Aug 1, 2005 | Uncategorized
It ain't paradise when you've got a head cold from hell. The sun is shining, the trades are blowing, and I'm miserable. This is my second cold since I moved to Hawaii. Silly me, I thought cold germs would be a lot harder to catch here. I can't think where I caught this cold, unless it was at Borders on Wednesday. No one around me seemed to be suffering, but then I had the telltale sore throat Thursday night and the sniffles on Friday. Saturday and Sunday were progressively worse. Today is full-blown cold. Maybe I should have stayed home over the weekend, but I didn't. Went to the beach by myself on Friday, went to the windward side with hubby on Saturday (ate at a great place called Fatboy's Local Drive In — kalua cabbage, yum!), went to a party Sat night, went to the beach on Sunday. I am paying today. This sucks.
Aside from surfing and bloghopping, I think I'll do nothing but read today. Since I finished Carpe Demon, my options are open. I am still stuck in another romance, so I could finish that one, or I could start a new one. Not sure I can deal with Virginia Woolf or Simone today. Reading Woolf's Three Guineas. Is it terrible of me to say I wish she'd get to the point and stop all the roundabout logic? Who am I to bitch, though? Virginia Woolf is Virginia-freaking-Woolf. I am nobody. And, I am quite sure the argument style was appropriate for the day. My 21st century sensibilities (i.e. give me the soundbite) are having trouble staying focused.
Gawd, what is happening to our literary traditions? Woolf, Lawrence, Joyce, Faulkner — they would look down their noses at me. I have been seduced by the dark side, aka popular fiction–and I'm not complaining! I love many of the stories by the aforementioned writers, but nothing tires me out more than someone trying to copy what they think is a literary style. I know someone who is writing a literary novel. The damn thing is lifeless and I can't put my finger on the why of it. The writing is good, but the story is blah. It's just blah. And, I suspect, an overdone theme within the literary novel tradition.
Who is good at the literary novel today? Hmm, my brain is clogged, so I'm sure I won't think of the more obvious ones I should. I like Pat Conroy, not The Great Santini but Beach Music and The Prince of Tides. John Irving, The World According to Garp (the only Irving I've read, though there are many more I'd like to). Sue Monk Kidd, of course. Margaret Atwood. I loved both The Handmaid's Tale and The Blind Assassin. I think The Handmaid's Tale should be required reading for all women. Just my opinion.
Anyway, that's my list for the moment, and it's entirely too short and missing all sorts of good writers, but I'm tired and clogged and grumpy.
Aug 1, 2005 | Uncategorized
You know it's a good book when you don't have any clue where the time went. Started Julie Kenner's Carpe Demon at the beach today. Just finished it a few minutes ago. Could NOT put it down. That is the mark of a darned fine book in my opinion. So what if there was one scene I thought didn't fit (a short one about a playdate) or if I thought it was over too fast. It was GOOD. I will definitely read another book about Kate Connor. I did figure out the bad guy, but there were enough misdirections to keep me wondering. What a fun read! I want to know more about Kate, what happened to Eric, etc. I look forward to Ms. Kenner's next Kate Connor book. I see where the movie rights have been sold. I'd love to see a movie, but afraid I will have to forgo it if it gets made. No doubt Hollywood will go the full monty with gore and demons and demon-slaying, and my delicate (okay, fraidy-cat) constitution can't take that. I am like the only kid who didn't go see those Nightmare on Elm Street movies. Or the Friday the Thirteenth movies.
I once risked extreme outcast-dom by going to see a stupid freaking Jerry Lewis movie when my friends went to the scary movie (um, not to seem old or anything, but I believe our movie theater back then in that particular place only had two screens — LOL!). We got to the theater, the choice was scary movie and Jerry Lewis, and I wigged out and went Jerry while they went for scary. Okay, maybe Jerry as a mailman is pretty scary too (that's all I remember about that scarring experience). But I knew what I didn't like and couldn't handle and damn if any amount of peer pressure could get me to do what I knew would terrify me. Hell, they scared me bad enough talking about the dang movie afterward. I think all of this springs from seeing The Excorcist at the age of 8. My mom was so pissed at the neighbors who let me watch it, and believe me, I had nightmares and trouble sleeping for a year after. The funny thing was, I didn't see the movie. I got so scared I left the room and my imagination took over, especially when my friends kept telling me what happened. Oh what a wimpy child!
Jul 31, 2005 | Uncategorized
It's official. I forgive them the pokey pacing, the often “lecturing down to uneducated masses” tone, and the never ending Princeton tour. The parts about the Hypnerotomachia, and the mystery as to what was hidden in the book — the who wrote it and why — was AWESOME. (The real Hypner. is coded, but this solution is fiction, though a great story nonetheless.) I would definitely give them another try if they write another book. They do have a facility with language that is simply beautiful. In fact, this book is like so many of the literary works I've had to read over the years — difficult, sometimes boring (can we say The Rainbow by D.H. Lawrence?), but ultimately worth the effort in the payoff that comes from having stuck with the text. I absolutely adore it when a book gets to the end and a light bulb goes on and I'm like, whoa, that was amazing (Absalom! Absalom! by Faulkner).
This is short, but I'm off to the beach in a few. I have a cold, believe it or not, but sitting in the sun feels good. I'll report later.
Jul 28, 2005 | Uncategorized
Funny moment last night while talking to hubby. Somehow, we were talking about the sky, and I was talking about my favorite description of sky anywhere ever. It's in Willa Cather's Death Comes for the Archbishop (I'll post it in a minute). So I'm talking about Cather and then he says, “In Uncle John's Bathroom Reader–” and I fell over laughing before he could even finish. I laughed so hard I cried. The juxtaposition of Cather and the Bathroom Reader (full name: Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Plunges into History) had me howling. I told him I was gonna blog this, and he said, “Great, make me sound stupid to the world.” I'm like, “Yeah, you mean me and the one or two people who accidentally stumble onto my blog from time to time.” I forget what was so important in the UJBR he had to tell me, btw. It isn't a bad book at all, but it sure doesn't belong in the same conversation with Cather. Ha! Hubby chalks it up to the dangers of being married to a snooty English major. Okay, here's my favorite description of sky evah!
The ride back to Sante Fe was something under four hundred miles. The weather alternated between blinding sand-storms and brilliant sunlight. The sky was as full of motion and change as the desert beneath it was monotonous and still,–and there was so much sky, more than at sea, more than anywhere else in the world. The plain was there, under one’s feet, but what one saw when one looked about one was the brilliant blue world of stinging air and moving cloud. Even the mountains were mere ant-hills under it. Elsewhere, the sky is the roof of the world; but here, the earth was the floor of the sky.
The earth as the floor of the sky makes me shiver every time. What an image! This is a book I highly recommend. It's about two priests from France who come to the American Southwest in the 19th century and are charged with spreading the gospel, which they do in a respectful manner that illuminates the faith and goodness of these two men. And they do get contrasted with corrupt priests so that you see what true faith is all about. It isn't about browbeating the Mexican-Americans into casting off their tribal beliefs and embracing Christianity, as some folks believed. This book is a beautiful story. I wish I could write like that.
Last night was critique. In talking with Ann Peach, I've finally realized that my hero's goal isn't good enough or heroic enough. So, I have some thinking and rewriting to do. And, honestly, I am sort of relieved because it means I can read for the thesis and not feel guilty for not working on the book. I have to let the situation marinate for a while. Ann likened the process to the old dial-up days when the computer screen would scroll down and everything was blurry. This would happen again and again until finally the image came into focus. She said that a book is like that too. You keep working it until it comes into focus, which can take several rewrites. I am not afraid of rewrites, but I am afraid of not getting the plot right yet again. I have got to learn to outline my books. In fact, I'm going to rethink this one and do an outline before I fix the problems. According to my hidden talent (see below) I will get there if I don't stop working on my dreams. Why did I pick this image, btw? The sky. I love to take pictures of the sky when I'm lying on the beach.
| Your Hidden Talent |
 You are both very knowledgeable and creative.
You tend to be full of new ideas and potential – big potential.
Ideas like yours could change the world, if you build them.
As long as you don't stop working on your dreams, you'll get there. |
Waikiki, lying on grass, chillin. Think we climbed Diamondhead earlier that day.
Jul 27, 2005 | Uncategorized
To show my solidarity with the ladies suffering through tanning sessions, manicure appointments, wardrobe shopping, and hard-body dieting for the conference, I plucked my eyebrows today. Indeed, I feel your pain.
I tend to pluck haphazardly for weeks and weeks, and then one day I decide it's time for a good plucking. So I get out the magnifiying mirror and tweezers and get busy. Today was my get busy day. I am sporting new, Kevin Aucoin-approved brows. Or at least I hope he would have approved since I used his book as a guideline.
Hubby will, quite typically, not notice a thing.
Jul 26, 2005 | Uncategorized |
Unfortunately, I'm not talking about a svelte figure. Hubby informs me yesterday, after I spent time whining over how I just couldn't get anything going on the novel, how I couldn't pick up the thread, how I needed to work through the weekends and somehow didn't do so and now I'm lost again, that I am spreading myself too thin.
Wednesday group, RWA, blogging, website updating, newsletter editing, email–these are the culprits. He says I have to stop giving time to everybody who wants it, at least for a while. He says to cut it off, hole up, and finish the book. If they are your friends, he says, they'll be there when you're done.
And let's not even mention the thesis. I technically have until March 1st, but I'd really wanted to have it done, finished, gone, by October 1st so I could change my graduation date to December. If I am to make the October deadline, I need a draft ASAP so it can circulate among my committee and make it back to me in time to make the changes, circulate again, and then get to the library by Oct 1st. Really, I suppose I just have to change my expectations, live with the March deadline, pay the extra money (less than $200, so not bad) for the continuation course for Spring, and make a time table for the chapters now. Reading The Rule of Four has gotten me somewhat motivated to get back to the thesis. I even started reading De Beauvoir in earnest again.
Speaking of Rule, I am so bored with it I can hardly stand it. But the writing is beautiful, so I keep reading. I'm over half way now. I figured out the villain a long time ago. Mostly, I keep reading to see what else is revealed about the Hypnerotomachia. That part is cool. And I do think these authors have a career in front of them and will only get better with time. For a first novel, it's a damn fine one. But, I think they could learn a thing of two from just about any Harlequin Intrigue author or romantic suspense author out there. And I'm kind of tired of the Princeton tour, too. My opinion, however, doesn't mean much because they are successful in spite of my grumblings. A quick check of Amazon.com reveals a mixed bag of comments. I do get that it's a literary thriller for people with brains (I didn't say that, honest; Bookpage said it, though not quite that insultingly even if that's what they actually meant), but I don't think dressing it up in fancy words excuses the lack of excitement or makes me a numbwit because I notice and complain. It's not that I don't have a brain, or don't get the hoity-toity scholarly stuff, it's that I want some excitement, a reason to turn the page. It takes over 100 pages for a body to show up. And chapters are alternated between present and flashback. Too many flashbacks, IMO.
Just my opinion, as I said. You don't have to agree with me and I won't be insulted if you don't. 🙂 And I am just dumb enough to keep reading anyway, though I may start skimming to move it along.
I really want to get to some of the other books on my TBR, but I don't want to stop reading a book to do it. Do you stop reading books that bore you, or do you force yourself through anyway? Sometimes I do stop, but much of the time I make myself finish, even if I skim the last half. I used to feel guilty for that, but I don't anymore.
