Wordless (Wednesday on) Thursday: Truth in Advertising?

I'm a day late to this week's Linked-Up Wordless Wednesday because of a prior commitment to my friends at TLC Book Tours, but I hope you'll click the thumbnails below (courtesy of the new link tool we're using) to see what my WW friends were up to yesterday!

I've been in Sacramento this week on my first-ever real business trip for my day job, learning lots of things about the accounting software we use. My hotel was just a short walk from the state Capitol in one direction and historic Old Town in another, which is where I spotted this.

I wonder if what you see is what you get here?

(My photo, edited with Snapseed for Mac)

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TLC Book Tour: NOT LESS THAN EVERYTHING, edited by Catherine Wolff

Not Less Than Everything: Catholic Writers on Heroes of Conscience, from Joan of Arc to Oscar Romero
Catherine Wolff, editor
HarperOne (February 2013), trade paper original (ISBN 0062223739 / 9780062223739)
Nonfiction (essays/biography/religion), 352 pages
Source: Publisher
Reason for reading: TLC Book Tour

Opening lines (from the Introduction): “This book has been a long time coming. I grew up in a Catholic family in San Francisco during the 1950s and ‘60s. when it seemed like everybody was Catholic: Irish or Filipino or Italian or Mexican. Catholicism was the medium in which my five siblings and I thrived.

“Our family was well-educated, staffed by Jesuits, devout. But we were not unquestioning.”

Book description, from the publisher’s website:
Joan of Arc, Mother Mary MacKillop, Ignatius of Loyola, and Bartolomé de Las Casas. All of these people have one thing in common—they are Catholics whose beliefs caused them to be persecuted, but who, through the test of time, proved to be figures revered in the Church. 

In fact, many of the Catholic figures who intrigue and inspire us are the men and women who found the great strength—personal, spiritual, intellectual—to challenge the Church. Some were called heretics, denounced for denying doctrine. Others were condemned for not submitting to the control of the Church. But they have much to teach us in our own efforts to live out our faith. 

It is difficult to know what to do when Church doctrine is at odds with cultural developments. From gay marriage to contraception, stem-cell research to required celibacy for priests, Catholics today are struggling with the conflict between tradition and the Church's need to come to terms with modernity. In Not Less Than Everything, some of the best Catholic writers of our time, including Alice McDermott, Ron Hansen, Mary Gordon, Tobias Wolff, and Ann Patchett, share their personal accounts of people who have influenced the way they view the intersection of faith and culture. Not Less Than Everything is a riveting exploration of how to face the challenge of living our faith in the real and messy world.

Comments: I usually precede it with the modifier “lapsed” or “nonpracticing” these days, and I have many issues with the institutional church, but I’m coming to terms with the fact that--like it or not--I still self-identify as a Catholic. My Catholic upbringing and education still provide a frame of reference and a prism through which I view the world. That said, I’m increasingly inclined to challenge or disagree with what I see through that prism. The essays collected by Catherine Wolff in Not Less Than Everything: Catholic Writers on Heroes of Conscience, from Joan of Arc to Oscar Romero are reminders that challenging or disagreeing with the church’s party line is a tradition almost as old as the church itself. It should be noted that the church has responded to this dissent in various ways, ranging from the Inquisition to canonization; these challenges may not be warmly welcomed, but occasionally they’ve been honored.

The “heroes of conscience” that are the subjects of the essays in Not Less Than Everything are drawn from centuries of Catholic history, including the most recent one. The “professionally religious”--priests, nuns, monks--are well-represented, as you might expect, but there are secular “heroes of conscience” portrayed here as well, demonstrating that morality and theology don’t necessarily operate in tandem.

My date on this TLC Book Tour came up before I was able to finish reading Not Less Than Everything, but I should finish it soon; most of the pieces in the book go quickly, and few are more than 15 pages long. That said, the writers in the collection are a mix of religious and secular, scholarly and populist, and this results in noticeable inconsistencies in tone. While some essays are evocative and literary--Bo Caldwell’s piece on missionary Henry Bartel reads almost like a short story--others are dryly academic, and when that dryness is coupled with a less familiar subject, a ten-page selection takes more time to read than, perhaps, it should.

A more even blend of styles would have made Not Less Than Everything  an engaging collection that I’d eagerly recommend. As it stands, I’d suggest not reading it cover-to-cover unless you’re sincerely interested in every story presented; I appreciate the concept of the book, but feel it could have been executed more effectively and for broader appeal. That said, I also appreciated learning about others who have challenged and dissented and still identified--like it or not--as Catholics.

Rating: 3.5/5

Other stops on this TLC Book Tour:

Wednesday, February 13th: Vox Nova

Thursday, February 14th: So What Faith

Monday, February 18th: JonathanFSullivan.com

Thursday, February 21st: 50 Books Project

Monday, February 25th: Raising Little Saints

Tuesday, February 26th: 5 Minutes for Books

Thursday, February 28th: Bibliosue

Monday, March 4th: Book Hooked Blog

Wednesday, March 6th: Emily McFarlan Miller

Thursday, March 7th: the smitten word

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Sunday Salon: Winding Down a Short, Over-Committed Month

After spending my last visit to the Sunday Salon talking about going offline, that was what I did most of last weekend, and I may spend a good chunk of today that way, too. But I do hope I'll be able to spend some time reading; I have a post due for a blog tour on Wednesday. As I mentioned back at the beginning of February, I had a long reading list for a short month. But the month included two four-star reads and one book liberated from long-term TBR Purgatory, so I'd say it's been a short month well-spent.

That said, my March reading calendar doesn't have much on it, and I'm glad. I will #marchon with Fizzy Jill; we're reading Little Women. Care to join us? Aside from that, my only book-related commitments for the next few weeks are to reading March and April galleys for the freelance gig (which is an ongoing commitment, really--I almost always have one of those in progress, just to stay caught up!)

Speaking of catching up, I'm leaving town tomorrow for a few days--an actual day-job business trip(!) to Sacramento for some software training--and I hope to use some between-sessions time to work on some of the writing that's been pushed aside by my required reading (and by various other "requireds") during the past few weeks (and which will, if it gets done, be showing up around here during the next few weeks). But I'll also be reading, of course--I've got plenty of e-books on the iPad, and a couple of print books will be coming along for the ride, as well. 

However, I'm glad to say I've made it most of the way through my over-committed February without a lot of this:

That whole "Keep Calm and Carry On" thing? Overrated.

What are you committed to doing--and not freaking out about--this week?

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BlogHer Book (Club) Talk: A GOOD AMERICAN, by Alex George

A Good American
Alex George (Twitter) (Facebook)
Berkley Trade (February 2013), Paperback (ISBN 0425253171 / 9780425253175)
Fiction, 432 pages
Source: Purchased e-book (iBooks edition: ISBN 9781101559895)
Reason for reading: BlogHer Book Club

The BlogHer Book Club is sponsored by Penguin Group. BlogHer compensates me for this review and participation in online discussions. All opinions expressed are my own.

Opening lines: “Always, there was music.

"It was music— Puccini, to be precise— that first drew my grandparents into each other’s orbit, more than a hundred years ago. It was an unusually warm afternoon in early spring, in the grandest municipal garden in Hanover, the Grosse Garten. My grandmother, Henriette Furst, was taking her usual Sunday stroll among the regimented flower beds and manicured lawns so beloved of city-dwelling Prussians. At twenty-five, she was a fine example of Teutonic rude health: Jette, as she was known by everyone, was six feet tall, and robustly built. She walked through the park with none of the feminine grace that was expected from ladies of her class. Rather than making her way by trippingly petite steps on the arm of an admirer, Jette clomped briskly along the graveled paths alone, too busy enjoying the day to worry about the unladylike spectacle she presented to others. Rather than squeezing her considerable frame into the bustles and corsets that constrained the grim-faced ladies she so effortlessly outflanked, Jette preferred voluminous dresses that draped her outsized form like colorful tents. She swept along in a dramatic, free flowing swirl, leaving all those rigidly contoured women hobbling in her wake.

"And then, as she passed a sculpted wall of privet, a song drifted out from behind the topiary. The singer was male: his voice, as clear and as pure as a freshly struck bell, fell on Jette like a shower of jasmine.”

Book description, via the publisher’s website:
This is the story of the Meisenheimer family, told by James, a third-generation American living in Beatrice, Missouri. It’s where his German grandparents—Frederick and Jette—found themselves after journeying across the turbulent Atlantic, fording the flood-swollen Mississippi, and being brought to a sudden halt by the broken water of the pregnant Jette. 

A Good American tells of Jette’s dogged determination to feed a town sauerkraut and soul food; the loves and losses of her children, Joseph and Rosa; and the precocious voices of James and his brothers, sometimes raised in discord…sometimes in perfect harmony.

But above all, A Good American is about the music in Frederick’s heart, a song that began as an aria, was jazzed by ragtime, and became an anthem of love for his adopted country that the family still hears to this day.

Comments: It seems somewhat contradictory to describe Alex George’s novel A Good American as a “small-scale family saga,” but that’s how it struck me. The story of four generations of the Meisenheimer family doesn’t lack colorful characters or events, but it also doesn’t have that sprawling, melodramatic, bigger-than-life feel that I associate with that type of fiction. (Maybe I read The Thorn Birds too many times in my impressionable youth.) Perhaps I’m losing my taste for sprawling melodrama with age, though, because A Good American didn’t need it to keep me engaged.

The Meisenheimer story is told by James, the second of four American-born grandsons of immigrants Frederick and Jette, whose plans to settle in St. Louis were permanently sidetracked when they stopped over in the small Missouri town of Beatrice. Surrounded by fellow Germans, they put down roots, but they are tested by larger events as World War I alters American attitudes toward Germans everywhere and Prohibition shuts down the family business. But because reinvention is an American hallmark, the bar is reborn as a restaurant, and over the decades, its menu evolves from Jette’s native German specialities to her son Joseph’s all-American burgers to a great-grandson’s Mexican-style offerings. And while James associates his family’s story with music--taught to sing by their father Joseph, who learned to love music from his father Frederick, he and his three brothers sang together as a barbershop quartet--but food is at least as big a part of it.

George’s style, via James’ voice, is straightforward, not flashy, and suits the story very well. The humor is subtle, and the family drama is offset by the drama of the great changes of the 20th century. A Good American begins as the story of new Americans, but for me, it really comes to life when it becomes the story of James and his brothers, the all-American grandsons growing up and making lives in small-town America. This is traditional, old-fashioned fiction, and sometimes that's just the right kind of comfort food.

Rating: 3.75/5

The BlogHer Book Club is reading and discussing A Good American for the next few weeks--come join our conversation!

   

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Wordless Wednesday: The Oscar Goes To...

...for "Best Interpretation of a Time- and Space-Traveling Object":

The TARDIS Girls (and a Couple of Guys) of Gallifrey One, 2013

Credits:

Original photo by Paul Vasquez (edited with Snapseed, text added with Phonto)
TARDIS pinafore* by Amanda Marin/Darling Army
TARDIS-printed waist-cincher corset* by Yuly Springer/Butterfly Frillies

Linked-Up Wordless Wednesday has two new players this week, and our theme is inspired by this weekend's Academy Awards ceremony. Please check out "The Oscars" bestowed by
Desiree Eaglin
Catalina Juarez
Candice Kahn
Susanna Morgan
Kim Tracy Prince

(I think I'm getting the award for "Nerdiest Participant in Linked-Up Wordless Wednesday" this week.)

*Disclosure: All cosplay items were purchased, but I wanted to identify their sources.

Posted with Blogsy

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(Audio)Book Talk: WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN, by Lionel Shriver

We Need to Talk About Kevin: A Novel
Lionel Shriver (Wikipedia page) (Goodreads)
Audiobook read by Coleen Marlo
Harper Perennial (2006), Paperback (ISBN 006112429X / 9780061124297)
Fiction, 432 pages
Source: Purchased paperback; purchased audiobook (Harper Audio, 2011; Audible ASIN B006QGIFWC)
Reason for reading: Personal (long-term TBR, topical fiction)

Opening lines:
“Dear Franklin,
“I’m unsure why one trifling incident this afternoon has moved me to write to you. But since we’ve been separated, I may most miss coming home coming home to deliver the narrative curiosities of my day, the way a cat might lay mice at your feet; the small, humble offerings that couples proffer after foraging in separate backyards. Were you still installed in my kitchen, slathering crunchy peanut butter on Branola though it was almost time for dinner, I’d no sooner have put down the bags, one leaking a clear viscous drool, than this little story would come tumbling out, even before I chided that we’re having pasta tonight so would you please not eat that whole sandwich.”

Book description, from the publisher’s website:
Eva never really wanted to be a mother—and certainly not the mother of a boy who ends up murdering seven of his fellow high school students, a cafeteria worker, and a much-adored teacher who tried to befriend him, all two days before his sixteenth birthday. Now, two years later, it is time for her to come to terms with marriage, career, family, parenthood, and Kevin’s horrific rampage, in a series of startlingly direct correspondences with her estranged husband, Franklin. Uneasy with the sacrifices and social demotion of motherhood from the start, Eva fears that her alarming dislike for her own son may be responsible for driving him so nihilistically off the rails.

Comments: There’s mom guilt, and then there’s Eva Katchadorian’s mom guilt. Many parents struggle with an outsized sense of responsibility for their kids’ failings, but most kids’ failings don’t extend to the murders of seven classmates. And most mothers’ guilt isn’t complicated by an ongoing, years-long struggle to bond with their children in the first place, but Eva wonders if her conflicted feelings about motherhood may have somehow come across to her son even before he was born, foreshadowing a relationship characterized by cold distance and mutual suspicion. Although she was miles away on that Thursday in April 1999 when Kevin Katchadorian joined the infamous ranks of high-school killers (his deeds would be overshadowed by the events at Columbine High School just a few weeks later), Eva seemed all too ready to be tried and convicted for her own parental mistakes. But almost two years have passed since “Thursday,” and Eva is finally ready to work through the story, from the beginning, to explain her side and explore her self-blame.

I’ve had Lionel Shriver’s We Need to Talk About Kevin in TBR Purgatory for years. Although Shriver’s subsequent novel, The Post-Birthday World, was one of my Books of the Year in 2008, I’ve found it difficult to bring myself around to reading ...Kevin; not even a movie adaptation could spur me to “read the book first” (the fact that I really didn’t intend to see the movie anyway may have factored in there too, to be honest). The Newtown shootings were what finally tipped the scales, I’m sorry to say--although, since I read this as an audiobook, the print copy remains where it was and is technically still TBR. But I’ll probably give that copy away or donate it somewhere. We Need to Talk About Kevin may be one of the best books I’ll never want to read again.

Presented as a series of long, highly detailed letters from Eva to Kevin’s father, Franklin, written over the fall and winter of 2000-2001 and culminating at the second anniversary of their son’s attack on Gladstone High School, the novel is essentially a monologue. Eva makes it clear that she and Franklin saw their son very differently from the very beginning, and she strongly implies that Kevin wanted it that way by being different with each of them. But because this is Eva’s telling, anyone else’s perspective is filtered through hers--we are never privy to Franklin’s responses to her letters--and at times I wasn’t sure how much I could trust that. But as the story built to its horrifying, heartbreaking climax, questions I didn’t even realize I had were answered, and my skepticism was thoroughly quashed.

The American idealization of motherhood can make it complicated for a woman to admit when it doesn’t come easily for her--any woman who’s struggled with meeting her own expectations about the role, let alone those of her family and society at large, may be unsettled by Shriver’s expression, through Eva’s voice, of feelings we don’t like to feel. Along with its uncomfortable emotions, ...Kevin also addresses unpleasant facts. Teenagers launched a shocking number of killing sprees during the late 20th century, and Shriver references many of them; I was surprised by how many of those news stories I remembered. (Perhaps because my own son was in school throughout the 1990s, I was especially attentive to school-violence stories then.) We all know Columbine was not the last of these incidents, but it was far from the first.

I’ve found that sometimes an audiobook performance points up weaknesses in the writing, but that was rarely true here. While I didn’t love some of her character voices, for the most part, Coleen Marlo’s reading made me appreciate just how good Lionel Shriver’s writing was. We Need to Talk About Kevin is fascinating, frustrating, shocking, and memorable, even as it goes to places you might prefer to forget. It’s an important novel, and I think I’ll be adding it to my short list of Books Everyone Should Read...but just once.

Rating: Book 4.25/5, audio 3.75/5

Other reviews, via the Book Blogs Search Engine

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A Few Things I'm Loving Right Now #ValentinesDay

This is not the post I'd originally planned for today, but I decided that particular book review might be better scheduled on a day that's not Valentine's Day--I've bumped it to next week (because it's not for a tour or a book club, so I can).

I suppose my Wordless Wednesday post yesterday could count as my "official" Valentine's Day post, but I thought today might be a nice time to mention a few of my favorite things these days. (Disclosure: I have received NO incentives or payments to mention any of these products; I spent my own money on them. This post is not sponsored in any way.)

Music from Les Misérables

I've seen the movie three times and can't get the music out of my head. The fact that there are recurring melodic themes in quite a few of the songs helps them stick, but having the soundtrack in frequent rotation in iTunes is probably also a factor. Do you hear the people sing?





E-books on the iPad

I officially retired my Kindle (through Amazon's Trade-in Program) late last year. Between the Kindle, Nook, and iBooks apps on my iPad, I just wasn't using a dedicated e-reader very much. And when I read e-books on the iPad, I discovered I like the reading experience best in iBooks; I'm reading e-books more regularly now than I ever did. (Damn, Apple, you got something else right!)

Body Shop Cocoa Butter Stick

Yes, I realize I live somewhere that doesn't really have much in the way of "winter," but whether it's a function of the season, age, or both, I seem to be fighting with patchy dry skin a lot this year. This stuff is really helping.

Greek yogurt

I know it's kind of a thing these days, but considering how many years I was hostile to the "yogurty" taste of yogurt, I'm quite surprised that I like this stuff as much as I do! I'm trying to eat more protein and it's a very good source, but I wouldn't eat it so cheerfully if I didn't actually enjoy how it tastes.

"Powering down"

I talked about this a bit this past Sunday ("The Online Trend of Going Offline"), but this weekend I expect to be doing a fair amount of it. We're going to the Gallifrey One Convention to celebrate all things Doctor Who during its 50th-anniversary year.

Formalwear for Whovians

I hope to come back with blogfodder, but I don't plan to turn it into much while I'm there (except for maybe some Instagram updates). I'm bringing some books for downtime, but my goal is to be where I am...and not so much in the online space, for the next few days.

See you soon! Happy Valentine's Day, and tell us about something you're loving right now!

Posted with Blogsy

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Wordless Wednesday: Be My Valentine

Self-portrait with iPhone, Getty Center gardens (Los Angeles, CA), February 2013

Today's Four-Way Wordless Wednesday has a Valentine's Day theme! Please check out how my friends see the holiday:

Candice: Josh Duhamel Says Happy Valentine's Day

Desiree: The Day of Love: Wordless Wednesday

Kim: Wordless Wednesday: In the Mail

Posted with Blogsy

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TLC Book Tour: NEWS FROM HEAVEN, by Jennifer Haigh

News From Heaven: The Bakerton Stories
Jennifer Haigh (Facebook)
Harper (January 2013), Hardcover (ISBN 0060889640 / 9780060889647)
Fiction (linked short stories), 256 pages
Source: ARC from publisher
Reason for reading: TLC Book Tour

Opening lines (from the first story, “Beast and Bird”):
“Every Sunday morning, at seven o’clock promptly, the two Polish girls crossed the park and walked fifty blocks downtown to church. Early morning: the avenue wide as a farmer’s field, the sunlight tempered with frost. The girls were bare-legged, in ankle socks and long coats, their long blond hair dark at the ends from their morning ablutions. The younger, Annie Lubicki, was also the prettier. She had just turned sixteen.
“Knowing less, Annie listened more than she spoke. Frances Zroka was three years older, a city girl from Passaic, New Jersey.”

Book description, from the publisher’s website:
When her iconic novel Baker Towers was published in 2005, it was hailed as a modern classic—"compassionate and powerful...a song of praise for a too-little-praised part of America, for the working families whose toils and constancy have done so much to make the country great" (Chicago Tribune). Its young author, Jennifer Haigh, was "an expert natural storyteller with an acute sense of her characters' humanity" (New York Times). 

Now, in this collection of interconnected short stories, Jennifer Haigh returns to the vividly imagined world of Bakerton, Pennsylvania, a coal-mining town rocked by decades of painful transition. From its heyday during two world wars through its slow decline, Bakerton is a town that refuses to give up gracefully, binding—sometimes cruelly—succeeding generations to the place that made them. A young woman glimpses a world both strange and familiar when she becomes a live-in maid for a Jewish family in New York City. A long-absent brother makes a sudden and tragic homecoming. A solitary middle-aged woman tastes unexpected love when a young man returns to town. With a revolving cast of characters—many familiar to fans of Baker Towers—these stories explore how our roots, the families and places in which we are raised, shape the people we eventually become.

Comments: My in-person book club faded into oblivion several years ago, but one of my personal triumphs during its lifetime was selecting Jennifer Haigh’s second novel, Baker Towers, as one of our reads. It was a fine blend of immigrant-family saga, 20th-century historical fiction, and place-as-character novel that introduced me to a new favorite author and has stuck with me ever since. When I was offered the opportunity to revisit Bakerton, Pennsylvania in Haigh’s new short-story collection, News From Heaven, I eagerly accepted. Although I’ve said before that I’m not generally a short-story fan, the linked-short-story format seems to work for me.

Haigh connects the “Bakerton Stories” in News From Heaven not only to each other, but also to Baker Towers, although I don’t think there’s a recommended order in which to read the books--the references aren’t plot-specific. Several stories revisit members of Baker Towers’ Novak family, both filling in blanks from the earlier stories and exploring what’s become of those people since Haigh last wrote about them. The Novaks also make cameo appearances in stories that center on other Bakerton families--the Lubickis, Wojicks, and descendants of the founding Bakers themselves--and I found it fascinating to explore the relationships among them, viewed through an assortment of perspectives.

The stories in News From Heaven make fewer overt references to Catholicism and immigrant/first-generation culture than Baker Towers does, but those elements still color life in a town whose ups and downs have always gone hand-in-hand with the fortunes of the coal-mining business that built it. Most of the characters here are children and grandchildren of the Polish, Italian, and Irish immigrants who settled the town and labored in the mines for decades. But the as mines were emptied out and closed down, Bakerton became an aging company town with a questionable future, and its population, in Haigh’s stories, reflects the social and economic changes of the last few decades.

The slices of life in Jennifer Haigh’s Bakerton Stories are portrayed with empathy and emotional authenticity, and I hope she has even more of them to tell.

Rating: 4 / 5

Jennifer Haigh discusses News From Heaven on the Book Club Girl podcast

Other stops on this TLC Book Tour:

Tuesday, January 29th: The Feminist Texican [Reads]

Tuesday, January 29th: Tiffany’s Bookshelf

Wednesday, January 30th: 50 Books Project

Thursday, January 31st: A Patchwork of Books

Monday, February 4th: BookNAround

Tuesday, February 5th: What She Read …

Wednesday, February 6th: Savvy Verse & Wit

Thursday, February 7th: Dreaming in Books

Monday, February 11th: Book Addiction

Tuesday, February 12th: Kristen’s Book Nook

Wednesday, February 13th: Luxury Reading

Thursday, February 14th: The Book Bag

Friday, February 15th: 5 Minutes For Books

 

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Sunday Salon: The Online Trend of Going Offline

If all goes well, today will be a review-writing day. Last night I raced to finish a book of short stories for a blog tour this Tuesday, so I'll be writing that up. I also hope to get my thoughts down, finally and with some degree of coherence, about We Need to Talk About Kevin; I finished the audiobook a few days ago, but it's a novel that definitely needs to simmer a little.

I also hope to keep making progress with a chunkster-ish novel--did we agree awhile back that 400 pages was the minimum threshold for "chunkster" status? Then this isn't an "-ish," it's a bona-fide chunkster, and the fact that I'm reading it as an e-book doesn't negate that--for an online book club launching a week from Thursday, and I need to get started on the books for one more tour this month and March reviews for Shelf Awareness. Considering that February is short of days compared to other months, I think I may have overbooked it! (I'll pause now while you groan at the bad pun.)

And--somehow--I've made a good dent in my feed reader this week, where I've noticed what seems to be a new trend. Lately, there's a lot of talk online about getting away from being online: #FACEBOOKBREAK, the social-media hiatus, powering down.

The online space as the venue for these conversations feels a little weird and ironic, and yet also totally appropriate. And since I've been kicking some of these ideas around in my head for a little while, I wanted to open up the conversation here, for what will probably not be the last time.

The new challenge of "balance" is maintaining our connections--many of which are nurtured by social media--while trying to keep "being connected" from eating up our lives.

Aside from a couple of Facebook groups and the G+ Book Bloggers community, I feel like I'm doing more broadcasting--sharing links and promoting content--than conversing online lately. The social-media beast has changed dramatically during the nearly six years I've been blogging--it's bigger and more fragmented, like blogging itself. I'm coming to feel that I don't do the "social" part very well these days, but I'm not sure I feel a need to fix it.

There are so many online outlets now--Facebook and Twitter and Pinterest and Instagram and Google+ and other networks I probably don't even know about--that I've accepted that "catching up" is futile. I feel better when I just don't try. Besides, even after so many years and despite frequent reports of their impending death, blogs are still alive and well, and the pace and content of blogging continues to satisfy me more than anything else online.

Then there's this: If you want to blog about books, you have to make time to read books, and follow that up with writing blog posts about what you've read. And if the amount of time you can make to do those things is limited to begin with, you have to choose your activities carefully so you don't limit it further. A book blogger has to step back from the online midway in order to keep the blog healthy and well-fed. This is a niche that depends on powering down in order to stay powered up.

The Power Down Podcast is a biweekly conversation about figuring out how to "find peace in the chaos." It's the kind of talk that often takes place at conferences and workshops and other places where online people meet offline, and it seems like talk a lot of us may be ready to have. I hope you'll give it a listen--they've done two shows so far, and a new one will be up this Wednesday, February 13. Maybe you can even do some reading while you listen.

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Five for Friday: Recommended Reading

Click the "Stuff to Share" link in the navigation bar at the top of the page to visit my RebelMouse site, which collects the links, pictures, and online finds I've been sharing via social media recently. If you're a Facebook friend or Twitter follower, you may have seen (or ignored) some of these recommended-reading links already.

Readings From the "Books" Section

Poynter.org: "How Bloggers Became the New Chick-Lit Heroines" 

"'Where chick lit once tantalized readers with romance or fancy clothes,' Fischer writes, 'the vicarious thrills of its new-media incarnation are more mundane and rooted in the mechanics of actually doing a job.'

"As journalism has changed, so have literary portrayals of it. Some authors seem less inclined to describe journalism as an ideal industry where women can 'clock in for manageable daily adventures then clock out for afterhours drama,' Fischer writes. They’re instead portraying 'a version of journalism that’s decidedly bleaker' — one that’s marked by the need to churn out lots of stories and generate lots of page views."

(bonus link--The New Republic: "Chick Lit Has a New Heroine")

Book Riot: "How to Talk About a Book You Loved That Your Friend Hated (or Vice Versa)"

"2.) Don’t try to change the other person’s mind.

I learned this from a recent episode of the radio show This American Life entitled “Red State Blue State.” In Act One of the show,  producer Lisa Pollak speaks to Phil Neisser and Jacob Hess, two political opposites who have learned they can talk to each other about their different-as-day-and-night politics as long as the DON’T TRY TO CHANGE THE OTHER PERSON’S MIND. No proselytizing allowed. When you stop trying to change someone’s mind, you start listening. I mean really listening, listening without quickly brainstorming what your next talking point is going to be listening. When you let go of the idea of 'winning,' a tempers-flaring debate becomes a passionate conversation. A passionate conversation is MUCH more likely to result in hugs and going out for ice cream after. And who isn’t down for that?"

Beth Kephart at Huffington Post Books: "Why (Some) Teens Don't Read YA"

"You notice, in this list, the obvious. You were about to warn me, before I even got started, about the absence of books originally published for young adults (YA)--the very 'category' of respondents to my small survey. (It is duly noted that books like Music of the Swamp, The Bell Jar, and The Picture of Dorian Gray have evolved, through the years, into teen staples). Indeed, just a handful of contemporary 'teen' books made it onto the list...

"On a wind-blown day in an urban Miami Beach garden we talked about these books best loved, these books most influential. We talked about the contemporary books written specifically for younger readers. 'There seem to be just three kinds of young adult books,' one sighed. 'The gossip books, the I'm starving/I hate myself/everything is terrible book, and the dystopian books in which the teens save the world. This is not representative of our reality.' 

"'YA authors seem to think that teens see themselves as central, as the story's only important protagonists' another told me. 'But we're not actually the center of the universe. We're part of something. We want to be part of something. We want to connect to other people, other generations, other eras.'"

(bonus link-- "Lamp Lighters and Seed Sowers: Tomorrow's YA," Beth Kephart's keynote address to the "YA: What's Next?" Publishing Conference, November 2012)

Readings From the "Arts & Life" Section

Linda Holmes, Monkey See (NPR.org): "Coastal Snobbery, the 'Masses,' and Respecting the Lowest Common Denominator"

"Assuming cultural commonality between those places and Cleveland and all the different parts of Texas is not just condescending and coast-centric, though it is those things. It's also just wrong and silly. There's no such thing as making a television show, for instance, for 'middle America,' because anything that's broad enough to be intended for even both Austin and Dallas is intended for parts of New York and California. And if your definition of 'middle America' is super-super-middle-America, like, 'Oh, no, I'm talking about just Kansas and Missouri,' then (1) that's still not all one kind of person, and (2) nobody would ever make a television show or a movie for Kansas and Missouri, because they have a combined population of under 10 million people, and making something for a potential audience pool of 10 million people is not exactly the broad, safe play people have in mind when they say 'middle America.'

"To try to appreciate the cultural flavor of 'middle America' is not to come to terms with its depressing sameness, but to get your arms around its tremendous variation, its pockets of enthusiasm, and its utter indifference to most of what people in New York and Los Angeles have to say about it."

Alexandra Petri, Washington Post: "Dear Barnes & Noble"

"The market research and media forecast firm Simba Information keeps finding that a decrease in physical bookstores doesn’t drive e-book sales. Instead, it just makes people forget that books are a thing that exists and that you can spend money on. More contact with books and book retailers makes you more likely to buy books. Less does just the opposite. 

“'All right,' you may justly say, 'but if you care so much about physical bookstores, why do you only go into them to buy coffee and sit for several hours using the free wifi without purchasing anything?'

"Look, we can change! Just stop closing the bookstores. You have something special! Don’t throw away your birthright in this frenzied dash after the thin pottage of the eBook market! You are all that stands between us and the nightmarish vision of a world where the only place unused books are sold is at Urban Outfitters, as decorative ironic curios, along with vinyl records and toilet brushes shaped like owls."

Reading From the "Sports & College Humor" Section (by the other blogger in my family)

Rocky Top Talk: "A Hypothetical Oral History of National Signing Day at Every Single University"

"Excerpt 3: The Big Get

"Head Coach: Really, we can talk about how good our staff is all day long, but at the end of the day, the campus sells itself. This is such a good place to be for so many reasons.

"Athletic Department Office Assistant: Man, the head coach was so pissed when the only half-decent strip club in town shut down in September. The only redeeming thing about the new best place in town is Taco Tuesdays - $1 per taco isn't a bad deal no matter where you find it.

"Key Booster: I can't believe Wishes shut down in September. Don't they understand recruiting season? How's a young man supposed to enjoy all our fine city has to offer if they can't visit the best places in town?"

TGIF, and I hope you have some good weekend reading ahead of you!

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Wordless Wednesday: Castle and Contrast

Neighbors: Franklin Avenue, Los Angeles, California

I'm linking up in a fantastic four-way Wordless Wednesday! Please check out today's photos from Kim: Wordless Wednesday: Indecision; Desiree: 6 Month Baby Tradition - Wordless Wednesday; and Candice: Not My Baby Anymore.

Posted with Blogsy

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Book Talk: THE HISTORIAN, by Elizabeth Kostova

The Historian
Elizabeth Kostova (Facebook)
Back Bay Books (2006), Paperback (ISBN 0316154547 / 9780316154543)
Fiction, 704 pages
Source: Purchased
Reason for reading: Personal

Opening lines: “In 1972 I was sixteen--young, my father said, to be traveling with him on his diplomatic missions. he preferred to know I was sitting attentively in class at the International School of Amsterdam; in those days his foundation was based in Amsterdam, and it had been home for so long I had nearly forgotten our early life in the United States. It seems peculiar to me now that I should have been so obedient well into my teens, while the rest of my generation was experimenting with drugs and protesting the imperialist war in Vietnam, but I had been raised in a world so sheltered that it makes my adult life in academia look positively adventurous. To begin with, I was motherless, and the care that my father took of me had been deepened by a double sense of responsibility, so that he protected me more completely than he might have otherwise. My mother had died when I was a baby, before my father founded the Center for Peace and Democracy.”

Book description, from the publisher’s website:Late one night, exploring her father's library, a young woman finds an ancient book and a cache of yellowing letters. The letters are all addressed to "My dear and unfortunate successor," and they plunge her into a world she never dreamed of-a labyrinth where the secrets of her father's past and her mother's mysterious fate connect to an inconceivable evil hidden in the depths of history.The letters provide links to one of the darkest powers that humanity has ever known-and to a centuries-long quest to find the source of that darkness and wipe it out. It is a quest for the truth about Vlad the Impaler, the medieval ruler whose barbarous reign formed the basis of the legend of Dracula. Generations of historians have risked their reputations, their sanity, and even their lives to learn the truth about Vlad the Impaler and Dracula. Now one young woman must decide whether to take up this quest herself-to follow her father in a hunt that nearly brought him to ruin years ago, when he was a vibrant young scholar and her mother was still alive. What does the legend of Vlad the Impaler have to do with the modern world? Is it possible that the Dracula of myth truly existed-and that he has lived on, century after century, pursuing his own unknowable ends? 

The answers to these questions cross time and borders, as first the father and then the daughter search for clues, from dusty Ivy League libraries to Istanbul, Budapest, and the depths of Eastern Europe. In city after city, in monasteries and archives, in letters and in secret conversations, the horrible truth emerges about Vlad the Impaler's dark reign-and about a time-defying pact that may have kept his awful work alive down through the ages.Parsing obscure signs and hidden texts, reading codes worked into the fabric of medieval monastic traditions-and evading the unknown adversaries who will go to any lengths to conceal and protect Vlad's ancient powers-one woman comes ever closer to the secret of her own past and a confrontation with the very definition of evil.

Comments: I began reading The Historian late in the winter of 2007. I set it aside that April--not long after I started this blog--with a bookmark stuck in at page 400-something. I’d spent too long with it to abandon it completely, but having just come upon the third instance of introducing completely new backstory material into the narrative, I was frustrated. I always intended to go back to finish it “eventually,”and thanks to Fizzy Jill’s #peeon, “eventually” came last month.

I won’t even try to “review” a book that I took a nearly six-year break from reading, and I have to admit that I hoped I’d find some new delight in it after all this time. However, not long after I picked up The Historian again, I remembered pretty quickly what had exasperated me about it and what had compelled me to make it through about 75% of it before exasperation won out. For me, this was a case of a whole that’s a good deal less than the sum of its parts. The novel frequently engaged me on a chapter-by-chapter basis, but in a nearly 700-page book, I need more than just engaging chapters to keep me going.

Elizabeth Kostova’s first novel can’t be faulted for ambitious reach. An unnamed girl’s search for her missing father brings her to discover his own similar quest, decades earlier, to unearth the truth behind his mentor’s mysterious disappearance...and all of it leads to Dracula. It’s an intriguing premise, but it’s too often weighed down by the volume of Eastern European historical detail that Kostova seems to feel is necessary to give the story authenticity. Most of the story is told through letters and documents: the girl discovers her father’s journals, which recount what was in his mentor’s journals, which recap older documents...and so on. (Those are the layers upon layers of backstory that drove me away from the novel six years ago,) I’m a fan of the epistolary novel as a form--although, in real life, I’ve rarely encountered letters and journals as well-crafted, informative, and detailed as the ones fictional characters seem to leave for one another all the time, and I think I resent that just a little--but it does seem to lend itself to “tell” as opposed to “show,” and I felt that The Historian fell into that trap too often.

The Book Blogs Search Engine connects to many other reviews of The Historian, but I want to quote this from Jennifer at Reading with Tequila, because it made me feel that my response to the book was validated:

“For me, The Historian was split right down the middle - 50% love, 50% hate. I loved the story. I couldn't stand the way that story was told.

With any novel deeply based in historical lore, one expects a reasonable amount of vivid description to allow a complete picturing of the time period. The Historian is so very descriptive, it borders on obsessive. There was way too much information about exact architectural details, exact clothing descriptions, exact sights, sounds, tastes, feelings, etc. that while I felt right there in the moment with the characters, the pace was dreadfully slow. ...The thrill of the present-day hunt for Dracula often got lost as the reader was repeatedly dragged back into the 1500s for more Dracula history.”

The Historian has some very passionate fans, and I feel like I’m disappointing them by not joining their number. It would be easier if the novel were truly bad, but I want to make clear that it’s not that; it’s original, and the first half is strong (remember, it didn’t really lose me until well past the middle). If it had a smaller page count, more action, and less detail seemingly aimed more at actual historians than at fiction readers, we might have hit it off better. As it is, I’m not sorry we’re history, at long last.

Rating: 3/5

 

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Sunday Salon: A Short Post to Start a Short Month

I'm later to the Salon than I like to be, and I won't be staying long today. We have plans for this lovely Sunday. Last year we spent it with the antiquities at the Getty Villa; today we'll be going to the Getty Museum (cameras in hand, of course) for more art and views of the city. We don't plan to be back before the game starts, so we have the DVR set to record it--we wouldn't miss the Puppy Bowl!

I'm not sure much reading will happen today, but I do have a review for the freelance gig to write before we leave. February is short of days, but it has a pretty full agenda--stealing this idea from Care, here's my itinerary:

two blog tours

three book clubs (although one started on January 31, two are online, and one's already met)

an audiobook in progress (I should finish it around midweek)

and two March releases to read and review for Shelf Awareness...after I finish the slightly-late February review I have to get to them today, I'll decide which books they'll be.

This is also the busiest time of year for me at my Real Job, so while the reading schedule is busy, blogging may fall by the wayside a bit during the next few weeks--so if I'm scarce, now you know why. My "things I want to blog about" folders are full, but time to do anything with those ideas is definitely limited right now, and I've already had to "mark all as read" in Google Reader once this month. Odds are it'll happen again.

See you when I see you, and have a great Sunday!

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