Sunday Salon: A Quiet Weekend

Time Midafternoon on Saturday

Place At the kitchen desk, under the ceiling fan, listening to the TV in the other room, waiting for a furniture delivery (a small sleeper sofa for the guest room and a matching chair, the last of our big purchases for the new house)

Eating Nothing right now, but I may go hunt for a snack soon--most likely a granola bar. I don’t want to fill up too much, since we may go shoe shopping (for Tall Paul, not me) after the furniture comes, and chances are we’ll grab some dinner after that. I’m thinking Italian.

Drinking Water. Aside from coffee in the morning and iced tea at dinner, it’s almost always just water.

Reading I’m having trouble settling in with anything that’s not audiobooks lately, it seems. I’m making headway on my e-galley of The Salinger Contract--it’s a fast read when I actually make time to spend reading it! I still need to get started on the She Reads October selection, which is just not calling to me (although I’ve seen some really good reviews of it from other people already, and the author is pretty well-regarded), and I’m not sure which of my November review candidates for Shelf Awareness to start on first. I think I’m not-so-subconsciously protesting being back in the “required-reading” zone, and am reconsidering the book-club thing going into next year. My blog reading has been spotty as well--aside from posts about the new TV season and iOS 7--but I promise y’all I’m skimming my book-blogs folder every day, and Sundays usually are a good chance to do some catching up on that.

Watching The new TV season has started! We haven’t added too many new shows to the DVR rotation, but we’re glad to see some of our old favorites returning, especially the comedies. I’ve needed those this weekend, after the wrenching finale of Broadchurch--an outcome I didn’t foresee until about 15 minutes before it was revealed (and for which I deliberately avoided reading recaps, because for once I cared about not being spoiled). That show was so well-done in every way--writing, acting, characterization, setting--but I’m wondering how they’ll approach a second season...and how much I’ll want to go back there. (Oh, who am I kidding? If David Tennant comes back, I most likely will too.)

Listening I spent Banned Books Week with the audio of Rainbow Rowell’s Eleanor and Park, giving part of my attention to the story itself and part to trying to understand why it had so provoked parents in one Minnesota school district. I’ll get into both when I write up my thoughts on the novel, which I should be posting in the next few days. I’m in “catch up on podcasts” mode for the next couple of commuting days while I decide on what my next audiobook will be; my new Audible credits came in on Friday, and they’ve already been used on two books I had wish-listed.

Pondering I’m still thinking about what seems to be a shift in my reading preferences (content, not format), and I hope to spend some time working through it during the next day or two, so I can post about it and discuss it with you.

And speaking of posts, I’m 22 away from hitting the milestone of 2000 posts here. I’m thinking that either #1999 or #2001 will be some sort of retrospective--I haven’t done one of those for a while. But it seems like P2K should stand alone and be about something significant, and I’m trying to decide what that might be. Do you have any ideas, suggestions, or questions you’d like me to address for the occasion? Please leave them in the comments if you do!

Blogging I blogged about the assorted e-books in various apps that constitute my “phantom TBR,” and how I struggle to keep up with them--or even remember to read them at all! Thanks to Anastasia for recommending e-book management app Calibre in comments; I downloaded it and uploaded my e-books into it this afternoon, and we’ll see if it helps with the “keeping up” side of things. (It’s up to me to manage the “remembering to read”--and not be distracted by the other things I could be doing on the iPad instead--side of the issue.

Anticipating My online writing workshop starts on Monday! I’ve never done something like this before, so I’m a little nervous, but I’m eager too.

Gratuitous Photo of the Week

Point Mugu, August 2013--one of our favorite "scenic drive" spots

How’s your weekend going?

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The Phantom TBR: Or, Me and an E-Book

I gave up using a dedicated e-reader well over a year ago. I was fond enough of my original Kindle, but when I “upgraded” to a Kindle Touch a couple of years later, I just couldn’t get comfortable with it. On the other hand, I was quickly coming to love using the iPad I bought for myself with some Christmas money (on December 26, 2011) for many things, including reading. It turned out that I wasn’t as attached to e-ink, or as bothered by a backlit screen, as I’d thought, but the bigger surprise was how much I appreciated not being committed to a single e-book supplier.

I have Kindle e-books, Nook books, and iBooks, and just a few Kobo books--I only added that app last week. Most of them are living “in the cloud,” but each app does have a few books downloaded and stored on it, ready to read when the mood hits. And for ultimate mood-driven e-reading there’s Oyster, the “Netflix-for-ebooks” subscription service where all of the books live in the cloud and are streamed to your device as you read them, and where I already have a growing queue. I’ve used the iBooks app most because I like the “feel” of the reading experience in it best, but as the design of other reading apps starts to resemble it more, it’s harder to play favorites.

Every time I read on the iPad, it strikes me how pleasant it is and how much I like it. So why don’t I do it more often? I’ve got a couple of theories.

The flip side of not using a dedicated e-reader is that there are so many other things I can do on an iPad. It’s my favorite device for reading blogs, following social media, playing games, and editing photos, and it’s often a more convenient spot for writing and blogging than my laptop. And when it’s plugged in to charge up after all those tasks, I can’t use it for anything unless I sit right near the power source...and that’s usually when I decide to leave it to itself and walk away from it for a while. In all honesty, sometimes I just plain forget about using it to read books at all!

That tendency to forget is a major reason I haven’t gone for e-galleys in a big way. I have enough trouble keeping on top of the paper ARCs and review copies I get in the mail, and I keep those in obvious places where I can see them! I like the concept of e-galleys very much--not least because they spare you the problem of how to discard them after you read them--but without a solid system (one that includes reminders!) to track them, I’m afraid they’d be doomed to go unread and un-reviewed for much, much too long. Then again, I suppose I could dedicate one of the apps, most likely the Kindle, to e-galleys only--but since I’ve still got e-books in that app that I bought three years ago and haven’t read yet, it’s either much too late or way too soon to get that change in place.

I don’t usually add e-books (or audiobooks) to my LibraryThing collection until I’ve started reading them, which means the population of TBR Purgatory is consistently understated. The true number of “books I possess but haven’t yet read” is scattered across seven apps. Granted, they’re not taking up physical space, but they do seem to suffer from “Out-of-Sight, Out-of-Mind Syndrome,” and that’s a whole ‘nother source of TBR guilt. I’ve joined the E-book Reading Challenge for a few years running with the fairly modest goal of six e-books for the year--it should be easily reached, and yet I struggle with it every time. I’m being haunted by my “phantom TBR,” and I’m curious--how do you manage your reading between print and e-books without losing track of your library?

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WW: I'd Rather Be Sailing

I don't know how to sail. No one in my family has a boat. But when "Envious/Jealous" popped up for our Linked-Up Wordless Wednesday prompt this week, I knew it was time to own up to my envy of people who get to spend their days like this.

Sailing, East-Coast style: New York Harbor, Boston Harbor, and Boothbay Harbor, Maine (bonus: Portland Head Light, Portland, Maine)

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(Audio)Book Talk: THEN AGAIN, by Diane Keaton

Then Again
Diane Keaton (Twitter)
Audiobook read by the author
Random House Trade Paperbacks (2012), Paperback (ISBN 0812980956 / 9780812980950)
Nonfiction (memoir/autobiography), 336 pages
Source: Purchased audiobook (Random House Audio (November 2011), ISBN 978-0-307-93402-4; Audible ASIN B0067VIYKE)
Reason for reading: Personal (recommended by Beth Kephart)

Opening lines:

“Mom loved adages, quotes, slogans. There were always little reminders pasted on the kitchen wall. For example, the word think. I found think thumbtacked on a bulletin board in her darkroom. I saw it Scotch-taped on a pencil box she’d collaged. I even found a pamphlet titled think on her bedside table. Mom liked to think. In a notebook she wrote, 'I’m reading Tom Robbins’s book Even Cowgirls Get the Blues. The passage about marriage ties in with women’s struggle for accomplishment. I’m writing this down for future THINKING . . . '“

Book description, from the publisher’s website
In Diane Keaton’s memoir of her mother and herself, you will meet the woman known to tens of millions as Annie Hall, but you will also meet, and fall in love with, her mother, the loving, complicated, always-thinking Dorothy Hall. To write about herself, Diane realized she had to write about her mother, too, and how their bond came to define both their lives. In a remarkable act of creation, Diane not only reveals herself to us, she also lets us meet in intimate detail her mother. Over the course of her life, Dorothy kept eighty-five journals—literally thousands of pages—in which she wrote about her marriage, her children, and, most probingly, herself. Dorothy also recorded memorable stories about Diane’s grandparents. Diane has sorted through these pages to paint an unflinching portrait of her mother—a woman restless with intellectual and creative energy, struggling to find an outlet for her talents—as well as her entire family, recounting a story that spans four generations and nearly a hundred years.

More than the autobiography of a legendary actress, Then Again is a book about a very American family with very American dreams.

Comments: I surprised myself by deciding to read this at all. I remember people who had heard Diane Keaton talk about Then Again at one of the Book and Author Breakfasts at Book Expo America in 2011 saying that it was a memoir about her mother and Alzheimer’s...and that she’d made everyone, including herself, cry. At that point, I thought it would probably be for the best if I didn’t read it, especially since I’m not a particularly big fan of Keaton the actress and didn’t have that as a lure. But when it comes to memoir, I take what Beth Kephart says pretty seriously, and she said this about Then Again when she included it in the appendix of Handling the Truth, her book on the writing of memoir:

“Celebrities tend to write autobiographies. Diane Keaton didn’t. She wants to understand who her mother is, how her mother shaped her, and what kind of mother she is now, and to do this, Keaton artfully poses the right questions and, taking risks, leaves aside that which does not matter. She is quiet, unassuming, funny, graceful, and one believes she is telling the truth...Keaton writes because she is one of us. She writes to find her way."

That assessment made it a memoir I had to read, and I decided to let the author read it to me.

While Then Again includes autobiographical detail and, for the most part, follows a roughly chronological structure, Keaton does play a lot with the form. Pulling in excerpts from her mother’s volumes of personal journals and setting them alongside her own narrative, she looks for their similarities, notes their differences, and works through the ways in which her close, complicated family shaped the person she became. Letters, lists, and dramatic scenes are also part of Then Again, and the whole is a reflective, deeply personal, surprisingly engaging document.

As I said, I’ve never been a great follower of Keaton’s--mostly because her films just haven’t often ended up on my radar--so I learned quite a bit about her here. I was surprised to find out that she’s a Southern California native--because if you go by California-girl stereotypes, you wouldn’t necessarily peg her as one--and I enjoyed her reminiscences about growing up here back when the place really was something close to what the stereotypes still say it is. Nearly forty years later, she may still be best known for her role as the title character in Annie Hall, but I had no idea how much she really was Annie Hall; born Diane Hall, and sometimes called “Diannie” by her father--she adopted her mother’s maiden name, Keaton, professionally--she was unquestionably Woody Allen’s muse for that film.

Losing her mother to Alzheimer’s may have been what led Keaton to write this memoir, but I got a sense that it had been percolating for a long time, particularly once she became a mother herself--at 50, when most women her age are starting to look toward grandparenthood, Keaton adopted a baby daughter, and added a son to their family a few years later. Motherhood leads many women to see their own mothers in a different light; Keaton’s entry into motherhood overlapped her mother’s decline into Alzheimer’s, and that may have strengthened her drive to document Dorothy Keaton Hall, the remarkable woman who raised her. And I was struck that she’s asked the same question I have about my own mother’s early-onset dementia: could the condition be brought on by untreated depression and unfulfilled ambition?

Then Again truly is memoir, not autobiography, and it’s one that I’m glad I read in audio form. This one really shouldn’t be heard in any voice but the author’s, and if I wasn’t a big Diane Keaton fan before I read this, I might be on my way to it now. She hits just the right emotional notes--because she knows them intimately--and comes across as thoughtful, self-deprecating, and honest. I was far more charmed by an account of losing a mother to Alzheimer’s than I’d imagined I could be, and that’s probably because Then Again is more than that...and more than I’d imagined it was.

Rating: Book 3.75 of 5; Audio 4 of 5

Other reviews, via the Book Blogs Search Engine

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Sunday Salon: "Happy Hobbit Day" Edition

Time Between 9:50 and 11 AM (Elevenses!) on the day on which we celebrate Autumn, Hobbits, and good TV

Place I’m at the kitchen desk. Tall Paul was at his office desk--he had to go into work for a few hours, but he’s home now--and Spencer is hanging out in the living room after finishing a stack of geometry homework. (I love that the boy hates proofs as much as I did.)

Eating Probably nothing for a while, since my first breakfast (turkey sausage and egg burrito) was immediately followed by my second (a makeshift cobbler of apple and pear chunks mixed with blackberries, on a Trader Joe’s shortcake biscuit), in honor of Hobbit Day--suffice it to say I’m not at all hungry now.

Drinking Alternating water and coffee

Reading One reason I don’t really use e-galleys is that if I don’t see physical copies of the ARCs I get for review, I tend to forget they exist. Therefore, I owe a thank-you to the publicist from Open Road Media who checked in with me about Adam Langer’s The Salinger Contract, which she’d authorized for me on NetGalley--and basically reminded me to start reading it, which I have. I’m also thisclose to finishing a memoir for a Shelf Awareness review (yes, the one from last week--don’t judge me, there’s been stuff going on). After that, I’m jumping into a November review candidate for the Shelf and the October selection for She Reads Book Club.

Watching We’ll probably watch some of the Emmy Awards tonight, which usher in the official start of Fall TV, and the season finales of Copper and Broadchurch this week, which will unofficially wrap up our summer viewing.

Listening I’m in between audiobooks at the moment, but I’ll most likely change that tomorrow by starting on Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell--which, due to some recent controversy over the book’s themes and language, means I will be getting in a Banned Books Week read after all. (Sometimes I really appreciate having circumstances make these decisions for me.)

Pondering / Blogging (I’m putting these together, because one way or another, my pondering usually finds its way to my blogging) Kim weighed in with her “Why I Blog” thoughts this weekend, and I related to the opposing forces she’s currently experiencing:

“‘I feel pulled in two opposite directions: blog less or blog more.’ I have felt that way for a while, but my actions are definitely in the direction of ‘less.’ As you note, the problem isn’t a shortage of things to say! But sometimes life has to come first–-I wonder whether the reassessments so many of us are doing right now is a way of coming to terms with that.”

Other ponderings that I want to explore in my blogging: why I am lately less drawn to reading certain forms of fiction, and why I like the idea of e-books but so seldom choose to read them.

Blogging I participated in Sheila’s advance Banned Books Week party with some uncensored thoughts on censorship a few days ago, and posted a book review that got the dreaded zero comments (I’d say “I don’t know” why, but I can make a good guess). I should have my thoughts on Diane Keaton’s memoir, Then Again (my last audio read), up in a few days.

Anticipating Getting out of the house soon. I’m not sure what we’ll be doing aside from a few errands, but it’s way too nice out to stay indoors!

Gratuitous Photo of the Week

After nearly seven years, I am finally establishing my official Internet citizenship by posting a cat picture. This is McGonagall. She lives at Spencer's mom's house, but I occasionally see her when I pick him up over there.

How’s your weekend going?

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Some Uncensored Thoughts on Censorship

I didn’t plan my September reading well enough to have a book lined up for Banned Books Week 2013, which begins on Monday, and I didn’t plan this week well enough to put together an original piece on censorship for Sheila’s annual Banned Books Week event. She’s holding it a week in advance due to a schedule conflict, and calling it “Reading to Beat the Banned.” But I’ve written about this before, and my feelings really haven’t changed much.

Here’s the official list of the 10 books most frequently challenged in school and public libraries in 2012:

1. Captain Underpants (series), by Dav Pilkey. Reasons: Offensive language, unsuited for age group
2. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie. Reasons: Offensive language, racism, sexually explicit, unsuited for age group
3. Thirteen Reasons Why, by Jay Asher. Reasons: Drugs/alcohol/smoking, sexually explicit, suicide, unsuited for age group
4. Fifty Shades of Grey, by E. L. James. Reasons: Offensive language, sexually explicit
5. And Tango Makes Three, by Peter Parnell and Justin Richardson. Reasons: Homosexuality, unsuited for age group
6. The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini. Reasons: Homosexuality, offensive language, religious viewpoint, sexually explicit
7. Looking for Alaska, by John Green. Reasons: Offensive language, sexually explicit, unsuited for age group
8. Scary Stories (series), by Alvin Schwartz. Reasons: Unsuited for age group, violence
9. The Glass Castle, by Jeannette Walls. Reasons: Offensive language, sexually explicit
10. Beloved, by Toni Morrison. Reasons: Sexually explicit, religious viewpoint, violence

(I’ll be honest; if we’re talking strictly about school libraries, I can’t really disagree that they’re no place for Fifty Shades of Grey.)

There aren't all that many commonalities among the books in this list, thematically. They vary in their objective literary merit, and if it weren't for the fact that they've been banned or challenged, there would probably be nothing especially memorable about some of them. However, they've all been challenged because they pose a challenge--to ideas about religion, politics, morality and ethics, and the structure and habits of society. But if a society--or an individual--means to grow, it's necessary to challenge established ideas, and to develop tools to consider them critically.

The American Library Association defines the purpose of Banned Books Week as:

“...(f)ocusing on efforts across the country to remove or restrict access to books (to draw) national attention to the harms of censorship. (T)he frequently challenged books section (of the ALA website) explore(s) the issues and controversies around book challenges and book banning. The books featured during Banned Books Week have all been targeted with removal or restrictions in libraries and schools. While books have been and continue to be banned, part of the Banned Books Week celebration is the fact that, in a majority of cases, the books have remained available. This happens only thanks to the efforts of librarians, teachers, students, and community members who stand up and speak out for the freedom to read."

The ALA and its partners have been calling attention to the issue of censorship and “celebrating the freedom to read” during the last week of September every year since 1982. “Freedom to read” also includes the freedom not to read books that we might find objectionable, of course…but in a free society, the individual should be the one who exercises those freedoms and makes those choices, not some (self-appointed) educational or morality police.

It’s entirely reasonable for parents to be the ones to exercise those rights on behalf of their own young children regarding what they read in their own homes, of course. But as children get older, the parents’ role--as well as the schools’--appropriately shifts toward giving kids the tools to discern what’s worth reading for themselves. It’s harder to develop that discernment when options are deliberately limited and critical thinking is discouraged; and sometimes, what’s worth reading just might “convey shocking, controversial or unpopular ideas.”

I thoroughly support the freedom to read what one chooses to read--and in order to make those choices well, one needs access to the full range of choices. I also believe in the freedom to choose not to read something--as long as that choice is truly mine. I do not support censorship. I don't believe in delegating my right to decide what I can and can't read to anyone else. I have the tools to make those decisions for myself, and I believe we all have the right to those tools.

Having said that, I don’t often make a point of seeking out and reading banned or censored books just because they're challenged (although there have been cases where it’s the controversy that brings a book to my attention and piques my initial interest). That said, I also know there are themes and topics that just don't appeal to me, and quality of writing notwithstanding, if I choose not to read a particular book, that will be the reason why. But I deserve to be able to make that decision for myself. So do you. So does every reader.

Banned Books Week calls attention to the fact that the freedom to read gets challenged every day of the year, and that we all have the right, and the responsibility, to challenge that.

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Book Talk: I DON'T KNOW, by Leah Hager Cohen

I don't know: In Praise of Admitting Ignorance (Except When You Shouldn't)
Leah Hager Cohen
Riverhead (September 2013), Hardcover (ISBN 1594632391 / 9781594632396)
Nonfiction, 128 pages
Source: ARC from publisher
Reason for reading: Personal interest

From Chapter One:

"I was twenty-two and in my first week of graduate school in journalism. I knew by their appearances that most of my classmates were older, just as I knew from the school’s brochure, which promised to provide journalists 'a unique opportunity to hone and deepen their skills at any point in their careers,' that many of them already had experience working in the field, whereas I had never so much as written for my college newspaper. But until the moment I searched in vain for the devilish little entity called a nut graph, I’d been more thrilled than cowed, eagerly optimistic about joining their ranks.

"Now I sat awash in shame. It wasn’t the shame of incompetence so much as the shame of hubris. To think I had dared imagine I could be a journalist! I couldn’t even keep up with the class in the very first week of instruction.

"Did I raise my hand to ask for help? Turn to a neighbor with whispered appeal?

"I did not. The cost felt too great. To confess my ignorance would be to expose my inadequacy; I would be cast off, dismissed from this world to which I craved entry. Such was my fear, and it was powerful enough to make stewing in the solitary confinement of my shame seem a preferable alternative."

Book description, from the publisher’s website
In a tight, enlightening narrative, Leah Hager Cohen explores why, so often, we attempt to hide our ignorance, and why, in so many different areas, we would be better off coming clean. Weaving entertaining, anecdotal reporting with eye-opening research, she considers both the ramifications of and alternatives to this ubiquitous habit in arenas as varied as education, finance, medicine, politics, warfare, trial courts, and climate change. But it’s more than just encouraging readers to confess their ignorance—Cohen proposes that we have much to gain by embracing uncertainty. Three little words can in fact liberate and empower, and increase the possibilities for true communication. So much becomes possible when we honor doubt.

Comments: I’ve spent far too much of my life believing that lack of knowledge and lack of intelligence meant the same thing. Growing up as one of the honor-roll “smart kids” seemed to carry an expectation that one was supposed to know things. Not knowing things--or admitting to not knowing them, at any rate--meant potentially risking being revealed as not being so smart after all, and that was a risk I was rarely willing to take. It took years for me to get smart enough to understand that recognizing what I didn’t know--and then learning what I needed to remedy that--might be a better barometer of intelligence than carrying around a stockpile of facts. It’s not so much a matter of having all the answers as it is openness to the questions.

In a culture that seems to be more and more in search of a sense of certainty and definitive, black-and-white answers, Leah Hager Cohen’s I don't know: In Praise of Admitting Ignorance (Except When You Shouldn't) bravely presents another perspective. It’s a difficult work to describe. It makes use of existing research, but isn’t particularly scholarly; it’s an extremely long essay, but a pretty short book; it’s a quick read, but a sticky one, simple in appearance but deeply thought-provoking. It has the potential to open minds and discussions, and it deserves to find an audience open to both.

Reading I don’t know made me wish I were in a face-to-face book club right now, because I’d want the group to read it and talk about it. I’d hope we’d have a variety of responses the ideas it expresses, and not feel compelled to declare any of them right or wrong. I’ve been coming around toward more acceptance of uncertainty--finding a comfort level in asking and living with questions, and appreciating (sometimes preferring) the shades of gray--for the better part of my last decade. It sounds contradictory, but Cohen’s book helped me feel a bit more confident that it’s good to know what I don’t know...and that it really can be a gateway to growth. This one’s a keeper--I can see myself going back to it when I need to remember that it’s OK to know what I don’t know, as long as I remain open to knowing more.

No rating, but highly recommended

   

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WW: Change--Outdoor Dining, circa 1600

Mealtime rituals have changed a bit since the 17th century, haven't they?

Fine dining at the Renaissance Pleasure Faire, April 2013

An InLinkz Link-up

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Sunday Salon: Monday Check-In

Time Sunday evening

Place In the living room, on the couch, watching a Simpsons rerun and typing on the iPad

Eating Done eating for the night--had a very good chicken-salad sandwich from Togo's for dinner

Drinking Just water

Reading An October memoir I'll be reviewing for Shelf Awareness, and trying to figure out if I'll be able to work in a Banned Books Week read next week--I'd like to, but I probably should have started planning for it a little earlier!

Watching We just finished watching Star Trek Into Darkness on DVD (I saw it in theaters either three or four times this summer--I forget exactly), and we are gearing up for non-rerun season to start next week!

Listening I should finish Diane Keaton's memoir Then Again on Audible in another day or so, and am trying to decide what will follow that one. But with the new TV season about to get underway, I may be forsaking audiobooks for podcasts, including the new Agents of Zeitgeist on Blog Talk Radio--I know two of the three hosts personally, and that's kind of exciting.

Pondering / Blogging Last week I considered three reasons why I (still) blog , and later this week I'll be considering censorship as one of the participant's in Sheila's "Reading to Beat the Banned" pre-Banned Books Week blogfest

Promoting I have 2 invites (sorry, only 2) available for Oyster, the newly-launched “Netflix for ebooks”
app with a selection of over 100,000 ebook titles (and growing every day!). I’ll invite the first two people who contact me at 3.rsblog AT Gmail DOT com to request it--if you have an iPhone or iPod touch and think a monthly payment of $9.95 to download unlimited reads sounds like a good deal, email me now! (And if you don’t get one of my invites, request your own from Oyster--I only waited a few days to get mine.)

Gratuitous Photo of the Week: Another look at the bookshelves!

Hope your week is starting out well--and if not, Monday will be over soon!

 

Posted with Blogsy

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Sunday Salon: The Organization

I find that if I get something organized when I start out with it, it's a lot easier to keep it that way. I returned

from vacation this summer to find a refurnished and refurbished office, and I've succeeded in keeping clutter from regaining a foothold for almost three months. See?

You may recall that last Sunday, I was organizing our new bookshelves. Do you mind if I show you how they turned out? Here's an overview, with close-ups below, and a confession: unless they're galleys, books I've accepted for review (consideration) but haven't gotten to yet are mixed in with books I've bought. I mostly know which are which, though.

The right side is almost all nonfiction, except for the two bottom shelves (not pictured--they hold genre fiction, mostly SF/speculative, and a small selection of my keepers). The top shelf holds what I call my "Religious Studies" collection, books on writing, and essay collections. The next two shelves are mostly memoir and biography, and below that I've shelved an assortment of topical nonfiction.

The center section is shorter and wider than the two sides. The top two shelves are ARCs (fiction on the left, nonfiction on the right, matching the tall sections). The rest of this area is "family" property--keepers that my husband and I have shared--and kids' & YA, both read and unread.

This is the (non-genre) fiction section, on the left, organized in the most basic way: alphabetical by author.

And here's a gratuitous "bookshelfie," because why not? (on the fiction side)

I'm doing some stuff around the house today, hopefully including some reading (but no shelving!)--what are you up to this weekend?

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Three Reasons Why I Blog

Bryan posted a link to Jeanne’s post “Why I Blog” in the Book Bloggers Google+ Community as discussion fodder--and it worked there, but it’s also a topic that warrants an in-kind response. I'm starting to feel like the longer you do this, the more important it is to revisit your reasons periodically, and with 6.5 years and close to 2000 posts here, I think I qualify as having been at this for a pretty long time.

You should go and read all of Jeanne’s post, but here’s this:

“In the last year, a lot of book bloggers have been writing and talking about how much quieter it’s gotten in blogland. Sullivan compared 2008-style blogging to jazz—’jazz and blogging are intimate, improvisational, and individual—but also inherently collective. And the audience talks over both.’ I think that 2013-style blogging, though, is more aptly compared to a solo in a classical concert. There are people in the audience, and they enjoy the music, but some of them are nervous about clapping in between movements, so it’s very quiet in the house.

“Because of the diminishing sense of audience, some bloggers have gone back to the old model of a blog as a ‘commonplace book,’ something a writer keeps for herself. Not a bad model; it’s how I began. I’m not sure I’m ready to go back to it, though.”

commonplace books, via Google Image Search

I started blogging for a similar reason, although I wasn’t familiar with the concept of the “commonplace book” at the time, and so I wouldn’t have characterized my blog that way. It was a place to record what I read and my thoughts about it, since without such a place, most of my reading was quickly becoming forgotten, and most of it didn’t deserve that.

(Sidebar: The flip side of having such a place is that there’s a living record of books you might prefer to forget you read--but fortunately, I haven’t encountered too many of those, before or since. Although I’ve been described, by myself and by those who know me well, as someone who would read anything she could get her hands on, the truth is that I really am fairly selective--usually. And when I fail to be selective enough for long enough, I eventually have to remedy that with a large-scale book purge. When “Will Work For Books” stops becoming an amusing motto and starts to feel like what your reading life actually is, it’s time to acknowledge that “free books” really aren’t.)

If I were starting out with those same reasons today, I’m not sure I’d be blogging; a Goodreads account offers just about everything a reader needs to keep a record of what she’s read and her thoughts about it. However, I started out with those reasons six and a half years ago. They brought me here, but after all this time, they’re not the only reasons I stay here. Here are three more:

• Creativity. There are plenty of places to find “rules for successful blogging,” and those rules been surprisingly consistent over the last half-dozen years, so I guess they’re pretty effective. I’ve tried to follow many of them over the years, with varying amounts of consistency and degrees of success. But this is my blog, and when it comes down to it, I get to make my own rules for it, implement them in any way I like, and change them on a whim. And I don’t have to blog exclusively about books in order to call myself a “book blogger.” There’s no one right way to do this, and I think every blogger can appreciate that.

• Connection. That “diminishing sense of audience” Jeanne mentions isn’t imaginary; much of the conversational aspect of blogging has gradually migrated away from blogs and over to Facebook and Twitter, and without comment conversations, it’s hard to know for certain whether we’re reaching anyone. I’m not sure the audience has truly diminished, though; I think sometimes we’ve just fallen into companionable silence, when we’re not having our conversations elsewhere. Granted, if you’re not keeping up with all the “elsewheres”--I’m getting worse at it, and less bothered by my failings--it might feel like no one’s around any more. But I still believe in the authentic connections I’ve made with other readers and bloggers, and I don’t want to lose them; I can only hope those with whom I’ve connected feel the same way.

• Confidence. Everything that blogging involves--the reading and learning that feed creativity of thought and expression, and produce communication and connection--continues to help me grow as a person. It’s enriched my life in ways I couldn’t have foreseen a decade ago, and strengthens my sense of my self. Why would I not want that?

At this stage in my blogging life, this is why I blog. I’m sure you have your own reasons. I hope you’ll revisit them...and blog about them.

Cross-posted to BlogHer.com 9/12/2013

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WW: Shelved!

We've got a "wild card" week in our Wordless Wednesday linky group, so I thought you might like to see what we did with our dining room this past weekend. It gives a new meaning to the concept of "devouring books."

It may seem like an odd place to put them, but the dining room just happens to have one wall that's the perfect size to line with bookcases.

At intervals between Saturday evening and Sunday afternoon, I filled the shelves...and rearranged the shelves, and re-filled the shelves. 

  

And finally, all the boxes of books were unpacked (although not all of the books ended up on these shelves--we have others!)--and we still have some room for more!

That spot right in between all the books seemed like the perfect place to hang our autographed lithograph of the Rock Bottom Remainders.

I think I'm ready to declare us officially moved into the new house, now that the books have been unpacked. I'll be posting close-ups and explaining the shelving system in my Sunday Salon this weekend, so all of you book-organizing nerds should come back then!

An InLinkz Link-up

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(Audio)Book Talk: BEAUTIFUL RUINS, by Jess Walter

Beautiful Ruins: A Novel
Jess Walter
Audiobook read by Edoardo Ballerini
Harper Perennial (March 2013), trade paper (ISBN 9780061928178 / 0061928178)
Fiction, 368 pages
Source: Purchased audiobook (Harper Audio (June 2012), ISBN 9780062201621; Audible ASIN B008ARPV8Q)
Reason for reading: Personal

Opening lines: “The dying actress arrived in his village the only way one could arrive directly--in a boat that motored into the cove, lurched past the rock jetty, and bumped against the end of the pier. She wavered a moment in the boat’s stern, then extended a slender hand to grab the mahogany railing; with the other, she pressed a wide-brimmed hat against her head. All around her, shards of sunlight broke on the flickering waves.

“Twenty meters away, Pasquale Tursi watched the arrival of the woman as if in a dream. Or rather, he would think later, as a dream’s opposite: a burst of clarity after a lifetime of sleep.”

Book description, from the publisher’s website
The story begins in 1962. On a rocky patch of the sun-drenched Italian coastline, a young innkeeper, chest-deep in daydreams, looks out over the incandescent waters of the Ligurian Sea and spies an apparition: a tall, thin woman, a vision in white, approaching him on a boat. She is an actress, he soon learns, an American starlet, and she is dying. 

And the story begins again today, half a world away, when an elderly Italian man shows up on a movie studio's back lot—searching for the mysterious woman he last saw at his hotel decades earlier. 

What unfolds is a dazzling, yet deeply human, roller coaster of a novel, spanning fifty years and nearly as many lives. From the lavish set of Cleopatra to the shabby revelry of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Walter introduces us to the tangled lives of a dozen unforgettable characters: the starstruck Italian innkeeper and his long-lost love; the heroically preserved producer who once brought them together and his idealistic young assistant; the army veteran turned fledgling novelist and the rakish Richard Burton himself, whose appetites set the whole story in motion—along with the husbands and wives, lovers and dreamers, superstars and losers, who populate their world in the decades that follow.

Comments: I’m not often as thoroughly captivated by a novel as I was by Beautiful Ruins, and that makes it challenging to articulate my response to something more than “I loved it!” but I’ll try. I’m sure Jess Walter’s writing would have captured me on its own--and having read this, I’m now that much more determined to liberate The Financial Lives of the Poets from TBR Purgatory--but I do think that reading it as an audiobook probably amplified (no pun intended!) my reaction. Edoardo Ballerini’s reading was nearly perfect, in both English and Italian.

Approximate location of Beautiful Ruins' Portovergogna, Italy

Beautiful Ruins is a novel of mid-20th-century Italy and old (and new) Hollywood, conveying its characters back to the final days of World War II and forward through the decades into the present, with detours into the Pacific Northwest and a stop at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. The catalyst for it all is the location filming of Cleopatra in Rome in the spring of 1962, a production which proved epic in complications and cost overruns while setting the modern template for behind-the-scenes tabloid scandal. Fifty years after, their experiences on the fringes of that production--and that scandal--still impact the lives of an Italian businessman and an American drama teacher, and a Hollywood mogul attempts to create a third act to his own story by producing a sequel--of sorts--to theirs.

I was very impressed by Walter’s weaving of these story threads--as well as others I’m not mentioning, because if I get too far into a plot discussion I’ll never get to anything else--balancing and connecting them into a fascinating whole. That said, the characters that inhabit Beautiful Ruins (pun somewhat intended this time, as I believe Walter intends multiple meanings to the title) are what make all those plot threads so absorbing. They are complex and convincingly human; I loved several of them, and even the least likable ones have characteristics that won me over to some degree. I genuinely enjoyed discovering how characters connected to one another across the novel’s expanse of time and place; I’d try to guess, and I was right more often than I wasn’t, but I was usually satisfied by the outcome either way. The descriptive passages in the novel are vivid, and so are the emotions it portrays.

My husband has given me ten years to learn conversational Italian so we can travel to Italy, my mother country--that is, the country of my mother’s ancestors. (Tall Paul has no Italian heritage himself, but he does have abiding interests in art and food.) I bought some audiobooks and downloaded a language-instruction app for my iPhone, but I’ve been procrastinating about doing anything with either of them, and now I have only nine years left for this project. Listening to Ballerini perform Beautiful Ruins, evoking the scenes and sounds of Italy’s Ligurian Sea coast, just might be what gets me started on it. Granted, only part of the story takes place there...but I drive past Universal City on my way to and from work every day, and I mostly speak Hollywood’s language already. I also have enough command of my own language to tell you that if you love having literary fiction read to you, I strongly recommend that you listen to Beautiful Ruins (and if audiobooks aren’t your thing, you won't go wrong just reading it, either); I listened to this one driving back and forth from Hollywood, but I was completely transported by it.

Rating: Book, 4 of 5; Audio, 4.25 of 5

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Sunday Salon: "Time to Fill the Bookcases" Edition

Time Mid-afternoon on Saturday--trying to get a little bit ahead. I usually write this weekly installment first thing Sunday morning on my iPad, but I left the iPad at the office on Friday (not on purpose, trust me!), so I’m working on the laptop...

Place ...at my kitchen desk, under the ceiling fan. Have I shown you my kitchen desk yet? Here it is...

Eating Just finished a snack of a two clementines and a Kashi granola bar--I’m mildly addicted to the chocolate-almond-sea salt ones.

Drinking Water. I drank an iced Americano and an iced tea at Starbucks this morning, so I’m a little overcaffeinated right now.

Reading I also left my in-progress book on my desk at the office on Friday, so I started something else from the small stack of “books that aren’t in boxes because they’ve just shown up in the last few weeks.” I don't know: In Praise of Admitting Ignorance (Except When You Shouldn't) by Leah Hager Cohen is an odd little book--it feels a bit like a very expanded journal article--but I’m marking a bunch of passages in it, and I could potentially finish it before I get my other book back on Monday. Depends what else I end up doing with the rest of this weekend, I suppose...and I do have a big project underway, so we’ll see.

Watching Not all that much right now besides BBC America, where Copper and Broadchurch are approaching the end of their seasons, but starting to get psyched for the end of rerun season (which we’ve actually used in the old-school catch-up fashion to get Spencer into Arrow). Oh, and Jon Stewart is back!

Listening Even though today wasn’t a commuting day, I actually spent some time reading an audiobook--I was so close to finishing Beautiful Ruins that I didn’t want to drag out the last hour till Monday morning. I hope to get the review written soon, but I’ll say this now: I think I’m ready to start on those Italian lessons my husband’s been telling me he wants me to take!

Pondering What to expect from an online writing workshop I’ll be starting at the end of the month. Just because I’ve been exposing my writing here for over six years doesn’t mean I’m not nervous about exposing it to structured critique from people who know what they're doing!

Blogging I thought I’d post more than I did this past week, but I think I may be right back in the three-post-a-week habit. I’d still like to get up to four, though. With two book reviews to write and some photoblogging, that might happen this week. Or not. I may decide to hold something over till next week. I’m working on balancing consistency with looseness.

Hating The heat. My iPhone says it’s 95 degrees out right now. It’s been like this for a couple of weeks, although the forecast says we’ll cool down to the upper 80s by later next week. I’m not sure I believe it. Summer in Southern California tends to run several weeks behind the rest of the country, so when your leaves are turning, we may still be burning (because Fire Season tends to last into November).

Anticipating Spending much of the rest of this weekend unpacking the book boxes and setting up the new shelves, which arrived this weekend! I’m planning to document the process in pictures, but here’s what I’ll be working with.

The bookshelves are maple, and they smell so good! Also, I want pancakes now.

How’s your weekend going?

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The Annual Alzheimer's Post: Walking to End It in 2013

family photo courtesy of Teresa Lantos DeGagne

(I call this "The Annual Alzheimer's Post" because, with minor changes, it goes up around this time every year, to accompany the annual Walk to End Alzheimer's. Details on the 2013 Walk, and my team's fundraising link, are below.)

On October 8, 1999, my mother, Mary Ann Corsino Lantos, passed away. A New York City native and, after a nine-year detour to southwestern Connecticut, a resident of St. Petersburg, Florida for 22 years, she was 69 years old at the time of her death. She was survived by her husband, two adult daughters, and one teenage grandson. This is what my sister says about her:

My mother was many things: loving, smart, funny, artistic, a voracious reader, and a quiet influence. She overcame many challenges throughout her life--including being born legally blind and losing her own mother before she was six years old. (Her) story is filled with drama, hope, faith and laughter. It would have been amazing to see how it would have played out had she lived fully, longer. My mother passed away at the age of sixty-nine, after being in the full throes of dementia from early-onset Alzheimer's disease for seven years.

But our family had truly lost her well before that. For over seven years, she had been living in a nursing home, incapacitated by early-onset Alzheimer's disease. We had begun to see changes in her health, demeanor, and personality when she was in her mid-to-late 50's--sudden weight loss, strange sleeping habits, difficulty in speaking, disengagement with her family and surroundings, paranoia and hallucinations--but her long-standing fear of doctors and medications caused her to resist our efforts to get her to seek help. My sister and I had both moved away, and geographic distance and the demands of our own lives limited what we could do about her situation; my dad was uninformed, fundamentally passive, and unprepared to force the issue. By the time Mom reached the point where something had to be done, there wasn't a realistic alternative to round-the-clock care for her, and the next several years were spent in a form of limbo. By the time she died, much of our grieving had been long underway; Alzheimer's doesn't take the body quickly, but it does take the intangibles that make a person unique and special.

My experience with Alzheimer’s has left me with feelings of loss, guilt, and fear. I often feel that I didn’t do enough to help with or advocate for my mother. I was a young mother myself at the time she became ill, and lived over 1000 miles away for most of the years until she died, and those facts have helped me rationalize my lack of involvement. But I wonder whether I would have done many things differently if I had been there--and I’m not sure I would have. The distance and denial feel connected, and they both feed guilt, even now.

The fear comes from the scientific facts about Alzheimer’s, including these: it remains difficult to diagnose in a timely manner, lacks effective long-term treatments, and is an incurable, terminal condition. It’s still associated with many unknowns, as the 2010 Shriver Report: A Woman’s Nation Takes on Alzheimer’s, elaborates:

• What causes Alzheimer’s? Is it inherited? What causes younger-onset Alzheimer’s? Is there any treatment that can delay the onset or slow down the course of the disease?

• What about new tests that may be able to tell you if you’re going to get Alzheimer’s? Are the tests ready for use? Are they accurate? Who would be a candidate to take them? If there are no foolproof treatments yet, what’s the good of knowing?

• What can we do to prevent Alzheimer’s? Do lifestyle changes really help? Should we all be hitting the treadmill, drinking tea, doing crossword puzzles, taking Omega-3 and Vitamin D?

• Why do more women get Alzheimer’s than men? Is it just because women live longer? Does estrogen play a part in prevention? If so, how much and when?

• What exactly is the natural course of the disease? Why does it play out in a few years for some patients, in a decade or more for others? Why do different people have different symptoms: some explosively angry, others hypersexual, still others mumbling or even silent? In other words, why is it that, “Once you’ve seen one case of Alzheimer’s, you’ve seen…one case of Alzheimer’s”?

• And for God’s sake, when will there be a cure?

Those living with Alzheimer’s--not just the patients, but their families and other caregivers--need resources and support now. Those who could find themselves living with it in the future need research to answer some of those unknowns.

The annual Walk to End Alzheimer’s is the nation’s major fundraising/awareness event on behalf of this disease:

"The Alzheimer's Association Walk to End Alzheimer’s™ is the nation’s largest event to raise awareness and funds for Alzheimer’s care, support and research. Held annually in more than 600 communities nationwide, this inspiring event calls on participants of all ages and abilities to reclaim the future for millions. Together, we can end Alzheimer’s disease, the nation’s sixth-leading cause of death.

Walk to End Alzheimer’s unites the entire community — family, friends, co-workers, social and religious groups and more --- in a display of combined strength and dedication in the fight against this devastating disease. While there is no fee to register, each participant is expected to fundraise in order to contribute to the cause and raise awareness.

When you participate in Walk, your fundraising dollars fuel our mission-related initiatives of care, support and research. In addition, your actions, both through fundraising and participating in the event, help to change the level of Alzheimer’s awareness in your community. At a Walk event, you can learn more about Alzheimer’s disease and the support programs and services offered by your local chapter. You will also have unique opportunities to get involved with the cause through advocacy initiatives and clinical trial enrollment."

All of the unknowns can leave a person feeling that there’s little she can do about Alzheimer’s. Participating in this walk every year is one thing I can do, both in remembrance of my mother and in support of a healthier future. My family will be doing the 2013 5K Walk to End Alzheimer's at the Thousand Oaks (California) Civic Arts Plaza on Saturday, September 21. If you’re local, we’d love to have you join us there!

I may not be able to join my sister, brother-in-law, and nephews on the Walk this year due to a schedule conflict, but I do want to help them reach (or exceed!) the team fundraising goal--I hope you'll help me help them with a donation to Team Mary Ann's Mafia!

Previous posts about Alzheimer’s on The 3 R’s Blog (sources for some of the material included in this one):

Remembering Mom: October 8, 1999

Book Talk: *Still Alice*, by Lisa Genova

Walk with me, and remember

A Turning Point: Maria Shriver and a Woman’s Nation Take on Alzheimer’s
Fear of Fifty: Or, Before I Forget

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WW: It's Oh So Quiet...

...quiet as a cemetary. New England is full of these picturesque little resting places.

A small cemetery just outside New London, New Hampshire (June 2013)

An InLinkz Link-up

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Sunday Salon: Live from the Loft!

Time: Sunday morning, in 8 o'clock hour

Place: The “Girl-Loft” (If Tall Paul gets a “Man-Cave,” I get a “Girl-Loft”), in the new house. We turned in the keys to the old place yesterday, and are officially All Moved In to the new one, although we're still unpacking and arranging.

Eating and drinking: Water only right now, but after I'm done writing this, I'll be meeting my sister for Sunday coffee and breakfast. (We usually get together on Saturdays, but for various reasons, it's been a month since we last saw each other, and with this being a three-day weekend, today's like another Saturday anyway!)

Reading: A book of short stories in translation that I'll be reviewing for Shelf Awareness–out of my comfort zone in a couple of ways right there! I'm also pushing through my feed-reader backlog this weekend. Nearly all of the books, aside from some review-consideration ones that have come in during the last few weeks, are still boxed up in the garage, and they'll stay there till the new bookshelves arrive (hopefully, that's just a few weeks away from happening!).

Watching: Not much besides the shows I mentioned last time, Broadchurch and Copper on BBC America–and recently, Seinfeld reruns in the early evenings. But now it's September, so new TV is on the way!

Listening: I just started Jess Walter's Beautiful Ruins, read by Edoardo Ballerini, on Audible this week, and am thoroughly savoring it already. It seems like some of my best reading this year has been by ear!

Blogging: I'm hoping to get back into the swing now that we're done with this summer of house-hunting, house-buying, house-moving, and cross-country travel (that wasn't house-related for us, but did include finding college housing for Kate!). It's back-to-school time…that means returning to the 3 R's, doesn't it?

Enjoying: You can probably guess this one–being DONE with the move, and getting comfortable in the new house! This weekend, we're not doing much besides arranging and hanging pictures. It feels weird not to have a thousand chores!

Anticipating: The arrival of those new bookcases, although I am a bit daunted by the prospect–and possibilities–of getting them set up!

Pondering/Planning: I'm trying to decide whether to sign up for an online writing workshop that one of my Creative Alliance friends, Jane Gassner, is planning for the fall. I've never been part of a formal writing group–or taken a class in it outside of my English curriculum in high school and college, for that matter; reading Beth Kephart's Handling the Truth piqued my interest in doing so, and Jane's class is coming along at just the right time to give it a try. And on a note unrelated to that but quite related to the move, I'm thinking about cooking and eating at home more regularly, especially on weekends--although we did go out to eat last night, I think we'll be dining in-house today.

How's your weekend going?

 

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