Category Archives: Meme

Vocabulary from Booking through Thursday

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I’ve always wondered what other people do when they come across a word/phrase that they’ve never heard before. I mean, do they jot it down on paper so they can look it up later, or do they stop reading to look it up on the dictionary/google it or do they just continue reading and forget about the word?

Maybe it’s just because I’ve racked up a lot of reading miles on the treadmills of reading and writing – I mean, I wrote a poem stating that I wanted to be an author when I was about seven – but it’s been a long time since I’ve come across a phrase that wasn’t fairly obvious just from context.

In fact, one thing that drives me crazy is when I see other adults who don’t know how to infer meaning, don’t understand how helpful context is. Did they have bad teachers? Are their brains just not wired the same way mine is? Who can say?

On the rare occasion that I do have a word or phrase that remains a mystery, my choice of reference depends on where I am. If I’m comfortably settled in the bath, I’m not going to race to my laptop and hit Dictionary.com or the Urban Dictionary, or use Google, but I’ll let the phrase sit in the back of my head until I have time for such a thing.

If I’m reading online – as I do a lot – then yes, I will fire up another tab in FireFox and see where it leads me. Doing so can often lead to wonderful adventures, and new turns of phrase.

Prompt provided by Booking Through Thursday.

Lit-Ra-Chur (Booking Through Thursday)

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When somebody mentions “literature,” what’s the first thing you think of? (Dickens? Tolstoy? Shakespeare?)

Do you read “literature” (however you define it) for pleasure? Or is it something that you read only when you must?

I’ve been pretty insular lately, so I thought I’d take a break from writing medicare advantage articles to actually participate in a meme. It’s not Thursday, but if you don’t tell, I won’t either.

Literature, at least in my personal lexicon, does include Shakespeare, Dickens and Tolstoy, as well as Melville, Fitzgerald, and Hawthorne, but it also includes the Bronte sisters, Austen, Woolf, Cather, Alcott, and George Sand. Not to mention Dickinson, Emerson, Whitman, Plath and Thoreau. I don’t believe something has to be part of a “great books” program in order to be literature, but there’s a reason the classics are, well, classic.

Staying power is one part of what distinguishes literature from, say, general fiction, but it’s also not the only factor. I believe literature is still being created. Consider the beauty of the language in Memoirs of a Geisha, for example, or the works of A. S. Byatt.

As to what I read for pleasure. I read a bit of everything. I like the classics. Curling up with Wuthering Heights or Jane Eyre on a dismal weekend evening is just as restful as breezing through a couple of Star Trek novels, and the latter are often just as provocative as any of the works I studied in school.

As I write this, I’m in the middle of two books – one is the middle novel in a trilogy of Trekfiction, the other is the latest in the Kushiel’s Legacy series by Jacqueline, and I’m about to begin reading Pride and Prejudice.

As a writer, I learn from everything I read. Not just the stuff that we used to write essays about.

Even Bibliophiles Do Memes Sometimes

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I was tagged by my blog-buddy Green Tuna with this meme, and since the alternative to blogging tonight is to read about individual health insurance plans, and then write about them (which is important, yes, but kind of dry), I thought I might participate.

Ms. Tuna provides the following, rather familiar, instructions:
1. Pick up the nearest book (of at least 123 pages).
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people.

Like her, I have some issue with the closest book. Technically the closest book to me is the instruction manual for my Blackjack, which was stashed in the back of my night stand and may never leave. But that would be kind of dry.

Then there’s the pile next to the bed, running along the window sill. Is the top one on one section of the pile significantly closer than the top book on another? Not really.

I’ve chosen, therefore, to use a book that is on the stack, as yet unread, Garden Spells, by Sarah Addison Allen:

Sydney watched Claire work for a while. “I wonder why I didn’t inherit it,” she said absently.
“Inherit what?”

As to tagging people, if you have a book in the room you’re in when you read this, consider yourself tagged.
Or not.

Booking Through Thursday: 24 January 08

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Rather than chastise myself yet again for not having the Uverse guys restring the house with Cat5e cable while they were here in October, I thought I’d answer this week’s question from Booking Through Thursday. It’s technically not Thursday any more, but I won’t tell if you don’t. Deal?

They ask:

What’s your favorite book that nobody else has heard of? You know, not Little Women or Huckleberry Finn, not the latest best-seller . . . whether they’ve read them or not, everybody “knows” those books. I’m talking about the best book that, when you tell people that you love it, they go, “Huh? Never heard of it?”

I think my answers would be Paris to the Moon by Adam Gopnik, Outside Lies Magic, by John Stilgoe, neither of which are fiction. The first is a series of essays about living in Paris as an American with a young child, the second is about finding the extraordinary in ordinary things – like the way a picket fence becomes “invisible” if you ride past it on a bike at just the right speed.

In fiction, I’d have to recommend the novel Mothers by Jax Peters Lowell, which is about Claire, a photographer, and Theo, a caterer/chef, two women who fall in love and raise a child in New York in the early sixties and seventies. I bought it because I liked the picture on the front, and I think it was on the $5 table. I’ve reread it because it has everything a good novel needs to have to make it a comfort book for me: romance, strong women characters, food, art, and scenes at the beach. I would have liked to grow up with Claire and Theo as parents.

Five For Friday: Formulaic.

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While I confess, I’ve been known to mock formula romances like those offered by Silhouette and Harlequin, I also recognize that they’re great for quick escapist reading, perfect for the bathtub, and have helped a lot of really good writers get their starts in the industry. Besides, it’s a market dominated by women, and that’s never a bad thing.

For this week’s Five for Friday, then, I offer five characteristics of formula romance heroes:

  1. They’re handy. If they don’t have a workshop full of Ingersoll Rand air tools that they use with ease, they at least know how to change a tire, unclog a sink, and chop firewood, all without ever staining their shirts.
  2. They cook. Granted it’s usually one meal like steak or an omelet, but they do it really well, and are proud of their achievement in the kitchen.
  3. They twinkle. Oh, I don’t mean Dumbledore-esque twinkling, I mean that there’s a reason some people call these books “twinkling brown eyes” novels.
  4. They’re debt free. Oh, they might have business trouble, or they might be poor, but you never read about them freaking over not being able to pay their Visa bill.
  5. They communicate with their mothers. There’s just something about romance novel heroes and their mothers – they all have parents who give good advice that they actually listen to, or who manage to somehow help them seal the deal with the heroines of these novels, who generally don’t have mothers of their own.

Five for Friday: Magazine Rack

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While I generally prefer books, especially thick novels with vivid characters, I have a special fondness for magazines. I only indulge in really girly magazines in the salon, I try to avoid things that feature ads for cigarettes or incontinence products because neither fits into my life, and I don’t have any more subscriptions (must fix that), but I do buy them at stores – they’re great for reading during lunch when I’m spending it out by the pool, because I don’t care if I forget to bring them in.

This, then, is a list of five magazines I read often.

  • Mary Englebreit’s Home Companion: Yes, it’s a little bit kitschy, but it’s artistic kitsch, and even though I have zero talent when it comes to painting and drawing, I grew up with a mother who was always making, sewing, crafting, and I have a deep appreciation for it. Besides, after looking through some of the houses featured in her pages, my house seems decidedly uncluttered.
  • Writer’s Digest: While I don’t generally use the prompts, and have considered, but never managed to actually submit an entry to, their contests, I love to read this, because it always leaves me in a writing mood. Also, I compare my writing to some of the people who do win, and feel good, because frankly? I’m better than a lot of them.
  • Discover: This is really Fuzzy’s Christmas present from my parents, but I always steal it when I think he’s done, or when I think he’s had enough time to be done, even if he isn’t. I confess, this is one of my favorite bathroom reads, because there are lots of short filler items, but I do read it all, cover to cover.
  • Real SimpleSunset doesn’t seem to have a Texas edition (their Southwest edition covers Arizona and New Mexico, I think) so I’ve switched to Real Simple since moving here, three years ago. I like the recipes and some of the organization tips, and when I’m done reading it, I leave it in the guest room for my mother to read on her annual visits. Well, when I remember.
  • Ms. I started reading this when I was about eight, and my mother would leave her copy in the bathroom, or I would check the mail and get to it first. It’s both extremely candid and extremely educational, and while I realize that feminism is no longer popular, especially among gen xers, I don’t really care. I am who I am, and my choices are my own, but we are all influenced by our parents’ beliefs, and in this, I am totally my mother’s daughter. I’m lucky to have grown up in a household of free thinkers, and constant encouragement to read, explore, experience.

Booking Through Thursday: Live and In Person

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The folks at Booking Through Thursday asked:

  • Have you ever met one of your favorite authors? Gotten their autograph?

    • I’ve never really seen the point in autographs on slips of paper, but I do like to attend signings when I have the opportunity. I’m also not really one to just interrupt someone and goggle at them. That being said, I have contacted a few authors whose work I enjoy, or think I’ll enjoy, and asked them to do interviews for me, for this site…there are two to be posted (one I’m late on) this month.

  • How about an author you felt only so-so about, but got their autograph anyway? Like, say, at a book-signing a friend dragged you to?

    • I’ve never been dragged to a signing. I did stumble into an author at one of the reception desks in a bookstore once, and ended up not only buying her book, but having it signed. (Um, I still haven’t read it though.) She was holding a signing I hadn’t known about.

  • How about stumbling across a book signing or reading and being so captivated, you bought the book?

    • Yes. See above.
    I’ve stayed for readings at bookstores in SFO, too – there’s something so cool about hearing words read aloud in a public venue. It reminds you of how very much humanity is born of Story.

Booking Through Thursday: Decorum

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From Booking Through Thursday:
Do you have “issues” with too much profanity or overly explicit (ahem) “romantic” scenes in books? Or do you take them in stride? Have issues like these ever caused you to close a book? Or do you go looking for more exactly like them?

If language or sex are important to the plot of a book I’m reading, I don’t have an issue with them. In some cases, it’s more jarring when authors back away from strong language – it comes off as phony, and strange. With sex, I don’t really sit at the bookstore and go, “well, I’m desperate for a book that has actual penetration described,” but if it comes up, I’m cool with it.

I will admit that a couple of Laurell K. Hamilton’s books have been off-putting for me, not because I mind the sex (I mean, her male characters are HOT) but because there was more sex than plot, and while I may refer to her work as “Monster Porn” or “Faerie Porn” in jest, the reality is that I do read these for the story, first.

That being said, I have to add that while explicit porn may not float my boat most of the time, censorship is wrong. Just as we all have the power to change channels or turn off a television, we have the power to choose what we read without external forces helping us. If you don’t like it, don’t buy it.

Language has power. You should wield it wisely, but you shouldn’t ever be afraid of it.

A Bookish Meme

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CJ over at My Year of Reading Seriously did this meme, which she snagged elsewhere, as one does. I liked it, so I’m snagging it as well. If YOU want to play along (and I encourage this), the questions are listed without answers interspersed below the fold.

Hardcover or paperback? Why?
Hardcovers last longer; paperbacks are easier to tuck in a purse, but my favorite size and shape is the trade paperback because they’re lighter than the first, and not as thick as a standard paperback – I have small hands, so this is an issue.

If I were to own a book shop I would call it…
You know, I’ve never named a book shop, only a coffee shop. Ex Libris would be one option though it might seem a little too toney. Maybe just Stacks.

My favorite quote from a book (name it) is…
Oh, this changes, often, but for the moment: I’d gotten better lately at simply refusing to let my imagination run away with me. Maybe it had something to do with being a sociopath; if so, let’s hear it for dementia. From Narcissus in Chains by Laurell K. Hamilton.

The author (alive or deceased) I would love to have lunch with would be…
Madeleine L’Engle or Mark Twain.

If I was going to a deserted island and could only bring one book, except from the SAS survival guide, it would be…
Oh, I want to pick something lofty like The Complete Shakespeare, but the reality is that I’d bring along The Eight by Katherine Neville, and not just because it’s 825 pages long, either.

I would love someone to invent a bookish gadget that
…would allow me to read in the tub – actually READ, not listen to an audio book – without any chance of the book getting wet.

The smell of an old book reminds me of…
Poking around old bookshops in the Haight on a rainy day, and then curling up in front of a fireplace with espresso, quilt, and dog, to read.

If I could be the lead character in a book (mention the title), it would be…
I wanted to be Harriet from Harriet the Spy when I was little, and then Anne Shirley from Anne of Green Gables when I was older. I like the Anita Blake series, but I wouldn’t want to BE Anita – it’s exhausting. The lead character from Madeleine L’Engle’s Certain Women appeals to me even though her name escapes me, or the researcher in the Pink Carnation series. It all changes depending on my mood and the weather and what I’ve read recently.

The most overestimated book of all time is…
The DaVinci Code. It was a nice couple hours of entertaining reading, but folks, it was just a novel, and similar stories have been told far more artfully (*cough*Foucault’s Pendulum*cough*).

I hate it when a book…
Ends prematurely. When you’ve been sucked into the story and you’re invested in the characters, and then it just sort of fizzles out. It’s so disappointing.

Continue reading →

Booking Through Thursday: Buy a Friend a Book

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Buy a Friend a Book Week is October 1-7 (as well as the first weeks of January, April, and July). During this week, you’re encouraged to buy a friend a book for no good reason. Not for their birthday, not because it’s a holiday, not to cheer them up–just because it’s a book.

What book would you choose to give to a friend and why?

The book I’d choose to fling at a friend would depend on the friend. A shabby-chic decorating guide might go to a friend with a new apartment, a vampire story to a friend who loves them as much as I do. For other friends, I’d probably pick something from their wishlists at places like Amazon.com.

One book that I recommend to everyone is The Eight by Katherine Neville. It’s not new. In fact, I first read it during spring break of my freshman year in college (April, 1989), but it’s thick, compelling, and fun – and every so often I love to revisit it.

Another favorite is Alexandra Stoddard’s Gift of a Letter a tiny little book that really makes you appreciate snailmail.

Either of those would be good random gift books, I think.

You can join the Booking Through Thursday fun, too.