The Lonely Polygamist

I love, love, loved this book. Usually when you read a book about polygamy it's from the wives point of view. This book was from everyone's viewpoint.... the husband, the wives, one of the kids, and even from the house's point of view.
It's not overly religious or preachy, but just perfect. The story is great, the characters are great, there is just enough sex to keep it interesting, and it was really a page turner even though it wasn't a crime or mystery novel.
I was on the wait list for this one for a while from the library, but again it was so good I just might have to buy this one to keep on my shelves. I could really see myself wanting to read this one again.
The best part was when Golden tells all his wives that he loves them and the newest wife realizes that when you sign up for polygamy you are signing up to believe that there is always enough love for everyone. Love is not finite. It is not measurable.
I loved it. It doesn't glorify or condemn polygamy, but just shows it as messy and confusing as any other family. It's the same...deaths, births, fighting, economic hardships, and pooping dogs.
Buy this book!

Coming Soon

I know it's been so long.

See my other blog for explanations.

School starts next week so after that I should be able to come back here and rant and rave over all my books.

Currently I'm reading Elizabeth Street, and I just finished A Brief History of Montmaray, which I really loved.

I tried to read The Education of Henry Adams, but after about 100 pages I realized that I don't know enough American history to really understand what he's talking about. I'll come back to it again someday. I hope.

Mostly I'm just trying to read through as many of the required textbooks for the U of A Library and Information Science program as I can and still squeeze in my just-for-fun reading too.

Book Collector

It's been a while. I've probably bought 20 books since I last updated my acquisitions, so it's a little too much for 1 post.

I also wanted to talk about BookCollector.

It's awesome and you should buy it to catalog all of YOUR books.

I've gotten to the point where I've started to buy duplicates, so it was time to make sure everything was completely cataloged. The amazing thing about BookCollector is that I can upload my collection to my Iphone 4 and always know whether I have a book or not before I buy another copy. Amazing. It's like an Ipod for books, but just the list. I still cant' seem to get totally on board with an e-reader, but this is the next best thing.....my list of books in my pocket at all times. I love technology.

Week of June 21-25

Acquisitions

1. I Robot - Isaac Asimov

2. Dombey and Son - Charles Dickens

3. Make Money Reading Books - Bruce Fife

4. The Women's Health Big Book of Exercises - Adam Campbell

5. Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution - Simon Schama

Library Science?

Yes I'm reading this week, but not any titles of note.
I'm still working on To Kill A Mockingbird, which is fabulous, but have not quite finished it yet.

Mostly this week I've been reading books from the library on library and information science.
Now I also went a little crazy today and looked up the entire syllabus and textbook requirements for a degree from the University of Arizona Tuscon.
Of course I went ahead and bought the textbooks for the first 2 required courses. Crazy yes, but a very small investment compared to the price of tuition.
I figure if I can get thru the basic textbooks and enjoy them then I have a good chance of getting thru a master's degree in Information Science.
I ordered most of them through Abe Books so it will be a week or two before they get here and I bought all of them used and didn't spend more than $50.

Less Than Zero

This book was also a quick read this weekend.

I loved this book, not loved loved, but loved. I would read it again.

I heard Bret Easton Ellis was writing a sequel to this book and I knew that in order to read the second I had to read the original.

At first I didn't get it. The story seemed to be going nowhere, but not all stories are supposed to go anywhere. I loved the way it was written... like it really was written by an 18 year old. It was all over the place, mostly dry and just observations, but every once in while a little gem of a sentence would pop up and make all the rest worthwhile.

I was a little surprised at the end at how graphic the lives of these kids were shown. I had no idea things were going to be that bad. These rich kids were living the lives of street children only surrounded by all that money had to offer. It was a very strange juxtaposition.

I would put this on my shelf to read again someday and I'll definitely be reading the 25 years later book. I would be surprised if any of these kids were still alive besides Clay. I'm Netflixing the movie for tomorrow starring Andrew McCarthy. It should be interesting. I wonder how graphic it will be.

The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner

Now, I like the Twilight novels. I like Stephenie Meyer, but I am not a die hard Twihard. I fall somewhere in between reading all the books and seeing all the movies and being a fanatic. I love a series and I always see the movies of books that I read.

That being said I did pick up this book last week. I did not wait in line, read it online or pre-order it. I just happened to be strolling past the book aisles at Sam's Club and threw it into my cart. Somehow it moved up in line in my to-be-read pile and I picked it up Saturday afternoon.

It was good. I finished in a couple of hours, but it wasn't astounding. The only Twilight book that was astounding was Twilight of course. It was very readable and entertaining, but not one I feel I will ever need to go back and re-read for the fabulous story or great writing. It was simply a sidetrack to the original novels. That is what it was intented to be and it satisfied that need to see what was going on in the background.

If you've never read Edward's version of the first time he saw/smelled Bella that is also an excellent flip side of the original story.

Overall a good read and of course if you are a collector like me it must be on the shelves next to all the other Twilight books.

June 16 Acquisitions

1. Anne Rice - Pandora, Blackwood Farm, Taltos, Belinda - I 'm not going to stop until I have all the books she's written.

2. Debt Cures - Kevin Trudeau - I have a thing for any book about credit and how to pull one over on the credit bureaus. I hate banks. I shall read this, absorb any new tips, and add it to my collection.

3. Nicholas Nickelby - Charles Dickens - Since A Tale of Two Cities was so good, I'm also going to try and read all of Charles Dickens. It's a lofty ambition, but I think I can do it over the next 30-40 years.

4. Haunted City: An Unauthorized Guide to the Magical, Magnificent New Orleans of Anne Rice - Joy Dickinson - Of course I had to buy this to complete my new obsession with Anne Rice.

5. The Majesty of the Garden District - Lee Malone - This is the first of three that will go in my architecture library.

6. New Orleans Architecture: Volume 1 The Lower Garden District - Pelican Press

7. Plantations and Historic Homes of New Orleans - Jan Arrigo

I'm going to try and not buy any books next week. Yeah, right.

Ramblings

I'm still reading Anthropology of an American Girl and it has not disappointed me yet. It is enveloping. I want to finish it and yet it's one of those books where you don't want to leave the world that the author has created, or in this case I don't want to leave Eveline's mind.

I was thinking in the shower this morning about how easy it is for me to come here and talk about books. I just wish someone would join me here. I was marvelling at the fact that my chosen profession is architecture and yet when I started an architecture blog I was hard pressed to find something to talk about and the blog floundered. This is not my profession by education, but if I could go back I still think I would have chosen architecture, but I would have minored in English Lit. It would give me more credibility in talking about books, but as it stands I'm more well read than most people I know and I think that makes me qualified.

This is a rambling post, but I blame it fully on the ramblings in Anthropology.

Acquisitions

New books bought on June 10th, 2010.

To Kill A Mockingbird - Harper Lee - Strangely enough I have never read this and I think it's about time I did.

Cemetery Dance - Preston and Child - I saw this on the bargain paperback aisle at Target and since I loved The Cabinet of Curiosities so much, I thought I'd give this newer one a try.

Anthropology of An American Girl - Hilary Thayer Hamann - I already wrote a tirade on this new edited version. I will keep this copy, but I also found an original version on Amazon for $40. It is currently on the way to my house now.

The Last Madam: A life in the New Orleans Underworld - Christine Wiltz - This was a birthday present from my husband that he picked out of my Amazon shopping cart. I am continuing my research on New Orleans.

Nine Lives: Mystery, Magic, Death, and Life in New Orleans - Dan Baum - See above.

More on The Anthropology

OMFG!
I am horrified by the "edited" version of The Anthropology of An American Girl.

I just got the new copy from Amazon and it is totally messed up. The paragraphs have all been rearranged to try and make all the distinct thoughts into distinct paragraphs. Conversations are created out of thoughts and recollections of conversations, song lyrics are completely removed, and some of her most subtle and ,to an editor, unnecessary, metaphors have been REMOVED! Oh the horror!

What has an editor done to this book? Would Tropic Of Cancer have been anywhere near the masterpiece it is if is had been 'fixed' by a modern-day editor?

I am going to have to keep the library book so that I can read the book the way it was intended to be read by the author when she self-published it. I mean I understand she's looking for a wider audience for her book and she definitely deserves it, but I much prefer the OG version.

I am freaking going to have to steal this one from the Flagstaff Public Library or else pony up the $150 for the real version of the book.

I am going to also have to look up and see what Ms. Hilary Thayer Hamann has to say about this new version of her book. How could she have agreed to the rewrite?

Anthropology of An American Girl

This book kicks ass. It was a little slippery to start with, but once I got into the flow of how the author writes the book really started to hit home. This is not a final review since I am only on page 100, but I cannot even imagine putting the book down.

Now I just read Youth in Revolt last month, which is like a teenage boy's take on high school and misfit divorced parents. While this book is pretty much the same story, it is told from the view of a very introspective girl. I absolutely love it. The story flits back and forth between current events and stories and event of the recent past. It's a very stream of consciousness story, but with a clean path towards some kind of story.

I guess I relate to it just because this is how I wrote when I was seventeen. The writing seems familiar and comfortable.


I first got this book from the library, not the version you see above, but the original one from 2003. I went online to try and find the original and was surprised to see that it is selling for upwards of $150 on AbeBooks. I was astonished. Apparently Hilary Hamann self-published it in 2003 and now has re-released it as a hard cover again this year. I much prefer the smaller more compact version from 2003 that is now apparently a "rare" edition over the newer mass market standard size and type re release.

I'll keep you posted if the book takes a turn for the worse, but for now this book is going to be one of those books that while originally checked out from the library, had to be purchased for posterity.

The House on First Street

This book kicked ass.

It had everything that I look for in a book: houses, interesting people and an interesting city.

Julia Reed is an excellent writer. She kept me entertained almost the whole time I was reading the book. She lost me a couple of times in her long descriptions of all the food and various alcoholic beverages she and her friends consumed, but over all it was a fascinating book.

I was just hoping to get a little insight on what it's like to live in New Orleans and to restore a house, but the book was so much more that that. It was a first hand account of living thru Hurricane Katrina which I had never read before. It was sad, entertaining and also immensely educational. Not only that but it seemed as if Ms. Reed knew every single person in New Orleans. There were more characters in this book than I could easily keep track of, but still I muddled through.

As I research my way through New Orleans further I am getting sucked deeper and deeper into this city. I can't seem to find anyone who does not fall in love with it as soon as they arrive. This book only made an actual trip there more inevitable.

My Book Reviews

Now if anyone is reading this, they might say...... "your book reviews suck".

I might agree with you, but I would also point out that I am not trying to write an Amazon Quality book review. If you want a plot synopsis then go to Amazon. If you want to know if the book was readable without kissing any ones ass, then read my reviews.

Yes they are all about what I think. That's all I can tell you when I read a book. I can only tell you if it struck a chord with me. So I'll tell you honestly if I couldn't get through the first paragraph, if the book felt like it was being written by a screen writer with all dialog, or if I was swept away into a magical world and couldnt' stop myself from turning pages well past 11 pm.

So read them with that in mind.

I'm gonna give away lame plot twists.

I'm going to call bullshit on shitty writers.

I'm going to praise others and worship at their feet.

That's just how I review.

How to Write?

I'm am not going to read any more books on 'How to Write'. They all say the same thing. I learn more about how to write reading than I do wasting the time reading the how to books.

I came to this conclusion after I had read my hundredth sentence contradicting a book I had read previously. Some of the books say you have to struggle for so long and amass hundreds of rejection letters and others say to just write and know the right people. It just all seems like bullshit and doublespeak.

The only really helpful books on writing have been written by authors I actually read and enjoy like Stephen King's book. Most of these books are however not written by authors of the caliber of Stephen King are seem to be written by editors and magazine writers who are looking for a paycheck from Writer's Digest. I dont' know if I can take their advice seriously. They are not the writers I want to become.

I am of the opinion that we all know how to write. If you read regularly, can communicate your ideas in basic correct grammer, then go for it and write. Everything else is just polishing. Yes it is a craft, but we all have the basic tools and we don't necessarily need an instruction manual to put them to use.

So now that I've crossed about 10 books off of my June reading list I'm going to add some fun into the mix. I'm spending a little time researching New Orleans and found a fabulous book at the library by Julia Reed called, The House on First Street. It is amazing so far and I should finish it by this evening and then I'm tempted to read Anthropology of an America Girl by H.T. Hamann (the new edition of the book she has a diferent name) but it looks so long and very heavy on teenage angst. Then I'm going on to a second Dickens book (yes I did finish A Tale of Two Cities) and then hitting up Mansfield Park. So many pages to get through, but those books will be better teachers than any writing program or writing book.

Called out of Darkness

 I am not particularly religious, but I do believe in God, so this book intrigued me. I love Anne Rice and had always wondered why she changed the type of books that she wrote. It was a huge mystery to me. I had always thought it came about due to her near death experience in a diabetic coma and the death of her husband Stan. Those things added to it, but this book describes in detail how she went from an atheist to a Roman Catholic again after 38 years away from the church. It was fascinating. I had to skip over a few overly religious bible stories, but other than that I loved it. I think you have to be a big Anne Rice fan to read this or else wanting to know about New Orleans in the 40's and 50's.

Now that I finished this book it has given me insight in to the stories inside some of her books. i just had to rush out to Barnes and Noble this morning and purchase the following Anne Rice books:

                                  1. Belinda
                                  2. Christ the Lord
                                  3. Violin

As the when I actually get around to reading them? Heaven only knows.

                   

3000 Words a Day

Okay, so it's day 3 of my 3000 words a day.

That is so not going to work.

So far I've averaged 1000.

That's not too bad. it's about 3 double spaced pages. Maybe after all the kids and I get settled into a schedule I'll be able to find more time to write every day, but the hour-hour and a half it takes to write three pages seems like just enough. I'm not getting burned out or stressed and it still feels like I'm accomplishing a little bit towards my goal and I'm writing daily.

I'm not going to say I'll only write 1000 words a day, but I'll write at least 1000 words a day. It's nothing to sneeze at. Maybe it's like working out.... you have to build up your stamina.

Plus I still need so much time to read....... That's just an obvious excuse.

June 2 Book Aquisitions

I bought some classics that I was missing yesterday at Barnes and Noble.

1. Lasher - Anne Rice

2. Less than Zero - Bret Easton Ellis

3. In Cold Blood - Truman Capote

4. Valley of the Dolls - Jacqueline Susann

5. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay - Michael Chabon

The 39 Clues

I've been reading these books since they first came out in September of 2008. While the story is good enough, what I really love about them is the fact that I know I have a good book to buy every 3-4 months. It's the consuming and the collecting that I love the most.

The story is overall good, entertaining and fast paced, but sometimes it's a little too much action and too little story. Now that we're on book 9 things are starting to get a little juicy. I love that Nellie's (the au pair) connection to the kids and the clues is finally being revealed. It makes the story a smidge bit more believable. There are just way too many coincidences and close calls most of the time, but now that Nellie is part of the mystery it's making a lot more sense.

I think the next book is the last one. There are a lot of loose ends that are going to need to be tied up quickly. I can't wait to see if Dan and Amy take over as the head of the Cahill clan.

Overall I recommend them highly. I haven't been able to get my 10 year old hooked on them, but they sucked me in on the first book.

Starting the Book

My deadline is fast approaching. I gave myself all of May to read and research and tinker with writing. June will be the month that I dive in. There is no turning back. This will be the time that it sticks. It will be hard with the kids home all summer, but if I just write instead of read I should be able to produce at least 3000 words a day and be well on my way to having a complete novel by the end of the summer.

I'm tired of just talking about it and writing about. It is time to do it. I can't let another year go by with nothing to show for it but well-behaved and well-adjusted children. This year I want a stack of pages that in some way form a coherent story.

This will be the year that I decide my own fate and finally take back my life and start writing for real.

A Tale of Two Cities vs. Under the Dome

It looks like Amazon will only give me one link per post, either that or I haven't figured it all out yet.

Anyway I think I'm going to give up on A Tale of Two Cities. I'm already on page 100 and I haven't been sucked in yet. That's usually my limit on a book. If it's not good by page 100 then it's not going to be good. But this is Dickens. Shouldn't there be a special rule for him? This is supposed to be a classic, but is it the best of Dickens? I read the first few chapters of Oliver Twist a few weeks ago and it seemed far more interesting than this one.

Making things harder is the fact that my name finally came up on the waiting list at the library for Under The Dome by Stephen King. There is no way I can read both A Tale of Two Cities and this 1100 page monstrosity. The library only gives you 2 weeks on the new books. So I've got to get cracking on this one. And you know what, it's already got me sucked in on page 10. That's Stephen King for you. Sorry Mr. Dickens. You lose.

Amazon Links

Yea! I just signed up to put the Amazon links directly in my posts. Before, I was searching for the book jacket photos and saving them and inserting them. Not any more. I've stepped into the 21st century. You can now buy a book directly from my blog and I'll make a little money. How freaking cool is that?

Yesterday and today I've been doing my book transcribing. I started with Twilight. The language is so simple and easy to transcribe. It took me probably 4 hours to copy out the first chapter of 29 pages. It was fun and it really brought the story closer to me. What was most surprising to me was the placement of commas in fully edited text. I thought I used a lot of commas, but man they are everywhere, in places I never would have imagined them.

We all know that Stephenie Meyer is not the world's best writer, but she sure can tell a story. It's very interesting the copy it all down and filter it through my hands. It makes it obvious that what she writes is so simple. There are no fancy metaphors or similes. She's not going for a lot of description or even a lot of emotion. It's basically just a list of events and a series of conversations. That is pretty much what life is like if you just copy down the obvious. There are no deep insights into the human condition here. Bella's thoughts are given and described, but she is not a deep thinker. She's just a teenager and this is written from a distance even though we are supposed to be in her head in a first person narrative. It's fascinating to write it all down. It's like I'm in the book. I highly suggest trying it for your favorite books.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower

This book looked so cute when I bought it last Friday that it jumped all the way to the front of the reading pile and I finished it Sunday morning.

I like it. I really liked it. I flew through it while reading. It didn't seem like it was going to end well, but it did more or less.

At first I thought the kid was a little slow mentally. He seemed to write more like a 13 year old than a 15/16 year old. It was almost like he hadn't really lived until he started his freshman year of high school. Everything seemed to be so new to him.

The writer seemed to me to capture what it was like to listen to music as a teenager. I think that is what spoke to me the most in this book. Music was everything to me when I was 15 and 16. It made memories and it made me feel infinite too. I don't think it works that way for everyone, but he sure as hell captured it for me.

It seemed a little unbelievable to me that so many crappy teenage things could happen to one kid, but it was all squeezed in there. The only salvation this guy had was that his parents seemed fairly normal and genuinely cared for him as did his English teacher. If only every kid could be so lucky. Usually coming of age books talk crap about both parents and teachers, but in this one they were the most caring people.

Overall a good quick read. I would recommend it and I might even read it again.

Acquisitions of the Day

Today's Book Acquisitions

1. Archaeology - David Hurst Thomas (a used textbook from Abe Books)

2. Archaeology: The Science of the Human Past - Mark Sutton and Robert Yohe (a used textbook from Abe Books)

3. In a Dark Wood Wandering - Hella Haasse (Abe Books)

4. How to Write a Damn Good Mystery - James N. Frey (Abe Books)

5.The Angel's Game - Carlos Ruiz Zafon

6. The Perks of Being a Wallflower - Stephen Chbosky (I didn't even know MTV had a publishing dept)

The first four came in the mail today and the last two were from a 15 minute run into B&N. Really I should know better than to try and kill time there and not buy anything.

Transcribing Books

The last few 'how to write' books I've read have given me and interesting tip in how to become a better writer:

Copy long passages out of your favorite books and written by your favorite authors.

So far I have chosen 5 books that were influential in me deciding that I want to write and that I have deemed worthy of spending several hours transcribing passages:

1. The Witching Hour - Anne Rice. I love this book, not necessarily for the story, but for the style. I love the long luxurious descriptions of the house in New Orleans. Those are the passages that I want to copy out. I want to learn to create a sense of place the way Anne Rice has here in this book recreating New Orleans. You actually feel like you can walk up the sidewalk and see the house and feel the humidity as you read along.

2. Ghost Story - Peter Straub. This book is haunting in it suspense. You can feel yourself trudging thru the snow at the end of the book in the final climax. You get scared shitless when the ghosts appear. You feel like an old man sitting in the library listening in on the other old guy's stories. I can't quite put my finger on what made this book so great, but it is one that has stuck with me ever since I read it. It's mesmerizing.

3. Atonement - Ian McEwan. Again this book is not my favorite story, but I love the first half of the book (before they all go off to war). The description and sense of place here again are amazing. It's like reading a modern day Victorian English novel. He writes more beautifully than any other modern author. In re-writing his words I hope to be able to suck up some of his polished use of the English language.

4. I Capture the Castle - Now this book I love the story. It's a fairy tale that has a little girl with a missing mother and a mad father living with her sisters in an old manor house next to a ruined castle. It's every little girl's English fantasy. There is something so romantic about the whole book. I want to put my finger on what it is that makes this book stand out for me. The only way to do that is to write it out.

5. Twilight - Stephenie Meyer. I know, but don't roll your eyes. This is the first book and the best book. I am going to transcribe out he first few chapters of this one so I can get a handle on dialog. There is something magical about this first book that hooked us all. To me it was the immense tension created in the first conversations between Bella and Edward. I want to take them apart and learn from them. That is the best sexual tension I have ever read.

Now as to when I'm going to find the time to actually do this I have no idea, but it theory it sounds like a great way to spend an afternoon.

Magazine Article Writing

I know I said I was going to talk about writing magazine articles. I know nothing about it other than what I have read in how-to books. It's something I need to learn more about. It's something I need to do in order to make a little money at writing. Now even though I may never have actually written an article to be published, you would be hard pressed to find someone who knows more about magazines than I do. I currently subscribe to over 20 publications and always seem to supplement my subscriptions with an additional 10-15 from the grocery store and book store each month. I know the magazine rack like the back of my hand.

I know the audience pretty well for most home design, travel, writing, women's, and decorating magazines. Those are my genres of choice.

The next step is to actually find something worth writing about and submit it. It's niave I know to think that it will be that easy, but I have to start somewhere. I'll try and start with our local newspaper and the local Mountain Living magazine published right here in Flagstaff. Where there is a will, there is a way.

I'm devoted to this full time now. Well as full time as I can, but this is going to be my focus for the summer. I will succeed sooner or later.

The Actor and the Housewife

I couldn't read this. I only read the first three chapters and the last chapter. It was horrible. It gave me a headache on so many levels. I'm a description kind of gal and I like my books to be full of it. This thing was all dialog and not just regular dialog, but mind bending banter and smart remarks. It was like trying to read a seasons worth of Moonlighting episodes. I found the main character to be annoying not charming as she is described in the book. She just talks and talks and talks. Where is her internal dialog?

Maybe I just don't like chick lit- but if I want to see or hear a conversation on children arguing I don't need to read a book. This is just everyday life and I guess I don't want to read about the life of a housewife. It's not very interesting.

And since I didn't find the main character charming I had a really hard time believing that the mega star actor would want anything to do with her. It just didn't make any sense at all and I didn't buy it, not for one minute. She was such a goody goody. I know that is the basic premise of the book, but it was too much for me. She freaking reprimanded her children for using the word "pee" and told them to watch their language. I mean really come on. Who does that? Certainly no one I know, but then again I don't live in Utah. It just seemed like all God and prayer and perfect housewife-ness.

Then skipping to the last chapter I didn't feel like I had missed a thing. I'm going to spoil it for you here..... after 10 years and a spouse conveniently dead from cancer the actor and the housewife finally end up together and kiss for the first time. I was relieved to find out that I didn't have to read the whole thing to be disappointed at the end.

Overall it's just not my type of book. The premise seemed so good and interesting, but it wasn't done to my taste. I don't really want to slam a book, but I just think I'm not the audience for this book either.

Overwhelmed

After yesterday's post it should not be the least bit surprising that I am overwhelmed by my reading list. Even now I feel guilty that I should be reading and not writing, even when the whole purpose of me reading is to get better at writing. It's ridiculous.

Today's book acquisition........ The Actor and the Housewife - Shannon Hale

I've been waiting for this book for a while and finally I got the e-mail this morning that it was waiting for me at the library. Why didn't I buy this book? Even I don't know the answer to this one. The book hooked me as soon as I saw the synopsis in a magazine 6 months ago. It's taken that long for my library to acquire it and then even longer for my turn on the library's waiting list.

This goes into the huge pile on my desk. I'm not kidding when I say that there are 5 stacks 8 books deep on my desk. It's just so much and I want to read it all, but really how much is too much reading? I'd say I'm right at 2-4 hours a day at least. I could easily spend 6-8 and on a really good weekend I can squeeze at least one six hour day. Now if only I could channel that same energy into writing.

Tomorrow's post will be all about magazine article writing and what little I know about it.

The Writer's Journey

Nothing gets me hotter and more worked up than lists of books. If you've found this blog you must be the same way, so in order to titillate your senses today's post will be the lists of books I'm reading and the list of reading material that I acquired yesterday.

Maybe that will be a bigger part of this blog as I get it up and running again. I am a very prolific book buyer. I'm trying to cut back, but it never seems to work. It's just in my blood. I am a reader and a collector.

Books I'm reading this week:

The Writer's Journey - Christopher Volger - This is a classic, so I felt I must read it. It really focuses more or films than books, but still it should be an interesting read on how to tell a story.

The Modern Library Writer's Workshop - Stephen Koch - This is a little gem I found at the library. It is awesome. It's one of those literary books that tells you to go for it. Just write. Write in your own style and don't worry about being right or wrong. Find your voice and start yelling with it. I like this book. I'm not very deep into it, but I like the tone and I'll read the whole thing.

A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens - I'm going to give this a go. It's not technically on my reading list this month, but I keep seeing it referenced in all of my literary books and I just think it's time that I got this one under my belt.

Books I bought yesterday:

Half Broken Things - Morag Joss - Weird people living in an abandoned manor house.  You had me at manor house. Should be a good book.

People Are Unappealing - Sara Barron - This looks like one of my favorite kinds of books... kooky memoir of a young person.

Beowulf on the Beach - A book about books? Love it. It seems to have summaries of all the best books I've never read, but intend to read.

I got these three from the Buy 2 Get 1 Free table at Barnes and Noble.

Magazines I bought yesterday:

The Paris Review
O The Oprah Magazine
Writer's Digest
The Writer
Poets and Writers
Wallpaper
Fine Homebuilding Annual Houses Design Issue

I know I went on a bit of a magazine rampage yesterday. I know the lady that checks me out at Barnes and Noble is wondering when I find the time to read everything I buy from her. She seems to be rolling her eyes at me lately as I check out. She must know I am not going to be able to read The Brothers Karamazof, Oliver Twist,  and War and Peace before I come back and buy another arm load of books.

I'm going to try and stay out of the bookstore for the rest of the week. Hopefully there will be no more new purchases this week.

Ready, Get Set, GO!

So there has to be a time when I stop reading everything in site and actually start writing. I have all the abilities to start. I have all the abilities to finish. I love to revise and edit. Why am I not starting? Like right now. I'm not doing anything. I thinking about going to Target to pick up a few things, stop at the book store and look around, maybe hit the library too, but why don't I just write? Why don't I re-read what I've already started? The first step is to just sit down and start it. The next step is to open a file and start writing. Well I'm sitting down. I'm in front of the computer, but there are so many other things to do while sitting here. Do I really need a laptop to write? Do I need to research Mac's or use my Ipad or use my HP laptop I just bought for the boys? What to do? What to do?

It's  frustrating. It's such a huge undertaking and it starts with just one step just like anything else. Do I focus on writing magazine articles? or just jump right in to the novel? What is the best path? Is there anyway to really know?

No there isn't. That is the only thing that is true. There is no one way to find out what will work for me until I just start writing. I have all the tools. I don't need any new books or computers to write. All I really need is to have read a lot of books (check), a pencil and paper (or a computer) and I'm good to go. So Go already!

Agatha Christie

I read my very first Agatha Christie book this weekend while in Vegas. I was all settled in at the pool at the Monte Carlo and ready for a juicy read. I'd read all the hype on Agatha Christie, seen her referred to as one of the best mystery writers, and read that her formula was perfect in creating a mystery.

Boy was I disappointed. The book was horrible. It was so easy to put down that I would never call it a page turner. It was just a dry statement of facts. I felt no emotion for any of the characters. The victim was dead when the book started. Yes there was an interesting twist at the end of the book when the mystery is solved and the killer revealed, but I didn't buy it. It seems like the murderers went out of their way to make it unnecessarily complicated. I just didn't like it at all. It was all surface and no depth. There was no description, no feeling of time or place for me. I was so disappointed.

Of course when I went out shopping Friday afternoon to pick up my reading material for the weekend, I got 3 Agatha Christie books not knowing how crappy they would be. This story was a short one. I will hold my breath and try another one the next time I'm looking for a quick easy read. Maybe 'And Then There Were  None' will be better, but as it stands I am not impressed.

Literature vs. Fiction

I'm going to write, for reals this time, so I figured I should come back to this blog and get it going again.

I've been reading a lot of 'How to Write' books. I usually read a lot of these. There are a lot of crap books on how to write out there, but there are a few gems. They usually fall into two types of categories. One is the easy talking, don't worry about it, just write, conversational tone of book and the other is the scare the shit out of you, you will never format your query or manuscript correctly, get used to piles of rejection letters, and never misspell anything type of book.

Currently on my list of reading materials is the Portable MFA in Creative Writing, The Writer's Journey, and Aspects of the Novel by E.M. Forster. Now I love, love, love these types of books and not just because they all provide additional reading lists, but because I love to talk about writing and books. What I have noticed this past month in all my writing research is that the second type of these 'How to Write' books (the fancy, scary ones) use the same few books as examples of the best is literature. I'm tired of hearing about Tolstoy, Cheever, Henry Miller, and Homer. I'm not saying they aren't great (although I really don't like Cheever), but what about the really good books? Where are they in the study of how to write? Why don't they use examples of popular fiction? And isn't that the point? To write something that people want to read and not something that they are told to read?

I would love to see a book that talks about what Stephenie Meyer did in the Eclipse books, or how great Anne Rice is at telling a story, or lets talk about Ian McEwan's prose, or how Steven King creates suspense. That would be a really great how to book. Lets get in a little bit of study on Candace Bushnell, Ayn Rand, Colleen McCullough, or even Mark Twain and Charles Dickens.

When I first started reading the 'How to Write' books I had to actually go to the library/bookstore and look up all the references and read them so that I would know what they were talking about. I am fairly well read, but I was starting at ground zero according the authors of those high-falluting books. Those who write the how to books are usually MFA grads and professors of writing and it seems like it's be beneath them to admit to reading popular fiction. Do they really read it and not admit it? Or are they scared to even open a novel that is on the best-seller list?

I'm trying to keep all of my reading middle of the road, somewhere between only NYT Best Sellers, classical timeless books, and today's artsy short stories and fiction. That is what educates me the most: reading a little bit of everything.

Here is my current to be read pile:

A Tale of Two Cities- Charles Dickens   (I've never read it and feel so guilty about that )
The Carrie Diaries - Candace Bushnell
The Chicago of Europe - Mark Twain
The Collected Works of T.S. Spivet - Reif Larsen  (The illustrations look gorgeous)
The Enchanted Castle - Edith Nesbit
The Body in the Library - Agatha Christie (Again I've never read any of her mysteries)
The Preservation of Historic Architecture - US Department of the Interior
Fanny - Erica Jong
Booklife - Jeff vandermeer

and that doesn't even include all the big fat novels that have been in the pile for a while. So far this year I've knocked out Atlas Shrugged and the Lord of the Rings trilogy, but eventually I'd like to get to:

David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
Wives and Daughters - Elizabeth Gaskell
Middlemarch - George Eliot
The Fountainhead - Ayn Rand
The Way We Live Now - Anthony Trollope
Drood - Dan Simmons
War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy

Soooo many books, soooo little time.

The Lord of the Rings

Holy crap I read the whole thing. It took me two weeks, but with all the snow days recently and the kids home I had nothing else to do but read.

I was skeptical to start off with, but I felt I had to read it just out of pure curiosity and just because I had to get it under my belt of classics that need to be read.

At times it was a bit much with so many names and people and mountains flying by right in the middle of a good story, but besides that, obviously it was rivetting. It would have to be or they wouldn't have been printing the thing for the last 50 years and spent millions of dollars in making the movies

I liked it so much I would even put it on a list of books I need to read again in my lifetime.

I remember guys in highschool talking about Gandalf and acting out scenes from the book (Yes I went to a highschool for gifted students. All the guys were nerds.... cute, but nerds none the less.) I finally understand why they were doing that. I understand jokes on TV now making fun of Frodo or Smeagol. It's like a whole new world has opened up to me.

I don't think I'll start reading fantasy as a genre, but if this is the book that started it all then I can see why it's such a thriving genre.