000-04:002014-06-13T10:39:42.248-04:00Fifty is Nifty #1When I turned 50 in February, I decided I was going to write 50 letters to 50 living authors whose works I love. I was also going to write 50 short stories. Recently, I decided I would add to those two goals with a third: trying 50 new things. Bob has listened to all this and made comments like,<br />
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"That all sounds like way too much. I'm exhausted just thinking about it."<br />
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Well, maybe it would be if I'd given myself some sort of deadline, but I haven't. I'm just plodding along writing my letters and stories at a pace that works for me (sometimes that means I write 3 letters in one week and then go 3 weeks without writing any, or one short story in a day and then another one that takes two weeks to finish). By far, the hardest of these three plans of mine has been the trying 50 new things.<br />
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Let me explain this concept to you. This isn't some sort of "bucket list" of great adventures like bungee jumping over the Grand Canyon, or things I've been longing to do forever and am going to make sure I finally do. No, it's more of a paying attention when I've decided to do something new and different that I've never done. For instance, going to a yoga class at that studio I often pass in Lancaster City would count (haven't done that yet but still might).<br />
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The reason it's been so hard is that I'm someone who is constantly doing new and different things. I didn't realize this until I started paying attention. 50 seems like way too few. I'm beginning to think I should've decided on 150 or maybe even 1500. I was too vague when I came up with this idea. "New thing" is very hard to define. For instance, Bob and I recently went into Philadelphia to the University of Pennsylvania Hospital to visit a member of our congregation who'd had major heart surgery. I'd never been, and maybe that should count. Then again, it's not exactly a "new thing" for me to visit a member of our congregation in the hospital; it's just that I'd never been to that particular hospital. Afterwards, we went to The Philadelphia Museum of Art (that's an experience that's almost yawn-worthy. We go there all the time), but we decided to eat dinner at the restaurant at the museum, where we'd never eaten, and which is only open for dinner on Friday nights. That counts as doing something new, I thought, but then I realized, no, it doesn't. Bob and I are always trying new restaurants. In fact, we rarely go out to eat without trying some place new, especially if we're in Philadelphia.<br />
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I'm still working on defining "new thing" but have decided this blog is a good place to record some of the new things I'm trying, so now we get to the heart of this post. I'm doing something brand new for the next six months that involves books. It's an idea I've gotten from book blogging challenges that I've often thought about doing but have never done, which is to read only from my own overcrowded book shelves. This means, with the exception of books I have to get for book discussion groups, I'm not going to buy any new books to read or check out any books from the library. On May 31st, I bought my last two books (<i>The Adrian Mole Diaries, </i>because I was so sad to hear that Sue Townsend had died, and a pre-order of Tana French's newest, because, well it's Tana French, and it's a signed first edition). The last book I put on reserve at the library before June 1 actually came in the other day, so I did check something out post June 1, but that's it now until November 30.<br />
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Well, technically, it's not it. I'm a librarian. There's no way I'm going to let our circulation numbers suffer just because I'm determined to try something new. Thus, I'm planning on checking out copies of the books I'm reading from my own shelves, if we happen to have them in the library system.<br />
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So far, with nearly two whole weeks under my belt, this "new thing" is going swimmingly. The hyperventilating has stopped, and I'm happy to report that I never suffered from the DTs, which just goes to show one can find the willpower, somewhere, to stop spending all her money on books. I've gone cold turkey, with no support group, and I've been fine making do, quite well, choosing what to read from <span style="text-decoration: line-through;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">the thousands of unread books</span></span><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 11px; text-decoration: line-through;"> </span>little library we have in our home. I'm even discovering some things I didn't even know we had.<br />
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My biggest obstacle, so far, has been reading books. You know how books are the sorts of friends that enable your book addiction. You read one and come away from it with twenty others to read. I don't recommend reading, say, <i>Updike</i>, when you've decided to go six months reading only from your shelves, especially when your shelves have very little Updike on them. Damn Bob. Wasn't it his duty as a man who came of age in the twentieth century to fill our shelves with Updike? I don't recommend reading letters that any famous author wrote (you know, like Rose Macaulay, say) in which they're likely to mention anything they were reading. Nor is the summer fiction edition of <i>The New Yorker</i> a good idea.<br />
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Still, I'm not doing too badly. I'm able to read book blog posts, even, with a sort of detached "that sounds good" mind set, adding to the TBR tome without racing out and buying anything. Granted, I've not yet set foot in Barnes and Noble. Nor have I delved too deep into <a href="http://shinynewbooks.co.uk/">Shiny New Books</a>, despite how thrilled I am to discover that <a href="http://litlove.wordpress.com/">Litlove</a>, et al. have created something I've thought, for years, someone ought to create. Meanwhile, all this shelf browsing in my own house has helped me build my shelves at <a href="https://www.myindependentbookshop.co.uk/Readsalot64#">Emily's Page Turners</a>, a wonderful online community, which I discovered through <a href="http://musingsfromthesofa.wordpress.com/">Ms. Musings</a>, whose streets house nothing but independent book shops. Better yet, all the shops, for now anyway, are located in Great Britain. It's a terrific alternative to Goodreads (far more visually pleasing), and, better yet, it's not owned by <span style="letter-spacing: 0px; text-decoration: line-through;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The Evil Empire </span></span>Amazon. Instead, it's owned by one of my favorite publishers, Penguin, in conjunction with Hive.<br />
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Setting up a page at My Independent Bookshop could count as one of my fifty new things, I've just realized. Well, see, I'm still defining this goal and will have to come up with some way of figuring out what counts and what doesn't. Meanwhile, you can look forward to 49 more posts in the near (and distant) future you accounts of my adventures in "new things" (whatever that means).<br />
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<br />Emily Bartonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13971084813206845680noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28169009.post-45348733182457566472014-06-05T13:16:00.000-04:002014-06-05T13:30:04.596-04:00Trigger WarningsSo, I didn't know about trigger warnings until I read <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2014/06/09/140609taco_talk_mead">this article</a> by Rebecca Mead in the recent issue of <i>The New Yorker</i>. According to Mead, an article in the <i>NY Times</i> described trigger warnings as<br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 17px; line-height: 25px;">...preëmptive alerts, issued by a professor or an institution at the request of students, indicating that material presented in class might be sufficiently graphic to spark symptoms of post-traumatic-stress disorder.</span></blockquote>
I was torn, as I read the article, which does delve into the recent shooting at UC-Santa Barbara. Everyone knows, given the numbers of attacks on college and university campuses that have made the news over the past ten years that classrooms can no longer be considered safe spaces. In fact, nowhere in America, it seems, is anyone safe these days. People might be tempted to say, "Well, you're safe at home", but, no, homes are often the most dangerous places for those who share their homes with violent people, especially violent people who have guns. Also, as a woman who has a rather vivid imagination and has probably read a few too many mysteries and thrillers, as well as watched a few too many episodes of things like <i>Criminal Minds</i>, I can tell you that I often don't feel safe in my own home, especially when I'm alone at night.<br />
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I started the article, thinking "well, maybe trigger warnings are a good idea." I mean, I have friends who've been sexually abused or sexually assaulted to whom I've said, "Don't read Stieg Larsson." <i>The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo</i> is a book I very nearly put down and never picked back up, so upsetting was that first brutal rape scene, although I ended up loving the book by the end. Interestingly, though, I have a friend who was sexually abused by her father who devoured all three of the books and didn't seem nearly as traumatized by all the sexual abuse as I was. Which just goes to show, you really can't tell what is and isn't going to be a ptsd trigger.<br />
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Realizing how arbitrary and unpredictable ptsd triggers are, I blinked and went from thinking maybe trigger warnings are a good idea to thinking, "How much more are we going to baby students?" If the reality of their lives is that some NRA-supported psycho with an AK-47 could burst into their classroom at any minute, or that they could get stabbed while walking from their dorms to their classes, or that they might have a roommate they think they know who is secretly plotting to bomb a marathon, isn't literature the best place to explore sudden, unexpected violence? Do we really need to shield them from fiction? By definition, literature is a safe place, because we all know that what's happening either isn't real or that it happened somewhere else to someone else. It doesn't need to be made safer for those who are 18 and over. The horrible things that happen to us in life rarely ever come with warnings. When an adult picks up a book or goes to a movie, he or she should know without having to be warned that it might contain something upsetting. Almost anything truly worth reading or watching and studying does.<br />
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I went to college having barely watched anything more violent than <i>The Three Musketeers</i>. I'm very sensitive and empathetic and couldn't even watch episodes of <i>The Three Stooges</i> when I was young. I didn't find all the pain they inflicted on each other to be the least bit funny or appealing. My first year in college, I took a course called <i>Cinema as an Art Form</i>. The first movie we saw was <i>A Clockwork Orange</i>, and I'm not exaggerating when I say that I felt physically ill during most of the film, so violent and upsetting was it. The second movie was <i>Mad Max</i>. It made <i>A Clockwork Orange</i> look like a brilliantly choreographed ballet in comparison, so raw was all its violence. Again, I was physically sick. Do I wish these movies had come with warnings? I can honestly say, "no". Now, I know that's just me, and I'm not someone who'd ever been raped or beat up or shot at before I saw those films, but I do think that watching them was part of a growing up process for me, and they actually turned out to be very important movies in my life, movies I've revisited, especially <i>A Clockwork Orange</i>, which I still consider to be one of the best diatribes against behaviorist theory ever made (next to the original English version -- don't confuse it with the original "make-nice" American version -- of the book).<br />
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Those two movies taught me a lot that I don't think our professor even intended to teach. I learned how I relate to violence. I still don't like horribly violent movies, but I can sit through them without getting sick, knowing I can close my eyes if needed, and knowing that sometimes -- not always. Sometimes it's just Hollywood being manipulative or trying to shock us -- the violence is there for a good reason. I learned how to self-censor. I learned that it won't kill me to watch or read something that's terribly upsetting and that, in fact, sometimes if I stick with it, I will discover how strong I am or how lucky I am or how inspiring someone else is.<br />
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Trying to make everything safe when nothing is safe is a tricky business, one that doesn't belong in college and university classrooms. Instead of warning students that something might be upsetting, we'd be better off teaching students how to put things into context (a lost art in our society as far as I'm concerned). Is the racism and violence in <i>12 Years a Slave</i> devastating? Yes. Should we protect students from it, censor what we teach, because they may have suffered from racism in their own lives? Do we stop teaching Freud because he was so sexist, and young women are suffering enough from sexism in the world today? I think that's doing students a disservice, as well as underestimating their wisdom and intelligence. Instead, we should teach them about context, encourage them to explore ideas from historical perspectives, ask them to compare the 19th-century racism/sexism/abuse, etc. that they encounter in literature and film to today's racism/sexism/abuse. The best questions we can ask is "Have we changed? If so, how? If not, why not? Why is it important to study this?"<br />
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What I find most disturbing is that the students are the ones asking for trigger warnings. To me, it points to <i>students</i> who are underestimating their own wisdom and intelligence, students who've learned to assume they can't handle things, who've been taught to fear, to be on the alert for upsetting material, not to understand that they might get a different perspective on their own miserable experiences by being introduced to them in other, safe ways. It reminds me of the parent I once knew who came over to dinner at my house with her toddler, and before the child had even tasted what I'd made assured her that if she didn't like it, she didn't have to eat it. Of course, she didn't have to eat it, and I know my well-meaning friend was probably trying to counteract an old-fashioned child-rearing trait in which kids were forced to eat food they didn't like, setting up bad and dysfunctional eating patterns. However, don't suggest to a child that she might not like something before she's even eaten it. Let her try it, see if she likes it, and then tell her she doesn't have to eat it if she doesn't. Who's putting the idea into young people's heads that they might not be able to handle certain books or movies, especially when there's a whole school of psychology out there that believes in using literature as a prescription for coping with various psychological issues?<br />
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I'm not saying professors and teachers should be insensitive. It's just that I don't think blanket statements should be made about any work of art. The safety found in classrooms should center around students being allowed to feel what they feel without having to worry about negative repercussions, not around trying to decide what might and might not trigger certain reactions. Students ought to be free to say "I got to the rape scene in <i>The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo</i>, and I really just couldn't bear to read any more" or to say, "<i>A Clockwork Orange </i>made me feel sick, and I had to leave before it was over" without having to worry about being mocked or getting a bad grade. Great discussions could be had around both those statements, discussions that could, in theory, actually help the person who might have experienced some sort of trauma in the past feel validated or understood, or might help him or her find a strength that's been hidden. After all, isn't that what great art is all about?<br />
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Mead concludes her article by saying,<br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 17px; line-height: 25px;">The hope that safety might be found, as in a therapist’s office, in a classroom where literature is being taught is in direct contradiction to one purpose of literature, which is to give expression through art to difficult and discomfiting ideas, and thereby to enlarge the reader’s experience and comprehension. The classroom can never be an entirely safe space, nor, probably, should it be. But it’s difficult to fault those who hope that it might be, when the outside world constantly proves itself pervasively hostile, as well as, on occasion, horrifically violent.</span></blockquote>
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I don't disagree. I would only add that we need to teach students what the purpose of literature is, that it is an excellent mechanism for dealing with the outside world Mead describes. We need to resist their fears and requests to protect them from things that aren't truly dangerous. By understanding the true purpose of literature (the true purpose of <i>all</i> story telling), students will come to understand that, no matter what they might explore through literature, the literature classroom <i>is </i>a safe space, and it just might better equip them to handle real hostility and horror in the outside world.Emily Bartonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13971084813206845680noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28169009.post-81810605026007698642014-06-01T15:31:00.000-04:002014-06-01T15:34:08.977-04:00In Which I Become Boring and Blog About DietingSince moving to Lancaster County, PA 6 years ago, a place that doesn't exactly specialize in exotic eating adventures, but that <i>does</i> specialize in some of the best breads and desserts I've ever eaten, I've gained 15 pounds. I don't look horrible at this weight, but it isn't a weight that makes me happy, and it means I can no longer wear some of my favorite clothes, so I'd like to get rid of it. Back when I was 35, losing weight wasn't a big deal. I'd get back into an exercise routine (usually lack of a regular exercise routine was the reason I'd gained), keep track of what I ate, and soon I'd be where I wanted to be. Not so much anymore. In fact, not at all anymore.<br />
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It seems now my only choices are to exercise tons more or to eat tons less. Since I already exercise for 20-60 minutes 5-6 times a week, and, sorry, I'm just really not going to do anymore than that, the only real option for me is to eat less. For about a year now, I've been checking out different diet books and plans and doing things like trying to keep up with tracking my food and fitness at Sparkpeople.com. I'll lose a few pounds, get all excited, and then, well, you know, we have out-of-town guests, and I have to introduce them to the wonders of Amish sticky buns. Or someone invites me over for dinner and offers me two desserts, after I've already eaten an overflowing plateful of food, and, heaven forbid, I be rude and refuse. In fact, to be really polite, I'd better try both desserts or my poor host might think I don't like his or her offerings. Then there's that plate of brownies or cupcakes someone leaves in the kitchen at work. Whatever it is, all my willpower soon goes out the window.<br />
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The thing about me, though, is that I'm someone who knows she only eats for three reasons. Reason number one is that someone else suggests it's time to eat, and I agree. This used to happen a lot when I worked in an office all day. At 11:00, someone would decide it was time to go to lunch, and even though I wasn't the least bit hungry, I'd agree and go along. Reason number two is that food presents itself. I'm really not someone who ever goes around thinking, "I'd like a doughnut. I'd better go get a doughnut." But if I walk into a bank, and they have doughnuts sitting out for their customers, well, I'll eat one. The third reason is that I'm actually hungry. This often sneaks up on me. I'll be busy writing a short story for hours, when suddenly, I'll notice my stomach is growling. I'll look at my watch and realize, oh, it's 2:00 p.m., and I haven't eaten anything since 8:00 a.m.<br />
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In other words, I'm an impulsive eater, and I don't tend to be an emotional eater. I don't eat when I'm bored (which I rarely ever am anyway) or when I'm depressed. In fact, when I'm depressed, I'm one of those people who's less likely to eat. Ideally food would never present itself without my seeking it out; no one else would ever decide that 6:30 p.m. is a good time for dinner when I just went to Costco at 4:00 and ate every single sample offered; and I'd only ever eat when hungry. Life, alas, is never ideal.<br />
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Something else I know about myself is that I'm highly suggestible. It's why I often avoid reading reviews of books by my favorite authors and movies with my favorite actors until I've read or seen them. It's why I'm a borderline hypochondriac. It's why reading an issue of <i>O</i> magazine sometimes means I find myself thinking, "Hmm. Maybe Bob and I should sell everything and go build schools in South America." <i>O</i> is full of ideas when it comes to dieting (as well as delicious-looking recipes meant to sabotage any diet, I've not failed to notice), so it was <i>O </i>that introduced me to the idea of the <a href="http://thefastdiet.co.uk/">5:2 Diet</a>.<br />
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I read an article written by a woman who'd decided to try this intermittent fast diet, initially thinking, "Oh, I could never do that." I've fasted on occasion and know it's something I don't much like doing, because rather than being one of those people who feels rejuvenated by fasting or maybe has spiritual insights, I'm one of those people who, by 3:00 p.m. is ready to cook up a shoe and eat it. By the time I'd finished the article, though, I'd begun to think "I could do that. Maybe." The change of heart had less to do with the convincing manor in which the author had written it and more to do with the fact that, although the diet uses the word "fast", it's not a true fast, as in, you do nothing but drink water (or juice you have to make yourself, something I'm not willing to do) all day. No, you do actually get to eat. You just eat very, very little, for two days a week. The rest of the week, you eat what you please, without thinking about it.<br />
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That sounded doable and far better to me than constantly worrying about what I'm eating every day, which, let's face it, just doesn't work for me. I don't like having to choose between cake or ice cream on any given day when what I really want is both cake <i>and</i> ice cream (and probably even a second piece of cake, if you're offering). Oh, and did I mention, that's on top of the two hot dogs I've already had? Foregoing cake and ice cream today when I know I can have it tomorrow? That just didn't really sound so bad. So I decided to read <a href="http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-fast-diet-michael-mosley/1114035422?ean=9781476734941">the book</a>, which explained to me that I need to choose two nonconsecutive days a week and limit my caloric intake to 500 (men, those lucky bastards, get to eat 600 calories) on those days.<br />
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There are all kinds of arguments the authors put forth as to why this makes sense (the old "this is how hunters and gatherers ate and how our bodies evolved" is there, yet again, for anyone who, somehow, hasn't managed to hear it associated with any diet in the past 20 years), but do you want to know what I think? I think it works because people are actually just doing what always works, eating fewer calories. Let's say I typically want to eat 2000 calories per day, but that's really too many for me, if I want to lose weight. Now, let's look at two days if I'm on this 5:2 diet. One day, I eat 500 calories. Let's say the next day I eat 2500, I've still only eaten 3000 instead of the 4000 I would've eaten when I wasn't on the diet, and if I eat only 2000, well then, in two days, I've eaten 1500 calories less than I normally would.<br />
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All of this is to say that I've begun this diet. I'm convinced that even I can control my impulsive eating enough to look at a plate of brownies at work, take one, and save it until tomorrow, if I'm not allowed to eat it today. I'm in week two. I won't say it's for everyone, because you will be hungry on your "fast" days. I've fasted four days now, sticking to the authors' recommendation of eating something at breakfast, skipping lunch, and then eating something at dinner, about twelve hours later, which means I actually <i>am</i> fasting for twelve waking hours. I get really, really, shoe-eyeing hungry around 3:00 or 4:00 p.m. I've discovered, though, that if I stick it out, the growling stomach goes away. Counter-intuitively (because one would think this would mean passing out, given all we've heard about low blood sugar, etc.), it appears that working out is a good thing to do when my stomach starts to growl. I can workout, which distracts me, and then the hunger goes away for a while. I did that two days. The other two days, I discovered what worked was throwing myself into writing -- distraction again.<br />
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I'm sure your burning question is, "Yes, but is it working?" The answer to that question is "yes." I began this diet thirteen days ago. I've lost 3 pounds so far and have kept it off. That means it's working enough for me to continue with it. We'll see what happens if a plate of brownies ever presents itself on one of my fast days.Emily Bartonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13971084813206845680noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28169009.post-80121545984774974922013-10-17T12:15:00.000-04:002013-10-18T14:33:25.649-04:00Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead by Sara Gran<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsmXHoulY-RslWueA8mlkeBs6ndF75np-nOXhKWQ0gWJaCKTaBRb-iekNBIGNP7O92DHrbTSMe_Oec3LuSyVl0-df69IeNEHdNoJpQwgn_lED7ES_vmxQHyfHu6t_SdINXvKgX/s1600/claire+dewitt.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsmXHoulY-RslWueA8mlkeBs6ndF75np-nOXhKWQ0gWJaCKTaBRb-iekNBIGNP7O92DHrbTSMe_Oec3LuSyVl0-df69IeNEHdNoJpQwgn_lED7ES_vmxQHyfHu6t_SdINXvKgX/s320/claire+dewitt.jpg" width="212" /></a></div>
<span id="goog_1032241063"></span><span id="goog_1032241064"></span><b>Gran, Sara. <i>Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead</i>. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011.</b><br />
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This was October's Connecticut mystery book club read. What an appropriate title for October (although I actually read it back in September).<br />
<br />
I've never been to New Orleans, but I've always wanted to go. It's one of those American cities that mesmerizes me because it seems much older than it can possibly be, a city that must be at least 500 years old and teeming with all kinds of good and bad spirits, the two sides constantly struggling for control. Sara Gran's first Claire DeWitt mystery didn't disabuse me of this notion.<br />
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Gran's New Orleans is seedy, romantic, gothic, mysterious, evil, spooky, passionate... She's done a wonderful job of painting the city in a way that brings countless numbers of adjectives to mind, many of which are polar opposites. Having never been there, I'd say she's also done a wonderful job of capturing the city in all its complexity. And something about her brought <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caitlin_Kiernan">Caitlin Kiernan</a> to mind, even though the two authors are not of the same genre.<br />
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You'll get no unbiased review here. I loved the book from the minute I started reading it. Claire DeWitt is an interesting sleuth who, with the exception, maybe, of "the cozy", draws on all types of fictional detectives, rolling them into one to produce someone truly unique. Much to my surprise, I also found her truly believable, which she probably wouldn't have been in the hands of a less talented writer. She's part hard-boiled Phillip Marlowe (although with the 21st-century twist of turning more to drugs than to booze to numb all the horrors her chosen career forces her to face), part whacky Stephanie Plum and her ironic sense of humor, part Charlie Parker and his insight into the supernatural, and there's a little Hercule Poirot, since her mentor from the grave is a French mastermind. She's even a bit like Mary Russell, although she never apprenticed with the Great Detective himself the way Mary did with Sherlock Holmes. Claire, instead, apprenticed with another apprentice, who is also now dead and lives only in Claire's memory, dreams, and hallucinations.<br />
<br />
Claire, who grew up in New York (Brooklyn, to be exact) is a former resident of New Orleans but is living in California when she's called back to the city that is swarming with <i>her</i> ghosts, to help find out what happened to a lawyer who disappeared in the aftermath of Katrina. With the help of some of those ghosts of hers, her own wit and ingenuity, not to mention consultations with the I Ching and the occasional hallucinogen, she manages to figure out that this "nice guy", just like this "nice city", might have had a seedier side. Along the way, she meets some interesting new people and reconnects with some old. I, for one, was quite surprised to discover whodunit and why.<br />
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Happily, there's a new Claire DeWitt novel. I'm quite content to add this series to my growing pile of mystery series I read.<br />
<br />Emily Bartonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13971084813206845680noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28169009.post-50722045346809999442013-10-14T01:45:00.001-04:002013-10-18T14:31:15.120-04:0050 Scariest Books I'VE ReadThanks to <a href="http://susanflynn.blogspot.com/">Susan</a>, I discovered <a href="http://flavorwire.com/419194/the-50-scariest-books-of-all-time/view-all/">this</a>. The scariest thing about the latter is that, despite being a lifelong fan of horror and the supernatural, I've only read 17 books on the list of 50 (well, and part of 2, both of which spooked me so much, I had to put them down and never picked them back up again). Even scarier is that I'd never even heard of some of them. Maybe I haven't been reading that many scary books after all; maybe I can't really claim to be a fan; maybe I'm a mere piker when it comes to the spooky. No coward, I, I decided to face this fear head on, think of all the scary books I've ever read, and see if I could even come up with 50 to name as the scariest.<br />
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Happily, I discovered I'm no piker. I came up with tons of scary books and had to try to figure out how to narrow the list down to a mere 50. The first thing to do was to take a cue from the originator and include only one book by any given author. That made it a tad bit easier, but still, this was no easy task. I finally found myself boiling it down to books I remembered keeping me up at night; or those propelling me go downstairs to be with others, if the other members of the household were downstairs and I was upstairs alone (or vice versa); or encouraging me not to look out windows; or inspiring me to lock myself into rooms where I felt (sort of) safe. That meant including some titles that aren't necessarily horror classics, or that don't even fall into the horror genre, but just that, for whatever reason, scared the bejeezus out of me when I read them. I'm sure some of them wouldn't scare me in the least if I were to reread them. Others, however, I've read multiple times and can depend on to do the job when I'm in a masochistic sort of mood and actually want to feel the need to lock myself in the bedroom and dive under the covers.<br />
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I share with you my list (in alphabetical order by title), which does overlap with the "50 Scariest Ever" list. In compiling it, I've thought about how (like everything else about reading) subjective "scary" is. Vampires have terrified me all my life. Zombies? Not so much (except for the movie <i>Carnival of Souls</i>. Why, I don't know). I'd love to know which of these books others have read and found scary and which they haven't.<br />
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(I'm way too lazy to go find cover images for all 50 books, so, in keeping with a good supernatural tale, you'll just have to conjure up your own images.)<br />
<br />
1.<i> 1984 </i>by George Orwell. Yes, the world he painted can only be described as horrific.<br />
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2. <i>The Amityville Horror</i> by Jay Anson. Okay, now we know that it may all have been a hoax, but I didn't know that when I read it in my early teens. To this day I don't take too well to gatherings of 3 or more flies on windowsills.<br />
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3. <i>Best Ghost Stories of J. S. Le Fanu </i>by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu. A longtime fan of <i>Uncle Silas</i>, which didn't scare me at all, I made the mistake of reading this when Bob was away, and I was all alone. Lots of things went "bump in the night" in my house that night.<br />
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4. <i>Best Stories of Algernon Blackwood </i>by Algernon Blackwood. All the stories are good, but on really, really windy nights, or when I'm racing against time to get off a hiking trail at dusk, it's "The Wendigo" that always comes to my mind and sends shivers up my spine.<br />
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5. <i>Blood Games </i>by Jerry Bledsoe. Dungeons and Dragons game players and murder in my home state of North Carolina? Nothing scary about that, right?<br />
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6. <i>The Bog </i>by Michael Talbot. If books were classified the way movies are, this one would be a B movie. Completely predictable and stupid and about something that shouldn't have scared me at all, and yet, when a friend urged me to read it back when it came out, it spooked me to death.<br />
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7. <i>Broken Harbor</i> by Tana French. All of French's novels have had a spooky element to them, but this one was the one that got to me the most.<br />
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8.<i> Burn, Witch, Burn!</i> by A. Merritt. Ridiculous to think I'd be scared of doll-sized figures wielding sharp weapons, but I was. Maybe it's the psychology or the voodoo (which has scared me since I was a kid).<br />
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<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">9. <i>A Candle in Her Room </i>by Ruth M. Arthur. Well, I guess dolls </span>can<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"> be very scary, and the doll in this book was one of the scariest I'd ever encountered when I first read it as a child. She was still scary when I reread it as an adult.</span></i><br />
<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><i><br /></i></span></i>
<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">10. <i>Crime and Punishment </i>by Fyodor Dostoevsky. Not scary so much as just so damn creepy and horrific that I didn't want to be alone while reading it.</span></i><br />
<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><i><br /></i></span></i>
<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">11. <i>A Christmas Carol </i>by Charles Dickens. Forget that it's Christmas and has such a feel-good ending. Marley's ghost is damn scary. </span></i><br />
<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><i><br /></i></span></i>
<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">12. <i>Coraline </i>by Neil Gaiman. It's those blank, button eyes. </span></i><br />
<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><i><br /></i></span></i>
<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">13. <i>Couching at the Door </i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">by D.K. Broster. Some ghost story collections are uneven. This one isn't. I may be wrong, but I recall being spooked by all of them. </span></i><br />
<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><i><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">14. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><i>The Deep End</i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"> by Joy Fielding. This is probably a really dumb book, but when it first came out, I read it, and it terrified me with that whole telephone-caller-is-even (really, really)-closer-than-you-think-thing.</span></i></span></i><br />
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15. <i>The Demonologist: The Extraordinary Career of Ed and Loraine Newman </i>by Gerald Brittle. I'm still amazed that something so hokey had me so terrified. All I can say is don't read it at night if you have a dog who might suddenly start barking at nothing (or if you have a Raggedy Ann doll in your house. I was glad I didn't).<br />
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16. <i>Dracula </i>by Bram Stoker. No, it shouldn't have been scary. I knew the story when I finally got around to reading the original. Stoker was not the best writer of his time. Still, it got me (and did again when I listened to it while jogging through the woods one fall).<br />
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17. <i>Dracula's Guest: A Connoisseur's Collection of Victorian Vampire Stories</i>. If you want to feed a fear of vampires with plenty of blood, read this one.<br />
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18. <i>The Exorcist </i>by William Peter Blatty. Reread it last year to see if it's really as scary as I remember. Yes, it is.<br />
<i><br /></i>19. <i>The Falls </i>by Ian Rankin. Just enough of a hint of the supernatural and things like grave robbers to send many shivers up my spine.<br />
<i><br /></i><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">20. <i>Famous Ghost Stories</i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"> edited by Bennett Cerf. It's a short collection, but it has so many of the classics that can keep me awake if I read them too late at night (Oliver Onion's </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><i>The Beckoning Fair One</i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">, </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><i>The Monkey's Paw</i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"> by W.W. Jacobs, The </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><i>Phantom 'Rickshaw</i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"> by Rudyard Kipling, to name a few). </span></i><br />
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<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"></span></i>21. <i>Ghost </i>by Katherine Ramsland. Some of this was quite stupid (okay, a lot of it). Still, parts of it spooked me (a lot).<br />
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22. <i>Ghost Stories of an Antiquary </i>by M. R. James. James was the master. When I want to study the craft, I return to him. "The Mezotint" will always have me staying in one safe room and avoiding looking out windows at night.</div>
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<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">23. <i>Ghost Stories of Edith Wharton </i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">by Edith Wharton. Maybe it scared me so much because I never thought of Wharton as a writer of the supernatural, so I was surprised by her ability with the genre, or maybe it's because, like Henry James, she had such a good handle on "Is it a ghost or all in your mind?" Whatever the reason, it kept me awake at night. </span></i><br />
<i><br /></i>24. <i>Ghost Story </i>by Peter Straub. This was one that spooked me so much, reading it when I was on a business trip by myself, that I had to put it down. I've been meaning to try it again ever since.<br />
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25. <i>Green Man </i>by Kingsley Amis. The ending was over-the-top, but parts of it made me wary of trees (and, again, looking out the window at night, especially in areas heavy with trees) for a while.<br />
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<i> </i>26. <i>The Haunted</i> by James Herbert. The surprise is, yes, surprising. The movie also scared the crap out of me.<br />
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27. <i>The Haunting of Hill House</i> by Shirley Jackson. Every time I read it, I think, "It can't possibly scare me this time. I know it too well." I'm wrong about that. Every time.<br />
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28. <i>Helter Skelter</i> by Vincent Bugliosi. This is the stuff that keeps a teenager up, reading until the wee hours of the morning and then, wide-awake, unable to sleep, hearing all kinds of strange noises in the house.<br />
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29. <i>In Cold Blood</i> by Truman Capote. See <i>Helter Skelter</i>, only substitute teenager with forty-something who lives out in the American middle of nowhere.<br />
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30. <i>The Killing Kind</i> by John Connolly. Some very weird stuff that is very scary when you're reading it in Maine.<br />
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31. <i>The Monster of Florence</i> by Douglas Preston and Mario Sprezi. I listened to this one while out walking and remember constantly looking over my shoulder. It's terrifying on two levels: serial killer + being falsely accused of something while living in a foreign country.<br />
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32. <i>The Omen </i>by David Seltzer. It led me to believe that there isn't much that's scarier than a scary child. (Oh, and see <i>Helter Skelter </i>and that part about being a teenager up all night.)<br />
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33. <i>The Overnight </i>by Ramsey Campbell. Got so spooked by it (fog is scary) that I couldn't finish it.<br />
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34. <i>The Owl Service </i>by Alan Garner. I don't really remember why I found this one so scary. I just remember that I did.</div>
<i><br /></i>35. <i>People of the Lie </i>by M. Scott Peck. A well-known psychiatrist writing about the psychology of evil and his belief in demon possession? You know how you study abnormal psych and begin diagnosing everyone you know? Imagine when the "disease" is evil and possibly demon possession, and you'll get an idea of where this one took me.<br />
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36. <i>The Penguin Book of Ghost Stories </i>edited by Michael Newton. Ghost story collections can be hit or miss, but this recent collection was pretty much hit, and the ones that scared me (that I hadn't read before, and even some I had, like the aforementioned "The Monkey's Paw") <i>really</i> scared me.<br />
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37. <i>The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner </i>by James Hogg. A study in evil, more terrifying in what it suggests than in anything that actually happens.<br />
<i><br /></i>38. <i>Psycho </i>by Robert Bloch. You thought the movie was scary (which it most definitely was)? Read the book.<br />
<i><br /></i>39. <i>Red Dragon </i>by Thomas Harris. I found this one so much scarier than <i>Silence of the Lambs.</i> I think it mostly had to do with the way the killer chose his victims.<br />
<i><br /></i>40. <i>Rules of Prey</i> by John Sandford. I don't really know why, but John Sandford scares me. Maybe it's his ambiguity when it comes to defining good and evil. But that ambiguity shows up in plenty of mysteries that don't scare me. Anyway, I won't read him when I'm alone (just like I won't watch <i>Criminal Minds</i> when I'm alone).<br />
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41. <i>Salem's Lot </i>by Stephen King. Word to the wise: don't read this one when you're fifteen-years-old and baby sitting, a sleeping toddler being the only other one in the house with you.<br />
<i><br /></i>42. <i>Something Wicked this Way Comes</i> by Ray Bradbury. Before there was Erin Morgenstern and <i>The Night Circus </i>(which had its moments), there was Ray Bradbury and <i>Something Wicked this Way Comes</i> (more than just mere moments), discovered in one's teens.<br />
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43. <i>Strange but True: 22 Amazing Stories</i> by Donald J. Sobel. This was a Scholastic book I got circa age 9. I blame it to this day for my addiction to horror. I reread it a few years ago, and yes, I can understand why.<br />
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44. <i>Tales of Horror and the Supernatural </i>by Arthur Machen. Includes plenty of good tales, but the one that scared me the most was "The Terror", a perfect study in mass hysteria.<br />
<i><br /></i>45. <i>This is the Zodiac Speaking </i>by Michael D. Kelleher and David Van Nuys. I'm surprised I didn't buy a gun to protect myself while reading this one.<br />
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46. <i>Threshold</i> by Caitlin R. Kiernan. Nobody, but nobody writing in the 21st century does "here's a nightmare: is it real or not?" better than Kiernan (and I loved the <i>Beowulf</i> connection here).<br />
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47. <i>The Turn of the Screw <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">by Henry James. Still the ghost story to beat all ghost stories.</span></i><br />
<i><br /></i><span class="Apple-style-span"></span>48. <i>The Undead </i>edited by James Dickie. Another one to feed the imagination of someone who's vampire-obsessed.<br />
<i><br /></i>49. <i>The Victorian Chaise-Longue</i> by Marghanita Laski. One of those books that makes you glad you're not a Victorian woman surrounded by men defining how sane you are (or are not).<br />
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50. <i>The Works of Edgar Allan Poe </i>by Edgar Allan Poe. Good old Edgar is another one to blame for my early addiction to the spooky unknown.<br />
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(And one to grow on). <i>Wuthering Heights </i>by Emily Bronte. I know, I know, call me a wimp, but that scratching at the window? I still don't like to hear branches scratching at a window.<br />
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Okay, I can see the pattern here. If you want to scare me include one or more of these elements (either real or imagined): ghosts, vampires, serial killers, demon possession, scary dolls, and maybe, if the conditions are right, a bog monster (especially if it's scratching at a window with long, bony, gnarly-nailed fingers).<br />
<br />Emily Bartonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13971084813206845680noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28169009.post-5553537376118624102013-09-21T15:43:00.002-04:002013-10-18T14:30:33.836-04:00Guest Post: Stephen King and His MoviesToday is Stephen King's 66th birthday, and this week I will have in my hands our library's copy of <i>Doctor Sleep</i>, the long-awaited sequel to <i>The Shining</i>. I've been reading Stephen King for over 30 years, and I'm looking forward to this new book, out just in time for Halloween reading. So, when Brandon Engel asked if he could write a guest post here comparing two of King's books to the movie versions, I agreed, not only because I love Stephen King, but also because I'd like to support a fellow blogger who is making a living through writing blog posts. Brandon's post follows with some of my own thoughts and comments included in italics.<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 15px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></span></span>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.5pt;">This
September, author Stephen King will be celebrating both the release of his new
book <i>Dr. Sleep</i></span><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.5pt;"> (a long-awaited sequel to <i>The Shining</i></span><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.5pt;">) and his 66th birthday. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px;">Over the
course of his career, King has authored over 50 novels, several of which have
been used as the basis for feature length films -- with some adaptations
adhering to King’s stories more closely than others.</span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.5pt;">Let’s take
a look at two dramatically different examples…</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.5pt;"><b><i>The
Shining</i></b></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.5pt;">One film
which still gets some Stephen King fans riled up is Stanley Kubrick’s <i>The
Shining</i></span><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.5pt;">
-- which Stephen King himself was incredibly vocal about disliking upon its
release in 1980. In more abstract terms, the film differs from the book in that
the film places greater emphasis on the instability of the Jack Torrance
character, portrayed in the film by Jack Nicholson. King’s stated intention was
to portray the character in a more sympathetic light and to show his declining
mental health as being more symptomatic of the corrosive influence of the
spiritual entities who inhabit the Overlook Hotel. King’s chief criticism was
that the Kubrick treatment made the film more about a domestic disturbance, and
downplayed the supernatural elements of the story.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.5pt;"><i>EB: I'm disappointed to discover that King disliked the movie version, although his reasons make sense. I love Stanley Kubrick, and <b>The Shining</b> is one of my all-time favorite horror movies, one of the few that I still find terrifying, even though I've seen it many times. It's not as good as the book, of course, but as far as movies go, it's hard to beat.</i></span></div>
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<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.5pt;">There are
several other key differences between the book and the film though. In the
book, there are large topiary animals who come to life. Kubrick’s version does
away with the topiary animals, substituting them with a hedge maze. </span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.5pt;"><i>EB: And I always wondered why he chose to do that. It seems like it would've been a great special effect in a movie. Those moving hedges were one of the things that scared me most when I read the book, circa age 15.</i></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.5pt;"><i><br /></i></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.5pt;"><i></i>In the
book, Jack Torrance dies when the boiler room explodes. In the film, he freezes
to death in the hedge maze. In the book, Jack Torrance doesn’t actually kill
anyone. In the film, he kills the Dick Halloran character (played by Scatman
Crothers.)</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.5pt;"><i>EB: One of the things that always impressed me about the movie was how scary it was despite the fact that so few characters died, especially since it came out during the height of the slasher movie craze. It was a great lesson for me, who was just beginning to discover horror movies other than what was available on late-night TV: people don't necessarily have to die (or be turned vampires) in order for a movie to be <b>really</b> scary). </i></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.5pt;">The key
difference here, though, is that so much of King’s work is permeated by his
ambiguous spiritual beliefs, which usually seem to have some foundation in the
Christian narrative, whereas a defining characteristic of most of Kubrick’s
work is his biting cynicism and religious skepticism. </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 15px;"><i>EB: Which is probably why I love both of them, because I have to admit I'm a bit of a voyeur when it comes to others' views about religion and spirituality.</i></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.5pt;"><b><i>Carrie</i></b></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.5pt;"><i>Carrie</i></span><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.5pt;"> was historically
significant as it was King’s first published novel, and director Brian De Palma’s
first feature. There were a couple of notable differences between the novel and
the film. One was the appearance of the Carrie White character, who was
described as being overweight in the novel, but was portrayed by the wispy
Sissy Spacek in the film.</span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.5pt;"><i>EB: This is a movie I haven't seen (I know. I know!), but I always wondered about that myself. Everyone who's read the book knows that Carrie is overweight. Also, everyone who knew me in junior high thought I looked like Carrie (Sissy Spacek), which was a terrible thing for a skinny, junior-high kid and made me (unfairly) hate Sissy Spacek until years later.</i></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.5pt;">The most notable difference between the movie and the
book, though, is perhaps the ending. In the end of the novel, Carrie destroys
the entire town. In the end of the film, Carrie has essentially killed all of
the teenagers from the town, but has left the parents to grieve -- which is, by
this blogger’s estimation, infinitely more chilling. </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.5pt;"><i>EB: I had no idea that the movie ended that way, but I'd agree that that was a good change. </i></span></div>
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<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.5pt;">On the
whole, though, the film hits all the major beats from the novel -- the
character is a social outcast; there is one sympathetic character who
conspicuously arranges to have her boyfriend take Carrie to the prom (although
both King and screenwriter Lawrence D. Cohen clearly attempted to lampshade
this); and the vindictive teenage girl antagonists conspire to further
humiliate Carrie for menstruating. What embellishments were made for the sake
of filming were ultimately in the service of the same end as the novel.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.5pt;"><i>EB: Okay, yes, I must see the movie version now. </i></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px;"><i><br /></i></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px;"><i>Thank you, Brandon, for this birthday gift to Stephen King.</i></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.5pt;">About the
author: Brandon Engel is an entertainment blogger for </span><a href="http://www.getdirecttv.org/"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.5pt;">GetDirectTV.org</span></a><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.5pt;"> who is an avid consumer of gothic horror
literature and vintage horror films. Among his favorite writers are H.P.
Lovecraft, William Peter Blatty and, of course, Mr. King. Among his favorite
directors are Alfred Hitchcock, Brian De Palma, and John Carpenter. </span></div>
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Emily Bartonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13971084813206845680noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28169009.post-49068559325054861892013-06-28T15:37:00.001-04:002013-06-28T15:37:35.414-04:00Now and Then by Robert B. Parker<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYmGHeu2-K7x4KSJWyagLHA_smkYhuNtYIXqMPc0TOS8Pg8liKT8FVXHuFXHG_9IhE0FgX82o_57XibEUK88Mu7GiGHzI5wiaDVRTH9QsdLUqK0py_CbRFd1BYAbaVShHaR6Ti/s400/now+and+then.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYmGHeu2-K7x4KSJWyagLHA_smkYhuNtYIXqMPc0TOS8Pg8liKT8FVXHuFXHG_9IhE0FgX82o_57XibEUK88Mu7GiGHzI5wiaDVRTH9QsdLUqK0py_CbRFd1BYAbaVShHaR6Ti/s320/now+and+then.jpg" width="182" /></a></div>
<b>Parker, Robert B. <i>Now and Then</i>. New York: Berkley Books, 2007.</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
It's funny, the last <a href="http://emilybarton.blogspot.com/2013/04/the-house-without-key-by-earl-derr.html">CT mystery book club book</a> was one in which a dead body doesn't make an appearance until page 60 or so. In this one, we have no dead bodies until page 70 or so. But the two books couldn't be more different. The Earl Derr Biggers, as I noted in that blog post, was a genteel read. If I hadn't known everything I was reading was leading up to some sort of mystery, I never would've guessed. Here, we hit the ground running, just waiting for at least one, if not multiple, murders.<br />
<br />
I've been meaning to read Parker for years and am glad I now have. This wouldn't have been my choice for first of his to read, being the anal-retentive sort of reader who likes to start at the beginning of a series, but now I've had a taste of him and realize it doesn't really matter whether or not I read the Spenser books in order (that's true for most mystery series, but there are some for which it really does make more of a difference, like Jacqueline Winspear). Probably one of the reasons I've been reluctant to get started with this series is that Parker was so prolific, and I've feared it would take me forever to read through all the books. Silly worry. Now that I've read one, I'm aware that even a slow reader like me could probably plow through all 30+ novels without taking the better part of a year to do so, unless the others are very different from this one.<br />
<br />
Much of this novel, which begins when a man hires Spenser to find out whether or not his wife is having an affair, is told through dialogue. That could be problematic in the hands of an unskilled writer, but it isn't here. The dialogue is good, and Parker doesn't waste your time letting you eavesdrop on a conversation in which one character explains something to another that should be perfectly clear (you've heard me rant against that <a href="http://emilybarton.blogspot.com/2012/04/but-emperor-has-no-clothes.html">elsewhere </a> -- see #7 -- here at Telecommuter Talk). No, Parker's characters talk to each other with the understanding that they don't need to fill each other in on background information. In other words, they talk to each other the way we talk to each other in real life. Parker's genius is that he manages to do so while also providing enough clues for the reader who may not know any of the back story to get up to speed. I like that. He's a good one to study for anyone interested in writing and improving dialogue (like me).<br />
<br />
Anyway, as you might guess, this tale turns into one that's about much more than a wife having an affair. We've got FBI agents here and anti-government organizations and stolen identities. But I won't spoil it for those of you who haven't read it. I'll just assure you that if you're looking for a real page-turner (yes, I stayed up way too late one night because I just couldn't put it down), you won't be disappointed.<br />
<br />
Spenser's an interesting character, and I was drawn into his relationship with Susan, a psychiatrist who also happens to be his long-term girlfriend and who plays a key role in the book. I'm gathering she's played a key role in others, as well. Although I enjoy P.I.s like Philip Marlowe who can't walk down the street without having multiple women throw themselves at him, I like coming across those who are involved in monogamous relationships like Spenser is. It adds a depth to their characters that makes them a little more human. Women apparently throw themselves at Spenser, too, but when he shows restraint, it's because <i>he</i> knows he's got something that means more to him than a one (or two or three) night stand, unlike a Marlowe, who does so for any number of other reasons (like the woman is just too pathetic). Spenser and Susan have obviously had their problems, but they're mature in their relationship.<br />
<br />
Finally, I loved the setting. For some reason, I've read quite a few books lately that take place in and around Boston. I haven't read any mysteries set in the city, though, in a very long time. The last was probably Linda Barnes's Carlotta Carlisle series. It was nice to be back. Boston's a great city, whether I'm hanging out there for real or hanging out there in my imagination. Parker was good at making me feel like I was hanging out there for real.<br />
<br />
Great beach read? Yep, and definitely a step above so much that falls into that category.<br />
<br />Emily Bartonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13971084813206845680noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28169009.post-56229988927724187952013-04-30T14:51:00.000-04:002013-04-30T16:37:35.575-04:00The House Without a Key by Earl Derr Biggers<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPvbS8HiqRmQtbOLRWALQzAyLKoFFrEAuWDiMmXDXpeRHkYqeALhrrp4r87VERKM6MfqcEiXFFEAVa8gn2NTQqK2onpDIs0Pyz2x7PXMJkRv-AS_v-lFTz3ZGX2JwFlLwCXiaK/s1600/House+without+a+Key.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPvbS8HiqRmQtbOLRWALQzAyLKoFFrEAuWDiMmXDXpeRHkYqeALhrrp4r87VERKM6MfqcEiXFFEAVa8gn2NTQqK2onpDIs0Pyz2x7PXMJkRv-AS_v-lFTz3ZGX2JwFlLwCXiaK/s320/House+without+a+Key.jpg" width="207" /></a></div>
<b>Biggers, Earl Derr. <i>The House without a Key</i>. Chicago: Academy Chicago Publishers, 2008.</b><br />
<br />
(This book was originally published in 1925.)<br />
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If your thing is thrillers that jump right into a murder
before you’ve even figured out who the main characters of a book happen to be
then <i>The House without a Key</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> isn’t for
you. You won’t find any dead bodies until you’re about 1/4 of the way into the
book. I do happen to like those types of thrillers – in the right place and at
the right time – but I absolutely loved this, the first of Earl Derr Biggers’s
Charlie Chan mysteries.</span></div>
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To be honest, when this book was chosen for the Connecticut
mystery book club, I had no idea what to expect. I’ve never seen a Charlie Chan
movie. I hate to say it, but my only real knowledge of this particular
detective comes from the nods given by Saturday morning cartoon animators in
the 1970s. I can’t even tell you which cartoons (<i>Hong Kong Phooey</i><span style="font-style: normal;">, certainly, but he wasn’t very Charlie Channish. </span><i>Bugs Bunny</i><span style="font-style: normal;">? </span><i>Scooby Doo</i><span style="font-style: normal;">? </span><i>The Flintstones</i><span style="font-style: normal;">?) </span>sometimes featured Chinese
detectives <span style="font-style: normal;">based
on the character. Repeated exposure to cartoon images of the detective did help
the young me figure out that Charlie Chan was a movie character, but, you know,
those were </span><i>old</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> movies, like, from
my father’s time, when it only cost 10 cents to go see something in black and
white.</span></div>
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If this first book is any indication, I’m surprised that
Earl Derr Biggers isn’t the household name among readers that an Agatha
Christie or a Raymond Chandler is. Maybe that’s what happens when Hollywood
truly gets hold of a character but not the author who created the character. I
mean no one talks about Hercule Poirot movies or Philip Marlowe movies. The
authors of the characters are the names people know. I’m quite sure that if I
asked your average reader, “Have you ever read any Earl Derr Biggers?” the
answer would be, “Who?” He really deserves more than that.</div>
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I loved the slow start to this book that lured me in and
made me forget I was reading a “murder mystery”, so much so that I was a bit
shocked when I finally encountered The Body. We’re given details that bring
both the setting (Hawai’i) and the characters to life. Biggers definitely knew
about patrician families and the “black sheep” of such families. He paints a
dream-worthy portrait of Hawai’i, a place whose trade winds can mesmerize even
the most Patrician members of a New England patrician family, causing them to lose
all sense of themselves (maybe even to forget proper grammar). I could just
taste the pineapple and smell the leis made with fresh flowers.</div>
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Books like these are the ones that make me hate the notion
of “genre fiction” and everything it implies to most critics. Then again, I
have to admit that I’m a bit elitist in my own way when it comes to genre fiction. Tell me you love to read 21<sup>st</sup>-century romances, or
mysteries, or (popular where I live, the relative newcomer) inspirational
fiction, and I’m highly likely to judge you as a rather superficial reader. But
tell me that you love the romances or mysteries or inspirational fiction (most
of Louisa May Alcott, for instance) that have proven the test of time, and I’ll
judge you as a “real reader”. </div>
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There are pages in this book that you could’ve handed to me
before I read it, asked me who I thought the author was, and I might have
responded, “Henry James?” Or someone of his era and disposition. So, yes, there
is a murder, and we eventually get caught up in all the things I love about a
good murder mystery: whodunit? why? which clues mean something?, etc., etc.,
but there’s also an undeniable focus on class distinctions, racial
distinctions, family dynamics, and gender issues, all set against the backdrop
of these exotic islands. So exotic are they, in fact, those from the mainland
keep forgetting it’s a part of America. No, you don’t have to worry about
converting foreign currency. No, you don’t have to learn another language. My
one visit there led me to sympathize with these notions of being in a foreign
land, because it really <i>is</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> like being in
another country. </span></div>
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It takes a while, but finally, enter stage right: Charlie
Chan. I didn’t remember from cartoon portrayals that he’s such an obese man,
but obese he is. I guess this helps him loom larger than life, initially. Once
you get to know him, though, he certainly doesn’t need girth to loom larger
than life. </div>
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Again, I don’t know what I was expecting, a Chinese Sherlock
Holmes? More likely than not, yes. But Chan is not a Chinese Sherlock Holmes.
First of all, rather than being the center of attention, he’s almost a minor
character. And he is far, far more patient than Holmes, not only with his
“stupid” associates, but also with life in general. He’s a man who just calmly
goes about solving mysteries, never racing to any locations, but being exactly
where he needs to be when he needs to be there in order to receive the
information that just comes his way, almost obedient to his expectation that
it will. Meanwhile, he enjoys his life while waiting to receive such
information.</div>
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I have to admit that I had my eyes wide open for early
20th-century racism to rear its ugly head. I’m sure (maybe that’s unfair,
coming again from someone who’s judging without having been exposed to
something) that the movie versions of Chan were full of it. Here, I was
hard-pressed to find it. Yes, Charlie Chan speaks a very interesting version of
English, but he speaks it eloquently and intelligently. He’s not portrayed as
some strange “Chinaman” who “put pee-pee in your Coke” and who goes around with
chopsticks ready to attack cats for dinner. He tends more toward that sage
“Confucious say…” Chinese stereotype, but even there, he seems to draw a line
and to come down to nothing more than a brilliant observer of East and West, an
ability that serves him well in his profession. All I can say is, “Kudos to
Bigger for being so far ahead of his time and place.” (Then again, I’m a white,
Southern, Anglo-Saxon female. Those from different backgrounds – Chinese
Americans, say – might heartily -- and have every right to -- disagree with me.)</div>
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One other thing I loved about the book was the humor. Bigger
knew how to play off the weaknesses of the aristocracy, and he did so with such
grace. It’s funny how often I’ve been surprised to find myself laughing out
loud over the books we’ve read for this group. I love funny books. Why do I
assume most murder mysteries won’t be funny? Is it because I cut my teeth on
Agatha Christie? She’s not real funny, but you know, the likes of Raymond
Chandler and Ross Macdonald (or to make it more recent) Donald Westlake and
Janet Evanovich sure knew/know how to make a reader laugh.</div>
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Finally, we get to the whodunit? itself (we always do, don’t
we?). I love an author who can surprise me, and Earl Derr Biggers did. It isn’t
that I didn’t quickly peg who I thought was the murderer, it’s just that I fell
for the killer’s alibi until the end of the book when I was finally told how it
didn’t hold up. I love a good mystery, especially one that does such a good job
of surprising me and that includes a little romance on the side (I suppose, today, this book would be slotted into the "romantic mystery" genre, but, like any good book, it's so much more than that). Need I say I’d like to make Earl Derr Biggers a household
name?</div>
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Emily Bartonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13971084813206845680noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28169009.post-59889430833363979452013-04-12T20:25:00.004-04:002013-04-12T20:25:46.480-04:00The Agony and the Ecstasy<!--StartFragment-->
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Why, yes, here I am. Has anyone even noticed that I’ve been
MIA? Probably not. Before I get started on this long-overdue post, I wanted to
let those of you who don’t already know and who might be interested in my more
contemplative side that I’ve got a new blog this year <a href="http://wifereads.wordpress.com/">over here</a>. I can't promise that I’m any better about writing there, though, than I am about
writing here. I can promise that books play a major role, as they always do, no
matter which side of me you’re encountering. </div>
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Now, I thought maybe some of you might be interested in a
glimpse at a week in the life of a writer who is hard at work on the second
draft of a novel. She’s been working on this second draft for well over a year,
had been sure it would be done by now. This, she has discovered, is what
happens when one writes the first draft constantly saying to herself, “Just get
it down, get it down. You can look that up, work that out, fix that, etc., etc.
when you get to the second draft.” (Okay, maybe this didn’t all happen in one
week, but it’s sort of an “average” week and very easily <i>could</i> happen all in
one week.)</div>
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DAY ONE</div>
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<i>Writer has just been informed by a high school swimmer
that the high school swim season is in the fall. Writer could just pretend to
ignore this fact, calling on “poetic license,” and could let her teenage
character live in an area where swimming is a spring sport. After all, the book
takes place in a town that doesn’t exist. Why couldn’t it have an imaginary
swim season? But writer is anal retentive and always wants basic facts to be
accurate. This necessitates a complete reorganization of the book, because a
major episode in the book revolves around this teenager who is on the high
school swim team. </i></div>
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“Thank God for computers that allow one to cut and paste.
This shouldn’t be too difficult to do…Oh, wait a minute, if this section is
moved here, and this section is moved there, then I’m going to have to change
that whole boat section, since most people don’t go boating in Massachusetts in
the middle of January. Oh, that’s perfect, the fight between [character A and
character B] works much better now that it’s been moved. Oh, but wait a minute.
Oh shit, [Character A] can’t be pissed at [Character B] for [Action C] when
[Action C] hasn’t even happened yet. Damn! How am I going to fix that? Will it
help to move Action C to Chapter 3? No, not unless I get rid of [Character C]
in Chapter 3. But I don’t <i>want </i><span style="font-style: normal;">to get
rid of Character C in Chapter 3. That’s one of the best parts of Chapter 3. She
deserves to stay. Hmmm…maybe if I cut this section, move that to Chapter 6, and
add a bit here about why Character A and Character B won’t see eye to eye?
There. Oh, hell, Chapter 3 is now 78 pages long, and Chapter 5 is only 3. Oh,
and the vernal equinox has taken place in early August.” </span><i>(It’s worse than one
of those old-fashioned, uncreative, math “word problems” isn’t it?)</i></div>
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<i>At which point, writer goes and pours herself another cup
of coffee and decides to check Facebook and email and respond to neglected
friends and family members.</i></div>
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DAY TWO</div>
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No matter how difficult it is, writer is determined to sit
at the computer, working on the second draft of the novel for at least two
hours (the minimum she has allowed herself to put into it every day).</div>
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“Okay, I’ve got this figured out now. Just need to add a
scene to Chapter 4 that will help Chapter 5 make sense.”</div>
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<i>Writer opens her saved working outline of the book to see
where this new scene might make sense in Chapter 4. The outline mysteriously
stops after Chapter 3. The book has many more than 3 chapters.</i></div>
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“Huh?! What’s happened to my outline? I can’t work without
my outline! Don’t tell me I accidentally cut a huge chunk of my outline and
saved it that way.”</div>
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<i>Writer resists the urge to cry, takes the deep breaths
well-meaning friends always tell one to take in these situations. Anyone else notice that they rarely ever seem
to do a damn bit of good? She scrolls up and down the document in the hopes
that the rest of the outline will magically appear. Then, she looks at the
title of the document and realizes it says “Outline 2.” It’s not The Outline,
but rather, a confusing document she created when playing around with cutting
and pasting the true outline. Writer is thrilled and immediately changes the
name of “Outline 2” to avoid confusion in the future, then gets to work writing
the new scene.</i></div>
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“Oh, I love that. This is perfect. I wonder why I didn’t
think to put that in there when I was writing the first draft. This is gonna be
so good!”</div>
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DAY 3</div>
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Writer is now reading the new scene she wrote yesterday. </div>
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“Huh? This makes absolutely no sense at all. [Character D]
sounds like a robot. Nobody talks like that, and could [Character A] be any
more of a cliché? “</div>
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<i>Writer spends well over an hour rewriting the scene and
still isn’t happy with it.</i></div>
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“Oh well, I’ll work on that in the third draft.” </div>
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DAY 5</div>
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<br /></div>
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<i>You may be wondering what happened to Day 4. So is writer.
On Day 4, there was a massive storm, and water began to pour through the light
fixture in the upstairs bathroom. Writer and her husband had to find multiple
buckets, mops, etc. and deal with the mess, which was an indication that the
house needs a new roof. In the midst of that, one of the elderly members of
husband’s congregation (did I mention he’s a minister?) went to have cataract
surgery. His wife was supposed to drive him home after the surgery, but she got
dizzy and passed out while waiting for him. The hospital wanted to admit her,
but she insisted on going home, so they called the church (because their
children couldn’t help) and minister and wife (because, you know, she’s just
trying to write a novel and doesn’t have a </i><b><i>real</i></b><span style="font-weight: normal;"><i> job) were enlisted to pick them and their car up to bring them home.</i></span></div>
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<i>So, now it’s Day 5. Writer has gotten to a section in the
first draft of the novel where she has a sticky note that says “Research
post-partum depression.” She figured, when she stuck that sticky note there,
that she’d just do a quick online search to see if what one of her characters
was doing might be typical of someone suffering from post-partum depression.
Writer goes online to discover that there’s postpartum depression and then
there’s a very rare thing called postpartum psychosis, which seems to be the
better diagnosis for her character.</i></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-style: normal;">“God, I don’t want her
really to be </span>that<span style="font-style: normal;"> sick. She’s got to
bounce back and be okay and return to the way she was when she was first
married. What am I going to do?”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<i>Writer spends her time doing more research than she’d
wanted to have to do, then figures out how to keep her character just sick
enough to be able to retain the key elements she needs to make the story work
but not so sick that she drowns all 3 of her kids in the bathtub (a subplot
that would ruin the book).</i></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-style: normal;">DAY 6<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<i>Writer spends half her time poring over details about the
character with post-partum depression from the beginning of the book to make
sure they make sense. Once satisfied, she begins rewriting and revising a
relatively straightforward section of the book that doesn’t need many changes.</i></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-style: normal;">“This is so much fun. I
love writing!”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-style: normal;">DAY 7<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<i>Writer reaches a section she realizes needs about three
extra scenes if it’s going to work now that she’s had to rearrange everything
according to a different calendar. She looks to see if cutting and pasting
other scenes and changing some of the details might work. Nope. In fact, she’s
discovered that she just might have to delete some of those scenes (one of
which she’s already re-written twice and now loves), because they don’t really
make much sense anymore. She begins writing one of the new scenes and is
completely dissatisfied and frustrated. She double checks to make absolutely
certain there isn’t something she can just cut and paste and use here. Nothing.
She gets up and does some yoga stretches. She sits back down and hates
everything she’s written. Even though it’s only 10:30 a.m., she contemplates
fixing herself a vodka gimlet.</i></div>
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<span style="font-style: normal;">“Now I know why Hemingway
and Faulkner were alcoholics.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<i>Instead, she closes the laptop and picks up a book to
read. Nothing like a little distance to get some perspective. Tomorrow, she’ll
start again.</i></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-style: normal;">There you have it, all
those of you who might wonder how an aspiring author spends her week. I hope I
haven’t discouraged anyone who’s always dreamed of writing a novel and hasn’t
begun yet. If I have, please reread "Day 6" and focus on that. For some reason, the ecstasy of that one day far outweighs all the agony of any of the others. What can I say? It's one of life's best highs, and you keep going waiting for the next one.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Emily Bartonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13971084813206845680noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28169009.post-14273502799453540442013-02-08T13:30:00.000-05:002013-02-08T13:30:25.332-05:00Do I Need Shoe Shopper's Anonymous?<!--StartFragment-->
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Okay, forget all your preconceived notions of dowdy,
matronly librarians. I happen to work in a library with six paid staff members,
and only one of us is someone who just wears whatever is comfortable (casual
pants and a casual top most of the time. To tell you the truth, I adore her,
but I don’t pay that much attention to what she wears, so I can’t really
describe it). The others? Oh my God! They make me feel like I need to start
attending fashion shows. Each has her own style from Bohemian to funky to classic
tweed, and they all pull it off beautifully.</div>
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I was beginning to feel a bit intimidated surrounded by all
these glamour librarians (<a href="http://musingsfromthesofa.wordpress.com/">Ms. Musings </a>and <a href="http://zoesmom.blogspot.com/">Zoe’s Mom</a>, where are you when a gal
needs a trip into Philly with personal shoppers?). Then, one of my colleagues
came to the rescue. She’d been checking out books on fashion that we have in
our countywide library system, and some of them looked quite good. I
immediately began putting my own reserves on them and checked out a few that we
actually had on our own shelves (she pooh-poohed these because they were all at
least 7 years old – way too old for the truly chic).</div>
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My books all came in, and I began to read them. My two
favorites were <i>Wear This, Toss That </i><span style="font-style: normal;">by
Amy E. Goodman (although I didn't always agree with her), and </span><i>The Lucky Shopping</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> </span><i>Manual</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> by Kim France and
Andrea Linett (my colleague was wrong about being out of date when it comes to
this book published in 2003. It has timeless, practical advice). I like these
two because they’re heavily illustrated and have all kinds of great hints and tips.
Also, neither one insists you define your “body type” and dress accordingly.
Did I ever tell you about having my “colors" done back in the 1980s when that
was all the rage? The woman who did it, ultimately couldn’t figure out if I was
a “spring” or a “summer". Guess what. I have the same problem with body type. I guess I really did break some mold somewhere.</span></div>
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<i>The Lucky Manual</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> is
terrific, because for each article of clothing, it provides a page of specific
illustrations. I (who have never been very up on fashion terminology) could
look at its dress page and know exactly what a “shift” is. I also like it,
because for each article of clothing, it has a section that tells you how to
build your closet for that item. It starts off, “You’re totally covered if you
have…” letting you know which basic pieces you need and also what to add if,
for instance, you’re “a gal who loves dresses.”</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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I’m busy thinking, “This is terrific!” It means I can shop
my closet, streamline, get rid of what I don’t need, and buy those items that
will keep me totally covered. Shopping with specific items in mind, as long as
I can find them (and basics should be pretty easy to find) is far more
appealing to me than aimlessly shopping, unless, of course, I’m shopping for
shoes.</div>
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<br /></div>
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Which leads me to the shoe section. And <i>this </i><span style="font-style: normal;">is when I realize that maybe I have a bit of a
problem. Maybe I need to attend a shoe shoppers support group. I mean, up until
I’d reached this section, I’d found the book to be so practical. “Okay, I need
2 good white tees, 2 good black ones, 4 tanks, 1 striped tee, and 1 henley
(whatever that is) or polo. That I can do.” Then I began browsing the shoe
section. Let’s just say, my blood pressure was on the rise.</span></div>
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Okay, first of all, it opens with this page that pictures a
gorgeous array of shoes to illustrate what a platform or a clog or a flat or an
ankle boot is (funnily enough, I have no problem with shoe terminology).
I will forgive this section for not portraying a single sneaker or such classic
footwear as topsiders or espadrilles. I mean, if we’re going to be told,
basically, that we should never be caught dead in clunky athletic footwear
outside the gym or off the running track – a sentiment with which, by the why,
I happen to whole-heartedly agree – and should pair our tee shirts and shorts
with a sleeker pair of sneakers or other casual shoes, well, you know, give us
some pictures to show us what you mean. I guess I don’t sound too forgiving
here, but, really, I was (how could I not forgive a book with such a gorgeous
photo of shoes?) until I got to the “You’re totally covered if you have…”
section.</div>
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My reaction to this section leads me to believe that when I
attend that shoe shoppers support group, I will have to stand up and say, “My
name is Emily. I am an acknowledged book slut, but, it seems, I am also a shoe
slut.” I’ll probably never attend that meeting, though, because I’m quite sure
I have valid reasons for thinking <i>Lucky</i><span style="font-style: normal;">
is just plain wrong when it comes to shoes. </span></div>
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The manual informs us that if it’s winter, here’s what we
need to be totally covered:</div>
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2 pairs of knee boots (yes. That makes perfect sense. One
brown, one black. Although, 4 is even better: one pair of flat black, and one
pair of heeled black, and same in brown.)</div>
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1 pair of good office shoes (if you work in an office,
you’re there 5 days a week. Say you wear your two pairs of boots two of those
days and your good office shoes on the third – and who says you want to do
that? Perhaps you’re not in a boot mood. Granted, not being in a boot mood has
never happened to me, but it <i>could</i><span style="font-style: normal;">, you
know -- then, you wear your one pair of office shoes. Are you telling me you
must wear two pairs of those shoes twice in one week, showing up to work on
Friday in Mondays oh-so-tired-by-the-end-of-the-week boots?)</span></div>
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1 pair of evening shoes (okay, most winter evenings I’m
rarely wearing anything other than pajama bottoms, a warm pullover, and
slippers, so that makes sense)</div>
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1 pair of casual shoes (again, I ask, “One? Only one? I’m
sorry, but I cannot be monogamous when it comes to casual shoes. I mean, think
of all you have to choose from here: cowboy boots, ankle boots, clogs, loafers,
ballet flats, and what about snow boots? I bet my friends in New York and New
England won’t be wearing sneakers this weekend).</div>
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And that’s it, people. The book claims you’re totally
covered with only 5 pairs of shoes for winter. Am I the only one gasping for
air here? It goes on to say that “if the sky is raining shoes, add another pair
of knee boots, ankle boots, and a flat office shoe.” Let’s not get distracted
here by the idea of the sky raining shoes, which is a lovely image, isn’t it?
If the sky were to open up and pour shoes, surely even I, who, when I was a
kid, always came away from a broken piñata with about 3 pieces of candy, would
be able to get around to collect enough pairs of shoes to have more than 8 in my
winter wardrobe. Especially, since, you know, I’m not one who is comfortable
doing her workout videos in knee boots, and I don’t see athletic shoes
mentioned anywhere in the “totally covered” list.</div>
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Here’s what I supposedly need to be totally covered for
summer:</div>
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2 pairs of good office shoes (even fewer choices in summer
for the office than in winter. The sexist in me assumes your male colleagues
probably won’t notice, but can’t you just hear your female colleagues referring
to you as “that woman who wears the same shoes all the time”?).</div>
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1 pair of good flat sandals (surely this is a misprint. They
meant 3, right?).</div>
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1 pair of flip flops (oh, good grief. Flip flops cost about
as much as a pack of Lifesavers, and certainly I need one pair in each of the
five flavors).</div>
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I pair of strappy, sexy sandals (again. How could you ever
decide on one color? If I own only black or white, it seems I find myself
choosing a dress that screams for a pair of red or silver or light pink).</div>
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If it’s a summer thunderstorm of shoes (and they don’t pour
down with scorch marks all over them), I can add more strappy sandals (oh,
good. Hello, red, silver, pink, <i>and</i><span style="font-style: normal;">
green) and some light-colored office shoes.</span></div>
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Again, I ask you, where are the sneakers? I don’t know about
you, but I must have at least 2 pairs of cute sneakers (not athletic shoes,
mind you, but sneakers) for summer. I’m just not into the strappy, sexy sandals
and shorts look at my age. I may <i>be</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> a
shoe slut, but I certainly don’t want to </span><i>look</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> like one.</span></div>
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Okay, so tell me, do I need help? 16 pairs of shoes for one
year just isn’t enough for me. Also, I forgot to mention the fact that I will
happily wear an impulse buy once or twice and decide to get rid of it once I
discover that I’m hobbling around like an ancient Chinese bride after they’ve
been on my feet for 3 hours. Perhaps I’m just one of those gals whose hormones
are a little different. I need 40 pairs of shoes when others need only 16. Does
that make me such a bad person? As Rizzo, in <i>Grease</i>, might sing, “There are
worse things I could do than go with a pair of shoes or two (or 40).” While I
ponder all this, I think I’ll take my DSW coupon and head off to see what
they’ve gotten in since I was last there.</div>
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Emily Bartonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13971084813206845680noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28169009.post-48270148837591763832013-01-29T16:13:00.000-05:002013-02-02T10:47:01.874-05:00My 25 Favorite Reads of 2012<!--StartFragment-->
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(This is a long overdue post, but maybe people are looking
for some new titles to help them with any reading challenges they may have
signed on to do in 2013 -- people still do that, right? -- and will discover some here.) I keep detailed
statistics of the books I read every year, because I’m geeky like that. For
several years, I wrote blog posts that noted how many books I’d read total and
then broke them up into categories like “books by male authors” or “books by
American authors” or “books written in the 19<sup>th</sup> century”. I’ve found
that it’s gotten a bit depressing to do that, though, because every year I
begin with all these grand plans to, say, read very few books from the 21<sup>st</sup>
century, since I’m so disappointed by so many of them, and then I wind up
reading 63 books written in the 21<sup>st</sup> century. Or I decide I’m going
to read more short story collections, and I read none. Or I’m going to read more books
translated into English from other languages this year, and then I read 6 (and do two Stieg
Larssons really count?).</div>
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Rather than looking too closely at all the numbers and
reminding myself that, basically, I’m still just a book slut who should stop pretending that meaningful relationships are all she wants, I’m
going to do something different this go-round. I’m going to boast that I finished reading 95
books in 2012, decided not to finish 4, and was nearly through 2 others when
2013 arrived on the scene. This means I read a whopping 49,500+ pages. Wow!
That sounds pretty impressive.</div>
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These are the 25 that I thought were the best (arranged
alphabetically by title). This doesn’t mean they were necessarily the sorts of
books that wind up on “greatest books” lists, but they are the ones that
resonated with me, that made me laugh or cry or think, or that made me abandon
almost everything else in life until I’d gotten through them. I’d love to know
what others thought of any of the books on this list, so please feel free to
share your opinions.</div>
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1.<i> 1984 </i><span style="font-style: normal;">by George Orwell</span></div>
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I expected to drag myself through a ho-hum classic. Instead,
I was riveted and terrified and talked about it ad nauseam to anyone who would listen. If anyone isn't tired of listening, I wrote about it on my library blog <a href="http://pvreader.wordpress.com/2012/03/08/1984-by-george-orwell/">here</a>.</div>
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2. <i>11/22/63</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> by Stephen
King</span></div>
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The Stephen King book for people who don’t think they like
Stephen King. But I already like Stephen King, and this one tackled one of my
favorite subjects – time travel – with such an interesting premise, one that was
quite believable despite being quite absurd. Oh, and we had a little (doomed)
romance, too. I loved it.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
3. <i>About Time</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> by Simona
Sparaco</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Wow!” That’s the one-word review I wanted to write about
this book when I wrote <a href="http://emilybarton.blogspot.com/search?q=about+time">this</a> instead.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
4. <i>The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian </i><span style="font-style: normal;">by Sherman Alexie</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I absolutely, truly did not want to read this one for my
book-and-a-movie discussion group. I was absolutely; truly wrong not to
think I was going to love this funny and sad little book about surviving and
how we choose different identities in order to do so. (We followed it up with <i>Smoke
Signals</i><span style="font-style: normal;">, a movie I saw when it came out,
but which was even better than I remember after having read this book.)</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
5. <i>Broken Harbor</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> by Tana
French</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Okay, so when is the next Tana French book due to be
published? As far as I’m concerned, she can do no wrong.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
6. <i>Burn, Witch, Burn!</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> by
A. Merritt</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This book had every horror ingredient to make Emily happy:
questions of science versus black magic; creepy dolls; a heavy reliance on
ancient myth and folklore; the role of psychology in fear; and plenty of
ambivalence about what was really happening. Set it in New York City, and
really, what could be better? (NOTE: at 2:30 a.m. – I’m sure those of you
familiar with the hour can attest to this – acrobatic dolls wielding tiny
weapons seem perfectly plausible).</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
7. <i>Diary of<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Provincial Lady</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> by E. M. Delafield</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
You could call Delafield’s unnamed wife the original Bridget
Jones, but you’d be doing her a disservice. She’s deeper than Bridget and has
much more to tell you about the society in which she lives. Even though you’re
laughing out loud on the outside, on the inside you’re realizing how horribly
oppressive it all is.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
8. <i>The Cellist of Sarajevo</i> by Steven Galloway<br />
Pure poetry to help soothe absolute horror. A perfect book to remind me what an incredibly spoiled and easy life I've lived thus far.<br />
<br />
9. <i>Dragonwyck</i> by Anya Seton<br />
Sigh! Barring, you know, things like <i>The Castle of Otranto</i> and <i>Jane Eyre</i> can there be such a thing as the perfect Gothic romance? If so, this is it, all the more amazing because it doesn't take place in some remote European castle or manor, but rather in an Upstate New York I never even knew existed, historically, until I read this book.<br />
<br />
10. <i>The Domestic Life of the Americans </i><span style="font-style: normal;">by Fanny Trollope (or “Mrs. Trollope”, as my copy
says)</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A fun, funny, and enlightening look at early 19<sup>th</sup>-century
America as seen through the eyes of an English lady. I enjoyed her perspective,
the historical detail, and verification that “the more things change, the more
they stay the same.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
11. <i>The Eyes of the Overworld </i><span style="font-style: normal;">by Jack Vance</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
All three of the Dying Earth books by Vance are good, but
this one (the 2<sup>nd</sup>) was my favorite. The last time I ran across a
character in fantasy who delighted me as much as Vance’s Cugal does was the
last time I encountered the Phoenix in E. Nesbit’s <i>The Phoenix and the Carpet</i>.
Vance created a wonderful, dreamlike state (seriously. I had some awesome
dreams when I was reading this book) in which to appreciate this character who
is clever, funny, wise, and just oh-so-full-of-himself enough that those other three
traits aren't always enough to keep him out of trouble.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
12. <i>Girl in Translation</i><span style="font-style: normal;">
by Jean Kwok</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I had no idea. Really. I just had no idea that people still
led such lives in New York City. I thought this was going to be a book about
sweatshops and tenement housing circa 1907. And, no, I didn’t find the ending
the least bit unbelievable.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
13. <i>Kane and Abel </i><span style="font-style: normal;">by
Jeffrey Archer</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
If you’d told me last year at this time, “Emily, this year
you’re going to read this book by Jeffrey Archer, and you’re not going to be
able to put it down,” I probably would have looked at you as if you were nuts.
But then, because I’m me, I would’ve gone in search of this tale about two
corporate enemies and probably would’ve read it long before it was chosen for
our library book discussion group, discovering that you’d been absolutely
right: I was unable to put it down. Well, stranger things have happened, I
suppose.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
14. <i>Little Scarlet </i><span style="font-style: normal;">by
Walter Mosley</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A fascinating and riveting book that opened my eyes in ways
they’ve never been opened when it comes to the plight of blacks living in
America. Easy Rawlins, as I described him <a href="http://emilybarton.blogspot.com/2012/06/two-for-price-of-one-ct-mystery-book.html">here</a>, is a righteous marshmallow whom
it’s hard not to love.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
15. <i>Model Home </i><span style="font-style: normal;">by Eric
Puchner</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There’s a Jonathan Franzen-ish feel about this book, but I
liked it much better than <i>The Corrections</i>. Maybe it’s because Puchner’s a
master of characterization. Each one of his believable and empathetic
characters is a train wreck waiting to happen. I don’t tend to think of myself
as the rubber-necking type, but there I was, front and center at the track,
unable to move until I’d witnessed all the accidents.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
16. <i>The Name of the Wind</i><span style="font-style: normal;">
by Patrick Rothfuss</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A highly, highly addictive drug. So much so that I’m being
very careful before I pick up the second book, which I received for Christmas,
featuring my friend Kvothe. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
17. <i>The Phantom Tollbooth</i><span style="font-style: normal;">
by Norton Juster</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
You’ll know all you need to know when I tell you that this
is the only book I read as a child that I’ve since read 3 times as an adult.
Well, except <i>Daddy Long Legs</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> by Jean
Webster, which would also have made this list if I hadn’t read so many other
good books this year.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
18. <i>Rules of Civility</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> by
Amor Towles</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
If you haven’t read it already, what are you waiting for? It
certainly deserves the comparisons to F. Scott Fitzgerald and Edith Wharon that
it’s received. An added bonus: the author sent me a lovely email after I
wrote <a href="http://emilybarton.blogspot.com/2012/04/but-emperor-has-no-clothes.html">this</a>.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
19. <i>Pride and Prejudice </i><span style="font-style: normal;">by
Jane Austen</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Need I even give any sort of explanation as to why this one
makes the list?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
20. <i>Salmon Fishing in the Yemen</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> by Paul Torday</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I said it before, and I’ll say it again: finding good, 21<sup>st</sup>-century
farce isn’t easy. If you’re going to find it, it’s best to turn to a British
writer, even better just to go right to this brilliant little book by Torday.
Nobody escapes his wry observations, which makes for many, many chuckles, and
even a few laugh-out-loud moments.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
21. <i>A Son of the Circus </i><span style="font-style: normal;">by
John Irving</span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyTextIndent" style="text-indent: 0in;">
It had been years since I’d
read any John Irving, which is funny, because I always think of him as one of
my favorite authors. I wasn’t quite sure how he, Mr. New England, was going to
pull off a book set in India. Well, he’s John Irving. He pulled it off with
aplomb, and as always, I began missing the company of his beautifully well-drawn
characters the minute I got to the last page.</div>
<div class="MsoBodyTextIndent">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyTextIndent" style="text-indent: 0in;">
22. <i>Strangers at the Feast </i><span style="font-style: normal;">by Jennifer Vanderbes</span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyTextIndent" style="text-indent: 0in;">
Another one to compare to
Jonathan Franzen, I read an online review that described this one as “<i>The
Corrections</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> lite”.</span><i> </i><span style="font-style: normal;">Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. It’s “</span><i>The Corrections</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> tight”. Vanderbes has an incredible knack for giving
snippets of information about her fully-realized characters without getting
into unnecessary detail, snippets that work miracles when it comes to
understanding them. All the while, she tells a compelling story that raises all
kinds of interesting questions.</span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyTextIndent">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyTextIndent" style="text-indent: 0in;">
23. <i>The Suspicions of Mr.
Whicher</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> by Kate Summerscale</span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyTextIndent" style="text-indent: 0in;">
A fascinating story that
made me think so much about family relations/dynamics and the problem of
isolation in those Victorian English country houses.</div>
<div class="MsoBodyTextIndent">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyTextIndent" style="text-indent: 0in;">
24. <i>Unbroken </i><span style="font-style: normal;">by Laura Hillenbrand</span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyTextIndent" style="text-indent: 0in;">
Shattering! It was
exhausting to read (or rather, to listen to, because that’s what I did) but
impossible to stop until I got to the bitter end. It brought to life the
horrors of World War II’s Pacific theater in ways I never could have imagined.
Nonetheless, Hillendbrand managed to end it with hope.</div>
<div class="MsoBodyTextIndent">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyTextIndent" style="text-indent: 0in;">
25. <i>Wild </i><span style="font-style: normal;">by Cheryl Strayed</span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyTextIndent" style="text-indent: 0in;">
I still can’t believe I
suffered, along with memoirist Strayed, through unbearable heat, frigid cold, a
monstrously heavy backpack, dehydration, moments of loneliness and despair,
lost toenails – not to mention a hiking boot that went sailing off a cliff -- and
came away from it thinking, “I’d like to hike some of the Pacific Crest Trail.”</div>
<!--EndFragment-->
Emily Bartonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13971084813206845680noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28169009.post-73957489766315307432013-01-18T20:43:00.000-05:002013-01-18T20:49:51.390-05:00A Coffin for Dimitrios by Eric Ambler<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEispWKpFwMJbqpYF_FebtJvKbStEEaqqyAB0ijoY0Ly4SEMnXCeAxk92MXsIdGE6qrR7LTjwGn4ORVb2nx72L2h-LIp_4yLg6I0WYame2dVJ2XyNu2aFPi7rl_yOzz0UZoZezEC/s1600/Coffin+for+Dimitrios.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEispWKpFwMJbqpYF_FebtJvKbStEEaqqyAB0ijoY0Ly4SEMnXCeAxk92MXsIdGE6qrR7LTjwGn4ORVb2nx72L2h-LIp_4yLg6I0WYame2dVJ2XyNu2aFPi7rl_yOzz0UZoZezEC/s320/Coffin+for+Dimitrios.jpg" width="206" /></a></div>
<b>Ambler, Eric. <i>A Coffin for Dimitrios</i>. New York: Vintage Books, 2001.</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
<i>(This book was originally published in 1939.)</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
"<span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 1px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 1px; color: #181818; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px;">Yet another one of those forgotten mystery writers of the early 20th century. Ambler is caustic in a way I like, and there was a very good surprise at the end. It's a great vacation read, and I'll probably read more of his at some point."</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 1px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 1px; color: #181818; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 1px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 1px; color: #181818; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px;">That's what my brief review of this book on Goodreads says, which I wrote after I read it back in July of 2011. I was thrilled when it was chosen as this month's book for the Connecticut mystery book group, because (even though this is the only book of his I've read thus far), I think it's high time the world rediscovered Eric Ambler, who was recommended to me by a friend who never steers me wrong. If you look him up, which I did last time I read him, you'll find he's described as a writer of "spy novels." I suppose I need to read more by him, because I wouldn't describe this book as anything other than an ordinary old mystery, even more so because our "hero" isn't a spy. Yes, we encounter espionage, but our protagonist Latimer is a former professor turned full-time mystery writer. To get an idea of Ambler's wry sense of humor, you hit it on the second page of the first chapter in this description of Latimer:</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>A Bloody Shovel</i> was an immediate success. It was followed by <i>'I,' said the Fly</i> and <i>Murder's Arms</i>. From the great army of university professors who write detective stories in their spare time, Latimer soon emerged as one of the shamefaced few who could make money at the sport. (p. 10)</blockquote>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 1px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 1px; color: #181818; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px;">I was hooked the moment I read not only that line about the army of university professors, but also those book titles. The book titles become even funnier when Latimer (who has settled in Turkey when we're first introduced to him) meets the Turkish Colonel Haki, whose common language with Latimer is French, and has to spend "some time trying to explain in French the meaning of 'to call a spade a bloody shovel.'" (p. 15)</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 1px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 1px; color: #181818; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 1px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 1px; color: #181818; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px;">But let's get back to the notion of a "spy novel." This is the second book I've read for the CT mystery club whose author is generally known as a writer of that genre. Maybe I need to redefine that genre for myself, because I expect it to be technical and (despite all the "page-turning" claims) boring, which I noted when we read <a href="http://emilybarton.blogspot.com/search?q=call+for+the+dead">John Le Carré</a>. Neither this nor <i>Call for the Dead</i> could be described as technical or boring. I will say that if I'd just read a description of the two books side by side, and had been told to pick one, I would have chosen this one for the fact that it was written before the Cold War, a topic I find tiresome. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 1px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 1px; color: #181818; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 1px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 1px; color: #181818; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px;">Funny, though, I did find similarities between the two books, and not just because they both involved spies. It had more to do with the matter-of-fact writing style of the two authors, although based on these two books, I'd say Le Carré was the more sentimental of the two. Le Carré has more of a sense of longing for the good old days and wanting everything to be right and in its place, whereas Ambler seems to be laughing at human desire for such things (sorry. These are just feelings I have, and I can't really back them up with any examples or clues as to why I have them. Maybe someone else in the group, having read the two books I have, can identify why I might feel this way?). The other author Ambler brought to mind, strangely enough, was Somerset Maugham. There's this wonderful old-fashioned style of writing that's gone completely out of vogue these days, probably because editors and publishers don't think anyone has the attention span to tolerate it, in which a story's narrator likes to give his or her opinion, an opinion which is usually philosophical in nature and often involves quoting others' opinions. It may be out of style, but I love it when I come across a writer who likes to express his or her feelings about things. In fact, I probably lied when I said I was hooked from the moment I read the aforementioned quote. I was probably hooked from the very first line of the book, "A Frenchman named Chamfort, who should have known better, once said that chance was a nickname for Providence." (p. 9). We have both a quote and an opinion about it in one sentence, not to mention something to mull over ourselves: are chance and Providence the same thing? I read that, and I'm smiling.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 1px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 1px; color: #181818; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 1px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 1px; color: #181818; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px;">That's what there is to love about this book, because, apart from it, the plot was pretty straightforward. We knew who the "bad guy" was from the beginning, and it was just a matter of figuring out everything he'd done and how he'd done it. Latimer takes on this "what and how" as his task, and we follow him from country to country, all over pre-WWII Europe, not sure whom, exactly, we can and can't trust. There <i>is </i>the huge surprise when you near the end of the book, which I mentioned on Goodreads, as well as the standard fear-for-your-protagonist's-life plot device incorporated in almost every mystery I've ever read (always a little more nerve-wracking when the book isn't told in the first person, which this one isn't), but there's nothing extremely original plot-wise, here, to those who've been in a mystery book club for something like five years. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 1px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 1px; color: #181818; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 1px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 1px; color: #181818; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px;">Bottom line: I enjoyed it immensely and still intend to read more Ambler. I might even read other authors defined as writers of "spy novels." But I can guarantee an early death (and don't accuse me of murder) if you decide to hold your breath waiting for that to happen. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 1px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 1px; color: #181818; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 1px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 1px; color: #181818; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 1px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 1px; color: #181818; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 1px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 1px; color: #181818; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 1px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 1px; color: #181818; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 1px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 1px; color: #181818; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 1px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 1px; color: #181818; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px;"><br /></span>Emily Bartonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13971084813206845680noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28169009.post-41698993386703809572013-01-13T16:05:00.002-05:002013-01-18T19:21:47.722-05:0012 - 14 - 12It's been a month since the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, a very tough month for me (which is why a New Year's resolution to revive this blog was put on hold for a couple of weeks). If I still have any readers left who were with me when I began this blog, you know that I moved from Connecticut to Pennsylvania five years ago. What you may not know is that I moved from the village of Sandy Hook in Newtown, CT. I wrote on my Facebook page, but it's worth repeating, that I'm saddened that I will never again have this conversation:<br />
<br />
"So, where did you live in Connecticut?"<br />
<br />
"Newtown. You've probably never heard of it. Do you know Connecticut at all? It's between Danbury and Waterbury."<br />
<br />
It's funny how life works. I hadn't been back to Sandy Hook for some time, but in early November, while in CT for <a href="http://ofbooksandbikes.wordpress.com/">Rebecca's </a>baby shower, I had gone to Sandy Hook with <a href="http://zoesmom.blogspot.com/">Zoe's Mom</a> (just after Hurricane Sandy had devastated other parts of Connecticut I know and love. 2012 was not a good year for the name "Sandy"), so I could meet the new tenants who are renting Bob's and my house and to take a "walk through" with them. Our old tenants -- former neighbors with 3 young boys -- had moved into a house not far away, but I hadn't seen them this go-round. My November visit reminded me of the early days of Bob's and my marriage (we moved there together the year we got married and lived there for 12 years), of questions about whether or not we should have children, of the neighbors we knew and loved, of the friends we made at Valley Presbyterian Church in nearby Brookfield (many of whom lived in Newtown, like we did. New England doesn't have many Presbyterian churches, and it was the only one in the area). Sandy Hook was a lovely little place to begin married life.<br />
<br />
We've been away long enough that most of the kids we know are too old to have been in attendance at Sandy Hook Elementary on Dec. 14th, but we did know of six children (including our former tenants -- Bob and I used to babysit the oldest boy -- and Zoe's Mom's niece and nephew). We spent an agonizing two days waiting to hear whether or not they were all okay. Understandably, getting back to messages sent/left by Bob and Emily was not high on parents' priority lists at that time. We got final word when the list of victims was released late Saturday afternoon. Nobody we know personally was listed among the victims.<br />
<br />
That is not to say we know anyone who hasn't been affected. It's a small community, one in which it's impossible to raise children and not to have known at least one, if not all, of the victims. We even heard from one friend who is a school nurse in the city of Bridgeport at a middle school. Her school was suffering that day because Sandy Hook's principal, who was identified early on, was married to one of their teachers. Our friend described how hard it was for her colleagues that day, suffering as they were, to try to hold it together for the students, all of whom were getting all kinds of misinformation via cell phones. Because Bob and I lived in Newtown for over a decade, I also happen to know young men and women (I still think of them as "kids" even though they're in their early twenties now) who went to school with Adam Lanza and his older brother Ryan. How sad for one young friend in particular when early reports identified Ryan as the gunman.<br />
<br />
So, it's been a month, and I'm still grieving. I'm not as glued to the news about it as I was 3 and 4 weeks ago, but I still find myself crying at odd times. I expect to grieve for quite some time, especially when I think of all the kids I've known personally who spent their first few years of school at Sandy Hook Elementary. The last time I was at the school, I went to see a young friend play a lion in her kindergarten play -- a young friend who is now a middle schooler and who is pursuing drama, thanks, I like to think, to that experience.<br />
<br />
I grieve for all those who have been left to pick up the pieces and to somehow find the bravery to keep on going. I've attended one funeral for a child in my lifetime, and it was devastating. I'd hate to have to do it again. I can't imagine attending funeral after funeral for those beautiful young children. I can't imagine being a parent who has to help a young child through the horror of losing so many friends. I can't imagine being the parent of an older child who wasn't at the school, but who is now afraid to go to school, and not for the typical reasons a 12-year-old kid might be afraid of going to school (someone might make fun of her shoes, say, or a teacher might ask a question she can't answer), but because school is now viewed as a potentially very dangerous place. No child should have his or her innocence rocked like that.<br />
<br />
Selfishly, I will say that being down here in Pennsylvania, there have been times when I've felt quite alone in my grief. I'm learning more about human denial and dissociation than I ever cared to learn. People in my community here don't want to hear or talk about Newtown. Bob made it a focus of 2 sermons (the Sunday right after the shootings and the following Sunday), and a couple of people responded, "How much do we have to hear about Newtown? It's Christmas! Where's the Christmas joy?" I can forgive them (sort of) for their insensitivity. They don't want to think about it or talk about it (especially those who have kids of their own). I just hope no one is being that insensitive to the residents of Newtown. I also hope that those of us who are not in Newtown, don't just move on with our lives, heads in the sand, glad this horrific thing didn't happen in our own communities, forgetting that there is a lovely little town in Connecticut that will be grieving for a very, very long time. They deserve to remain in our thoughts and prayers.Emily Bartonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13971084813206845680noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28169009.post-71936694495145470512012-12-02T14:07:00.000-05:002012-12-02T15:03:21.302-05:00(The Many More than) Five Book MemeThe Queen o' Memes really ought to relinquish her crown at this point, but, every so often, she polishes it a bit and decides to pick up on someone else's meme. Maybe, one of these days, she'll even create one of her own. In the meantime, she saw this one both at <a href="http://litlove.wordpress.com/">Litlove's</a> and <a href="http://musingsfromthesofa.wordpress.com/">Ms. Musing's</a>. And, well, you know, the Queen can't resist a book meme.<br />
<br />
<strong>1. BOOK I'M READING</strong><br />
<br />
Since I am almost always reading more than one book at a time, this one really ought to be "Book<em><b>s</b></em> I'm reading." I thought about narrowing it down to one title, but that wouldn't be any fun, would it? So, here you go:<br />
<br />
a. <em>The Abbot's Ghost</em> by Louisa May Alcott<br />
"Christmas just won't be Christmas without any Louisa May Alcott." Or so I think whenever December rolls around. For some reason, every Christmas vacation when I was a kid, I seemed to read at least one book by Louisa May Alcott. <i>The Abbot's Ghost</i> is supposedly one of those "sensational mysteries/thrillers" she wrote to earn her keep before hitting it big with the likes of <em>Little Woman </em>and <em>Little Men</em>. It can also be classified as a "Christmas read" since this little edition of it bears the subtitle "A Christmas Tale." So far (at nearly the halfway mark), I have yet to fathom how it could be a mystery, why it's called a Christmas tale, nor why there's been no abbot and no ghost. Maybe these mysteries will be solved by the time I finish it. Anyway, as always with Alcott, I've met some interesting (if somewhat stereotyped) characters.<br />
<br />
b. <em>The Ghost and the Dead</em> <i>Deb</i> by Alice Kimberly<br />
I know it's supposedly the Christmas season, so why am I reading all these books about ghosts? Well, you know me and ghosts. As far as I'm concerned, we could just celebrate Halloween every month and forget all the other holidays (sshhh, don't tell The Minister I said that). <i>The Ghost and the Dead Deb </i>is the second in a series that merges the "cozy" genre with the "hard-boiled" genre by including a bookstore-owning, accidental sleuth and a dead PI whose ghost happens to be stuck in her bookstore. Such mindless fluff is the sort of thing that ought to be found in every Christmas stocking, along with the chocolate-marshmallow Santas.<br />
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c. <em>The Path to Power</em> by Robert Caro<br />
Such mindful iron is not the sort of thing that ought to stretch a Christmas stocking, but I've been reading <i>The Path to Power </i>since well before December, and I'll probaby be reading this mammoth book about Lyndon Johnson for the rest of my life, which means I won't have time to read all the others Robert Caro published afterwards (4 in all, each hovering around 800 or so pages long). In fact, I've been considering writing blog posts about this as I read through it -- about 10-20 pages at a time -- but have yet to do so, which means I probably won't. Suffice it to say (for now, unless I get motivated to write more) that it's a fascinating history, extremely well-written, and a wonderful look at a piece of American politics (maybe even a wonderful look at 20th-century American politics in general).<br />
<br />
d. <em>Domestic Manners of the Americans</em> by Mrs. Trollope<br />
A couple of years ago, one of my English cousins was staying with my parents and reading their copy of <i>Domestic Manners of the Americans</i>, which I never knew they had. My cousin was raving about how good it was, and my parents couldn't believe I'd never read it, so, this year, when they were moving and getting rid of tons of books, my mother gave it (a lovely, illustrated copy published in 1901 that is, sadly, beginning to fall apart) to me. OMG, what fun it is! Mrs. Trollope (yes, the mother of THAT Trollope) came to America in the late 1820s and spent something like 3 years here. This is sort of like reading Eric Linklater's <em>Juan in America</em>, but it isn't fiction, and, although Linklater was trying to make his audience laugh, I'm quite sure that half the time Fanny Trollope didn't mean to be funny. Nonetheless, she has no qualms about stating her opinions, to great comic effect. If Caro is a wonderful look at 20th-century American politics, Trollope is a wonderful look at 19th-century American daily life, when the country was still so very young and rough, as portrayed in only the way that a true outsider could portray it. (If you've never read it, put this treat on your Christmas list posthaste). <br />
<br />
e.<em> The Arabian Nights</em> edited by Muhsin Mahdi and translated by Husain Haddawy<br />
I've been reading this one almost all year, a few stories at a time. It's extremely addictive and hard to put down, but I wanted to read it this way, so I've managed to discipline myself and only rarely have I fallen into the trap of "just one more story ... okay, just one more after that ... well, I <em>have</em> to keep reading to find out what happens now ..." I'll be sad to see it end by the end of this month. Shahrazad would easily have kept me up all night every night for months on end if I'd known her. Little known fact, BTW: Aladdin was not an original tale.<br />
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And, then, there's the audiobook I'm listening to:<br />
<br />
f. <i>Nobody's Fool </i>by Richard Russo<br />
It's Richard Russo. It's brilliant. Need I say more?<br />
<br />
<br />
<strong>2. THE LAST BOOK I READ</strong><br />
Again, I need to change the phrasing of this to "the last book I finished reading," because, otherwise, I'm afraid I'll have to list 5 or 6 more books, and, well, we'll never get through this meme, will we?<br />
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<em>Kane and Abel</em> by Jeffery Archer<br />
"What on earth possessed you to read that?" you may very well ask. And it's a good question with a simple answer: it was chosen as November's book for our library book discussion group. I got sick and missed the actual discussion (good thing, because I'd barely begun it when the group met last Tuesday), but this was surprisingly good company for someone who had no voice, and, thus, had nothing better to do for 3 days than to lie around and read. Who would've ever thought I'd like a book about two 20th-century American corporate barons (one a self-made immigrant and one born into the moneyed class) and their hatred of each other? But I did. I was mesmerized. So much so that this was the fourth of only four books I read this year that made me abandon all else I was reading until I was done (the other three -- because if I were reading this post and didn't know, I'd be curious, and so I assume you are -- were <i>Wild</i> by Cheryl Strayed, <i>Broken Harbor</i> by Tana French, and <i>The Name of the Wind</i> by Patrick Rothfuss).<br />
<br />
<b>3. THE BOOK I'LL READ NEXT</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
I can't guarantee it, because I often find myself picking up some book at work that I had no intention of reading, bringing it home, and becoming immersed in it, but I'm pretty sure that if it's not the very next book I read, I will <i>soon </i>be reading <i>Pies and Prejudice</i> by Heather Vogel Frederick. This is the fourth book in her Mother Daughter Book Club series for kids, and I'm completely hooked. I wish this series had been around when I was a kid. I'm especially eager to read this one, because Emma, one of the daughters in the series, is dragged off to live in England during her freshman year of high school, which is exactly what happened to me during my freshman year of high school. (If you have a young friend age 9-12 or so who hasn't read any of the books in this series, I highly recommend you give her the first -- called <i>The Mother Daughter Book Club --</i> for Xmas and get her hooked.)<br />
<br />
<b>4. THE LAST BOOK I BOUGHT</b><br />
I'm going to assume this means last book I bought for myself, since it's that time of year when I've been buying books as gifts for others. Again, I will have to give you more than one, because in one of those "one gift for him, two for me" moments of Christmas shopping, I ordered the following two books for myself from Persephone (and am eagerly checking the mailbox every day. Damn the Christmas season for slowing things down so much).<br />
<br />
a. <i>Harriet</i> by Elizabeth Jenkins<br />
<i>Harriet</i> is a novelization of the mysterious death of a 19th-century wealthy woman named Harriet Richardson. You can't get much better than a true-crime-based-murder-mystery published by Persephone, huh?<br />
<br />
b. <i>Patience</i> by John Coates<br />
It's rare to find Persephone books written by men and even rarer to find <i>any</i> books written by men about how unsatisfying mid-twentieth-century marriage could be for women. <i>Patience</i> is just such a book, apparently. Oh, and it's supposed to be funny, too. It sounds a bit like it was written in the same vein as Winifred Watson's <i>Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day</i> and E. M. Delafield's <i>Diary of a Provincial Lady</i>. We'll see, I guess, when it arrives.<br />
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<b>5. THE LAST BOOK I WAS GIVEN</b><br />
It was a copy of Daphne duMaurier's <i>Don't Look Now</i>, sent to me by <a href="http://emilybarton.blogspot.com/2011/05/ah-yeah-california-2011-part-three.html">my friend Gary</a>, and which I hadn't read since I was a teenager. This collection of short stories was just as good as I remembered it being. <br />
<br />Emily Bartonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13971084813206845680noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28169009.post-21723848195587524382012-11-17T20:45:00.000-05:002012-11-25T19:48:03.142-05:00In a Lonely Place by Dorothy B. Hughes<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b>Hughes, Dorothy B. <i>In a Lonely Place</i>. New York: Feminist Press, 2003. </b><br />
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<i>(This book was originally published in 1947.)</i><br />
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Oh, where to begin with this month's choice for the CT mystery book club? Maybe I should start by saying that I'm going to address two things. The first will be the book itself. The second will be the Afterward to this edition, written by Lisa Maria Hogeland of the University of Cincinnati. And a warning: SPOILERS. I hate spoilers, but I really can't avoid them with this book.<br />
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First, the book. Some of you may remember how I waxed poetic o'er Dorothy B. Hughes's <i><a href="http://emilybarton.blogspot.com/2011/09/rip-challenge-book-one-expendable-man.html">The Expendable Man</a></i>, so I was excited to read another book by her that I probably wouldn't have gotten around to until ... well ... ever (truth be told). I don't watch many movies, so I'd never seen the movie version of this book and had no idea what to expect. I'm glad about that, since the movie, apparently, differs significantly from the book and would have reinforced the preconceptions I had when I began to read (because, of course, merely not knowing what to expect didn't mean that I had no expectations).<br />
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The biggest expectation I had was that there would be some sudden surprise, a plot twist that I didn't see coming. That's what Hughes gave us in <i>The Expendable Man</i> (read almost anything that discusses that book -- including the Afterward to this one -- and you will, unfortunately, be informed of that surprise from the get-go. I, however, refuse to spill the beans. The whole brilliance of the novel is not knowing until Hughes is ready to tell you. Thank you, <a href="http://www.persephonebooks.co.uk/books/the-expendable-man/">Persephone</a>, for keeping it out of your ad copy). That means, despite being told from the beginning that Dix Steele was a murderer, I didn't believe it. (I guess if you've seen the movie, you'd approach this book with the same expectation, because he isn't in the movie version.) I kept waiting for the moment when All Would Be Revealed: he was a private eye, one step behind a killer but one step ahead of the police detectives, or he really <i>was </i>writing a novel, and again, was one step ahead of the police detectives in a way that would help them solve the crime. That's the sort of book I expected Hughes to write. If you read it with that expectation, you'll realize there's nothing concrete (at least nothing that I spotted) pointing to him as the murderer, nothing one can't "explain away" while waiting for the Big Twist to reveal itself. In hindsight, I suppose Hughes did that on purpose, wanting the reader to be unsure about whether or not this was a killer, since it's so rare to tell a murder mystery from the killer's point of view the way she did.<br />
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Well, I'm the fool. What is it I've heard over and over again from all wise fictional detectives? Even Brub Nicolai, Dix's former army buddy turned police detective, knew that the simplest solution is almost always the correct one. I was busy creating all kinds of alternative realities for Dix when his reality was right there in front of me, while he was confessing to me, even. He was seeking female victims, raping and strangling them, and he had a serial killer's ego, "Let's make this more exciting by socializing with the police detective assigned to my case. Will he ever catch All-So-Clever-Me?" What's interesting to me here is that Hughes, writing before the term "serial killer" had come into being, had the profile down pat (I know this, of course, because I've watched my share of episodes of <i>Criminal Minds</i> and have read my share of Thomas Harris books). Dix taunted the police. He was sure he was covering all his bases, and he was even more sure no one would ever catch him.<br />
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I'm twice the fool for having paid attention to the cover copy. Here, we read about the " ... luscious Laurel Gray -- a femme fatale with brains ... " Everyone knows that the femme fatale leads the <i>good</i> guy astray, not the bad, right? I read Laurel's character all wrong. Actually, I loved this clever twist on Hughes's part. The bad guy is actually seduced by a good woman who helps catch him. Maybe this was meant to be Hughes's Big Plot Twist a la <i>The Expendable Man</i>. If so, it was a letdown (but only because I know she's capable of so much more).<br />
<br />
Basically, once the skeptic in me, who was never convinced some big surprise was actually coming, began to beat up on the optimist who kept waiting for it, I found myself disappointed by this book. All I could think was that it was a <i>The <a href="http://emilybarton.blogspot.com/2010/03/talented-mr-ripley-by-patricia.html">Talented Mr. Ripley</a></i> wannabe that didn't cut it. Except that it couldn't be, because it predates Highsmith's book (which leads me to wonder if Highsmith read Hughes and found herself thinking, "I could do that better").<br />
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I can't pinpoint exactly why I found <i>The Talented Mr. Ripley</i> to be so much better. Does it help if I tell you I didn't feel like I needed a bath after reading this one? I guess that means I never really empathized with Dix Steele; I never felt that Hughes helped to establish the fact that there just might be a killer in all of us, if only given the right environment and circumstances. Hughes kept Steele at a distance, which would have been a fantastic ploy if he'd turned out not to be a killer, but made the novel weaker, since he was.<br />
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This brings me to the Afterward, which makes a big deal of discussing how the reader is kept at a distance from Dix Steele, asserting this as proof of its being a protofeminist work. I don't know about you (and I know it's all the rage in academia to do such things), but I usually find it quite amusing when people try to impose 21st-century sympathies on anything written in prior centuries. Here, we have a "feminist" reading of <i>In a Lonely Place</i>. I'm grateful to this Afterward, because I learned quite a lot about Hughes, as well as how the movie version differs from the book, but, really, I can't recommend much else about it. <br />
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Lisa Marie Hogeland makes some mighty bold statements, like, "This particular psycho killer simply cannot be attributed to women, remarkable for a story written in the 1940s." Really? Has she read any Ross Macdonald (okay, he began publishing a couple of years later, but not <i>much</i> later, especially when you consider the fact that eras very rarely strictly fit into numerical definitions of decades)? Agatha Christie, even? She says "story" not "hard-boiled detective novel." Let's give her the benefit of the doubt and pretend she meant the latter, so Christie doesn't count. Even so, I know that's a pretty bold statement. I'm far from well-read when it comes to 1940s novels about psycho killers, but I'm quite sure there were novels written in the 1940s about psycho killers who didn't "get that way" because of some woman in their lives. (Although, I have to note that Patricia Highsmith fell into the "woman-who-made-the-killer" trap when she wrote her book.)<br />
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More importantly, though, my reading of the book is that she's wrong about this. No, it didn't happen as a result of some mean mother or other woman in his childhood, and, yes, he does have an overbearing uncle in his life, but, still, his need to kill can be attributed to a woman -- the first woman with whom he was ever in love, who was married to another man, seemingly broke his heart, and who was the first he ever killed. I would argue that (at least, according to most of the novels I've read/movies I've seen), if he'd been turned into a psycho killer by a man, he'd have been murdering men, not women.<br />
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I will admit, I was interested in what she had to say about violence, or rather, the lack of it here. I'd noticed that for a "hard-boiled" mystery, we got very little descriptive detail of the violence, nothing like what one expects from Chandler or Hammett or Macdonald. I'd argue, though, that this might have more to do with the fact that male writers of the genre and era had probably been exposed to more violence (even participated in violent acts) than a woman like Hughes had. These male writers could write about it more effectively and convincingly than women writers. My (perhaps biased and unfair, but maybe worth investigating) guess is that an educated woman from a certain class had spent a life relatively sheltered from violence. Truth be told: I'm a female who has witnessed very little real-life violence, has never been in a fight in which punches were thrown, and who does not feel very comfortable writing such scenes. Hughes and others may have been my mid-twentieth-century counterparts.<br />
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I'm not about to argue that what Hughes wrote wasn't a protofeminist work. I can tell from the two novels of hers I've read that she was definitely a woman who was ahead of her time, someone willing to tackle societal convention and so-called societal wisdom. All I'm saying is that we'd be wise not to jump to conclusions to prove such. We, really, have no idea exactly where she was coming from and what her point was, other than to make that point through a compelling story. My guess is that what some of us 21st-century feminists might say to her about this novel would make her smile and nod her head "yes." Much of what Hogeland had to say, though, I'm afraid would leave her scratching her head, saying, "Huh?" I prefer to try to avoid the latter and just to enjoy the fact that certain books have proved the test of time.<br />
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<br />Emily Bartonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13971084813206845680noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28169009.post-88707353016694809482012-09-18T15:32:00.000-04:002012-09-18T15:32:11.056-04:00About Time by Simona Sparaco<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b>Sparaco, Simona. Howard Curtis, tr. <i>About Time</i>. London: Pushkin Press, 2011.</b><br />
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One of the wonderful things about blogging is that, every so often, some terrific independent publisher stumbles across your nearly dead blog, decides that you write reasonably well about books, and offers to send you a book to review so that you can breathe some life back into the blog. Such is the case with Pushkin Press, and, man, what a way to breathe life back into this blog! Pushkin Press is a terrific publisher that is putting international material into the hands of the likes of me. This is the second book they've sent me, and all I can say is, "I am certainly one lucky gal!"<br />
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I'm tempted to write a one word review of this book: "Wow!" But I won't because I'm too enthusiastic about it, and when I'm enthusiastic about something, I'm not a woman of few words.<br />
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Let me start by saying that I closed the book, turned to Bob, who was reading some minor work that couldn't possibly compare and said just that, "Wow!" I then went on to say that this book is a masterpiece, the sort of book that rarely gets published today (at least, not by The Big Six publishers). I loved it for being one of those books that I can't believe is only 183 pages long. By the time I'd finished it -- which didn't take long, so riveting it was -- I was convinced I'd read some chunkster. The book is so much: parable, romance, father-son domestic tale, dark fantasy, odd sci-fi time travel, comedy, tragedy. Really. I'm not kidding.<br />
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I don't blame you if you're thinking, "All that can't possibly work in such a short book." I'd be thinking the same thing if I hadn't read it, but I have, so instead I'm thinking, "My God, how did Sparaco manage to pull all that off without my wanting to throw the book across the room in disgust, upset that I've wasted time with an author who was trying too hard to do too much while being terribly clever?" The only answer to that question is that Sparaco is a genius. I want to eat dinner with her -- actually, no I don't. I'd be too intimidated.<br />
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So, what's the book about? It's about Svevo Romano, the kind of man I hate. Maybe he's too much of a stereotype, but that's okay (after all, male writers have been stereotyping female characters for centuries. Why shouldn't female writers retaliate with a little stereotyping of their own?). He's Mr. On Top of His Game at Big Corporation. He uses and abuses women, women who are much younger than he is. Booze and cocaine are a way of life for him but not so much so that they interfere with his ability to work. He's got tons of money, which is why he lives in a fabulous, meticulously decorated apartment that has a glorious view of Rome.<br />
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Romano is a house of cards. Blow on him, and he'd scatter, but no one seems to know that. In case my description doesn't do enough to help you picture a cocky, middle-aged egoist, listen to how he talks to Father Time (with whom this whole book is a one-sided conversation):<br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
And what about the expression on my face when I sit down at the table to negotiate? That gleam in my eye is pure competitiveness, our daily bread. My rapid way of speaking, my thoughts constantly pursuing new strategies, and at the end of the meeting the mobile phone that starts ringing again bringing more appointments I can't be late for. Distances have been wiped out, dear Father Time, and You can't do anything about it. Technology allows us to do everything in an instant, we're always ready to receive information from anywhere in the world. (p. 26)</blockquote>
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Luckily, good old Father Time doesn't take too kindly to such talk. He's the one who takes a deep breath and blows on the house of cards. He does a clever thing to this cocky little bastard. He speeds up, but he speeds up only for Svevo. For everyone else, he moves at his normal pace. Svevo, however, shuts his eyes to fall asleep, and the next thing he knows, he's missed a 9:00 a.m. meeting without ever having fallen asleep.<br />
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Time begins to play this trick on Svevo while he is on an airplane, flying from Rome to France to play with one of his girlfriends. Once he realizes that time is speeding up for him and not for others, some of his descriptions are hilarious:<br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
I'd like to scream to everyone to stop. Slow down. Why are you rushing like that? When did the porter take our luggage? And now where's he going so quickly? The concierge didn't even welcome us, he's like a broker spewing out numbers in the middle of the afternoon. The lift zooms up to the top floor, the doors open wide, am I the only one who feels as if they're throwing us out into the corridor? (p. 40)</blockquote>
Funny, yes, but it's also extremely spooky and disconcerting. Part of Sparaco's genius is that you're never (and neither is Svevo) quite sure if time has speeded up for him, or if he's just slowed way down. In other words, is everyone else moving really, really quickly, and he's become a tortoise, or are they all moving at their normal pace while he's on some sort of perpetual time machine that keeps zooming him a few hours into the future? It doesn't matter which it is.<br />
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What matters is how effective it is and how I came out of it convinced that Svevo had written a very clever book about how we worship time and how empty our lives are when we do -- as empty as that other object of worship so many authors have tackled: money. Svevo speaks to Father Time and even respects him to the extent that he capitalizes the pronoun "You" when doing so, the same way so many capitalize "He" or "You" when referring to God. He's convinced he has complete control over time. Sort of reminds you of the multimillionaire trader shortly before the 1929 crash, who thought he had complete control over his money, huh?<br />
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What's different about worshiping time rather than money is that we can't bank time. People can die with plenty of money left to spend, but we all reach a certain age at some point, the age at which we begin to realize that time will eventually run out on us. It will run out even on those who think they have perfect control over it, those who think they've not only controlled it but have also beaten it, somehow, with all our 21st-century technology. Svevo has reached the age at which he's begun to realize this, but he doesn't want to admit it until time forces him to do so.<br />
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This novel's not so different from Mary Shelly's 19th-century take on a similar theme, <i>Frankenstein</i>. Science and technology were running away with her peers, and she could imagine the devastating effects. Science and technology are more than running away with Sparaco's peers. Svevo slowly comes to realize this, once he's been living in his new speeded-up world:<br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
What I see is a grim view of a city driven mad by the frenzied pace of its inhabitants. A poisonous curtain of smog lies over the streets, the parks, the buildings. I feel I can almost hear them, all those impatient car horns, like flocks of birds in a poisoned jungle, I can see the pale, exasperated faces of the drivers trapped behind their wheels. They're all running, thinking they can't afford to waste a single second of their lives, when in fact, they're already wasting most of them. (p. 83)</blockquote>
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I just love that last sentence. Sparaco has created a monster who is able to see all this -- with Father Time's help -- and he, unlike Shelley's monster, is able to change. He changes in a Scrooge-like way, a very satisfying way to those of us who like Dickens. Not only does he change, but it takes a woman, and real love, to help him do so. I love the fact that he discovers what so many who are stuck in the midst of the workforce rat race have such a hard time understanding, which is that, "You just have to remove yourself from the flow to realize you're not indispensable, quite the contrary." (p. 151)<br />
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Of course, when he says that, he still doesn't <i>quite</i> get it. He still thinks he needs to pull himself out of the abyss into which he's been thrown, prove that he <i>is</i> indispensable. Still, think of it: how would any corporation survive if it didn't depend on its employees' assumptions that each and every one of them is indispensable, or, at the very least, that it's possible to make one so? The first word of advice given to anyone who's worried about layoffs is "Make yourself indispensable." Nobody stops to think that doing so is all but impossible.<br />
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That's only one small bite from the huge plate of food for thought Sparaco provides. This short book could probably keep Thought stuffed enough for an entire winter's hibernation, maybe even longer. Do me a favor, please. Buy this book. Read it. Tell me what you think.Emily Bartonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13971084813206845680noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28169009.post-41474793084462333082012-08-17T00:26:00.000-04:002012-08-17T00:26:37.124-04:00Hard Time by Sara Paretsky<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b>Paretsky, Sara. <i>Hard Time</i>. New York: Delacorte, 1999.</b><br />
<b><br /></b><i>This was this month's CT. mystery book club read.</i><br />
<b><br /></b>Way back in the 1980s, long before Janet Evanovich and her lookalikes came along with their slapstick, accidental detectives, I was aware of 3 authors who were busy creating their prototypes. These authors were taking unsolved murders out of the hands of Miss-Marple-types, who had solved many a mystery while sipping tea by the fire, and putting them into the hands of women who were tough and daring in the ways many of the men who had gone before them were tough and daring. These women were even slightly dangerous. The difference between them and their little sisters like Evanovich's Stephanie Plum is that they were -- although wryly funny when appropriate in a way we recognize if we've read the likes of Raymond Chandler and Ross Macdonald -- far more serious. And romance was there, but it was secondary in their lives.<br />
<br />
Each of these "heroines" (if that's the right word for them. I'd like to get rid of the gender definition and just call them "heros") lives in a city that was as much a character in the book as any of the human characters. These cities laugh, cry, get kicked in the gut, and bounce back with a vengeance. I love cities that do that in the fiction I read.<br />
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The three authors to whom I am referring are Sue Grafton (another we read for the CT mystery book club), Linda Barnes, and Sara Paretsky. Their female investigators are, respectively, Kinsey Millhone, Carlotta Carlyle, and V. I. Warshawski. Their cities are Santa Barbara (yes, we know it's Santa Barbara, even though it appears incognito), Boston, and Chicago. Of these three, if you'd asked me back in 1990 which to read, I would have said, "Linda Barnes." For some reason (maybe because of Boston?) I was most into Barnes. (You have to understand what I mean by that. With the exception of reading through Agatha Christie when I was a teen, until I became a member of the CT mystery book discussion group, I wasn't a big reader of mysteries. I read Barne's first two books, got hooked, and waited as each of the next three came out to read them. Then, I stopped.) I'd read a couple of Grafton's books and stopped. And I hadn't read any Paretsky.<br />
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Why hadn't I read Paretsky? I can't answer that question. Everyone who knew me and had read her was busy recommending her to me, and I kept <i>meaning</i> to read her. Well, I've been meaning to read her for (can it really be?) about 25 years now. I want to thank the folks in CT for kicking me in the butt and getting me, finally, to read her.<br />
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I come to this sort of book not expecting great writing, so I was pleasantly surprised to find that Peretsky actually writes quite well. No, it's not poetry. I didn't find myself wanting to quote her, but it's seamless. The writing didn't distract in such a way, either because it was so riddled with grammatical errors or so obviously an attempt at blending genre fiction with literary fiction, that it kept me from focusing on the story. And story is what I <i>do</i> expect from this sort of book.<br />
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Does Peretsky deliver story? Absolutely! I was afraid, at first, that she wouldn't. The book begins at a media event, a party at a bar (I think it's a restaurant bar, but it was hard to tell), that was quite confusing. In fact, I read the first 5 or so pages twice and kept referring back to them to try to get people straight. Paretsky gave us quite a lot of crucial information in that opening scene, but I found it hard to concentrate in that atmosphere.<br />
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(In writing this, I'm realizing that maybe she's a better writer than I thought. I mean, isn't that what a crowded bar scene is: confusing? Isn't it a place where we are often overwhelmed with information? Information that's hard to keep straight, because we are typically sipping a few alcoholic drinks when we visit them?)<br />
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Mercifully, Peretsky didn't keep us at the bar until dawn. She quickly gets us out of the bar and to the streets, where, while taking a short cut, we stumble across an almost-dead body. An IQ of 180 is not needed to realize that this tiny woman lying unconscious on the street will soon become The Body.<br />
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Is it original that our friend V. I. Warshawski finds herself being accused of and framed for this murder? No. Not at all. Pick up 2 mysteries, and I guarantee you that at least one of them will be about a protagonist who is being accused of murder. What <i>is</i> original is the way Paretsky chooses to use this standard plot, which is, basically (and I'm not really giving anything away here. After all, the book's title is <i>Hard Time</i>) to throw Warshawski into jail (and not because she's believed to be guilty of the murder. But I've said enough. I won't give away anymore of that part of the story).<br />
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Here's where we get to the crux of why I so loved this book. If only it were made into a movie (and I say that only because I know how few people actually read and that most who do probably don't need Paretsky's lessons). Paretsky does a brilliant job of bringing to life the horrors and corruption in the prison system in America. I happen to know quite a lot about this subject, both from having edited books about it and because I know someone who is living the horrors of it now. <br />
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Peretsky paints a very real portrait here, and I'm clapping loudly at her attempt to exhibit it to a general audience. In case you've read the book and are wondering: yes, it's true that phone companies have monopolies in prison systems where no one can call in, and prisoners are stuck paying whatever the company decides to charge per minute to call out (need I tell you these rates are outrageous?). Yes, everything that can be purchased in the commissary costs way more than it costs those of us on the outside. Prison guards abuse their charges, and there are those guards who seem to have chosen their "professions" specifically so they can get away with actions on the inside that would have them locked up behind the bars they so carefully "guard" were they to commit them outside. <br />
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My focus has always been on the racism in our prison system, that and the huge corporate aspect of it (prison is a major money-making business, which is why so many of our Republican politicians are so big on cracking down on crime. They don't really care about keeping everyone safe. They care about the money generated by keeping our prisons overcrowded). What I liked about this book is how it focused on the sexism, the victimization of women behind bars. I don't know why I needed a fictional story to have my eyes opened to this aspect of the system, but apparently I did.<br />
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The actual mystery in this book became, for me, secondary to the tale of life in prison. I'm not saying that getting to the bottom of exactly why this woman wound up dead wasn't interesting -- it was. Believe me, it was -- but fighting injustice became as key for me as it did for Warshawski. On some level, we know the injustice won't go away, but still, we hope we can fight it. If you know nothing about The American Prison System, Inc., read this book. It will open your eyes.<br />
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Meanwhile, I'm impressed with Paretsky and plan to read more (I say that all the time, huh?).Emily Bartonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13971084813206845680noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28169009.post-30618730337051602192012-08-11T13:31:00.000-04:002012-08-18T10:30:17.838-04:00Merging Hats?For nearly twenty years now, I have worn two hats. Although at first glance, they might seem very different, they do both happen to be a shade of green (my favorite color), and so they may not be so different after all. My guess is that if I describe them, you, my readers, won't be able to figure out which is my librarian hat (worn throughout my days as a library assistant and student working towards her M.L.S., as well as while a library volunteer and now as a part-time librarian). My other one is my editor hat (worn all those years when I was working either as an acquisitions editor or a managing editor or an executive editor). One is a pretty, feminine, wide-brimmed hat that is fun and interesting. The other is extremely stylish (must be changed constantly to keep up with the times) and a bit serious, but sometimes I stick a little flower or a cool button on it to show it has a softer, more fun side, too. I know which one <i>I</i> think is which, but I'll let you decide for yourselves which <i>you </i>think is which.<br />
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Anyway, having assumed they were both very different and would look ridiculous, one piled on top of the other, I've always worn them separately, never together. But, yesterday, I discovered that designers have been toying with a new style of hat, one that might incorporate both, and I have to tell you that I can't be more excited, because, let me tell you, this hat is gorgeous. If you're one of those who has been moaning about the Decline and Fall of the Publishing Empire, worried that we are all going to be left with nothing but the ruins of literature (yes, <i>Fifty Shades of Grey </i>and 500 knock-offs do spring to my mind), while the gorgeous temples that make us sigh in awe and wonder become things of the past, you just might be excited, too.<br />
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I lucked out on getting an advance peek at this new fashion in hats. Our library director happens to be on vacation this week, and she asked me if I could take her place and go to our Capital Region Workshop for Library Leadership. I was, quite frankly, flattered that she'd asked me, and I typically jump at the chance to attend such events, so, of course, I said "yes." And it was at this workshop that I got to hear Jamie LaRue speak. Jamie LaRue is the Library Director of the Douglas County Library System in Colorado (I'm now dying to visit his library), and he is an exceptional public speaker, but, what's really important is that he is doing amazing things when it comes to providing content for his library, the best of which is fighting publishers and distributors who have been making it more and more expensive for libraries to get copies of eBooks. You can get an idea of how libraries are being screwed by reading the blog post he wrote for American Libraries <a href="http://americanlibrariesmagazine.org/e-content/50-shades-red-losing-our-shirts-ebooks">"50 Shades of Red".</a><br />
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If you can't be bothered to read LaRue's article, in a nutshell, thanks to the publishers and distributors, while you-all are paying $10.00 or so to buy your eBooks, libraries are paying upwards of $45.00 for each eBook title they buy. In my county-wide library system, we're about to announce our One Book, One Community book for 2012, but we have no eBook versions available to loan to our public (except what's on the Kindles we loan out), because an eBook version would cost us $86.00, and we just can't afford to spend $86.00 on one title like that (Pennsylvania is notorious for being a state that consistently ranks somewhere near the bottom when it comes to providing money for libraries). Most of our eBooks are distributed by the company that has the monopoly right now on such distribution, a company called Overdrive, and don't even get me started on how pathetically un-user-friendly they are, on top of charging libraries outrageous fortunes not to own, but to rent, content. They're slum lords, really.<br />
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Now, here is the exciting part. LaRue is an amazing director with a very sharp mind who isn't just sitting around complaining about this or capitulating to the corporate world. He's out wheeling and dealing, figuring out ways to get around companies like Overdrive, and the Big Six publishers, three of whom refuse to sell eBooks directly to libraries. He believes that libraries need to be the market force that changes terms, because libraries, unlike publishers and distributors, are not in the business of making as much money as they possibly can, with little or no regard to culture. No, he says libraries are in the business of collecting and distributing the intellectual content of our culture (I've never heard the library's role described that way, but I like it, don't you?).<br />
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How's LaRue doing this? He's using shareware to set up the ability to buy and own his own eBooks for the library. Since the Big Publishers won't work with him (yet), he's buying only print versions of most of their titles and turning his attention to independent publishers and their organizations (like the Colorado Independent Publishers Association). He's making money for his library, because he is offering the ability for his patrons, if a book is checked out, and they don't want to wait, to click on a link that lets them buy it directly from the publisher (and the publishers are letting him share in the profits from these sales because he's driving business their way). And he's going around encouraging other library systems to do the same. That's why he's using shareware. (I'm telling you, we had a roomful of very enthusiastic librarians yesterday).<br />
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What else is he doing? Well, this is where the new hat is being designed. He's also working with local authors, letting them publish their eBooks through him, for merely the cost of letting him have one free book (owning it, not renting it) for his library. He pointed out that libraries are full of readers, which means they are full of people who can edit, proofread, and review these eBooks -- many of them library volunteers -- so that authors can hit the marketplace, knowing their books have been vetted and with reviews they can use for promotion. No, these reviews won't have a <i>NY Times </i>byline, but they will give authors (especially first-time authors) many, many more opportunities to get reviewed than the standard review media authors have been dependent on for so long. And let's be real here: how important today is that <i>NY Times</i> byline? I'm guilty of having searched Amazon and Goodreads reviews to find out about books, and if I knew some site had reviews written only by library employees and volunteers, I can guarantee you I'd give it as much weight as I now give my favorite blogger reviews.<br />
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Why is this a good thing (besides letting me, maybe, one day, wear that new hat, working as an editor for a library system. I can see such jobs coming along in the future)? I mean, why is it good for you, the reader? Because if libraries start getting into the business of publishing, they are, as I quoted LaRue above, going to be doing so with an eye toward collecting and distributing the intellectual content of our culture. They won't be focused on the bottom line. Because librarians are book people, this new form of publishing will be run by book people (the way publishing companies used to be run), by readers, not by those who used to run GE and have now been hired to run Big Publisher #4, to keep it from going bankrupt. Those running the show will be focused on getting great writing into the hands of those who love to read it. This can only mean better content. No, it doesn't mean we'll eliminate <i>50 Shades of Grey </i>(after all, it has its cultural place), but, you know, that thing called the midlist, which seems to have been shrinking into nonexistence over the years? We just might see it begin to grow again.<br />
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Who would've ever thought, back in the 1990s when I was in library school, that libraries might take on a new role, that of publishers? LaRue thinks we're at one of the most exciting times in history, a major turning point when it comes to collecting and disseminating content. I agree, and I am so happy to hear someone out there touting such positive news instead of moaning and groaning about a society that is slowly creating a second Dark Age. I can't wait to don one of those new hats, and in the meantime, I'm going to do whatever I can to help bring them to Lancaster County, PA.<br />
<br />Emily Bartonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13971084813206845680noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28169009.post-13334551920484746532012-07-25T07:55:00.000-04:002012-07-25T07:55:13.006-04:00No Longer Taking My Eyes for GrantedSo, imagine: what could be the worse thing that could happen to someone who lives to read and write? Well, yes, someone could outlaw the written word or something (wouldn't put that past some of our legislators, many of whom I'm quite sure are illiterate), but think physical impairment here. Yes, you guessed it: going blind. Put a fear of blindness into the hands of someone who is, not hysterically so (I don't rush to the doctor with every ache and pain convinced I'm dying -- contrary to what my husband will tell you), but is decidedly a <i>bit</i> of a hypochondriac (I've been known to wonder if that odd ache in my arm that won't go away is bone cancer -- never out loud to my husband, mind you), and see what happens when she begins to realize she can barely see clearly, and her glasses prescription isn't even a year old yet.<br />
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You guessed it. That's what happened to me. Actually, what happened is I began to get this weird pain in my left eye that made me feel like I often had a bit of dust or something stuck behind my eyelid that I couldn't get rid of. Soon, I began to realize that my vision was getting blurrier and blurrier. That was last summer. I went to my primary care physician, and he decided it was allergies and prescribed some allergy drops for me to use. They seemed to help, but I still noticed that sometimes my vision wasn't quite right. By the time I went to my eye doctor last fall, I'd found that I could see fine as long as I wore my contact lenses, but that my glasses were becoming useless. I figured it was just time to admit that I needed bifocals (oh, excuse me, I mean, progressive lenses). I got those, and lo and behold! I could see again. For about 8 months.<br />
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Fast forward to the end of June. Now, even my contact lenses weren't helping much. I'd get in the car to drive and would be afraid I was going to cause an accident, because I'd blink and would be unable to see even the speed limit signs clearly. Vision came and went, and I could never depend on my eyes. Using eye drops seemed to help a bit, but it never lasted. The pain in my left eye was back, worse than ever, but when I covered my right eye to see if the left was the culprit for my worsening vision, it didn't seem to be. In fact, it seemed that my right eye was the one that was <i>really</i> going blind. Finally, after a terrible trip to the grocery store in which I seemed to lose all vision in my right eye, convincing me I must be having a stroke, or that I certainly had a tumor the size of a grapefruit behind my eye or at least a detached retina or something, I decided to consult with my eye doctor.<br />
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She didn't sound nearly as panicked as I was, didn't insist I get to the hospital immediately. Instead, she listened to my symptoms and said it was most likely something to do with my cornea, something causing extreme dryness. She set up an appointment with me later in the week, and when she'd done examining me, she told me she suspected it could be a few different things (none of which meant permanent blindness), but that I most likely had <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thygeson%27s_superficial_punctate_keratopathy">Thygeson's</a>. It's an extremely rare disease that causes lumps to form on the cornea. Despite the fact that my left eye was the one that always hurt, she discovered that my right eye was actually far worse. She prescribed steroid drops, some other eye drops to use between the steroid drops, and some gunk to put in my eyes at night before I go to sleep. She then told me to quit wearing my contacts and any makeup (in fact, she told me to throw all my makeup away, just in case there was something in it that was irritating my eyes. Good thing I don't wear a lot of makeup or spend much money on it), and to come back and see her in a week.<br />
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When I came back a week later, already seeing better than I had in months, she took a look and said, "Yep. It's definitely Thygeson's." I stayed on the steroid drops, etc. and didn't wear contacts for another week, went back to see her, and she then told me I could start weaning myself off the steroids, and that when I was down to one drop a day (she initially had me doing 4), I could start trying my contacts again. Happily, it all worked. I was afraid, despite the fact that she'd told me the three other patients she's seen in her career with Thygeson's all did better with their contacts than they did with their glasses, that I would be one of those who didn't and that I'd have to wave goodbye to my contacts. I don't mind wearing glasses, but I much prefer my contacts.<br />
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Happily, I'm back to normal now, or as normal as I'll ever be. I have to keep my eyes well lubricated with drops and am supposed to be cautious when it comes to staring at computer screens or reading too long, taking breaks and using extra drops. But I'll take that over going blind any day, and I will never stop thanking my eyes for being there and working so well (at least, until the next time I fear I'm going blind, like when I accidentally forget to take off my sunglasses when I'm driving a long distance and night descends).Emily Bartonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13971084813206845680noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28169009.post-18610507272099660962012-06-22T20:31:00.001-04:002012-06-22T20:46:24.318-04:00Two for the Price of One: CT Mystery Book Club<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I never posted on the last book for the CT book discussion group, so I am going to include my thoughts on it here, but first, my thoughts on the book being discussed this go-round.<br />
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<b>Persson, Leif G. W. Norlen, Paul, tr. <i>Between Summer's Longing and Winter's End</i>. New York: Pantheon, 2010. </b><br />
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<b>(This book was originally published in Sweden in 2002.)</b><br />
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This is a first: a CT mystery book club discussion book that I didn't finish and<b> </b>that I don't intend to finish. I read nearly 100 pages (97 to be exact) and just decided I didn't want to bother anymore.<br />
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It isn't that I hated it. It isn't even that I wasn't interested. It's just, I guess, that I wasn't quite interested <i>enough</i>. I mean, I sort of wanted to find out what the connection was between an apparent suicide of an American living in a student dorm in Stockholm and the 1986 murder of Sweden's prime minister (and I knew there was a connection because the jacket copy told me so), but not really, especially if it meant slogging my way through 450 more pages (and, ultimately, two more books, since this is the first in a trilogy) while keeping company with a cast of characters who, so far, had proven themselves not to be very likable while not being fascinating enough that whether or not they were likable didn't matter.<br />
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Given what I just said, you may be surprised by what I have to say next, which is that, due to the (unexpected and, to some degree -- at least, the way all publishing phenoms are -- inexplicable) success of Stieg Larsson in this country, publishers have all jumped on the Swedish mystery bandwagon, suddenly presenting us with hot, "new" Swedish authors whom our Nordic brothers and sisters have been reading almost as long as our British brothers and sisters have been reading Agatha Christie. (Okay, please excuse my exaggeration. Still. Persson isn't some new author. He's been around for a while, writing for well over 30 years.) Persson is, naturally, compared to Larsson on the cover copy (more impressive, to me, is that he's also compared to Ingmar Bergman -- probably a slight exaggeration. I mean, Bergman's characters are fascinating). Of Larsson's books, I've only read <i>The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo</i>, and (when I wasn't recoiling in shock from its most brutal and sadistic scenes), I liked it quite a lot. But from what I've now read of the two authors, I'd say Persson is a better writer. Persson, in this book, has set a stage and has gotten inside his characters' heads a little better than I remember Larsson doing. Yes, Larsson wrote psychological thrillers, but his emphasis seemed to be more on the thriller. Persson pays more attention to the psychological, and in doing so, writes more carefully, which, in this instance, means better writing.<br />
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Even so, I don't want to continue with it. Why not? I think it may have to do with a problem I have with sexism in 21st-century pop culture. I can read a book written in 1940 riddled with sexism, and, although it disturbs me, I just put it into its time and place (and I <i>marvel</i> when I read a book written in 1940 that attempts to attack sexism). Lately, though, I've begun to theorize that some 21st-century writers are choosing to write about other eras that allow them to live out sexist fantasies (<i>Mad Men</i> and its creator and head writer Matthew Weiner -- and yes, I've watched and like the show, although I've only watched episodes from the first two seasons -- spring to mind) while writing today.<br />
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I found some very offensive sexist passages in the first 97 pages of Persson's book pertaining to the way the male characters regard women. I don't know how sexist Sweden was in the late 1970s, but I am hoping that Persson was imagining a way that men <i>used</i> to think and act toward women and not the way they do today. I'll excuse him if he was doing the former, trying to make his work more realistic (and, really, since I haven't finished the book, I probably shouldn't be saying anything, because maybe there was a point to what he was doing. I mean, if I'd stopped reading <i>The Girl with a Dragon Tattoo</i> when I thought I wanted to, I would have felt quite differently about it than I did by the time I'd finished it). Still, unless you're fantasizing about "the good old days, when men were allowed to degrade women without having to worry about being attacked by feminazis", why write about it? It's the same argument I have with Larsson: so, you're the great champion of women, fighting against men who hate them? Then don't put your female character through that debasement at all. How many male heroes are subjected to such utter degradation? Rarely do we see a male character put through so much before he comes out on top. It's the same with the horribly sexist office workers on <i>Mad Men</i>. In the name of "telling it like it was," the writers seem (to me) to be "telling it like they wish it was and still were." Maybe it was bad, probably worse than most of the portrayals we have of the era that were written at the time, but, really, was it <i>quite</i> the way 21st-century male writers portray it?<br />
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I digress. Back to the book. Maybe it gets better. Maybe I would have eventually been ensnared by the "web of international espionage, backroom politics, greed, sheer incompetence, and the shoddy work of Sweden's intelligence force" that the jacket copy promises. Then again, maybe not.<br />
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One final maybe: maybe the big problem is that shortly after I began this one, I also began <i>The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher</i> by Kate Summerscale. I'm afraid the latter just captured my imagination and ran off with it, leaving poor old <i>Summer's Longing </i>to sit all by itself, forgotten in an old hammock, mouldering in the summer's heat, humidity, and sudden violent downpours. Perhaps I'm just more of a country-house-murder-and-interesting-detective sort (especially when it's true crime that constantly refers to favorite 19th-century novels and novelists) than I am a corrupt-police-force-international-espionage sort. Uh-oh: did I just identify some sexist tendencies in my preferences?<br />
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And, now, onto the last book the group discussed:<br />
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<b>Mosley, Walter. <i>Little Scarlet</i>. New York: Little, Brown, and Co., 2004.</b><br />
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I have to admit that I was not too keen on reading Walter Mosley. I'd tried, years ago, to listen to one of his audiobooks and hadn't been able to get into it (I now realize that this probably had more to do with the narrator than it did with the book). I did (also, years ago) see the movie <i>Devil in a Blue Dress</i>, and I really liked it, so I approached this book hoping it would be more like my experience with "Movie Mosley" than my experience with "Audiobook Mosley." Still, my hopes did not run high.<br />
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Yet again, hopes that hadn't gone soaring way above my head proved to be a good formula. I was fascinated and riveted from the moment I began reading this mystery, which takes place just after the 1965 Watts riots in Los Angeles and involves a complicated plot that eventually uncovers whodunit to a young black woman known as Scarlet. Although the plot itself and the solution to the crime are the sort that, if someone were to explain them to me, would probably have me snorting derisively (if I knew how to snort derisively, that is), casting them aside as completely unbelievable, Mosley is such a talented writer that he had me <i>completely</i> convinced.<br />
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His protagonist (Easy Rawlins, for those of you who don't know) is an extremely likable character. Easy has his faults, yes -- he's a bit too distracted by a pretty face, a bit too quick to jump to violent solutions to problems -- but, ultimately, he's a marshmallow. A righteous marshmallow, sure, but he has good reason to be so, having grown up black in America during the first half of the 20th century. Mosley does a superb job of helping his white readers walk in that black man's shoes, providing us with a wee taste of something we will never truly be able to understand.<br />
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Interestingly, I read this book at the same time that my church book discussion group was reading <i>The Help</i> (a book I'd read a couple of years ago and didn't bother to reread). Both books take place around the same time. Both books address racial issues and bigotry. They have very different approaches, and one, of course, was written by a black man while the other was written by a white woman. Still, there are similarities, not the least of which is that they both beg the question, "How far have we come since the Civil Rights movement?" Something we should all ponder in this country. I couldn't help wondering, while reading this, if Mosley chose to set his Easy Rawlins mysteries back in time because people wouldn't believe him if he wrote about how racist this country still is today (sort of the opposite of men setting their stories back in time in order to take advantage of the sexism of the era).<br />
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Anyway, I will no longer be hesitant to read another Easy Rawlins novel. (So many good mystery series, so little time... )<br />
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<br />Emily Bartonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13971084813206845680noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28169009.post-73971247213083943522012-06-14T07:23:00.000-04:002012-06-14T07:23:00.286-04:00A Controversial PostI realized, when I was working on my last post, that I don't have any controversial posts here at Telecommuter Talk that stick out in my mind. Courtney has recently made the decision to be a little more brave at <a href="http://everythinginbetween.wordpress.com/">The Public, The Private, and Everything In Between</a>, and I've decided to <s>copy</s> support her by doing the same. Be prepared. When I decide to be controversial, I, apparently, decide to go all the way. By the same token, when I decide to be controversial, it isn't because I necessarily think I'm right or that I have all the answers. What I really want to do is to open up a dialogue, to get others' thoughts, to find out where I might have errors in my thinking, and I certainly don't want to take my cue from television these days, whose sole goal seems to be to divide people and to get them to spew vitriol at each other. I'm in this world to learn and to grow and to (I hope) become a better person, and that means I need to listen to those who might think differently than I do and to be willing to change my mind, if necessary, or just to agree to disagree if their arguments don't convince me.<br />
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So, here is my controversial argument at its most basic: Americans are having too many children. It's the taboo environmental issue that no one wants to address, because, let's face it: who wants to tell people they shouldn't have (anymore) children? And yet, overpopulation is one of the most devastating environmental hazards. This planet may seem huge, but it definitely has its limits, one of which is that it can only hold so many creatures, and it can especially only hold so many of those creatures responsible for doing the most damage to it (i.e. human beings). The most obvious solution to this problem (and the one I'd most like to embrace)? Nobody should have more than one or two children. Those who want to have more than two should adopt.<br />
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I have to admit that I've not always felt this way. First of all, I'm the third of four children. Someone could easily say to me, "If your parents had stopped at two, you wouldn't have been born." Of course, I'm not someone who is busy changing the world, so if I had never been born, I'm sure it wouldn't have been a real tragedy, and I'd have no idea, having never existed, so I can't say I'd regret never having been born. Still, I'm pretty glad I've gotten to experience this life I've had, which I wouldn't have done if my parents had only had two children.<br />
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Back when I was in my mid-twenties, I had a roommate who only had one sister. She told me that her parents had firmly believed in the "replace ourselves" theory of having children: one child for each parent (very forward-thinking of them. She's my age. We were born before the first Earth Day, back when this subject was even more taboo than it is today). My roommate told me she would follow suit, and at the time, I remember thinking, "Only two kids?" In fact, when I first met Bob, I had pretty much the same reaction to his telling me that he has one brother, and that's it. "Only one sibling? Wasn't that lonely growing up? How did you play games like 'Clue' that require three or more players?"<br />
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I've learned a lot since those days, though. I've become much more concerned about environmental issues. I've attended environmental summits. I'm aware of how, as with almost everything else in the world, those who are poor are actually affected more severely by environmental hazards than those who aren't, and so I'm even more concerned than ever about the environment. I've read that some scientists believe we wouldn't have any environmental problems if it weren't for overpopulation, like one notes in a brief article <a href="http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/04/090418075752.htm">here</a>.<br />
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I never talk about one of the reasons that Bob and I decided not to have children, which is overpopulation. No, neither one of us was particularly dying to have children of our own, so that was one reason, but the more we read about overpopulation, the more we realized that those of us who weren't dying to have children shouldn't. If there were more of us choosing to be childless, then there'd be more room for those who want to have 3 (or even 4) children. Maybe if childless couples were celebrated for giving others this opportunity instead of being seen as defective, somehow, or being pitied, more people would choose to be childless. Maybe if we stopped trying to convince those who say they don't want kids with arguments like, "Oh, but it's so different when they're your own," and instead said, "Good for you for not bringing unwanted children into this word," we could start reducing the population.<br />
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Still, I'm not comfortable telling people that one reason Bob and I don't have kids is that I'm worried about overpopulation. Why? Well, how does that make us look, especially to friends who have 4 kids? It's like saying, "We care about the Earth, and you don't."<br />
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I'd like to solve this problem, but I'm not comfortable with the most obvious solution to it. I mean, I am all about the right to choose. That means the right to choose <i>to</i> have children (as many children as you'd like) as well as the right to choose not to have them. Also, I may be pro-choice, but I am (at heart) anti-abortion. Unwanted pregnancies, in my book, should be avoided at all costs, and abortions should be reserved for truly unwanted children, those who would enter this world on uneven ground from the get-go. I would hate to tell a woman who is beaming with the announcement that she's expecting her third child that she ought to have an abortion. I, of all people, having grown up in one, understand the desire to have a large, happy family -- station wagons (yes, station wagons. They're coming back, you know) packed with kids singing silly songs on long road trips, a backyard full of kids running around playing kick ball or catching fireflies, a tent in the backyard full of kids "camping out." The more the merrier.<br />
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I also understand that sometimes people make a mistake. They marry the wrong person at a young age. They have 2 kids and wind up divorced. Soon, they meet someone who is the true love of their lives. They want to have children with this person, and why shouldn't they? And who am I (or anyone) to say, "Sorry, you already had your two. You can't have anymore?"<br />
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I will say, though, that there is a point at which I have to admit I find myself thinking, "How selfish and irresponsible can you be?" I'm not talking about those who have three or four or even five kids. I'm talking about those who belong to the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quiver_full">quiverfull movement</a>, who turn to Biblical passages to justify having huge families, Biblical passages written back in the days when it made sense to have as many children as possible, because people were far less likely to make it to adulthood, and when they did, they lived much shorter lives. The human population could easily have died out in ancient times if everyone had decided only to have 2 children. There is absolutely no need, whatsoever, in 21st-century America to have upwards of 6 children. None. And I'm afraid I'm no good at all when it comes to that other little Biblical passage about "judging not" when I hear about people choosing to do so (when I was first told about the quiverfull movement, a couple of years ago, I'm quite sure I bruised my jaw, it hit the floor so hard).<br />
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I also wonder about the woman I know who had two lovely, lovely pre-teen daughters and decided she must have another child. She had another little girl, who, of course, was way too young to play with her sisters, both of whom were growing out of imaginary play and becoming interested in soccer, softball, and horseback riding. The woman decided to have a fourth child, so her third child "would have somebody," which means that, just when her two older daughters hit their teen years, a time when daughters really need their mothers, she was way too busy with a toddler and an infant to pay much attention to them. Is it any wonder that the older daughters, who'd shown such promise when they were younger, got in with the "wrong crowd," that one ended up being arrested for shoplifting, and that both (despite being extremely bright) decided college wasn't for them? I know I'm being horribly judgmental, but I can't help wondering why she felt that need to have those two other children when she already had two fantastic, healthy, and smart children? How might their lives have been different if she hadn't had those younger two kids? Or, if the need to have a larger family was so strong, how might their lives have been different if she and her husband had adopted some other children who were closer in age to her oldest daughters?<br />
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I don't understand why more people don't choose to adopt. If you've had a child and want more kids, why do those "more" necessarily have to be brought into this world by you? There are so many children all around the world who could benefit greatly by being adopted into a large, loving family. Parents who adopt kids are doing two goods: 1) giving a family to a child who has none and 2) helping to keep the population from growing.<br />
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No, I'm not comfortable telling people not to have more than two children. I would hate to see anyone try to enforce laws in this country, like the one-child policy in China, pertaining to such a personal choice. I do, however, think that people should be better educated about the devastating effects of overpopulation; that when it comes to family planning, environmental concerns ought to be taken into account; and that we need to put a new, much more positive spin on adoption as a choice, instead of continuing to enforce old, negative stereotypes. It also wouldn't hurt to applaud those who decide only to have one child, instead of running around asking them when they're going to have another (I think parents of only-children often have it even worse than those of us who are childless when it comes to insensitive questioning).<br />
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That's what I think. What do you think?<br />
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<br />Emily Bartonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13971084813206845680noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28169009.post-63984610078150303672012-06-12T13:52:00.000-04:002012-06-12T13:53:00.309-04:007 x 7 Link Award Meme<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">My goodness. </span><a href="http://litlove.wordpress.com/"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Litlove</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> tagged me for this one way back in April. I'm certainly falling down on my job as The Queen o' Memes when it takes me this long to respond to a tag. Anyway, this is the "7 x 7 Link Award" meme. It could also be called the "Trip Down Memory Lane" meme, or the "Get People to Read Blog Posts of Mine They Might Never Have Read" meme. These are the rules:</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">1: Tell everyone something about yourself that nobody else knows.</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">2: Link to a post you think fits the following categories: </span></span><strong style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: bold; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">The Most Beautiful Piece, Most Helpful Piece, Most Popular Piece, Most Controversial Piece, Most Surprisingly Successful Piece, Most Underrated Piece, Most Pride-worthy Piece.</span></span></strong></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">3: Pass this on to 7 fellow bloggers.</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">1. Haven't I already done this so many times in the past six years that there can't possibly be anything about me that nobody else knows at this point? Let me think really hard. Nope, I just really can't think of anything that nobody knows about me. Here's something that a lot of people don't know about me, though: I read magazines cover-to-cover like books, never skipping any articles (although some I skim rather than read real carefully).</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">2. <b>The Most Beautiful Piece</b>: During the first year I was blogging, someone started the fantastic "I Am From" meme, which triggered some of the most beautiful writing out in the blogosphere at the time. Litlove chose <a href="http://litlove.wordpress.com/2007/02/15/i-am-from/">her version</a> of this for her most beautiful piece, and I'm following suit with <a href="http://emilybarton.blogspot.com/2007/02/i-am-from.html">my own version</a>. </span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><b>Most Helpful Piece: </b>Has there been anything I've written that has been all that helpful? I suppose if you've been called for Federal Jury Duty in Philadelphia, you might consider some of the information in <a href="http://emilybarton.blogspot.com/2010/07/federal-jury-duty-day-1-post-riddled.html">this post</a> helpful. Does anyone else remember my writing anything that was particularly helpful? If so, please share. I'd love to know.</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><b>Most Popular Piece:</b> I find it hilarious that my most popular piece (and it has held this position basically since the day I wrote it) is a post that evolved from another meme. Anyone who is at all familiar with this blog has heard me say time and again that I am movie illiterate. Nonetheless, <a href="http://emilybarton.blogspot.com/2008/07/100-modern-classic-movies-meme.html">my take</a> on the "100 Modern Classic Movies" meme gets more attention than anything else I've written here.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><b>Most Controversial Piece: </b>I haven't a clue. No matter what I write, no one ever seems to vehemently disagree with me. Maybe I need to start writing about more controversial topics. Here's <a href="http://emilybarton.blogspot.com/2006/10/appalled.html">one</a> that I thought might be controversial, but it wasn't at all. In fact, it led to a number of us bloggers inventing the short-lived blog "What She Said." Again, anyone else ever remember my writing about anything that got any hackles up?</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><b>Most Surprisingly Successful Piece:</b> I had no idea how many book sluts there were in the world until I wrote <a href="http://emilybarton.blogspot.com/2008/03/1-book-slut.html">this post</a>.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><b>Most Underrated Piece:</b> <a href="http://emilybarton.blogspot.com/2011/11/rip-challenge-castle-of-otranto-by.html">This one</a>. I loved the book, and I love the way I used my photos from Maine in the post. Then again, maybe it's just because the whole thing reminds me of Maine.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><b>Most Pride-Worthy Piece:</b> I'm still amazed that I managed to pull off this <a href="http://emilybarton.blogspot.com/2010/09/vanishing-judgment-blog-post.html">"imitation as sincerest form of flattery" post. </a></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">3. I'm not going to choose 7. If you're reading this and haven't already done it, consider yourself tagged by me (and let me know when you've done it. I want to read your answers and reminisce with you!).</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div>Emily Bartonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13971084813206845680noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28169009.post-76981928530538742882012-06-05T23:53:00.000-04:002012-06-05T23:53:31.481-04:00For My Female Readers (And Brave Male Readers) Only(Any male readers I might have, you are forewarned. This post is all about things men typically don't want to discuss.)<br />
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I'm 48 years old, and I had my last period in July 2010. That's nearly 2 years ago. Once a woman hasn't had her period for one year, she is considered to be menopausal. I've been busy thinking, "Man, was I lucky" when it comes to what I've always considered to be one of the worst parts of being a woman, because I didn't get my first period until I was 13 1/2 (I hear some poor kids are getting it as early as age 10 these days), and I wasn't even 50 when it ended. Sorry. I know there are those who celebrate that special time of the month, and more power to you. I wish I could have been one of those lucky ones who felt exhilarated and creative once a month, but no. That wasn't my fate, and when you are someone who frequently suffered from PMS-induced depression and migraines to be followed by debilitating cramps that made her wish she had a morphine drip by her bed, well, you might understand why I consider myself lucky to be rid of such a nuisance, terribly lucky to have found herself on the lower end of the age-range for the onset of menopause.<br />
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The funny thing is I expected, based on all the information that surrounds menopause in our society, that it was going to be something awful -- the worst PMS I ever experienced threefold. I had visions of suddenly becoming suicidal over the fact that I could no longer bear children and had never had a child, or of losing all interest in sex, or of doing something crazy like leaving Bob and selling everything I own to go live in a commune. I thought I'd be cranking up the air conditioning even in the dead of winter, suffering from constant hot flashes that left me miserable. I thought I'd be so tired I'd sleep 15 hours a day or that my insomnia would be worse than ever, and I'd only sleep 3. I will admit that some of this has happened to some degree or other, but, really, I will take menopause over PMS and periods any day. In fact. my worst symptoms have been hot flashes and achy joints, which, once I read the terrific book <i>What Your Doctor May Not Tell You About Menopause</i> by John R. Lee and Virginia Hopkins and discovered natural progesterone (not to be confused with any sort of progesterone prescription) have all but disappeared.<br />
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My own experience with menopause has led me to question why this period in a woman's life has gotten such a bad reputation. I can only surmise that it's jealousy on the part of the men who rule a patriarchal society. I mean, what could any man want more than to reach an age at which he can have all the sex he wants without ever having to worry about 2 a.m. feedings at the age of 67, say, or paying child support at age 82? Forget Freud's so misguided theories of penis envy (only a man could think up the idea that women wished they had penises. What women have always envied are the rights and privileges men have over women in almost all societies. We couldn't give a damn about having penises of our own. I'm sure I'm not the only woman in the world who much prefers having her sexual organs hidden, thank you), I'm convinced men suffer from menopause envy. Because of that, the male scientists and doctors who ruled those professions for so long (and who still do, really, although women continue to make great strides when it comes to breaking into these fields), have convinced women that menopause is much worse than it actually is.<br />
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At my last physical, when my doctor and I were discussing menopause, he (who is a great guy who always likes to joke around with Bob and me) said to me, "Funny how I never hear woman complain about no longer having their periods." I mean, why have we come to think of menopause as a bad thing? Those of us who have always suffered with our periods are finally relieved of them. On top of that, we never have to worry about miscalculating the date in any given month and winding up at some special event sans tampons only to discover that we desperately need them. And as far as that goes, I was, just last week. thinking, "Maybe I ought, finally, to get rid of all that once-a-month underwear." I hope you women know what I mean -- that old underwear you keep around for once-a-month because you don't care if it gets "ruined." If you are so inclined (and I most definitely am), you can go out and splurge on all kinds of lovely things at your nearest lingerie shop and never have to put them away for 5-7 days a month, or worry that you might accidentally wear and ruin them at the wrong time. And need I mention the biggest plus of all? You can have sex without having to worry about contraception (and I promise you, especially if you use natural progesterone and read certain books and watch certain movies, your interest doesn't vanish). Please, though, don't tell me about your grandmother who had her only child at age 54, certain by then she didn't need any contraception. I don't want to hear it (and, yes, someone actually did once tell me about such a grandmother).<br />
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Speaking of that grandmother who thought she was menopausal and suddenly had a child, I have to tell you about my WTF experience. Here I've been thinking, "No period for a year. I'm safe!" I'm busy buying all kinds of lovely underwear. Never a thought about contraception (something that might be needed when you buy nice, new underwear, which husbands notice in a way they never seem to notice, say, nice, new shoes). Three days ago, I wake up, go to the bathroom, and find myself saying, "Ohmigod, What's that?" as I look at the toilet paper I used to wipe myself. It's an oh-so-familiar sight, and yet I've become so unused to seeing it, I couldn't believe it. Further investigation proved that, yes, I definitely had my period. After nearly two years? Damn! Damn! Damn! Did I even remember how to put in a tampon (from the reserve I kindly keep around the house in case I have any visiting friends who unexpectedly get a visitor of their own)? Yes (it's like riding a bicycle).<br />
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That, my friends, is the one great downside of menopause. It's a fickle friend. You never, apparently, <i>do</i> know exactly when you're safe. You can go nearly two years without a period and then suddenly have one. Be careful. My skepticism (so very strong when I was 27) when it comes to menopausal pregnancies is waning. My even bigger question: when can I finally get rid of that once-a-month underwear?Emily Bartonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13971084813206845680noreply@blogger.com8