Bob and I are having one of those years in which it seems we are constantly bombarded with decisions that have to be made. That's not necessarily a bad thing. Some decisions are fun: a meeting we thought we had has been cancelled. Do we go out and see a movie or stay home and play board games? (Probably the latter.) Others just fun to consider: do we throttle that member of the church who's such a know-it-all and who does nothing but judge and whine? (No, it wouldn't be the Christian thing to do. Besides, I've always kind of hoped that if I ever made the headlines, it wouldn't be as a murderous minister and minister's wife.)
All kidding aside, though, we've also been faced with some tough decisions, and all this decision-making has left me feeling a bit decisioned-out. Nonetheless, I'm spending this Memorial Day weekend making some decisions. You see, earlier this year, I made some decisions that I've already begun to regret. And once you begin to regret a decision, it seems it becomes another decision that has to be made. Luckily, I'm not talking about any decisions that can't easily be undone, which is why I'm here today to discuss undoing some of the decisions I've made.
DECISION #1: Changing my blog.
At the beginning of the year, I decided that my blog needed resuscitating. I chose a new design template for it. This was a very wise decision. I still love the "new" look of my blog. It cheers me up every time I visit. I also decided to be more purposeful in my writing, alternating blog posts among my 3 passions: books, music, and food. This was the stupid decision. I'm writing less than ever now, and it seems it's just because I can't be bothered much to write about food and music, while I've become a slave to my plan, thinking "I can't write another post on books. It's been ages and ages since I wrote about food."
RE-DECISION #1: It seems this slave needs to run away (and take all her books with her). I'm leaving the overbearing plan. I'm back to writing mostly about books and whatever else strikes my fancy. We'll see if anymore blog posts about music and food appear.
DECISION #2: Joining 2 reading challenges (The Once Upon a Time Challenge and The Classics Challenge). I love both these challenges. Really, I do. But what was I thinking? I've never been good at completing any reading challenges, and I already belong to three book discussion groups, and now I'm on the One Book, One Community Committee, which means reading tons of books to help us decide which is going to be our community read in 2013. That's enough when it comes to reading assigned books by specific deadlines.
RE-DECISION #2: I will enjoy the two challenges vicariously, when I can, peeking at what others are reading and what they have to say, and I will continue to keep reading the books I planned to read, but I will read them on my own schedule. I may or may not write blog posts about them. You may have noticed I've replaced the beautiful buttons for both these challenges (a sad thing to do, but necessary to convince myself I've really dropped the two challenges) with new gadgets on my blog: "Album I'm Loving" (there. A little bit of music for you) and "Book I'm Loving."
DECISION #3: Making complicated monthly reading plans.
For a number of years I've been in the habit of planning what books I'm going to read each month. It's kind of fun. Around the end of each month, I begin browsing shelves and the pages of my TBR tome and draw up a list, which sometimes has to be changed when I discover that in order to read everything on it, I'll need to read 500 pages a day. This year, though, I decided to make my monthly plan far more complicated than I ever had. I had assigned categories I was trying to fill, like "contemporary fiction," "classic fiction", "children's/y.a.", "poetry". Talk about taking the joy out of reading (there must be some Puritan blood in me somewhere the way I'm able to take things I love and turn them into chores). Why on earth did I set up a plan that was basically the equivalent of revisiting the horror I call "high school English classes"?
RE-DECISION #3: No more complicated monthly plans. In fact, I'm considering just reading at will. I'm not sure it's something I can do. For some reason, I do like having some sort of a plan (probably why I'm so easily convinced to join challenges). A glimmer of hope is shining off in the distance, though: I have not yet drawn up any sort of list for June, and when I was at our annual library book sale last week and came across a pristine copy of Lonely Werewolf Girl, a book I've been wanting to read forever, I bought it, abandoned everything else I was reading (overdue library books be damned), and dove right in. I've gone back to reading other things while reading it (I will never be a one-book-at-a-time sort), but that's something I rarely ever do, buy a book and begin it the day I buy it.
DECISION #4: I'm going to eat one vegetarian, one vegan, and one anything goes meal a day (an idea I got from Mark Bittman when I read his Food Matters). This is a very hard thing to do when you're (for health reasons) also trying to eat more protein and to cut back on sugar, white flour, and gluten in your diet. My vegan meals often include bread or pasta. I've found gluten-free pasta that I love, but I have yet to find a gluten-free bread that I love. In fact, if you're trying to cut down on those three things. it seems the best diet to adopt is the paleo diet, which recommends eating some sort of lean meat at every meal (something I'm smart enough to know not to even pretend I'm going to try to do, especially since the diet also forbids dairy, and I love my raw milk, yogurt, and cheese).
RE-DECISION #4: Again, I will stop being a slave to the plan. I'm still trying to eat meat only occasionally and to eat more vegan meals, but I'm not trying so hard to stick to this one-one-one thing. First of all, it doesn't work too well if you love to eat leftovers (which I do) and find yourself with 3 vegetarian choices and 1 meat-based choice in your fridge but no vegan choices (unless all you're going to do is eat raw carrots and broccoli, which I'm not). And secondly, I'm tired of eating something, and then thinking, "Oh, wait a minute. That was supposed to be a vegan meal!"
DECISION #5: I'm going to go a year without buying any books.
Can we all just laugh at this one? I think I bought my first book within a week of making this decision ("Book discussion/OBOC books I can't get through our library system don't count.")
RE-DECISION #6: Stop pretending I'm not buying any books this year. I will, instead, make more of an effort to get rid of those I've read, will never read again, and that need to find new homes.
Showing posts with label Free-for-All. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Free-for-All. Show all posts
Monday, May 28, 2012
Monday, April 30, 2012
Malevolent and Odious Ghosts
"... the ghost should be malevolent or odious: amiable and helpful apparitions are all very well in fairy tales or in local legends, but I have no use for them in a fictitious ghost story."
Amen to that! Guess, everyone. Who said it? Here's a HUGE hint: whenever I speak of ghost story writers, I mention him. He's my favorite. He was The Master. Nothing I write could ever compare to what he wrote, but he is always on my mind when I'm writing ghost stories.
At least, I hope he said it. It certainly sounds like something he'd say (who else would use the words "malevolent" and "odious" and "amiable" and "apparitions" all in the same sentence?), but, sad to say, I have no proof of it and am left trusting Zachary Graves, author of Ghosts: the Complete Guide to the Supernatural (Chartwell Books, 2011). I read books like this (which are never "complete" no matter what their titles would like you to believe) for inspiration for my own ghost story writing, and I've come to realize that their authors often do what Graves did here. He informed us that Montague Rhodes James ("M.R." to us friends) wrote that, but (shame on him) he doesn't tell us when nor where. One has to suspect books that don't source their quotes and question why so many books about demons, ghosts, vampires, etc. seem to be in the habit of ignoring copyright laws, as well as studies that back up claims, but that's a subject for another blog post.
The subject of this post is what M.R. James seems to have said, and I so hope he really said it, because, well, he's my hero, and we hero-worshippers need very little encouragement when it comes to finding evidence that "He's so much like me!" But, really, someone please tell me: what is the point of a friendly ghost? Okay, I will admit I was once touched by some ghost story about a kind ghost who cared for some woman's young son who babbled from his crib about the man who visited him. The ghost ended up saving the son in some way, but I don't remember how, which shows, that (quite obviously) I wasn't touched enough to remember the key elements of the story.
I also have to admit that, yes, when I was a child, I got up at some ungodly hour to watch Casper every Saturday morning. Casper the Friendly Ghost, if I remember correctly, was the first in my siblings' and my Saturday morning cartoon line up. Again, if I remember correctly, I have a sneaky suspicion that one of the reasons I was so attracted to it had nothing to do with its content and more to do with the fact that we were (for some inexplicable reason. Maybe because my father loved to watch Bugs Bunny? Maybe because my parents wanted to lie in bed and read on Saturday mornings and not be bothered by us?) allowed to watch cartoons all morning on Saturdays. You have to understand that this was in a household in which we were barely allowed to watch television. The rest of the week, we were allowed 1/2 hour of television-viewing a day, with the exception of things we watched with my parents -- such exciting fare as the nightly news and "What's My Line?" But on Saturdays, glorious Saturdays, we were allowed to get up, fix ourselves big bowls of cereal, and plop down in front of the TV until late morning. Is it any wonder I was up by 6:00, just waiting for Casper? I think I tolerated this friendly ghost because of the other ghosts -- the scary ones -- who sometimes appeared (and one could always hope they would this time) and Wendy. I was never all that into witches, so a good little witch was no problem (besides, I'd seen The Wizard of Oz), and Wendy was a girl, all reasons to like her. Casper himself, though? Meh! What a little goody-goody, huh?
I was much happier with any ghost who appeared on the scene in my favorite Saturday morning cartoon Scooby Doo. Nothing held a candle to that show, not only because Scooby was cute and funny, but also because he and his pals had the sorts of adventures I longed to have. They just happened upon mysteriously haunted places every time they piled into the Mystery Machine and headed down the road. You could always count on that road to become an unpaved one, surrounded by dark trees sporting oddly-bent branches and rickety wooden road signs that read "Beware" and "Turn Back Now."Malevolent, odious ghosts, indeed, would occupy such terrain. Too bad the ghosts always turned out to be some greedy human who would've raked in a fortune had it not been for those "snoopy kids and their dog."
When I reached the age at which I started attending and hosting slumber parties, forget all that stupid talk of boys and prank phone calls, my #1 goal was to spend as much time telling ghost stories and scaring ourselves out of our wits. It helped that I lived in a house that had a mysterious tombstone (you can read my brother's take on that here and my take here) hidden in the crawl space off the basement. I could give "tours" of the "grave under our house," which guaranteed a wonderful atmosphere of horror that sequed into terrifying story telling that kept everyone up until dawn.
These days I like to think I don't scare so easily. Nonetheless, in my masochistic desire to be scared out of my wits, I want the ghosts in any story I read to be the sort of ghost James wanted in his stories. An evil ghost, one that's come to drag me into the pits of hell with it, not one that's come to sing, "If you're happy and you know it, clap your hands" with me. I want to walk down my basement stairs at night, push open the old wooden door that scrapes noisely along the floor of that part of the basement (the little room that should feature it's own "Beware!" and "Turn Back Now!" signs) and to be confronted with a floating skull, clacking it's teeth or a see-through child wielding an ax above her head. I do not want a chatty little golden-haired apparition here to bear witness to all the happiness and love that abounds in my life if only I'll acknowledge it (shouldn't that entity really be tagged an angel and not a ghost?).
Ghosts, from what I understand, should be creatures who died before their time -- violently. I will admit that they don't, necessarily. have to have it in for me. A sad woman carrying the arm her abusive husband severed with a saw, causing her to bleed to death, is fine. She can show up in my house, seeking revenge on her husband, and I'll probably help her. As a matter of fact, because I'm a chicken at heart, I'd much prefer any ghost I encounter to have it in for someone else and not me. I'm perfectly willing, goose-bumped, white-haired and all, to help some poor malevolent and odious apparition (in fact, let's make sure it's particularly odious, because I so love that word) do what it needs to do in order to "cross over." But a friendly ghost? He's on his own if he shows up in my house. Just like my good friend M.R. I have no use for helpful apparitions, most especially in any fictitious ghost story I might read or write.
Amen to that! Guess, everyone. Who said it? Here's a HUGE hint: whenever I speak of ghost story writers, I mention him. He's my favorite. He was The Master. Nothing I write could ever compare to what he wrote, but he is always on my mind when I'm writing ghost stories.
At least, I hope he said it. It certainly sounds like something he'd say (who else would use the words "malevolent" and "odious" and "amiable" and "apparitions" all in the same sentence?), but, sad to say, I have no proof of it and am left trusting Zachary Graves, author of Ghosts: the Complete Guide to the Supernatural (Chartwell Books, 2011). I read books like this (which are never "complete" no matter what their titles would like you to believe) for inspiration for my own ghost story writing, and I've come to realize that their authors often do what Graves did here. He informed us that Montague Rhodes James ("M.R." to us friends) wrote that, but (shame on him) he doesn't tell us when nor where. One has to suspect books that don't source their quotes and question why so many books about demons, ghosts, vampires, etc. seem to be in the habit of ignoring copyright laws, as well as studies that back up claims, but that's a subject for another blog post.
The subject of this post is what M.R. James seems to have said, and I so hope he really said it, because, well, he's my hero, and we hero-worshippers need very little encouragement when it comes to finding evidence that "He's so much like me!" But, really, someone please tell me: what is the point of a friendly ghost? Okay, I will admit I was once touched by some ghost story about a kind ghost who cared for some woman's young son who babbled from his crib about the man who visited him. The ghost ended up saving the son in some way, but I don't remember how, which shows, that (quite obviously) I wasn't touched enough to remember the key elements of the story.
I also have to admit that, yes, when I was a child, I got up at some ungodly hour to watch Casper every Saturday morning. Casper the Friendly Ghost, if I remember correctly, was the first in my siblings' and my Saturday morning cartoon line up. Again, if I remember correctly, I have a sneaky suspicion that one of the reasons I was so attracted to it had nothing to do with its content and more to do with the fact that we were (for some inexplicable reason. Maybe because my father loved to watch Bugs Bunny? Maybe because my parents wanted to lie in bed and read on Saturday mornings and not be bothered by us?) allowed to watch cartoons all morning on Saturdays. You have to understand that this was in a household in which we were barely allowed to watch television. The rest of the week, we were allowed 1/2 hour of television-viewing a day, with the exception of things we watched with my parents -- such exciting fare as the nightly news and "What's My Line?" But on Saturdays, glorious Saturdays, we were allowed to get up, fix ourselves big bowls of cereal, and plop down in front of the TV until late morning. Is it any wonder I was up by 6:00, just waiting for Casper? I think I tolerated this friendly ghost because of the other ghosts -- the scary ones -- who sometimes appeared (and one could always hope they would this time) and Wendy. I was never all that into witches, so a good little witch was no problem (besides, I'd seen The Wizard of Oz), and Wendy was a girl, all reasons to like her. Casper himself, though? Meh! What a little goody-goody, huh?
I was much happier with any ghost who appeared on the scene in my favorite Saturday morning cartoon Scooby Doo. Nothing held a candle to that show, not only because Scooby was cute and funny, but also because he and his pals had the sorts of adventures I longed to have. They just happened upon mysteriously haunted places every time they piled into the Mystery Machine and headed down the road. You could always count on that road to become an unpaved one, surrounded by dark trees sporting oddly-bent branches and rickety wooden road signs that read "Beware" and "Turn Back Now."Malevolent, odious ghosts, indeed, would occupy such terrain. Too bad the ghosts always turned out to be some greedy human who would've raked in a fortune had it not been for those "snoopy kids and their dog."
When I reached the age at which I started attending and hosting slumber parties, forget all that stupid talk of boys and prank phone calls, my #1 goal was to spend as much time telling ghost stories and scaring ourselves out of our wits. It helped that I lived in a house that had a mysterious tombstone (you can read my brother's take on that here and my take here) hidden in the crawl space off the basement. I could give "tours" of the "grave under our house," which guaranteed a wonderful atmosphere of horror that sequed into terrifying story telling that kept everyone up until dawn.
These days I like to think I don't scare so easily. Nonetheless, in my masochistic desire to be scared out of my wits, I want the ghosts in any story I read to be the sort of ghost James wanted in his stories. An evil ghost, one that's come to drag me into the pits of hell with it, not one that's come to sing, "If you're happy and you know it, clap your hands" with me. I want to walk down my basement stairs at night, push open the old wooden door that scrapes noisely along the floor of that part of the basement (the little room that should feature it's own "Beware!" and "Turn Back Now!" signs) and to be confronted with a floating skull, clacking it's teeth or a see-through child wielding an ax above her head. I do not want a chatty little golden-haired apparition here to bear witness to all the happiness and love that abounds in my life if only I'll acknowledge it (shouldn't that entity really be tagged an angel and not a ghost?).
Ghosts, from what I understand, should be creatures who died before their time -- violently. I will admit that they don't, necessarily. have to have it in for me. A sad woman carrying the arm her abusive husband severed with a saw, causing her to bleed to death, is fine. She can show up in my house, seeking revenge on her husband, and I'll probably help her. As a matter of fact, because I'm a chicken at heart, I'd much prefer any ghost I encounter to have it in for someone else and not me. I'm perfectly willing, goose-bumped, white-haired and all, to help some poor malevolent and odious apparition (in fact, let's make sure it's particularly odious, because I so love that word) do what it needs to do in order to "cross over." But a friendly ghost? He's on his own if he shows up in my house. Just like my good friend M.R. I have no use for helpful apparitions, most especially in any fictitious ghost story I might read or write.
Wednesday, April 04, 2012
GRRR!
Okay, so things are changing in the blogosphere, and I just don't like it. First of all, Planet Blogger has changed it's "compose" page, and I'm not real fond of the new look and format. Maybe I'll get used to it, but, really, I don't know why a change was necessary. As far as I can tell, nothing new has been added, and I don't like having to go to the right-hand column to do things like label my posts. I liked the old composition page much better, with things like "scheduling" and "labels" down at the bottom of the post area. In fact, in the old format, you didn't even have to click on "labels," you could just type them right in. Why, Blogger, add that extra, unnecessary click? But, right now, this new format is just a little annoyance, and I can deal with it and will, probably, one day, even get used to it.
More problematic has been what's happened to me over on Planet Wordpress. Sometime last year, when commenting on all the blogs I like to read on that planet of many marvelous thoughts and ideas, I discovered that my signature image was just whatever random design was assigned to me at that particular day and hour. I didn't like this, so I went on to Gravatar to create my own image for my Wordpress comments, a cute little frog prince that some of you might recognize. I have to admit that I probably contributed to my own problems on Planet Wordpress by establishing a second home there, the blog I write for my library as PV Reader. This means that unless I remember to step out of that lovely home and lock the door, any comments I make on any blogs come up as comments being made by PV Reader and not by Emily Barton. Still, this was never a huge problem, because most of you know that PV Reader and Emily Barton are one and the same. Of course, PV Reader's images, when she comments, are randomly chosen designs, but she tries to comment so rarely that I'm not too bothered by that.
The huge problem surfaced about two weeks ago, when I suddenly discovered that the Wordpress government was holding my Emily Barton i.d. hostage. I could still leave my PV Reader home, but if I wanted to visit anyone else, I had to do so as PV Reader, or remain silent. I could no longer log on as Emily Barton with my Telecommuter Talk URL. Apparently, long ago (so long ago I honestly don't remember creating it), I created a blog called "WorldCitizenshipChallenge" on Planet Wordpress, using my Planet Blogger (located in the Google Galaxy) email address. Despite the fact that I had set up my Gravatar account with the Telecommuter Talk URL, which has worked fine for me ever since I set it up, I was told that my email address was already associated with some other Wordpress home and that I needed to either log into that or log into Gravatar in order to comment on blogs as anything other than PV Reader.
Did I ask the Wordpress government to do this? No. So, why did it suddenly become important to link me to some crumbling, empty home that is probably haunted with the sorts of ghosts I don't like? Especially since getting rid of my connections to that house was damn difficult to do. Until recently, I'd been on such friendly terms with the Wordpress government, their allowing me to comment in their realm, despite being from a different planet, and we'd been running along so smoothly. Now, suddenly, Frog Prince Emily Barton had been exiled from Planet Wordpress.
Seems the only thing to do, despite my opposition to war and violence, was to blow up the old World Citizenship Challenge home. Still not sure that worked, though. The Wordpress government still seems to be keeping an eye on me and trying to figure out if I have secret associations with a home that no longer exists.
More problematic has been what's happened to me over on Planet Wordpress. Sometime last year, when commenting on all the blogs I like to read on that planet of many marvelous thoughts and ideas, I discovered that my signature image was just whatever random design was assigned to me at that particular day and hour. I didn't like this, so I went on to Gravatar to create my own image for my Wordpress comments, a cute little frog prince that some of you might recognize. I have to admit that I probably contributed to my own problems on Planet Wordpress by establishing a second home there, the blog I write for my library as PV Reader. This means that unless I remember to step out of that lovely home and lock the door, any comments I make on any blogs come up as comments being made by PV Reader and not by Emily Barton. Still, this was never a huge problem, because most of you know that PV Reader and Emily Barton are one and the same. Of course, PV Reader's images, when she comments, are randomly chosen designs, but she tries to comment so rarely that I'm not too bothered by that.
The huge problem surfaced about two weeks ago, when I suddenly discovered that the Wordpress government was holding my Emily Barton i.d. hostage. I could still leave my PV Reader home, but if I wanted to visit anyone else, I had to do so as PV Reader, or remain silent. I could no longer log on as Emily Barton with my Telecommuter Talk URL. Apparently, long ago (so long ago I honestly don't remember creating it), I created a blog called "WorldCitizenshipChallenge" on Planet Wordpress, using my Planet Blogger (located in the Google Galaxy) email address. Despite the fact that I had set up my Gravatar account with the Telecommuter Talk URL, which has worked fine for me ever since I set it up, I was told that my email address was already associated with some other Wordpress home and that I needed to either log into that or log into Gravatar in order to comment on blogs as anything other than PV Reader.
Did I ask the Wordpress government to do this? No. So, why did it suddenly become important to link me to some crumbling, empty home that is probably haunted with the sorts of ghosts I don't like? Especially since getting rid of my connections to that house was damn difficult to do. Until recently, I'd been on such friendly terms with the Wordpress government, their allowing me to comment in their realm, despite being from a different planet, and we'd been running along so smoothly. Now, suddenly, Frog Prince Emily Barton had been exiled from Planet Wordpress.
Seems the only thing to do, despite my opposition to war and violence, was to blow up the old World Citizenship Challenge home. Still not sure that worked, though. The Wordpress government still seems to be keeping an eye on me and trying to figure out if I have secret associations with a home that no longer exists.
Wednesday, March 21, 2012
The Meme Continues
It seems most who've answered my 11 questions meme would like to see my answers, and Ms. Musings tagged me to answer her own questions, so here are both.
Answers to My Own Questions
1. Have you ever liked a movie more than the book? If so, what movie(s)?
Yes, before legal thrillers were a dime a dozen, and no one had ever heard of some new guy named John Grisham, I read a book called The Firm, which kept me absolutely riveted from beginning to end. When the movie came out, I was sure it wouldn't be as good as the book, especially since it starred Tom Cruise. I was wrong. I can't remember why (we're talking nearly twenty years ago now), but I distinctly remember thinking that some changes had been made for the movie version that made it even better than the book.
2. ________ opening for __________ would be a dream concert. Fill in the blanks. (You can fill them in with performers dead or alive.)
Jamie Cullum. Ella Fitzgerald. And then I hope they would come onto stage and do a few numbers together.
3. If you're making dinner and don't need to take into account anyone else's tastes but your own, what do you find yourself having over and over again?
Fried egg on toast, or baked beans on toast, or (if I'm really being fancy and decadent) fried egg and baked beans on toast.
4. You get to interview the author of the book you are reading right now. What's the first question you'd ask?
I'm (as usual) reading several books at once, but I will ask Lawrence LeShan, author of How to Meditate: Am I ever going to get to the point at which I can focus and keep my mind from wandering all over the place? (I've been trying fifteen minutes a day for three weeks now without much success at all.)
5. If the world becomes one in which all new novels are only published in digital format, what will you miss most?
Going to bookstores and browsing the new book shelves to see what (if anything) strikes my fancy. I do judge books by their covers, and digital covers are completely unsatisfying.
6. If you had been gifted to play any musical instrument brilliantly, what would you choose to play? (Or maybe you are so-gifted. If so, what do you play?)
The banjo. It's just such a fun, happy instrument.
7. The "war between the sexes" has been around since the beginning of time. What do you think is the biggest problem between the sexes today?
The fact that we still raise our children in ways that adhere to traditional sex roles. We're getting better, but we have a lo-o-ng way to go, and I'd say we've gone backwards since the 1970s, and Free to Be You and Me, what with all this focus on princesses and fairies and pink and lavender for girls these days, not to mention seven-year-olds being encouraged to wear tight-fitting, cleavage-baring clothes for their non-existent cleavage.
8. If you could switch places with any celebrity for three months, with whom would you like to switch places?
Nigella Lawson. I want to be able to cook like her. I want her kitchen. I want to write like she does (and to write for such publications as The New York Times). And I want to look like her. If I didn't love her so much, I would hate her.
9. You can eat at any restaurant in the world. Where would you eat?
The Hanapepe Cafe and Espresso Bookstore. Books, delicious coffee, fabulous food. What more could you ask for? Oh yeah, it's in Kauai, HI.
10. What book do you wish you hadn't wasted your time reading last year?
Heaven is for Real. That one very nearly did in this curious cat, who wonders just how many lives she has left to waste on books that pique her curiosity because she can't believe so many people are actually reading them and taking them seriously.
11. Would you like me to answer all these questions myself?
I think I've answered this one.
Answers to Ms. Musing's Questions
1. How do you mark the end of the week and the beginning of the weekend?
Since I work part-time, often on Saturdays and am married to a minister, my "weekend" is very different from most, basically it consists of Sunday afternoon and Monday. I typically mark it by coming home from church, changing into something extremely comfortable, eating lunch, and spending the afternoon reading before having some sort of "date" with Bob, whether that's going to dinner or a movie or just staying in and playing games.
2. What is your idea of luxury?
A day spent in bed, alone, with a good book.
3. Tell me a book, a drink, and a food that all complement each other.
Amor Towles's The Rules of Civility, a martini (or anything made with gin), and crackers with some sort of really delicious aged cheese.
4. What is one thing you love about the house (flat, apartment, yurt, whatever) and one thing you would change?
I love almost everything about it: the fact that it's over a hundred years old, its high ceilings, its hard-wood floor, its cool molding, it's large front porch, the large walk-up attic. It's a fabulous house.
I would change its horrible, horrible location: right on an extremely busy highway, traveled day and night by noisy tractor trailers, which makes the front porch impossible to use. There are so many gorgeous places in this county where I would happily pick it up and plop it down, if only I could.
5. What is something about yourself that you have made peace with?
I will never tan; that creamy, white skin can be beautiful, too (I mean, look at Nicole Kidman), no matter what the fashion industry wants us to believe; and that it is much better to stay out of the sun than to burn myself and risk skin cancer.
6. If you're browsing in a real-world bookshop, what will make you pick up a book that you've never heard of by an author you're not familiar with?
a. The cover
b. The fact that it's on a "staff recommends" shelf or has some sort of "staff-recommended" blurb associated with it
7. If you could (or do) have it your way, what's your decorating style (plain, fancy, girlie, austere, classic...?)
Definitely classic. Visit Pierpont Morgan's library in NYC (the part that was his). Antiques, leather, wood, huge fire place, wall-to-wall books. That's what I want (unfortunately, I don't have the money for that sort of thing).
8. What never fails to cheer you up?
Reading Three Men in a Boat (preferably outside, on a gorgeous day, by some body of water, with multiple glasses of fresh and icy cold lemonade).
9. What are you going to do when you retire that you don't have time for now?
Bake my own bread. In fact, bake in general. I also hope to learn about wild flowers and trees, hiking all those trails in Maine.
10. Given the chance, which house in literature would you move into and why?
The brownstone in NYC that Elizabeth Enright's Melendy family lived in in The Saturdays, because it was obviously conveniently located to anything the kids wanted to do (museums, opera, Central Park, etc.), while also being a typical brownstone, with its multiple floors (I'm a fan of multiple floors). I would also like to have the country home the family moves into in The Four-Story Mistake, because it's another dream house, with its cupola and secret rooms and nooks and crannies (and, of course, multiple floors). It was probably in Westchester County somewhere, but once I moved to Connecticut, I liked to think it was in Connecticut.
11. What don't you wear, not because it doesn't suit you, but because you don't think you're the sort of person who wears that style/colour/a poncho?
Long, tight dresses with plunging necklines and slits up to the hip. I don't have the right sort of curves, and I'm not a movie star and will never be on stage receiving an Oscar. Also, if I need tape to keep myself inside anything, I'm not going to wear it.
Friday, March 02, 2012
A Meme from the Queen
(Note all the labels for this post. This one conveniently fulfills all my recently created blog categories for The New and Improved Telecommuter Talk, except for "music." Seems I must do a couple of posts on music, then, no?)
Coutney
Remember back in the day when I was dubbed "The Queen o' Memes"? No? I don't blame you. I barely remember it myself, seeing how long it's been since I either responded to or created a meme. There have been quite a few that I've meant to respond to, but, well, we all know the difference between meaning to do something and actually doing it. I'm much better at the former, not always so good at the latter. In other words, if proverbs are to be believed, you don't have to look too hard to see the good intentions oozing out of the big truck paving my road to hell.
1. Post the Rules.
2. Answer the eleven questions that were asked of you by the person who tagged you.
3. Make up eleven new questions and tag eleven new people to do the meme.
4. Let them know you tagged them.
1. What is your favourite place in the world?
2. Have you ever visited an author's home, and did the experience live up to your expectation?
3. Do you read biographies of authors you like, or do you prefer to let their words speak for them?
4. Do you have a comfort food?
5. Do you have a favourite classical author?
6. Do you prefer to watch the movie first, or read the book first?
8. Is there an author that you are planning to read this year for the first time?
9. Do you have a favourite historical period, and why is it your favourite?
10. Name a book that you are anticipating reading that is being published this year.
and just because I [Susan, although Emily loves this question, too] like this question so much:
11. Name two of your favourite novels that you have reread more than once.
Luckily, I have Susan at You Can Never Have Too Many Books doing her best to save me from the fiery pits of hell. She tagged me for a meme that I just couldn't resist (and even emailed me to tell me she'd tagged me so that it wouldn't whizz by unnoticed, the way so many good blog posts seem to do these days, while I plod my way much more slowly around the blogosphere than I used to).
These are the rules for what I'm calling The Eleven Questions Meme:
1. Post the Rules.
2. Answer the eleven questions that were asked of you by the person who tagged you.
3. Make up eleven new questions and tag eleven new people to do the meme.
4. Let them know you tagged them.
And these are the questions Susan made up for those she tagged to answer, along with my answers to them:
I'm not sure. I absolutely love so many places and would move to any of them in a heartbeat (New York City; London; Edinburgh; Mt. Desert Island, ME; Portland, ME; Asheville, NC; etc.), but there are plenty of places in the world I've never been that I'm sure I would love just as much (Vienna, for instance. Rome for another). The world is just too big, and there's just too much to love.
2. Have you ever visited an author's home, and did the experience live up to your expectation?
When I was fifteen, I visited Beatrix Potter's home, and yes, it absolutely did live up to my expectations. It was the perfect place for the creator of Peter Rabbit, et al., and I loved discovering that she actually found dead animals and dissected them in order to be able to draw them as accurately as possible. I also, a couple of years ago, visited the home where Edgar Allan Poe lived during his Philadelphia years. There's a museum on the first floor, but the rest of the house is unfurnished, giving it a wonderfully eerie quality that just quietly whispers "Poe."
3. Do you read biographies of authors you like, or do you prefer to let their words speak for them?
I'd prefer to read biographies, and do, but not nearly as often as I'd like. I frequently find myself thinking, "Hmmm...I really ought to read a book about (Poe, say -- especially when touring his house)," but then I never do. Unfortunately, Wikipedia doesn't help when it comes to this. These days, I typically just refer to it and the links it provides when I want to know more about an author. When I do sit down with a biography (or autobiography or memoir), though, I always end up wishing I did so more often.
4. Do you have a comfort food?
I have tons of comfort foods: grilled cheese sandwiches, tomato soup, hot dogs, meat loaf and mashed potatoes, chicken pot pie (real chicken pot pie, not the chicken stew people in Lancaster County call "chicken pot pie"), bagels with cream cheese and lox, shrimp cocktail, fried egg on toast, baked beans on toast (actually, just toast, period)... I'm making myself hungry, so I'm going to stop now.
5. Do you have a favourite classical author?
That's like having a favorite place in the world. Many, many spring to mind: Louisa May Alcott, Charlotte Brontë, Jane Austen, Leo Tolstoy, Mark Twain, Edgar Allan Poe (he's popping up all over the place in this meme), Aristophanes, and I could go on. I'm sure, though, that I have plenty of undiscovered authors who would fit the bill once I get around to reading them. Maybe in my next life?
6. Do you prefer to watch the movie first, or read the book first?
Unless I know it's going to be my next lifetime before I finally get around to reading the book, I prefer to read the book first. There's nothing I hate more than being told what a character looks like (via images on a screen) before I've created the character in my own mind. In fact, it can ruin a book for me. Sometimes I accidentally see a movie first, because I don't realize it's a book (The Descendants), but usually I read the book before seeing the movie.
7. Do you have enough bookshelves? (I know this question is a cheat, because really do any of us have enough bookshelves?)
I would if my husband didn't have so many books :-)!
8. Is there an author that you are planning to read this year for the first time?
Yes, Jack Vance (and I've already begun to read him and have fallen in love with him).
9. Do you have a favourite historical period, and why is it your favourite?
The 1920s. It's my favorite because I love the 1960s, too, and all the radical changes that shook up the world, and the 1920s were the same. People forget that because our memories are short, and no one studies history much anymore. The 1920s were the original radical decade of the twentieth century.
10. Name a book that you are anticipating reading that is being published this year.
Tana French's Broken Harbour. Can. Not. Wait.
and just because I [Susan, although Emily loves this question, too] like this question so much:
11. Name two of your favourite novels that you have reread more than once.
Norton Juster's The Phantom Tollbooth, which I recently wrote about here and Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre. Like The Phantom Tollbooth, I read it about once a decade or so.
These are my 11 questions (which will include some questions about music, so technically, I probably could label this post "music", as well, but I won't):
1. Have you ever liked a movie more than the book? If so, what movie(s)?
2. ________ opening for __________ would be a dream concert. Fill in the blanks. (You can fill them in with performers dead or alive.)
3. If you're making dinner and don't need to take into account anyone else's tastes but your own, what do you find yourself having over and over again?
4. You get to interview the author of the book you are reading right now. What's the first question you'd ask?
5. If the world becomes one in which all new novels are only published in digital format, what will you miss most?
6. If you had been gifted to play any musical instrument brilliantly, what would you choose to play? (Or maybe you are so-gifted. If so, what do you play?)
7. The "war between the sexes" has been around since the beginning of time. What do you think is the biggest problem between the sexes today?
8. If you could switch places with any celebrity for three months, with whom would you like to switch places?
9. You can eat at any restaurant in the world. Where would you eat?
10. What book do you wish you hadn't wasted your time reading last year?
11. Would you like me to answer all these questions myself?
I'm tagging the following 11 people (some of whom have been tagged in almost every single meme I've ever done, I think, which reminds me of the good old days when I used to spend so much time whizzing around the blogosphere):
Looking forward to hearing what everyone has to say!
Wednesday, February 15, 2012
Things I (Inexplicably) Like
1. "Car Talk" on NPR. Click and Clack, the hosts of this show that ought to bore me to tears, have voices that are almost as annoying as sports broadcasters with names like "The Red Bull." I am not a car fan. I think of them as necessary evils that get me from Point A to Point B, because there is no such thing as good public transportation in America (unless you live somewhere like NYC, and then, you only think it's good, because you've never, well, lived somewhere like Paris). Tell me you'd like to discuss the inner workings of cars to me, and I am likely to take out my book and start reading. Nonetheless, when I am riding around in that necessary evil on a Saturday, running errands, and I find out that "Car Talk" happens to be on, I will listen to it as if I'm listening to that excellent audiobook version of Dracula that I so love. As Click and Clack would say, "Go figure."
2. The television show Criminal Minds. Want to freak me out? Put me in a house all by myself at night and tell me there's a serial killer on the loose in town. Serial killers terrify me. I constantly have to remind myself that the statistical likelihood of my being the next victim of the "Blue Bonnet Butcher" while I'm out walking the dog just before bed is next to nil. Criminal Minds was a fun, thrilling, interesting show when I first discovered it (being way behind the times when it comes to television viewing, this was only last fall), until someone told me that every episode is based on a real serial killer. We have had enough creepy killers in this country to be able to highlight one per week on a show that has been on the air for something like seven years? Those comforting statistics on which I used to rely are, somehow, not quite so comforting anymore. Does this mean I'm no longer addicted to the show? Of course not. Why would I stop watching something that gives me nightmares and adds to late night fears, while telling everyone how it's the only show on TV that I really watch?
3. Chick lit. When I was a teenager, I shunned all those romances my sisters and mother read, preferring to spend all my time with other favorites of theirs, like Agatha Christie, when I wasn't hunkered down with Stephen King and John Irving. Today, give me a candy-colored cover, and I'll happily breeze my way through it, egregious typos and grammatical errors and all. I can't live off this type of work, but I certainly find myself craving it from time to time, most often just after I've read, yet another, grim contemporary "masterpiece" all the critics have hailed to the moon and back that has left me thinking, "This is what qualifies as 'great literature' in today's world?" I don't know, I guess it's just nice, sometimes, to pick up something and know that it will end with the girl getting the boy, no matter how formulaic it all is. And, at least, it never pretends to be anything it isn't, which is much more than I can say for "The new Huck Finn" or "This century's War and Peace."
4. Oysters on the half shell. I would like to know whatever possessed the first human being who ever ate one to look at it and think, "That looks like it's going to be delicious." There's probably a lot I wouldn't eat if I went by looks alone, but this has got to be way up at the top of the list. They don't merely look unappetizing; they look gross, like something some kid in a biology class would take from a dissected pig and use to frighten others. I don't just like them, though, I love them, and I can't explain why. It's not as though they're loaded with flavor (in fact, half the reason to eat them is the lemon and cocktail sauce typically served with them). It's not as though they have great texture. But I crave them sometimes. I miss them living where I do (even though we're not far from the Chesapeake Bay, the restaurants around here tend to cater to a meat and potatoes crowd, so they're not standard items on most menus). When I go to Maine, I don't eat lobster nearly as much as I eat oysters.
5. Craft shows and fairs. I know: what could be less inspiring than booth after booth of people desperately trying to make something out of nothing? And yet, tell me there's a craft show coming to town, and I'll pen it in on my calendar. I don't think it's because I necessarily care for much of what's being sold (although I do. Some of the jewelry I find at craft fairs is gorgeous, and I like anything that's hand-knitted, but most of that stuff tends to be out of my price range. Then again, I often don't: highly-shellacked, wooden plaques with "cutesy" sayings on them, anyone?). I think it has more to do with a certain sort of fascination: look at all the people who flock to these things, look at all this creativity, look at all the things I could have thought of to make and sell, look at all the things I could never, ever make, even if I spent every minute of every day trying to make them. On the other hand, it may just be the food.
What about you? What are some things you inexplicably like?
Friday, January 20, 2012
The New and Improved Telecommuter Talk
It's been over a month since I posted anything on this blog, and I haven't been reading any blogs, either. Some of this is due to the fact that 2011 -- a year that will be memorable for not being one of the best in the Barton household -- went out with a bang (our car broke down on the way to Maine and what should have been a relaxing vacation, after an exhausting Thanksgiving and Christmas season, instead became an exhausting vacation dealing with what to do with it and, ultimately, buying a new car -- the Prius v, Prius's new station wagon, which is proving to be a fabulous car so far). That happened during the week of December 26th, and we got back to Pennsylvania on January 3, though, so I can't really blame it for my disappearance from the blogosphere for all of January as well. I can say, however, that because I didn't have the relaxing vacation I'd planned, in which I was going to spend the majority of my days reading in front of a fire, I came back with three long books to read for our One Book, One Community committee (I'm serving on that to choose the book our three counties will be reading for 2013). I had to spend every spare minute reading them. Then again, that meeting was a week ago, so I can't really use it as an excuse anymore. Finally, I've decided that I was just a little bit bored with my blog, but I don't want to give up on blogging altogether. After 5 1/2 years, I just needed to tweak it a bit.
First up: a face lift. I've changed the design template (Blogger has much more to offer in this regard than they did when I first came on board with them). I hope you like it. I'm way too much of a Luddite to design my own look, but this one caught my eye.
Secondly, I've decided to be more purposeful in my posting. Those of you who've been with me since the beginning know that I started this blog with the intent of writing about my experiences as a telecommuter. I quickly ran out of content and started writing about any and everything. My blog's title now seems like false advertising; I don't even telecommute anymore; but I like it (I'm a huge fan of alliteration), so I'm going to keep it. How to be more purposeful? I started thinking about my passions, and I came up with three:
1. Books
2. Food
3. Music
I'm not at all original in my passions, huh? I'm passionate about other things: animals (especially frogs), for instance, but I don't particularly like reading and writing about them. I mean, there are only so many fascinating facts about frogs that I would care to share with my readers and only so many pictures I could take of new additions to the frog collection I've had since I was five. Books, food, and music, though, are passions that lend themselves well to blog posts. After all, I've already been blogging about books and music for years. I recently realized that, although I talk about loving food and cooking, I rarely ever post anything about my adventures in the kitchen (kind of like I talk about writing a novel and a collection of ghost stories and never seem to finish them -- but I am. I promise! It's just taking much longer than I'd like). I think it's about time I did.
With these three passions in mind, I've come up with a weekly game plan for the blog, as follows:
One post a week will be focused on books. This won't necessarily be a book review, although I hope to include plenty of those, but it will always be about books or authors or publishing or libraries or some such thing.
One post a week will be focused on music. Again, it may be more than a favorite song (which I've been doing for years on Music Monday), and I do still plan to share favorite songs, but I want to broaden this category and write about groups or composers or types of music, etc. And I hope to stop being so lazy, giving you something a little more substantial than mere links to YouTube videos.
One post a week will be about food. Same thing. I hope to share original recipes with you, but I also want to share other aspects of food that interest me, like nutrition and the celebrity chef phenomenon, etc.
Finally, one post a week will be a free-for-all. This is where all the other stuff I like to ponder will appear.
I'm not going to assign days of the week to these posts, although Music Monday seems like it ought to remain on Mondays (lovely alliteration yet again), so it probably will. My goal is to be more purposeful but not more anal: no need to assign specific days of the week to specific types of posts. I'm going to start using the label function, so if you're not interested, say, in reading about music, you can skip that post and spend your time reading what does interest you.
So, Happy New Year, everyone, and Happy New Telecommuter Talk (I hope)!
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