(Audio)Book Talk: KICKING & DREAMING, by Ann and Nancy Wilson

Kicking & Dreaming: A Story of Heart, Soul, and Rock & Roll
Ann Wilson and Nancy Wilson, with Charles R. Cross (Twitter) (Facebook)
Audiobook read by Ann Wilson and Nancy Wilson
It Books (September 2012), Hardcover (ISBN 0062101676 / 9780062101679)
Nonfiction: Autobiography/music/popular culture, 288 pages
Source: Purchased audiobook (Harper Audio, unabridged. ISBN 9780062243706; Audible ASIN B009CMO4ZY)
Reason for reading: Personal (recommended by Jodi at I Will Dare)


Opening lines (from the Prologue): “I never thought much about it at the time, but looking back it seems odd that our career came crashing apart and then came magically back together in a club named Lucifer’s.

“Robert Johnson, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Jimmy Page. You might have expected all of them on the bill at Lucifer’s,Calgary, Canada. But in October 1975, the flame-red letters on the club’s marquee read FROM VANCOUVER...’DREAMBOAT ANNIE’ recording artists: Heart.” (Ann Wilson)

Book description, from the publisher’s website

The mystery of "Magic Man." The wicked riff of "Barracuda." The sadness and beauty of "Alone." The raw energy of "Crazy On You." These songs, and so many more, are part of the fabric of American music. Heart, fronted by Ann and Nancy Wilson, has given fans everywhere classic, raw, and pure badass rock and roll for more than three decades. As the only sisters in rock who write their own music and play their own instruments, Ann and Nancy have always stood apart—certainly from their male counterparts but also from their female peers. By refusing to let themselves and their music be defined by their gender, and by never allowing their sexuality to overshadow their talent, the Wilson sisters have made their mark, and in the process paved the way for many of today's female artists. 

In Kicking and Dreaming, Ann and Nancy, with the help of critically acclaimed and bestselling music biographer Charles R. Cross, recount a journey that has taken them from a gypsy-like life as the children of a globe-trotting Marine to the frozen back roads of Vancouver, where they got their start as a band, to the pinnacle of success—and sometimes excess. In these pages, readers will learn the truth about the relationship that inspired "Magic Man" and "Crazy On You," the turmoil of inter-band romances gone awry, the reality of life on the road as single women and then as mothers of small children, and the thrill of performing and in some cases partying with rock legends. It has not always been an easy path. Ann struggled with and triumphed over a childhood stutter, body image, and alcoholism; Nancy suffered the pain and disappointment of fertility issues and a failed marriage but ultimately found love again and happiness as a mom. Through it all, the sisters drew from the strength of a family bond that trumps everything else, as told in this intimate, honest, and uniquely female take on the rock and roll life.

Comments: I’ve sometimes liked the idea of the band Heart--a coed rock group not merely fronted, but actively led, as songwriters and performers, by two women--more than I’ve liked the music they’ve created, and some of their most popular music isn’t among my personal favorites. But not many women have experienced the music industry the way Ann and Nancy Wilson have. In Kicking and Dreaming, a dual autobiography that reads like oral history, the sisters trace their individual and overlapping stories through nearly four decades in a shared family business.

There have been nearly 30 members of Heart over the band’s history, but the constants--and its public face--have always been the Wilson sisters, so it’s a bit surprising to learn that it wasn’t originally their band. Ann--the middle child of three girls, four years older than Nancy--started the group with a few male musicians she’d played with in their hometown of Seattle, after they’d all ended up in Vancouver; after years of pleading from her sister, Nancy eventually dropped out of college and moved north to join them. The sisters were used to wandering and to relying on one another, having grown up in a Marine Corps family and moving often until their father retired. That may have been good preparation for the constant touring that building a career in rock and roll demanded, and having each other’s backs in settings where they were often the only women (not counting the groupies) helped too. And while having the women out front--Ann singing, Nancy on guitar--didn’t hurt in attracting attention, the Wilsons truly saw Heart as a group effort, with their sister act linked to the Fisher brothers; guitarist Roger was another of the the founding members from Seattle, while his brother Michael was the band’s behind-the-scenes leader. For nearly a decade, Michael was also Ann’s boyfriend (and songwriting muse, the inspiration for “Magic Man” and “Crazy on You”), and for a time, Roger was Nancy’s. When these couplings crumbled, the band’s future grew cloudy, but the sisters still had each other. With new cohorts, they forged ahead and changed with the times, if sometimes reluctantly...but the music kept on going.

I prefer celebrity autobiographies to tell a little less than “all,” and this one complies. Kicking and Dreaming is candid without being excessively graphic; the Wilsons refer to the sex and drugs that accessorize the rock-and-roll life but don’t provide unnecessary play-by-play detail. However, this isn’t just a tale of the rock-and-roll life; it’s a tale of being women in the rock-and-roll life...and of being women, full stop. The sisters’ respective images--Ann’s more earthy, Nancy’s ethereal--may be based on their looks, but as they come across here, seem well-connected to their personalities. Ann is open about her struggles with weight, body image, and addiction; Nancy delves into the creative process. Both are devoted to music, work, and family.

The audiobook edition of Kicking and Dreaming accentuates the “oral history” feel, as the Wilsons trade off narration. Ann’s a somewhat more effective narrator--which isn’t that surprising, since she’s the lead vocalist--but there’s not a glaring discrepancy between her and Nancy as readers, and hearing their story in their own voices give it more intimacy. Listening to them tell it made me want to add some more Heart songs to my music library, and made me like them more than the idea of their band.

Rating: Book 3.5 of 5, Audio 3.75 of 5

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WW: For Work AND Play!

Our Linked-Up Wordless Wednesday theme this week is "Play"--but since that's something I haven't had much time for during the past week, I thought I'd go in the opposite direction and show you my "Work" space in the new house instead. It's one of those built-in kitchen desks, and I'm excited to have it because I'm oddly reluctant to use my laptop on my lap. But since the laptop and its cousin, the iPad, are two of my favorite "playthings," I guess I'm not completely off-topic.

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Packing Up, Moving On...

...no, not from this place! I'll own up to using an intentionally misleading post title, though.

Yes, we really are using professionals for a move next door--there's some big, heavy furniture going up and down stairs in both houses, and we are not young people. (Well, two of us aren't, and the one of us who is a young person is only thirteen and a bit less than full-grown.) They'll be coming on Saturday morning, but Tall Paul and I are taking the rest of this week off from work to prepare, and clean, and move a lot of the stuff that's not so big and heavy. The wi-fi router is supposed to be moved tomorrow--if that goes without mishap we shouldn't be deprived of internet access for long, but I don't anticipate having much time to make use of it for the next few days.

If we're not too preoccupied by doing the moving, chances are good that Tall Paul and I may be documenting the process on our Instagram and Facebook feeds, but the blog will probably be quiet till early next week. Wish us luck, and see you soon!

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Semi-Wordless Wednesday: Back to School!

I haven't gone back to any of my old schools since I left the last of them, 26 years ago. The fact that I've put thousands of miles between myself and them is only one of the reasons why. I'm not the person I was when I was there, and some of the schools aren't the same, either.

Broad River School Homes, via Google Street View

The high school is smaller, the university has grown, and my old elementary school now serves a completely opposite population--it's been converted into senior apartments.

But school's been back in session for our 13-year-old since last week, and he's starting eighth grade with this shower curtain, which he picked out for his bathroom in the new house. It'll be a handy cheat sheet when he actually gets around to taking chemistry.

Top: Periodic Table shower curtain, our house. Bottom: Library, Aviva High School

An InLinkz Link-up

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Sunday Salon: "Moving Week" Edition

Time: Sunday morning, in the seven o'clock hour

Place: My side of the bed, with the iPad

Eating and drinking: Nothing yet, but thinking about breakfast…and about drinking lots of water today. It'll be another hot, dry one in Simi Valley.

Reading: Most of the books are boxed and in the garage at the new house, where they'll most likely remain until the bookcases are delivered a few weeks from now, but I did leave out a few. I'm about halfway through a galley I'll be reviewing for Shelf Awareness in October, a memoir about an interfaith marriage (she's Baptist, he's…Hindu?), with two more potential reviews for them and book-club reads for the next two months on deck. Since there'a not a lot of time for reading right now anyway, I think this should do well until the Great Unpacking, but I've got plenty of ebooks ready to go if I actually do get through all the print ones before that happens, so I'm pretty sure I'm set.

Watching: It's mostly TV shows that have some connection to the BBC right now–Broadchurch and Copper on BBC America, and the first series of “new” Doctor Who on Netflix. And Tall Paul's go-to “when nothing else in on” show remains Top Gear, which seems to be getting more generally entertaining and less directly about cars.

Listening: I weeded out my podcasts subscriptions last week; I kept about a half-dozen, and they're pretty much strictly pop-culture and TV discussions now, since those are the ones I most consistently listen to anyway. I also switched to a two-credits-per-month Audible plan this month, although now that school has started my audiobook-consumption pace may slow down a bit (I don't always listen with Spencer in the car, unless it's a book I'm sure would be OK for him–or he has his iPod on and headphones in, so he's listening to his own thing anyway). I'm about ¾ through Kicking and Dreaming, the joint autobiography of Ann and Nancy Wilson from Heart, on audio right now, and hoping to finish it before Wednesday–I'm taking two days off at the end of this week for the move, so I won't have my customary audio-commute time.

Blogging: I've only missed a couple of days of blogging since taking on the Just One Paragraph project, and although I'm enjoying the writing challenge, I'm really not sure daily blogging is something I want to do any more. The 3-4 posts per week habit I was in before this month feels like the right groove, and I think I'll be going back to it once this experiment is over.

Enjoying/Anticipating/Planning: Having all of our belongings back under one roof by the end of this month, and making that new space into the home we want it to be between now and the end of the year.

Promoting: I've got two "in case you missed it" posts of my own to mention this week. Whether you have ambitions to write memoir or just like reading it, Beth Kephart's Handling the Truth will make you better at both–it's an essential addition to your library . And the move next door isn't the only one happening in my family this month.

Gratuitous Photo of the Week

How's your weekend going?

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The Daughter, in #JustOneParagraph

“She’s going to be a beauty,” I said to her father, as she timidly modeled the dress she would wear at our wedding. And she is. Endlessly tall and dressed in black, she’s a presence, and she’s rarely timid anymore. She is smart and confident and creative; she is loyally devoted to what she loves, and she’s been generously gifted with the support to make herself into herself. And that support won’t be staying behind, three thousand miles away. Her things were put onto a truck on Monday, and this morning she, one of her two best friends, and her cat will set out cross-country in a packed-to-the-roof Toyota Prius. She should be arriving at her new place in New Hampshire around the time we're moving to the townhouse next door, and she'll have a couple of weeks to acclimate before the next phase of her learning, and her life, officially begins. She is the one who made him into a dad, and although it’s been almost nine years since he’s lived every day with her, this is a new stage, and a new distance in place and time, for them, as well as for her and the younger brother who has lived every day with her, and hasn't yet known life when she wasn’t there. I’m thankful that they both have our own move--next week, next door--to distract them from this other change for the next little while, but soon we’ll all have to adjust to living in a place that has a dedicated guest room, but doesn’t have her room. Still, there will always be room for her there, whenever she wants it, even as she makes room for herself in the big wide world--even in her absence, I have no doubt she’ll be a presence among us.

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Book Talk: HANDLING THE TRUTH, by Beth Kephart

Disclosure (non-standard): I received a personally-inscribed galley of Handling the Truth: On the Writing of Memoir from the author, Beth Kephart, in an expression of the friendship that has grown out of reading, writing, and Facebook. What follows is not a “review” of the book, but it is my honest response to it.

Beth Kephart is one of a small number of authors who has made me reconsider whether I might not be too old for “young adult”, but she was first published as a writer of nonfiction. One of Salon.com’s “Mothers Who Think”--foremothers of the mom bloggers-- in the dark ages of the Internet (read: the late 1990s), Beth’s first book, A Slant of Sun: One Child’s Courage, was a memoir of her early years of motherhood, and a finalist for the National Book Award. Four more memoirs followed that one, and while Beth has spent more time writing acclaimed young-adult fiction in recent years, memoir still matters to her. In her Creative Nonfiction classes at the University of Pennsylvania, she teaches the art of making memoir to a group of undergraduates every spring. In Handling the Truth: On the Writing of Memoir, she brings some of those lessons to those of us not lucky enough to sit in her classroom.

I’m pretty familiar with Beth’s writerly voice now, and while there’s something of her in everything she writes, I’ve never heard that voice more strong and true than in Handling the Truth. When I said that memoir “matters” to Beth, I understated her feelings; memoir done right--experience and truth, shaped by insight into art--is her passion, and this book makes that abundantly clear to both those who want to write memoir and those who just want to read it. Instructive but never pedantic, it’s meant to make you better at both. And Beth leaves no doubt that writers of memoir must be readers of memoir. Handling the Truth abounds with excerpts and examples, and features a generous (50-page!), well-curated list of recommended further reading in both the art and craft of memoir writing.

One thing that Beth clarifies early on is that memoir is a distinct literary form from both fiction and autobiography, although it draws on the facts of the latter and often shapes them with the forms and devices of the former. Thanks to her establishing this distinction so well, I will refer to my preferred guilty-pleasure reading as “celebrity autobiography” from now on, unless it’s clear that the personal story the celebrity has written really is memoir--and I should be able to tell the difference better now.

Handling the Truth is a practical guide to reading and writing memoir. It breaks down the various elements of the form, and offers illustrations and exercises drawn from the classroom. At the same time, it’s a memoir of Beth Kephart’s own experience with the writing, reading, and teaching of memoir...and the book accomplishes both missions without being overly self-referential or meta. It’s a celebration, examination, and defense of the form. It’s honest and direct about where and how it can go wrong, and why that makes it so important to get it right.

In addition to the tools it offers to be a more discerning reader and a more effective writer--no matter what you're writing--Handling the Truth has a bigger message for me. I know I’ll never write my autobiography. I’ll probably never write a memoir, either. But I’m always working toward a better understanding of my own story...and if that understanding ever becomes something that could mean something to anyone besides me, it could be memoir.

My copy of Handling the Truth was a gift from its creator, but this book is a gift to all readers and writers, no matter what truths you’re trying to handle. Because this is not a review, I’m not adding a rating to the end of this post, but I am giving a most enthusiastic recommendation. Two of the books cited as “Helpful Texts” in the reading list are Stephen King’s On Writing and Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird, both of which also double as writing manuals and memoirs of writing; Handling the Truth belongs right with them on the shelf.

A (self-)interview with the author

Beth Kephart (r.) and me at BEA 2011

Handling the Truth: On the Writing of Memoir
Beth Kephart
Gotham (August 2013), trade paper (ISBN 159240815X / 9781592408153),
Nonfiction: writing/memoir, 224 pages

Writing memoir is a deeply personal, and consequential, undertaking. As the acclaimed author of five memoirs spanning significant turning points in her life, Beth Kephart has been both blessed and bruised by the genre. In Handling the Truth, she thinks out loud about the form—on how it gets made, on what it means to make it, on the searing language of truth, on the thin line between remembering and imagining, and, finally, on the rights of memoirists. Drawing on proven writing lessons and classic examples, on the work of her students and on her own memories of weather, landscape, color, and love, Kephart probes the wrenching and essential questions that lie at the heart of memoir.

A beautifully written work in its own right, Handling the Truth opens Kephart’s memoir-making classroom—and thoughts—to all those who read or seek to write the truth.

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WW: Summer Vacation Wrap-Up

Yesterday, August 13, was the first day of school for the Los Angeles Unified School District, so it seems fitting that our link-up photo theme today is "Summer Vacation Wrap-Up." If you've been around here much this summer, you've been subjected to my vacation pictures a few times already, but I have an official directive to share some more today, and I love how easy it is to do that with a collage app! As you may (or may not) recall, we made a ten-day family trip to New England in June; our travels started and ended in Boston, circling through New Hampshire's White Mountains and along the lower Maine coast before returning home.

Boston, Massachusetts. Clockwise from left: Custom House Clock Tower, Quincy Market, Long Wharf (from Boston Harbor) 

  

New England. Clockwise from upper left: the White Mountains; the Public Library, Littleton, NH; the White Mountains; Portland Head Light, Maine; Rocky Gorge, the White Mountains

At the end of this week, Kate will be returning to New Hampshire, on her own, as a student at Colby-Sawyer College. This is where we'll picture her for the next couple of years.

An InLinkz Link-up

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(Audio)Book Talk: SISTERLAND, by Curtis Sittenfeld

Sisterland: A Novel
Curtis Sittenfeld
Audiobook read by Rebecca Lowman
Random House (June 2013), Hardcover (ISBN 1400068312 / 9781400068319)
Fiction, 416 pages
Source: Purchased audiobook (Random House Audio, 2013; ISBN 9780307736611)
Reason for reading: Personal (audio recommended by Beth Fish Reads)

Opening lines:

“The shaking started around three in the morning, and it happened that I was already awake because I’d nursed Owen at two and then, instead of going back to sleep, I’d lain there brooding about the fight I’d had at lunch with my sister, Vi. I’d driven with Owen and Rosie in the backseat to pick up Vi, and the four of us had gone to Hacienda. We’d finished eating and I was collecting Rosie’s stray food from the tabletop—once I had imagined I wouldn’t be the kind of mother who ordered chicken tenders for her child off the menu at a Mexican restaurant—when Vi said, ‘So I have a date tomorrow.’

“‘That’s great,’ I said. ‘Who is it?’

“Casually, after running the tip of her tongue over her top teeth to check for food, Vi said, ‘She’s an IT consultant, which sounds boring, but she’s traveled a lot in South and Central America, so she couldn’t be a total snooze, right?’

“I was being baited, but I tried to match Vi’s casual tone as I said, ‘Did you meet online?’ Rosie, who was two and a half, had gotten up from the table, wandered over to a ficus plant in the corner, and was smelling the leaves. Beside me in the booth, buckled into his car seat, Owen, who was six months, grabbed at a little plush giraffe that hung from the car seat’s handle.

“Vi nodded. ‘There’s pretty slim pickings for dykes in St. Louis.’

“‘So that’s what you consider yourself these days?’ I leaned in and said in a lowered tone.”

Book description, from the publisher’s website
From an early age, Kate and her identical twin sister, Violet, knew that they were unlike everyone else. Kate and Vi were born with peculiar “senses”—innate psychic abilities concerning future events and other people’s secrets. Though Vi embraced her visions, Kate did her best to hide them.

Now, years later, their different paths have led them both back to their hometown of St. Louis. Vi has pursued an eccentric career as a psychic medium, while Kate, a devoted wife and mother, has settled down in the suburbs to raise her two young children. But when a minor earthquake hits in the middle of the night, the normal life Kate has always wished for begins to shift. After Vi goes on television to share a premonition that another, more devastating earthquake will soon hit the St. Louis area, Kate is mortified. Equally troubling, however, is her fear that Vi may be right. As the date of the predicted earthquake quickly approaches, Kate is forced to reconcile her fraught relationship with her sister and to face truths about herself she’s long tried to deny. 

Comments: "Sisterland: Population 2" read the sign on the door of the bedroom occupied by the Shramm twins, Violet and Daisy, in suburban St. Louis. The unique bond between twins is well documented, but these two are further connected by both the complications of their home life--an older father, an emotionally distant mother--and the unusual talent they share. Both twins have psychic abilities, which they call "senses"...but as they get older, it doesn't require special perception to see that this "gift" isn't easy to live with, particularly for Daisy--when she leaves for college, she'd like to leave that part of herself behind too, which extends to dropping her first name and calling herself by her middle one, Kate. But "losing" her senses doesn't prove easy for Kate, especially when Vi takes the opposite path with her own.

The "psychic twins" angle is a great hook into Curtis Sittenfeld's fourth novel, Sisterland--but it's a hook that might lead readers to expect something very different from what the novel turns out to be. The central plot thread--one of the psychic twins has predicted an earthquake for their hometown of St. Louis on October 16, 2009--adds tension and suspense, but while the storyline takes some surprising twists and turns, this isn't a thriller, either. Therefore, I think a reader coming to Sisterland expecting paranormal activity--or seismic activity, for that matter--might well be disappointed. What that reader will find is a novel about two sisters...and their father, and the husband and children of one, friends of them both, and how life fractures and reshapes itself in ways not unlike what earthquakes due to the landscape.

I had a few quibbles with Sisterland, and I’ll get them out of the way first. Although I was pretty thoroughly sucked into the novel, I felt at times that Sittenfeld may have been trying to tackle too many relationships and almost too much story--the last quarter of the book veers into unexpected, and not entirely welcome, territory. Given its title, you might reasonably expect the story between the sisters to be at the center of Sisterland, but at times it seems to take a back seat to Kate’s marriage and children. That leads me to my other quibble: this is a novel that might have been well-served by dual narrators. We only see Sisterland from Kate’s point of view, and I think the novel could have been enriched if at least a few chapters gave Vi the chance to speak for herself.

However, with all that said, those are indeed quibbles. They’re far outweighed by the humanity and emotional honesty of Sittenfeld’s story and its telling, which is enhanced by a strong sense of place--St. Louis is more secondary character than setting for Sisterland. And while I didn’t always like the novel’s primary characters, their story more than held my interest, and it thoroughly wrenched my emotions. The effectiveness of Sittenfeld’s writing was reinforced by Rebecca Lowman’s reading. This is my second audiobook with Lowman, and I was as impressed with her narration here as I was with it on Rules of Civility last year. I’m still new enough to audiobooks that I don’t really have a list of “go-to” narrators yet, but if I did, I think I’d give Lowman a spot on it based on my experience with her so far. And based on both the writing and the audio performance, I think I may be giving Sisterland a spot on my Books of the Year list...so far.

Rating: Book and audio, 4 of 5 

Other reviews, via the Book Blogs Search Engine

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Longer Than #JustOneParagraph...later

Writing these little (almost-)daily pieces has made me realize how much I miss writing longer ones. It's been some time–I could look up just how long pretty easily, I know, but I won't–since I wrote what I'd call a “blogger essay.” Mine have usually been prompted by such a strong desire to respond to other blogger essays on a currently hot topic that it almost becomes a compulsion, and I'll push other things aside to get the words down, along with the links and quotes to back them up. The lack of such writing recently is a function both of not regularly reading blog posts enough to keep up with the hot topics in the first place, and not responding strongly enough to what I have read to write through it--responding in my own writing hasn't felt important enough to take time away from something else. But I've read several essays lately, on subjects that I care about, that are stirring that compulsion again, and once this month of paragraphing (and moving!) is done, I hope the words--and time--will be there for me to give those pieces the longer, more thoughtful, better-referenced response I believe they deserve.

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Sunday Salon: Words From Friends, in #JustOneParagraph

The books are packed, in about a dozen boxes. But don't worry, I did leave a few out to read...

I'm fortunate to know some very eloquent people, and I've been appreciating their words this week. One friend's reflections on acknowledging where she is in her life right now–at home with her family, but so much more than “just a mom”–are a reminder that so many of are fortunate to have the option of “opting” at all, whether it's in or out, and that one person's opt, at any particular time, doesn't have to be a commentary on anyone else's. Another friend's reflections on the options we have in telling our own stories–sharing the insights she's acquired over years of writing, reading, and teaching memoir, fueled by her passion for why it matters to do it right–have led to a book that's a gift to writers, readers, teachers, and students…all of us, basically. It's taken her sixteen books to get here, but in truth, I think this is the one that will outlive them all. Personal expression, thoughtfully and thought-provoking expressed, often inspires my own self-expression, and I'm thankful that sometimes I have the privilege to know these inspiring people personally.

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Directions, in #JustOne Paragraph

I admit this: I tend to look for the complications and the complexities. It's not (usually) that I'm trying to be difficult; it's that I have a hard time accepting that there are only two sides to anything. My sister and I have had the "glass half-full/glass half-empty" debate for years, and part of the reason it keeps going between us is that I don't see the state of the glass as static. I think the fullness or emptiness is a function of whether you're adding to it or taking away from it, and there's a range of possibility on either side. A sense of fullness may be accompanied by anxiety and discomfort just as much as by satisfaction and contentment. Emptiness can convey depletion and finality, but also the promise of "clean slates" and fresh starts. We are two weeks away from emptying the rooms of one home and filling those of another--what's in the glass is sloshing about in all directions right now. It's hard to tell which direction it's going in, and that's all right with me.

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Morning, in #JustOneParagraph

The further into the week it is, the harder getting up at 5 AM feels. You'd think that would be worst on Monday mornings, but oddly enough, it feels toughest on Thursdays. The problem isn't so much the waking-up-at-5 part; I usually respond to my alarm--which is a fairly pleasant wind-chimey thing, nothing raucous--just as it goes off. It's the getting-up-at-5 part, which has to happen in order to accomplish everything I need to do in order to leave the house and get to the office close to on time, allowing for an hour (more or less) on the road there. It's the getting-up-at-5 part when, at this latitude in early August, there's no daylight to speak of for at least another hour. It's the getting-up-at-5 on Thursday morning when Saturday morning is just over the horizon, and when it comes, there will be two straight days of not getting up at 5. Granted, I may still wake up at 5 AM--but it'll happen without the alarm, since there won't be any need to get up at 5--and I'll be able to ignore that it is 5 AM. And when you're up at 5 AM five days a week, not getting out of bed before 7 feels like sheer self-indulgence.

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WW: Eating Up Summer, in #JustOneParagraph

I think that this is where it started, back in June, at City Landing for our first dinner in Boston--I’ve really had a thing for berries this summer, and I trace it right back to this simple but glorious salad.

SALADS

Summer Berry Salad

Strawberries, Dried Blueberries, Candied Pecans, Blue Cheese, Raspberry Vinaigrette 10

Fresh strawberries, surrounded by Haymarket (collaged with Diptic)

Sadly, I didn’t take a photo of it, as I got straight to eating it. I’ve made variations on it several times since I’ve been back home, though--fresh blueberries instead of dried, and no blue cheese or pecans (although I just remembered, as I was writing this, that I actually might have pecans in the pantry, so I’ll throw some in next time if that’s true!). And if I were back in Boston, I’d likely go to Haymarket--the city’s historic outdoor produce market--to pick up all my fresh ingredients, so I know that this salad would cost me a lot less than $10 to make.

I'm combining my Linked-Up Wordless Wednesday and Just One Paragraph posts for this week's WW theme, "Summer Foods."

An InLinkz Link-up

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(Audio)Book Talk: REDSHIRTS, by John Scalzi

Redshirts: A Novel with Three Codas

John Scalzi (Twitter) (Facebook) (Goodreads)

Audiobook read by Wil Wheaton (Twitter) (Facebook) (Tumblr)

Tor Books (2012), hardcover (ISBN 0765316994 / 9780765316998)

Science fiction/satire, 320 pages

Source:* Purchased audiobook (Audible Frontiers, 2012: ASIN B0088U1CCO)

Reason for reading: Personal

*I received an ARC of Redshirts, signed by the author, at Book Expo America 2012--and I’ll be keeping that, even though I decided to listen to the novel instead of reading it.

Opening lines (Chapter One):

“Ensign Andrew Dahl looked out the window of Earth Dock, the Universal Union’s space station above the planet Earth, and gazed at his next ship.

“He gazed at the Intrepid.

“‘Beautiful, isn’t she?’ said a voice.

“Dahl turned to see a young woman, dressed in a starship ensign’s uniform, also looking out toward the ship.

“‘She is,’ Dahl agreed.

“‘The Universal Union Capital Ship Intrepid,’ the young woman said. ‘Built in 2453 at the Mars Dock. Flagship of the Universal Union since 2456. First captain, Genevieve Shan. Lucius Abernathy, captain since 2462.’

“‘Are you the Intrepid’s tour guide?’ Dahl asked, smiling.

“‘Are you a tourist?’ the young woman asked, smiling back.

“‘No,’ Dahl said, and held out his hand. ‘Andrew Dahl. I’ve been assigned to the Intrepid. I’m just waiting on the 1500 shuttle.’

“The young woman took his hand. ‘Maia Duvall,’ she said. ‘Also assigned to the Intrepid. Also waiting on the 1500 shuttle.’”

Book description, from the publisher’s website:Ensign Andrew Dahl has just been assigned to the Universal Union Capital Ship Intrepid, flagship of the Universal Union since the year 2456. It’s a prestige posting, with the chance to serve on "Away Missions" alongside the starship’s famous senior officers. 

Life couldn’t be better…until Andrew begins to realize that 1) every Away Mission involves a lethal confrontation with alien forces, 2) the ship’s senior officers always survive these confrontations, and 3) sadly, at least one low-ranking crew member is invariably killed. Unsurprisingly, the savvier crew members belowdecks avoid Away Missions at all costs.

Then Andrew stumbles on information that transforms his and his colleagues’ understanding of what the starship Intrepid really is…and offers them a crazy, high-risk chance to save their own lives.

Comments: I tend to consume my genre fiction in visual form, as opposed to in writing; basically, that means I enjoy watching science fiction and fantasy in TV and movies, but I don’t read a lot of it (The Sparrow notwithstanding). I swear it’s not literary snobbery--it’s just that the more world-building a story requires, the more I seem to need to *see* it to make sense of it. Although I’ve been reading SF writer John Scalzi’s blog for years, I hadn’t read any of his books. Redshirts was going to be my first; I obtained a galley at BEA 2012. By this spring, it had become another victim of “ARC I Still Hadn’t Read Before the Paperback Edition” Syndrome. But there was an audio edition--which reinforced the Star Trek reference of the title by having Wil Wheaton as its narrator--and that seemed like the perfect way to liberate Redshirts from TBR Purgatory. (But I’m keeping the galley, since I got it autographed.)

I understood the premise of Redshirts going in, and expected that it would both reference and tweak conventions of TV and movie science fiction in general and of Star Trek in particular, and Scalzi didn’t disappoint on either of those counts. I don’t think I expected it to have such a sense of humor about the whole thing, though--humor that came across as both snarky and affectionate because it knew its subject so well--and was pleasantly surprised by that. For the most part, I felt that the novel struck a nice balance between the predictable, which I didn’t begrudge because I understood where it came from, and some engaging narrative twists, which I appreciated for the surprise. Although there were times when the whole thing did flirt with overly meta self-awareness, I was consistently entertained.

Although it originated with the red-uniformed security personnel of Star Trek, “redshirts” has become a generic term for the extras and bit players who seem to be elevated to prominence in a story just in time to be killed off in highly dramatic fashion. Familiarity with this concept, and others that comprise a working vocabulary of science-fiction storytelling devices and tropes, is really all that’s necessary to grasp the world-building of Redshirts, but a solid foundation in pop-culture literacy (double-majoring in Comic-Con) and some grasp of the workings of the entertainment-industry machinery will definitely enhance one’s appreciation of what Scalzi does with all of these elements. They did for me, anyway. I’d say that this book hit so many of my personal nerd-girl sweet spots that it wasn’t even funny--except that it actually was funny on top of everything else. For this particular non-reader of science fiction, it’s hard to imagine what could make for a better read. Redshirts isn’t one of those works of science fiction which explores deep philosophical questions--it’s not really “about” all that much other than itself, but it doesn’t have to be. And in audiobook form, it doesn’t really need more than a narrator who seems to be enjoying the ride as much as the reader does, and Wil Wheaton delivers that.

Rating: Book and audio, 3.75 of 5

Other reviews, via the Book Blogs Search Engine

Discussion of Redshirts’ usage of numerous genre conventions, with numerous examples (read: spoilers), at TV Tropes

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Countdown: D-Minus-20 to Moving Day! #JustOneParagraph

I still feel like it was a good idea, but it didn't really go as I'd hoped--there was only a very small turnout for my Book Purge Giveaway this weekend, and I have to admit that I was a little disappointed by some no-shows. But with that said, I really do appreciate the few people who did come by and take some books away! Getting to where I live does require deliberate effort--it's really not "on the way" to anywhere for most people I know--so maybe I should have offered more than just free books? In any case, the remaining purge candidates have been donated to charity, and now I need to start packing up the keepers for their long journey to the garage next door, where they will await the arrival of the new bookcases we ordered on Saturday. Tall Paul spent a good chunk of his weekend getting that space in shape, as you can see from this before-and-after collage. The utilities should be turned on today, and once we have power and water, we can start setting up inside the house.

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Just One Paragraph, August 2013

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Sunday Salon: Book Purge Day Edition

Time: The first weekend of August, 2013–starting the draft of this post on Saturday evening, intending to finish and publish on Sunday morning


Place: My side of the bed, with the iPad

Eating and drinking: I have my bedside (nearly always at my side, wherever, to be honest) glass of water, and that's it till breakfast, which will probably be Kashi cereal with fruit and a biscuit. Unless that's not what I feel like eating by the time I get down to the kitchen...

Reading: Beth Kephart generously sent me an advance copy of Handling the Truth: On the Writing of Memoir, which officially releases this Tuesday. I'm about halfway through it, and it's the next best thing to sitting in on one of her Creative Nonfiction classes at Penn. I'll have more to say about it when I'm done, but I'll say this now: if you ever consider writing your own memoir, read this before you do. And I'm about to resume reviewing for Shelf Awareness; I'm expecting my October “review consideration” package from them any day now, as well as the September selection for She Reads.

Watching: It's pretty much summer-doldrums time for TV, so last night we started watching the first season of “new” Doctor Who on Netflix. We came to this show with the Eleventh Doctor's first season and then backtracked through the entire Tenth series, and we've been watching the monthly Doctors Revisited specials that BBC is running during the show's 50th-anniversary year to get better acquainted with “classic" Who. Now it's time for us to be completists and get to know the Ninth Doctor.

Listening: I just switched to the two-credits-per-month plan with Audible, and one of the first books I bought with it was Curtis Sittenfeld's latest, Sisterland, on the recommendation of Candace from Beth Fish Reads. It's very absorbing.

Blogging: I missed my first day of daily "Just One Paragraph” posting yesterday, and I'm tweaking the premise slightly anyway; the “paragraph” post goes up on days when I don't have a book discussion or other content scheduled. I'm trying to focus on the daily posting and almost-daily writing. I made it for almost two weeks, and I'm jumping right back in!

Enjoying: The wait is over. The house next door is ours.

Anticipating: Three weeks from today, I'll be waking up in the bedroom on the other side of this wall. And three weeks after that–more or less–I'll be unpacking my books into the three new bookcases we just ordered to line one entire wall of the dining room.

Pondering/Planning: We have movers coming to cart the big bulky stuff over to the new place, but we're planning to bring a lot of the smaller stuff over ourselves, bit by bit and day by day. There are lots of logistics to consider regarding what to take and when, so we minimize the number of days we're effectively living in two places.

Promoting: Are you a book lover within a reasonable driving distance of Simi Valley, California? Do you have some time on your hands today? Come by my house and help yourself to some of the books I'm not moving! Details are here. Message me on Facebook or email me at 3.rsblog AT Gmail dot com for the address and directions!

So, what's up with you this weekend?

 

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Control, in #JustOneParagraph

Now that we're through the process of buying the house, Tall Paul and I were talking about stress yesterday--his has dropped noticeably, while mine seems to be increasing. What makes the difference for him is that we've now entered the phase where he feels more in control over things; buying the house involved waiting for other people to make decisions and take actions, but actually moving into it is about practicalities, logistics, and DIY. What makes the difference for me is that the closer we get, the more I feel the inverse relationship between time and the length of the to-do list; the more my time is claimed by things, the more I worry about getting any of it done, and the less I feel in control of anything. Years ago, I recognized that this was another inverse relationship: the less control, the more worry (and its tagalong cousin, stress). I'm less stressed when I'm either accepting an essential lack of control over the Big Things--perhaps I am being granted, sometimes, "the serenity to accept the things I cannot change"--or confident that I'm dealing with such a Small Thing that I have almost full control over it. My job title is "Controller," and there are times I don't wear it very well at all.

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Making the Move, in #JustOneParagraph

After a couple of weeks of cryptic remarks and references buried in blog posts, I was able to spill the story yesterday. (If we're Facebook friends, you may have read the short version already. This is the just-slightly-longer one.) Tall Paul and I started down the road to home ownership back in the spring. It's been a bumpy one, and we've been keeping our progress--and the frustrating lack of it, sometimes--quiet. But we'd just gone into a sale contract when we left for our family trip to New England in mid-June, and on the last day of July, we closed on the house next door to the one we've been renting since the fall of 2008. As my husband (accurately) put it in his own Facebook update,

"At 11:16 this morning, Florinda and I officially became homeowners! Well, we own a tiny part, it'll be 30 years before we own the rest."

We worked things out so we'll have most of August to move, but we've got plenty to do between now and then (including purging a bunch of books!), and we hope it'll be our last move for a very long time.

 



 

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