Shaking the (Blogging) Family Tree--Throwback Thursday #Selfiebration

When I started thinking about Jenna's latest BlogHer #Selfiebration question, "What Does Your Blogging Family Tree Look Like?", I was stumped.

I've been blogging for nearly seven and a half years, and the paths I once shared with many bloggers have diverged, or dead-ended for one reason or another, along the way. Then I realized that one thing about having blogged for so long is that at one time or another, I've probably mentioned some of those who helped form me as a blogger...whether they know it or not.

For Throwback Thursday, I'm shaking the tree with an update of a post from my second Blogiversary, in March 2009.

1. 

   Florinda PVasquez@florinda_3rs

   Your influencers/"blogcestors"? RT @FireMom: What Does Your Blogging Family Tree Look Like  http://bher.co/ZU1e  #selfiebration#blogher14

   5 DAYS AGO
2. 

   Jenna Hatfield@FireMom

   @florinda_3rs I *LOVE* the term "blogcestors." That's perfect.#selfiebration #BlogHer14

   5 DAYS AGO
3. 

   Florinda PVasquez@florinda_3rs

   @FireMom Thanks! Twitter character limits force ingenuity & word coinage :-).(And I really need to ponder my "blogcestors"!)#Selfiebration

   5 DAYS AGO

(NOTE: All blog links in the following are those currently used by these bloggers, and may not be the ones they had back in the day.)

"Gosh I didn't even know there was such a thing as Mommy blogs. I am very focused in my blog reading on book blogs I guess."

--comment from Lenore, March 2009 (before she was Lenore), on a link-roundup post

I was never that focused. My interests are pretty wide-ranging, and so is my blog reading. On the Internet, I'm a bit of a wanderer, but I've found "homes" among two communities: the "book bloggers" and the "mom bloggers." I launched this blog two years ago today over seven years ago, and it seems to me that much of my second blogging year was spent building community ties.

I'd known about blogs for a few years before I started one, although I didn't personally know anyone who had one other than my son, who started and stopped a few during his university years. But I was seeing blogs becoming a component of some of the websites I regularly visited, and it made me curious to explore them. I actually started, and then killed, my first blog several months before The 3 R's was born, because I had no idea what I wanted to do with it.

Book reviews were my reason for starting this blog (so I could remember things about what I read, mostly), and at that time, I didn't even realize how many other people were blogging about books. I started looking for them not long after, though, and finding them through activities like the still-active (as of last month) Booking Through Thursday, the long-gone MotherTalk blog tours, and Sassymonkey's book posts on BlogHer. Slowly I discovered the book bloggers, and through them, I found more...and more...and others found me. It was a while before I truly felt like part of the group, though, and as is the case with so many things related to the book-blogging community, it happened at least partly because of Dewey, thanks to her starting the Weekly Geeks activities and giving me the opportunity to host a Bookworms Carnival. The other big catalyst for my sense of belonging to this community was participating in Book Blogger Appreciation Week, during which My Friend Amy became a friend of so many of us.

If there's a "typical" book blogger, it's not me, and that's part of why I haven't always been sure I should call myself a "book blogger" at all. There are bloggers who only post book reviews, reading memes, and book-related news; you can find those things here, but you'll find a lot of other content too, whether you're looking for it or not. What I love about being among the book bloggers is that it turns out that a lot of us aren't "typical" after all, and it's a very welcoming environment. We're giving each other stuff to read--how could that be bad?

On the other hand, one of the first sites where I participated after I began blogging was Work It, Mom!, so the blogging moms weren't a big surprise to me, and I sought them out. Seeing myself in that community was more of a surprise, though, since I was even less of a "typical" mom blogger than I am a book blogger. My kids were older--two aren't even "kids" anymore--and I'm LONG past the trials and tribulations of early motherhood, a period which also gives birth to many blogs. However, "mom" is one part of my identity that will never change, and I was excited to become part of the Los Angeles Moms Blog during its "soft launch" phase in the fall of 2008. (The LA blog was under the umbrella of the Silicon Valley Moms Group of regional moms' blogs, which folded in July 2010.) The first bloggers I met face-to-face were part of this group, which gave me another outlet for writing and exposed me to the whole mom-blog-marketing thing, with its opportunities and its pitfalls. But the best thing it did was help someone who always felt like "the misfit mom" finally feel like she had a moms' group of her own, for a while.

Over time, bloggers in both of these communities have come to feel like family to me... and there's more blending and crossover between them than you might realize. I know book bloggers who are moms, even if they don't often blog about their families. I know blogging moms who love to read and talk about books--and not just books for their kids. My favorite bloggers in both groups are probably the ones who, like me, are a bit less "typical"--the ones who can't help bringing a bit of themselves and their lives into their book reviews, and the ones who have something to say about the world at large as well as its effects on their families.

Thank you all for helping form me into the blogger I have become, whether you knew it or not.

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Wordless Wednesday: Blue

As seen from Virgin America flight 404 to New York City, May 27, 2014

An InLinkz Link-up

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Book Talk: GOLDEN STATE, by Michelle Richmond

Golden State: A Novel
Michelle Richmond (Twitter) (Facebook)
Bantam (February 2014), Trade paper (ISBN 0385343280 / 9780385343282)
Fiction, 304 pages
Source: Purchased ebook (iBooks edition, ISBN 9780345532404)

Southern-rooted, San Francisco-based Michelle Richmond was my “Must-Read Author Discovery” of 2008 thanks to her novels The Year of Fog and No One You Know, but I’d lost touch with her a bit until her latest novel, Golden State, was published earlier this year. Certain elements here will be familiar to those who’ve read this author’s earlier works: a San Francisco setting, characters with ties to the Deep South, a deep bond between sisters, and a romantic relationship strained by a tragedy involving a child. However, despite all those similarities, Golden State is not a reworking of a story Richmond has already told.

Golden State takes place on one exceedingly eventful day in the life of Dr. Julie Walker, a physician at the VA hospital in San Francisco. She’s turning 40 and signing divorce papers, after having spent one last night with her soon-to-be ex-husband. Her unmarried younger sister is about to give birth. It’s the day that Californians are voting on whether to secede from the United States—which could leave Julie out of a job. It’s the day that she finds that she has caused a hostage situation because local upheaval over the secession vote delayed her getting to work…and that situation will force her to deliver her sister’s baby. As Julie tries to manage her sister’s labor and the hostage-taker’s demands, she reflects on her long and complicated relationships with both of these people, and how they factored into the breakdown of her marriage.

The California-secession angle could be the basis for some fascinating speculative fiction, but here it’s ultimately just that, an angle–a relevant one, but not as critical to the overall narrative as it seems like it will be early in the novel. I’d actually like to read that story, but it’s not the one Richmond’s offering here, and I’m not exactly sure I’d want her to be the one to write it—I’m not certain it would play to her strengths. Her strengths lie in character development and the depiction of complex relationships, and those are deployed quite effectively in Golden State, providing a framework for insights about fate, choices, and how our lives become what they are.

“But the thing about reinvention is, no matter how much you change everything on the outside, you still know where you came from. You’ve still got all that stuff from middle school clanging around in your system. It’s almost like you’re living a double life, just waiting to be caught. Waiting for someone to walk up to you and say, ‘I know who you are. Enough with the charade.’" 

“’We become so accustomed to the patterns we create for ourselves,’ he said, his voice full of excitement. ‘We become so used to the way things are—scientifically, cosmically, personally—that we can’t imagine things being any other way. But there’s always another way. Common wisdom is, don’t buy a lottery ticket, because no one wins the lottery. But here’s the thing: someone always does win the lottery.’" 

“I never expected to find myself here, on the edge of the continent—forty, childless, possibly jobless, with broken bones and a broken marriage, citizen of a broken country. But here I am, and I must make something of it. That’s really the only choice one has: make something of it, or don’t—a choice my mother failed to make after my father died, a choice my sister has completely embraced.”

Richmond effectively balances an account of the tension and suspense of one particular day–and between an impending birth and a disgruntled, gun-wielding veteran, there are literally life-and-death stakes here–with an exploration of the emotional connections, conflicts, and personal histories underlying them. Golden State is involving and affecting, and was a welcome reminder of what I discovered in Michelle Richmond’s fiction years ago.

Rating: 4 of 5

Other opinions, via the Book Blogs Search Engine

Book description, from the publisher’s website:

Doctor Julie Walker has just signed her divorce papers when she receives news that her younger sister, Heather, has gone into labor. Though theirs is a strained relationship, Julie sets out for the hospital to be at her sister’s side—no easy task since the streets of San Francisco are filled with tension and strife. Today is also the day that Julie will find herself at the epicenter of a violent standoff in which she is forced to examine both the promising and the painful parts of her past—her Southern childhood; her romance with her husband, Tom; her estrangement from Heather; and the shattering incident that led to her greatest heartbreak. 

Infused with emotional depth and poignancy, Golden State takes readers on a journey over the course of a single, unforgettable day—through an extraordinary landscape of love, loss, and hope.

Opening lines:
"The reception area of the tiny hotel is eerily empty. On the desk, a coffee mug smeared with red lipstick sits beside a small televi- sion, the volume turned up high, blaring news of the vote. Eleanor’s mug, Eleanor’s lipstick. Famously difficult Eleanor.

"I leave my crutches behind and use the rail to pull myself up the stairs. At the top, I turn left. The first room is empty, the door open to reveal two twin beds, an old dresser, blood on the floor.

“I continue along the hallway. The second door is closed. Room 2B. Heather’s room. Early this morning, while I was still sleeping on the couch of a radio station at the other end of the city, my phone began to vibrate. It was Heather, texting: It’s time. It seems like a life- time ago.”

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What's What: July 13 (Sunday Salon)

What I’m reading

• in print / on screen

Things haven’t changed too much since my Week 2 Check-in for the From Left to Write Summer Reading Challenge. I I finished The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry on my e-reader last night, and will be working on my writeup today; I haven’t decided on my next e-book read yet.

Last week, I dug out the galley of The Leftovers I got three years ago(!) because it’s a TV series now, and since I don’t get HBO I figured I should probably, finally, read it.

• on audio

Thanks to a bunch of Facebook raves from friends, I decided not to wait to start The Silkworm on audio–I’m finding it gripping, as well as somewhat grotesque. I think readers who enjoy stories about writers and the publishing business will particularly appreciate some of the intrigue here, but this “Robert Galbraith" outing definitely presents a side of J.K. Rowling that Harry Potter barely hinted at.

What I’m watching

We just finished binging Season 4 of Supernatural last night, with four more seasons to go on Netflix. I’m not sure we’re going to continue at this rate, but if we do, we’ll be close enough to caught up to add the new episodes to our DVR rotation in the fall. I really enjoyed the meta turn the show took toward the end of the fourth season–I like a show that’s able to wink at its own batshit-craziness.

What I’m writing

I have two book reviews to work on today, and I’d like to tackle this week’s BlogHer Selfiebration query, “What does your blogging family tree look like?”, although I admit it has me a bit stumped at the moment. On a related note, I’ve really appreciated the conversation in response tomy post on last week’s question, “What would your life look like it you hadn’t started blogging?”

What caught my eye this week
Not long after a Twitter #Fabchat on the topic of “unplugging” from social media, I came across a discussion of some of the ways it meets our needs:

“That sense of belonging comes from all sorts of places online. For example, the people you follow on Twitter likely share similar interests to you. Sites like Tumblr or Pinterest showcase similar ideas based on what you like. The same goes for all the other sites out there that help facilitate real world friendships as well. In the end, how much you feel a sense of belonging depends on how you use those social networks.”

–“Why We’re Hooked On Social Networks” at Lifehacker

And a couple of takes on how publishers still meet the needs of authors and readers:

“The role of the publisher isn’t to take a book that’s pretty much finished and turn it out to the public. Editors help shape books in significant ways. A good editor doesn’t just tell you that you have made typos or that your sentences are grammatically incorrect; a good editor looks at every part of a book, from character development to plotting to theme, and tells you what doesn’t work, what works really well, what needs to be cut, what needs to be built up. A good editor reconstructs a story from the raw materials and makes it as good as it can possibly be.”

–Why We Still Need Publishers" on Book Riot

“It’s not even that I have anything against you, per se. It’s that so many of you think that publishers are just out to take your money away from you by making ‘unnecessary changes’ to your ‘babies’…You are not the best judge of your own work. Frequently, when you re-read your work, you see what you meant to say, not what you actually said. And if you’re not hiring that shit out, you’re doing a disservice to your readers and yourself.”

–“Reading Rage: I’m Kinda Sick of Your Smug, Self-Published Face” at Insatiable Booksluts

Gratuitous Photo of the Week

The first selection for Book Riot's Riot Read arrived this week!

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The Empty Spaces: Picturing A Life Without Blogging (#Selfiebration)

I've talked about how "Creativity, Connection, and Confidence" are three reasons why I (still) blog. A new post/prompt for BlogHer's Selfiebration comes at that from a slightly different angle: "How would your life look now if you hadn't started blogging?"

One thing that makes it hard to answer "what might have been" questions is that there's a chicken-and-egg aspect to them: would you miss the things you think you'd miss if you'd never known them in the first place?

There are so many people who have come into my life through blogging--all those connections, some of which have made the leap from words exchanged onscreen to time spent together in places near and far. Without blogging, I literally wouldn't know who I was missing. But I do know that blogging has given me the chance to make friends from all over, and this introvert would have even less of a social life without it.

There are things that I wouldn't have learned without blogging. There are things I wouldn't have been interested in learning without blogging. Thanks to my husband's influence, I suspect my fondness for photography might have grown anyway, but blogging is what's gotten me to explore photo-editing apps and visual expression. Blogging has definitely made me fluent in social media. My particular blogging niche has taught me a lot about publishing and the book business (*edited to add this after Kathy's comment reminded me!) And of course, blogging is responsible for my identifying myself as a writer, even as I'm still number-crunching for a living.

However, on that note, I do know of one thing that would absolutely be different: I wouldn't have a freelance side gig writing book reviews, because that came about as a direct result of what I've written here on the blog. (I had to submit three sample reviews when I applied to be one of Shelf Awareness for Readers' first reviewers). And that brings to mind a few other things that would be different:

• I wouldn't have as many books. period. Obviously, publishers wouldn't send them to me, but I just wouldn't know about as many books if I didn't learn about them from book bloggers!
• I would probably still have my irrational fear of running out of things to read, because I wouldn't have as many books.
• I would spend more time reading the books I have, which means I would get through them faster and, therefore, be more worried about not having enough of them.

I'm glad to have all the books. I'm glad to have the blog. I'm glad you took a few minutes to read my thoughts on what my life might look like without it. And if you have a blog yourself, how might your life be different without it?

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Celebrating 3 Decades of Chris (Not-Quite-Wordless Wednesday)

Our parenting stories are our own, and although there's a stretch of years when it's difficult to separate them from the stories of those we parent, eventually our children's stories become their own, too (and parent bloggers find themselves floundering for new things to talk about).

This story was supposed to begin on July 4, 1984. From the very beginning, Chris has done things in his own time.

My parenting story began 30 years ago today, and by my math, that means that my son's stories have been his own for quite some time now. However, in keeping with the July NaBloPoMo theme, "Decade," I thought I'd share a few of my favorite photos from Chris' most recent decade on his 30th birthday.

October 21, 2006 (with Aunt Teresa): The day he tried to give me away to his stepdad...

...and got himself a new grandma out of the deal

May 2007: Graduate of the University of Tennessee College of Engineering!

...and living near all of this stuff ever since

With 3000 miles and a lot of busy-ness between us, I'm glad he's still coming "home" (sort of--California's my home now, but it never was his) for the holidays.

He's tried to teach me about coffee snobbery. I'm a slow learner.

Happy birthday to the one who calls me "Mom"!

An InLinkz Link-up

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Book Talk: BRUTAL YOUTH, by Anthony Breznican

Brutal Youth: A Novel
Anthony Breznican (Twitter) (Goodreads author page)
Thomas Dunne Books (June 10, 2014), Hardcover (ISBN 1250019354 / 9781250019356)

Fiction, 416 pages

A version of this review was previously published in Shelf Awareness for Readers (June 17, 2014). Shelf Awareness provided me with a publisher-furnished galley to facilitate the review, and compensated me for the review they received and posted.

Anthony Breznican's Brutal Youth is at first reminiscent of The Chocolate War, Robert Cormier's classic young-adult novel of bullying in a Catholic high school, but it soon establishes itself as a more broadly-focused--and darkly funny--fiction debut.

It's 1991, and St. Michael the Archangel High School in suburban Pittsburgh is in decline in every possible way: the building is crumbling, enrollment is dwindling, and after a frequently-bullied student snaps and terrorizes the campus one spring morning, the parish pastor has stepped up his not-so-secret campaign to have the school shut down by the end of next year. Father Mercedes intends to make St. Michael's principal, Sister Maria, pay for allowing the culture of student-on-student harassment--culminating in the annual Hazing Day picnic--that may have fostered the outburst; for her part, the principal believes that the school's hazing tradition actually fosters class morale. The cliquishness and jockeying for status that can be found at any high school are ramped up when the environment seems to sanction them, and at St. Michael's, where some faculty and staff are returned graduates still living out their adolescent dramas, they're not confined to the students.

Peter, Noah, and Lorelei meet on the first day of their freshman year at St. Michael's. While they soon unite to support each other against bullies of all stripes, they won't be able to hold together for long. Over the course of the year, each will be ostracized; by spring, one will rise as a school hero, one will find sympathetic acceptance for all the wrong reasons, and one will end up in a place far worse than St. Michael's.

Breznican leavens the bleakness of Brutal Youth's premise with sharp, darkly comic dialogue that feels authentic to his well-drawn characters, particularly the adolescents. This coming-of-age novel is fast-moving, unsettling, and blends sympathy and satire with surprising effectiveness.

Thanks to Macmillan Audio for providing an excerpt from the audiobook, read by Matthew Brown.

Insights from the author in a conversation with Caroline Leavitt, and in a Twitter conversation with me following this review's original publication in Shelf Awareness:

by Florinda Lantos Pendley Vasquez

a minute ago

tweetcon

a brief Twitter conversation with debut novelist (and Entertainment Weekly senior writer) Anthony Breznican

1. 
   

   Anthony Breznican@Breznican

   Thanks to @florinda_3rs for the fun BRUTAL YOUTH review on@ShelfAwareness. So glad you found humor in there! :) http://bit.ly/1ncPQ7u 

   18 HOURS AGO
   
2. 
   

   Florinda PVasquez@florinda_3rs

   @Breznican You're welcome--and I hope I was supposed to!@ShelfAwareness

   15 HOURS AGO
   
3. 
   

   Anthony Breznican@Breznican

   You definitely were! Some overlook that part, so your review made me very happy. @florinda_3rs @ShelfAwareness

   15 HOURS AGO
   

   REPLYRETWEETFAVORITE
4. 
   

   Florinda PVasquez@florinda_3rs

   .@Breznican Was I also supposed to get the Elvis Costello reference in the title? Because that was one reason I asked to review #BrutalYouth

   13 HOURS AGO
   
5. 
   

   Anthony Breznican@Breznican

   That's a bingo. :) "Now, there's a tragic waste of brutal youth ..." That whole @ElvisCostello album was a massive influence.@florinda_3rs

   13 HOURS AGO

Book description, from the publisher's website

With a plunging reputation and enrollment rate, Saint Michael’s has become a crumbling dumping ground for expelled delinquents and a haven for the stridently religious when incoming freshman Peter Davidek signs up. On his first day, tensions are clearly on the rise as a picked-upon upperclassmen finally snaps, unleashing a violent attack on both the students who tormented him for so long, and the corrupt, petty faculty that let it happen. But within this desperate place, Peter befriends fellow freshmen Noah Stein, a volatile classmate whose face bears the scars of a hard-fighting past, and the beautiful but lonely Lorelei Paskal —so eager to become popular, she makes only enemies. 

To even stand a chance at surviving their freshmen year, the trio must join forces as they navigate a bullying culture dominated by administrators like the once popular Ms. Bromine, their embittered guidance counselor, and Father Mercedes, the parish priest who plans to scapegoat the students as he makes off with church finances. A coming-of-age tale reversed, Brutal Youth follows these students as they discover that instead of growing older and wiser, going bad may be the only way to survive.

Opening lines:

"The kid had taken a lot of punishment over the years, so he had much to give back.

"A steel hatch on the roof of St. Michael the Archangel High School shuddered, then burst open, and the boy crawled out and collapsed against the gritty tarpaper surface, kicking the lid shut again with one sock-covered foot. He wore only his uniform gray slacks and a wide-open button-down shirt, streaked with blood that wasn’t his. A black canvas book bag hung over one shoulder, swinging back and forth as he scrambled to his knees. He pressed his weight against the closed hatch to stifle the hollering and pandemonium rising from beneath it.

"Next to the steel hatch was a bucket, steaming with hot tar. The janitor had been using it to seal sections of loose shingle that had been leaking water into the school during every springtime rainstorm. A grubby tar mop leaned against the bucket. The boy shifted his heavy bag and scooped up the mop, wedging it between the handles of the hatch, locking it shut. Then he fled back across the flat roof toward the ghostly concrete statues lining the edge.

"The row of saints had stood watch over St. Michael’s for as long as anyone alive could remember. Thomas, the doubter; Joseph, the foster father; Anthony, finder of lost things; Jude, devotee to the hopeless; Francis of Assisi, the lover of nature, who had a small concrete bird in his outstretched hand, and a real drip of birdshit on his concrete head. At the center archway of the ledge high above the school’s main entrance stood an even larger statue of a warrior angel, St. Michael himself, wings spread and sword raised against the satanic serpent being squashed beneath his foot.

"The boy on the roof was named Colin Vickler. Not that it mattered. This was the end. This was good-bye. There was nowhere else to hide."

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