Nov 30, 2005 | Uncategorized
Last week, we were shopping for a book, and noticed that our local Borders had something unusual on the shelves: lots of print versions of books published by electronic publisher Ellora’s Cave. While the fact that print publishers are creating electronic versions of their books isn’t news, it’s interesting that a publisher that started exclusively in the online realm is in the financial position to offer print books. Yeah, the covers are still bad, but these aren’t the kind of books you read for the covers, if you know what we mean.
Courtesy of Booksquare. No, you definitely don't read those for the covers. 😉
Nov 30, 2005 | Uncategorized
Didn't mean to be gone a whole week, but the holidays do that to a body don't they? We had a good Thanksgiving, a long and fun weekend, and I've spent the last two days working hard on the newsletter I edit.
In fact, I've realized I'm going to need to make some hard decisions come January about what I can and cannot do next year. As incoming Aloha Chapter president, I'll have plenty to keep me busy. When I mentioned writing an article on-spec for another publication recently, Mike nearly hit the roof.
“No more giving away your writing for a clip. You've got enough already, and you need to work on selling your novels.”
Um, yeah, he's right. December is bad for getting anything done, so I'll content myself with less. Maybe I'll put together a business plan. I had one, but I never wrote it down so it didn't seem real. This time, I'll write it down and refer to it daily.
Someone asked me recently if I got more writing done because I lived in a warm and sunny place year round. Er, no. In fact, it's kind of like those spring school days where you sat at your desk and gazed out the window at the birds and grass and imagined yourself frolicking. Except there's no teacher keeping me in that classroom now. 😉
Nov 24, 2005 | Uncategorized
You know you live on an island when, with a fast approaching holiday dedicated to eating, you have to drive to four different stores just to find the fresh herbs and whipping cream that your recipes call for. Does no one around here use fresh ingredients until Thanksgiving? Why the run on whipping cream and thyme? (Sage I can understand.) Mounds of basil are still available. Piles of oregano beckon. Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme are off to Scarborough Fair or something. I'll be glad when normal returns next week.
For holiday gift ideas, the New York Times has just updated their 100 Notable Books of the Year. Here's a taste:
Fiction & Poetry
BEYOND BLACK. By Hilary Mantel. (John Macrae/Holt, $26.) Neurotic, demanding ghosts haunt a British clairvoyant in this darkly comic novel.
A CHANGED MAN. By Francine Prose. (HarperCollins, $24.95.) A neo-Nazi engages a Jewish human rights leader in this morally concerned novel, asking for help in his effort to repent.
COLLECTED POEMS, 1943-2004. By Richard Wilbur. (Harcourt, $35.) This urbane poetry survived the age of Ginsberg, Lowell and Plath.
EMPIRE RISING. By Thomas Kelly. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $25.) A muscular historical novel in which the Irish erect the Empire State Building in a cheerfully corrupt New York.
ENVY.
By Kathryn Harrison. (Random House, $24.95.) A psychoanalyst is unhappy but distant until Greek-tragedy things start happening in this novel by an ace student of sexual violation.
EUROPE CENTRAL. By William T. Vollmann. (Viking, $39.95.) A novel, mostly in stories, of Middle European fanaticism and resistance to it in the World War II period.
FOLLIES: New Stories. By Ann Beattie. (Scribner, $25.) This keen observer of the surface of life now slows down for an occasional epiphany.
Nov 22, 2005 | Uncategorized
JESUS, JUICED:
Anne Rice's 27th novel, “Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt,” is No. 4 on this week's hardcover fiction list. The book, like Norman Mailer's “Gospel According to the Son” (1997), is a first-person account of the life of Jesus, though Rice cannily breaks off a smaller piece of that life, writing about him at age 7. (“It's as if Rice is casting Christ as the new Harry Potter,” Chris Ayres wrote in The Times of London.)
The book has arrived to some of the best reviews of Rice's career. There's something about writing in the voice of Jesus that smooths out a writer's prose; Reynolds Price, reviewing Mailer's book in the Book Review, didn't like Mailer's “excess of self-effacement.” Yet Rice has been praised for pretty much the same thing. As Laura Miller put it in Salon: “Gone are such Ricean devices as passages of florid description, conspicuous high-end consumption, endless assurances of the main characters' beauty and that odd, pseudo-archaic Germanic syntax that would later become a trademark of Yoda. (Pretentious it was.)”
Rice, who was brought up in the Roman Catholic Church, was an atheist for 30 years – and wrote “Interview With the Vampire” and a pile of other pop-gothic novels – before returning to the church in 1998. On “Charlie Rose,” she seemed grateful she's been welcomed back. “I thought maybe,” she said, “I had been officially excommunicated.”
Stephanie Diani for The New York Times
Nov 22, 2005 | Uncategorized
Mike is back from DC, his coat stashed in the back of the storage closet, his jeans on a shelf, his shoes tucked away, his long sleeve shirts hanging where they won't be disturbed until another chilly trip beckons.
“How was it?” I ask.
“Cold,” he says. “Freaking cold, rainy, and miserable. Did we really live there for ten years?”
“Yep.”
“I don't miss it. I never want to go back.”
“True dat.”
He called me the first day he was there, saying “It's so flat and so big, just goes on and on and on. I'd forgotten.”
And we both know DC is nothing compared to a big city like Chicago or New York. DC is actually a lovely city, the mall is beautiful, and the lack of skyscrapers is refreshing. But the metro area is gigantic when compared to this island we live on. I wonder how many Oahus could fit inside the Beltway?
Last night, I was startled out of a dream in which a giant wave was coming toward the house, and then I realized it was raining. Not just a little tap-tap-tap, but a downpour in which I could hear water rushing down the sides of the house, splattering the soggy ground. I worried about the creek behind us, then figured it hadn't been raining long enough to fill a 12 foot deep trench. There'll be many more nights like this, and days too, when the water pours as if it won't ever stop and the news bleats flash flood warnings on a regular basis (turn around, don't drown the voice from the National Weather Service says as it reminds you not to cross any body of water in which you cannot see the bottom).
Winter has arrived. Time for high surf, short days, lots of rain, and whales.
Nov 20, 2005 | Uncategorized
I've been stuck on page 168 of The Da Vinci Code for the past three weeks. Life is just too short and I cannot force myself to continue through this linguistic hell. When I mentioned to my friend Michael, three weeks ago, that I was stuck on pg 168, he looked at me with surprise.
“You mean you made it that far?”
“You didn't?” I said.
“I picked it up in the bookstore and couldn't get past the first page.”
That's the benefit of a PhD in Lit, I guess. The crap meter works instantaneously.
I'll wait for the movie. This sucker is going back to the library (thank heavens I started cleaning house today, or I'd have forgotten the darned thing was buried beneath a pile of papers).
Foucault's Pendulum and The Last Temptation of Christ are much better written; Temptation, at least, is every bit as controversial as Da Vinci.
