When Will There Be Good News?

Finally finished the last of the Jackson Brodie trilogy and fearlessly hoping there's more in the works. (Aha! Amazon UK says there's a 4th, due there in August 2010!)

For now, perhaps I'll try some of Kate Atkinson's earlier books, though I've heard mixed results from friends who've tried and given up on them.

It's not only her writing style I loved in these three books, very literary mysteries with just the right amount of humor to offset the grisly bits. I love the stories and most of the characters.

Jackson, especially, a tired, jaded,former policeman who just can't seem to get his life together. Here's a comment of his as he thinks about Louise, a woman he hoped he might have connected with:
How ironic that both Julia and Louise, the two women he'd felt closest to in his recent past, had both unexpectedly got married, and neither of them to him.

And this from Reggie, another irresistable character, the young, persistent nanny:
She'd identified a dead body, had her flat vandalized, and been threatened by violent idiots, and it wasn't even lunchtime. Reggie hoped the rest of the day would be more uneventful.

You probably want to read these three books in order:
Case Histories
One Good Turn
and then
When Will There Be Good News?

Ah, well. Must return it to the library and cross my fingers it won't take too long for that new book to cross the ocean...




(Word I had to look up while reading and will never use in conversation?

Simulacrum:
1. image, representation
2. An insubstantial form or semblance of something; trace)

Escape from Snowmageddon

I took a blogging break this weekend to play with my friend Julie, a visitor from The North. We had great fun listening to The Help (terrific recording!) and talking about Olive Kitteridge (which we both adored). Although Julie's very good at prodding my writing along, this time we mostly focused on The Weather. When they cancelled her return flight to Baltimore, I got to keep her for an extra day or two. We shopped, walked in the sunshine, ate, and watched Emma on TV.

(Thanks, Kate and Carl, for the pictures!)



Here's what she escaped.
(Her street in Baltimore County.)












And this is my daughter's street in Bethesda... Had the plow arrived yet? She says not until Monday night. (Actually, this is a nearby street. Hers is still unplowed, deep, undrivable...)





Neither rain, nor sleet, nor... HA!

(No mail for a while, I guess.)At least the sun's shining?



Almost 30 inches? Maybe I'll get Julie until April! Lots of books yet to read and talk about.

(What she's recommending I read next: REMARKABLE CREATURES.
Here's what I'm recommending she read next: the Jackson Brodie trilogy by Kate Atkinson.)

Title Picking

I actually have a file in my computer with this name. In it, I've pasted every piece of good advice I've ever read about selecting a title for your writing. It's something I'm not at all good at, picking a really great title, and it's something I think I should be.

When I was a librarian, the youngest kids would ask for "the red book with the dog on the front," but by the time they were old enough to read for themselves and to pay attention to the recommendations of their friends, they usually remembered the title, or at least some part of it. Kind of like me now with Potato Peel Pie Society. See, I can't ever get it all out, but I know enough to find it at the library.

So I think this article in the current Glimmertrain is worth saving in my file. Written by Eric Puchner, it's filled with gems likes these:

"...there seems to be very little correlation between producing something brilliant and the ability to come up with a half-decent name for it. Perhaps it's a different skill set entirely. I sometimes think there should be professional titlers: just as we wouldn't ask a carpenter to tar the roof of our house, we shouldn't expect writers to work outside their métier."

Some people are just plain good at titles, and fortunately I have a few of those in my writing life. Because I agree that it's crucial to have a good one. I mean, would you have loved The Great Gatsby as much by another name?

"..keep in mind it wasn't Fitzergerald's idea. He wanted to call the novel Trimalchio in West Egg, which sounds like something Dr. Seuss might have dreamed up for the Playboy channel."

That's my gift, via Eric Pucher and Glimmertrain, to you today.

Even More on Words, New Words That Is...

No big surprises here.

According to the American Dialect Society, Google is the word of the
decade and tweet is the word of the year.
According to the Oxford University Press, the word of the year is unfriend.

And then there's the whole defriend vs. unfriend thing. Wow. What a way to stir the pot when it comes to picking popular words.

Here's a bit from the American Dialect Society's blog:

In its 20th annual words of the year vote, the American Dialect Society voted “tweet” (noun, a short message sent via the Twitter.com service, and verb, the act of sending such a message) as the word of the year and “ google” (a generic form of “Google,” meaning “to search the Internet) as its word of the decade.

And did you know that out of the million words available for our use, the average person's vocabulary is fewer than 14,000 words. That's straight from the folks who are tracking words like defriend and twitter. 14,000? That seems excessive. Then again, those are the Brits tracking words, so I'll take it with a grain of salt.



Related post: More on Words

Late to the Dance?

OK, maybe I will and maybe I won't. But for any of you reading this, with 500 words ready to go, check out the contest (alas, ending tonight!) over at the Kidlit.com blog. That's the blog of Mary Kole, an agent with the Andrea Brown Literary Agency. As luck would have it, I'm just rereading the middle grade novel, great voice and compelling story, written by one of her authors: Love, Aubrey.

And reading the kidlit blog, I found this link to Rebecca Stead's great article on NYKids Time Out about that ever changing demographic: 'Tweens.

This is a blog I'll be reading often. Lots of great stuff.
Now if I can just gather my wits and get 500 words off- Time's a-wasting!

Food Writing or Food/ Writing or Food and Writing?

Today was my turn to post at the Southern Writers Blog: A Good Blog is Hard to Find. I'm in very good company over there, lots of familiar names and frequently published authors. So click on over and read my (tongue-in-cheek, slightly humorous?) post explaining where baking and writing intersect, kind of.

Or you can just skip that part and scroll down to a really easy but very tasty recipe for "Pear Purses."

Or you can just keep going and get to the link for my friend Lee Hilton's real Pear Purse, AKA Rustic Pear Galette recipe.

But this blog and that one are writing blogs. And the point, whether I made it or not, was that baking, like its distant cousin writing, has rules which need to be mastered before you branch out. It's just a random thought, something I wish I'd known and believed a long time ago about writing. Then again, there are all sorts of schools of thought about writing. There's the Pantster (fly by the seat of your pants- get it?) vs. the Plotter school. There are the outliners, the thinkers, the NaNoWriMo-sters. Whatever works for you when it comes to writing.

And I think somebody was trying to tell me something today when I stumbled across this from Darcy Pattison's FICTION NOTES blog.

IF you usually just start in writing, TRY planning each scene. IF you usually plan each scene, TRY just jumping into the writing. Every once in a while, it’s great to break your pattern of working and see what happens. Shake yourself up! (I suggested this once at a national conference and got several notes later that this was the best advice the writers had ever taken, the resulting novel was the best she had written – so try it!) If the results are disappointing, you can always go back to your original methods of writing your novel.

Kind of like a lot of life. You won't know if it works till you try it. And then, if it doesn't, try it another way.


Related posts: NaNoWriMo- Get Me ReWrite!
Revision: Darcy Pattison

The Future of Fiction

Somehow I missed the Wall Street Journal article by Lev Grossman, book critic at Time Magazine, until it was posted this week on a discussion list email. But it's worth reading if you can.

Bring back the elusive plot! Readers are turning to Young Adult books because literary fiction has failed them. Lots of points worth pondering, including this (and not just because he cites my new fav writer Kate Atkinson, among others. And The Hunger Games. All good...):

Why do so many adults read Suzanne Collins's young-adult novel "The Hunger Games" instead of contemporary literary fiction? Because "The Hunger Games" doesn't bore them. All of this is changing. The revolution is under way. The novel is getting entertaining again. Writers like Michael Chabon, Jonathan Lethem, Donna Tartt, Kelly Link, Audrey Niffenegger, Richard Price, Kate Atkinson, Neil Gaiman, and Susanna Clarke, to name just a few, are busily grafting the sophisticated, intensely aware literary language of Modernism onto the sturdy narrative roots of genre fiction: fantasy, science fiction, detective fiction, romance.

Also take a quick look at some of the many comments. Interesting discussion, no?

Hmmm. Wait! Donna Tartt? The Secret History? Better check to see if she's got a new book coming out.


Related post: Plot

Resolved...

All month long, I've been reading everybody else's resolutions. Set smaller attainable goals. Eat less. Write more. Sleep more. Read more. Exercise better. Less TV. Be nicer.

All good. I think I'll just steal a few before January ends. Especially the healthy eating resolution from my friend Lee Hilton. Click on over to Lee's blog for a great recipe for Mexican Shrimp Dip. Supposedly good for you but sounds quite delicious.

I think I'll make it to eat while reading more books and watching more TV. Whoops, less TV...
And then I'll try this trick:

Reading With Goodreads and Facebook

Today's New York Times, and not even in the Book Review section, has Motoko Rich writing about "The Book Club With Just One Member." On many levels this headline caught my eye. And how could I not read an essay that begins with a quote from the new Newbery winner, Rebecca Stead's When You Reach Me. Miranda, the 11-year-old main character, has a favorite book which is entertwined throughout Stead's novel. She's read A Wrinkle in Time over and over, even feels it's her very own book, hers alone. "The truth is that I hate to think about other people reading my book.. It's like watching someone go through the box of private stuff that I keep under my bed."

Rich's essay ponders those of us who feel that possessiveness about the books we read and the ones who share their reading tastes via Book Clubs, Facebook, Twitter, Goodreads. She makes a lot of thoughtful points, quotes from other of my favorite writers, even brings David Foster Wallace's books into the mix (along with Katherine Paterson and Lois Lowry).

One conclusion seems to be that there are books whose understanding is helped along by communal reading. Those challenging books (Wallace), the ones you never honestly got through in college (Ulysses). "Some books particularly lend themselves to collective reading--" she says, "partly, of course, because everybody is reading them."



I like the image on the New York Times' page. Reminds me of sitting in a tree reading Nancy Drew. Come to think of it, I can't remember ever wanting to discuss Nancy's latest escapade with too many kids. But I guess I outgrew that. Two-plus Book Clubs later, I've now pretty much stopped the communal discussions over a nice glass of chardonnay, but I do like hearing what others are reading and sensing the excitement. In fact, Rich acknowledges one obvious point- the more people talk about a book, the better it sells. "Some of the biggest sellers of recent years--Eat, Pray, Love...The Kite Runner...The Help-- were propelled by word of mouth."

OK, back later. After I update my Goodreads page.
;)



Related posts: Katherine Paterson

Lois Lowry

My Own Girlfriend Weekend

If you read my posts for writing thoughts, links to books, all the usual, you can stop right here while I take time out to write about friends.

Remember that old Girl Scout song? Make new friends, but keep the old. One is silver and the other gold. This is about friends who are gold.

Last weekend I felt a bit like the proverbial fly on the wall, eavesdropping on my own former life. I hadn't seen some of these college friends since we were eighteen years old, and in some ways it was like yesterday and in other ways, we had changed beyond recognition. But, remarkably, we all still seemed like those friends who are gold, worth keeping.

Late one night after our last marathon chatfest-- what a new friend of mine calls a chinwag-- sleep eluded me. After all, who could sleep with all those memories floating in my head, visions of red hearts and golden lockets. So I made a list. This will make no sense if you weren't there, but I wrote it for a reason I'm sure. One of these days the reason will become obvious. Right now it just feels like something I want to remember.

margarine vs. butter, fat arms, The Delta, The Coast, The Redneck, piecrusts, Gumbo (dog), Gumbo (roux), Leos, Beach weekends, Sloe Gin, Olive Kitteridge, Yazoo City butt, pineapple sandwiches, mayonnaise, smoking while standing up, squirrel brains, coffee and spooned cream, donut sundaes...




Southerners know how to do a party right, complete with ironed linen napkins, shrimp and grits, party favors, table decorations, coasters bearing a resemblance of our former selves. Our Atlanta hostesses outdid themselves with food and good cheer. Thanks, ladies.

Book Clubs

For a long time I edited a column about book groups for Skirt! Magazine. Made some great cyberfriends and learned a lot about how to have fun with reading, chatting and eating, all at the same time. I also discovered how many variations there were, from a party of two who met in various NYC bars to talk about books they loved, to a large group of women who travel together, and everything in between.

I was actually in two different groups for a long time, and a third that fell apart pretty quickly. Now, even though I'm no longer in a book group, I follow my friends' picks and am always intrigued with what they are reading. Here's an NPR columnist's recommendation of Books for Book Groups, 2009. Check out the comments also, for additional books and a dissent or two.

I visited my friend Anne's group last week, for their discussion of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. If ever a book had the greatest, though most easily forgettable name, this is it. The book chatting at this group, open to the public, sponsored by the American Pen Women was lively. (And I love the Safety Harbor Library where they met. Is that a gigantic banyan tree right outside? I was late and it was too dark to see well!)

A quick non-scientific study turned up these repeat book group choices, including the Potato Pie Book, from my buddies in Book Groups.

Out Stealing Horses

Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

The Book Thief

Olive Kitteridge

The Help

So, what's your group reading these days?

Related post: Skirt! Book Groups

Leaving Gee's Bend

Click on over to Joyce Moyer Hostetter's blog for my review of Leaving Gee's Bend.

Joyce is a terrific writer of historical fiction for young readers, and her newly revamped blog features all things historical. Check it out!

Newbery Announcement at ALA

OK, so maybe you stayed up late watching the Golden Globes last light. Nothing compared with how the library and children's book world feels this morning, awakening to the announcement of the Newbery and Caldecott, Coretta Scott King and Printz Awards, among others.

Predictions and mock voting has been rampart in the last few weeks, and a lot of kids will be happy about the winners this year. Rebecca Stead's book will be a popular choice for the Newbery. Great book, fun read.

I think Bryn Mawr School, where I joyfully served as librarian for a few years, may have been one of the original Mock Newbery programs in the country. Now there are lots. One year we even took the Bryn Mawr students to Washington DC to hear the exciting announcement of the winners.

Now, had you risen early this morning, you could have tuned in to a live webcast, almost like begin there. Except I doubt you could duplicate the excitement our students felt that year, dressed as book characters, holding signs and cheering their favorite book.

This year the American Library Association met in Boston and has just moments ago announced the winners. I'm delighted to say a book I reviewed and loved is the 2010 Newbery Medal book. Another I reviewed, Mare's War, is a King Honor winner. TaDa, drumroll please!



Related Posts: Calpurnia Tate

Cybils Finalists

At the beginning of the new year, a group of blogging readers and writers announce the Cybil Awards finalists. The awards - The Children's and Young Adults' Bloggers' Literary Awards-were started in 2006 to recognize books of high quality that also have a lot of kid appeal. What that means is that reading books on the list usually guarantees you of a terrific experience of new, popular, yet highly regarded books. I was delighted that a middle grade book I nominated made the cut. And a very tough cut that was!

Find the entire list of all genres of nominated books here on the official site.

Here's what the brochure from last year's winners said (you can download it from the Cybils site):
...we’re comprised of 90+ bloggers who write about children’s and teen’s books every day. We open our nominations to the public. Maybe there’s a book your child resisted bedtime for. Another may’ve circulated from locker to locker. And still another never seemed to make it back to the library by its due date.

Now it's up to a second round of judges to pick the winners. Stay tuned in February for the announcement. I'm taking the list, reading a few more, picking my favorites. Check out the widget below my info on the right of this blog to participate in Cybils talk.

Don't you just love Awards Season? First the Newbery and Caldecott on Monday, January 18, then the Cybils, soon the Oscars.

Those Pulpwood Queens!

If I weren't having my own Girlfriend Weekend with college friends in Atlanta, I'd be sorely tempted to figure out where Jefferson Texas is. Starting today, January 13-17, Kathy Patrick and her fellow readers and writers are gathering for the 10th Anniversary Girlfriend Weekend Author Extravaganza: "Beauty and the Book."

Among the guests- Oh, shoot, just way too many to list. Check out the website here. And if you can get to Jefferson, there might still be elbow room. But with the likes of Cassandra King, Pat Conroy and Elizabeth Berg sharing their writing tips, it's bound to be standing room only.

Kathy started her Book store/ Hair salon/ Literacy sharing a few years ago, and this weekend is now ten years old. Congratulations, Kathy and all the Pulpwood Queens. Have fun and Be Queenly.

Check out the website for the Beauty and the Book bookstore and book groups here. You might even locate a Book Group meeting near you. And I do love Kathy's signature: "Hairdresser to the Authors." You go, Girl!

Vintage Posters

Well, how much fun is this Vintage Ad Browser? And what a great resource for writers! Type in your own search term or browse the topics. Narrow it down by dates. Wow, I can see lots of uses of an old Maxwell House ad. Not to mention all those Coca Cola ads from the 1950s.

Word of the Day

This word from my Word a Day email is from my childhood memory bank. I'm trying to remember why. My high school English teacher? Maria from The Sound of Music?

Word of the Day for Wednesday, January 6, 2010

flibbertigibbet \FLIB-ur-tee-jib-it\, noun:
A silly, flighty, or scatterbrained person, especially a pert young woman with such qualities.


We discover here not the flibbertigibbet Connolly describes but a serious reader (Goethe, Tolstoy, Proust) who found her cultural ideal in 18th-century France.
-- Martin Stannard, "Enter Shrieking", New York Times, November 28, 1993

He argues persuasively that Millay's reputation has been harmed not only by academics who dread and fear her heartfelt "simplicity," but by the very admirers who wished to promote her as a kind of whimsical flibbertigibbet, a poetical Anne of Green Gables.
-- Liz Rosenberg, "So Young, So Good, So Popular", New York Times, March 15, 1992


Related posts: New (to me) Word a Day
Word a Day

Introducing- Our New Ambassador!

Katherine Paterson was one of the first true stars of the children's book world I met as a librarian. She lived near my school and generously visited us twice. Once she had to cancel when she got the early morning call from the American Library Association that she'd won the Newbery and had to fly off for the announcement. She soon re-scheduled our visit, and it was pretty exciting to be a part of that celebratory season.

Although that was a while ago, each time I've seen her since, she's always been the same generous, bright, funny person you'd love to sit down and chat with over a cup of tea.

So the newspaper announcement this morning that she's the next National Ambassador for Young People's Literature just made my day. Be sure to click here for the article and read right to the end when she's asked "Don't you want to write for adults?" Her answer won't surprise children's authors one bit:

"...why would I want to write a book that would be remaindered in six weeks? My books have gone on and on, and my readers, if they love the book, they will read it and reread it. I have the best readers in the world.”


Related post: Writing Tips

In the Newspaper

A perfect day to stay inside and read. So did I pick the new pre-pub novel I just started and can't put down? The kids' book everybody's talking about? The supposed funniest YA book of last year? Nope, I chose the newspaper.

And even though I've avoided Twitter, David Carr's article, Why Twitter Will Endure made me want to join in the fun.

Here's a bit from the beginning:
In the pantheon of digital nomenclature — brands within a sector of the economy that grew so fast that all the sensible names were quickly taken — it would be hard to come up with a noun more trite than Twitter. It impugns itself, promising something slight and inconsequential, yet another way to make hours disappear and have nothing to show for it. And just in case the noun is not sufficiently indicting, the verb, “to tweet” is even more embarrassing.

Then it gets better, and makes Twitter even more tempting to join:

At first, Twitter can be overwhelming, but think of it as a river of data rushing past that I dip a cup into every once in a while. Much of what I need to know is in that cup: if it looks like Apple is going to demo its new tablet, or Amazon sold more Kindles than actual books at Christmas, or the final vote in the Senate gets locked in on health care, I almost always learn about it first on Twitter.

But I'm a book person, so I turned to the Book Review. And guess what? I now know what resolutions a few best-selling authors are making in the new year.

Hint: Margaret Atwood "must finish the bird classic I'm reading- the unique and sublime 'The Peregrine' by J.A. Baker. Must continue with my plan to read all the Dostoyevsky novels I haven't read...I want to read Lorrie Moore's latest novel--she's such a good writer."

Nick Hornby vows to combat literary clutter. Atwood will stop skipping around (Bad habit to break: skipping around from book to book," she says.)

Now that's a novel idea. Stop skipping around! No literary clutter! I think I'll make these personal resolutions. Then again, what fun is that?

Old Friends, and New

January 1st is such a good day for sorting, cleaning, putting away, giving away, tossing away. My mother always believed it was bad luck to keep Christmas decorations up after the New Year. My friend Stephanie always put them up early and left them till way past the New Year. She was one of my first true Yankee friends, so I always thought it had to do with fresh trees and wreaths drying out and dropping needles all over living rooms in the South where it was too warm to keep live greenery up too long. So today, it's out with the holiday trappings!

While sorting and tossing, I found something I will hang on to. A quote in the front of a book my very best and longest-standing friend-- we have grandmothers who were friends-- gave to me a long time ago, long before we truly appreciated either good wine or good oil!

She gave me a book of quotations I never see anywhere these days: LEAVES OF GOLD. Lately, I've hesitated to inscribe gift books, thinking people may want to exchange them, but from now on, I won't. I loved finding this book, with this note in her handwriting:

"Three things are better old than new: wine, oil, but above all, an old friend."

I have a lot of newer friends, and hearing from all of them during the holidays, re-reading the cards before I put them away, saving the pictures of children and grandchildren. What would I rather be doing on New Year's Day?

Save the Cat

I never quite understood the relationship between screenwriting and novel writing.Then fellow blogger Karin Gillespie over at A Good Blog is Hard to Find recommended, actually raved about, Save the Cat. So I did what anybody trying to figure out the whole structure thing would do, I bought the book. Karin's right. Not only is is easy to read and tremendously helpful, it's written in a way that even the thickest-headed writer-by-the- seats-of-your-pants can understand.

I'll never write a screenplay, or anything other than what I'm doing right now, but the ideas in that book are worth thinking on.

A recent post by the Story Fix Guy echoed why this approach works. Screenwriting to novel writing, that is. Here's a bit of what he says. Click here to read the rest:

Some writers, especially organic writers, fear that the application of principles, rules, criteria and structural guidelines somehow suppresses the creative process and compromises the end product. That particular fear will kill your publishing dream. To publish, you need to believe the exact opposite. To publish, your story must be wildly original, creative, compelling and fresh in a way that it reinvents whatever genre you are writing in. But… you need to do all that within a box. Within the constraints of, and in disciplined accordance with, the principles of storytelling. If you don’t have complete command of those principles, you won’t publish. Because your story, however wild and compelling and fresh, won’t fly without them.

Reliable Narrators

What do you do when someone, your critique group, a professional, your sister or best friend, says to be careful that your main character is likable? How do you create a character readers will actually want to read about because s/he's funny, intriguing, smart-assed, whatever it takes, yet also appealing?

Enter the Reliable Narrator. A character kids want to know. She may not be lovable but she should be interesting in some way. Oddball, quirky (that much disparaged word), spunky, full of life.

One of my favorite books to read and hardest to get my head around and write about was this year's much-discussed novel for middle graders, Rebecca Stead's When You Reach Me. So I liked this Story Sleuth posting about the narrator, Miranda, being a character kids really wanted to get to know. Here's a bit of the post. Click here to read more:

I’ve been thinking about what grips me about this story, why I’m so engaged. I think it’s largely because the narrator, Miranda, is so appealing. She feels like a real kid. Stead set the story in pre-cell phone, pre-email 1979. Miranda is a 12 year old 6th grader living on the Upper West Side of New York City with her single mom, who works in a law office. Miranda navigates her school as an office monitor, and her street as a “latchkey child.” (p. 3) Her best friend from day care grows away from her, and she seeks new friendships in her class, friendships that are strained, broken, and ultimately healed. What draws me into this story, in addition to the underlying mystery, is Miranda’s reliability as a narrator. I trust her, because she admits to feeling sad, and mad, and lonely, even mean and jealous. When her friend, Annemarie, hopes that a rose left on the doormat might have been left by Colin, the boy Miranda also likes, Miranda suggests to Annemarie that the rose might have been left by her dad. “Your dad is so nice. It has to be him.” (p. 112) Then the narrator Miranda describes her own feelings: “I was miserable, sitting on the edge of her bed in that puddle of meanness. But I couldn’t help it. I didn’t want Annemarie’s rose to be from Colin.”

Related post: Book Reviewing

My List

Inspired by the St. Petersburg Times Book Editor, Colette Bancroft's list, I'm making my own. Hers is a list of books that made a deep impression on her during the decade.

I thought about a list of my favorites, a short Best Books of the Year list. But rather than mere Best Books, how about my most impressive, most unforgettable, most re-considered Books of 2009 list?

New (to me) Series I'm Most Looking Forward to Continuing to Enjoy:
Kate Atkinson's Jackson Brodie novels

Easiest Novel to Recommend to Young Readers: The Small Adventure of Popeye and Elvis

Book I Can't Wait to Share with my Youngest Reader Friends and Family: Yummy: Eight Favorite Fairy Tales

Book I Read in Two Days and am Still Mulling Over: Brooklyn by Colm Toibin.

Young Adult Book I Never Expected to Be So Taken With: Hunger Games
(OK, I know it was published in 2008, but it took me a while to get to it.)
I just never dreamed I'd actually love a book set in the future, a game of kill or be killed, a world so outside my reality that I couldn't stop reading it. Now I'm reading the 2009 sequel, Catching Fire.)

Now you know looking back at books that stick with you is more fun than reconsidering all those resolutions you never quite got to, right?

Ho Ho Ho

Merry Christmas to all!
Time to snuggle up with those books you found under your tree.



So, what great books were waiting in your Christmas stockings?

Books into Movies

Just read over at the Christian Science Monitor's book blog that The Help is being fast-tracked to moviedom. No surprises, but can't wait to hear more. Lots of weeks on the best seller list, the novel has movie written all over it.

Soup's On

This is my last post about snow and cold weather, promise. Well, I'll try.

Today, in honor of my friends and family Up North shoveling snow, I made soup. Not just any soup but Alice's Vegetable Soup. This is comfort food to the max. Alice Moore cooked for my family, raised my brother, sister and me, sang to us, read Nancy Drew books with me, was an all-around good person. Not to mention the most fabulous baker of pies and homemade bread ever to wield a flour sifter. Fried chicken, fried okra, fried tomatoes, cornbread sizzling in a black iron cornbread stick pan (which I own but rarely use, a pound of butter not being at the top of my food groups)- she cooked them all.

But her soup is very healthy, very comforting, very warm. And you can pretty much throw the kitchen sink at it, vegetable-wise, and it always works. Alice used potatoes, but rice will also do. Even brown rice, though she's turning over in her grave as I type the B Word in front of rice.

For some reason, I came away with more of Alice's secret ingredients than my siblings did, but I'm always happy to share. So here's the secret ingredient in her Homemade Vegetable Soup. Remember, this was before the days of canned stock. She made her own beef stock with a soup bone and lots of onions and celery. I sometimes add canned stock, a short cut worth taking.

But Alice's final flavoring, maybe with a dast of Tabasco, was V-8 Juice. Great soup base for a cold rainy day when you need soup in a hurry.




And again, I'm reminded of one of my favorite quotes from Eudora Welty's EYE OF THE STORY.
To make a friend’s fine recipe is to celebrate her once more.


Related posts: Popeye's Biscuits
Stirring the Pot

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!

Not sure why I'm feeling so nostalgic for December snow.

Those December storms were the best, making everything feel like Christmas. But when friends and family "up north" (that's what people in Florida call everything above Georgia, I've decided- Ha. What would my Mississippi grandmother say about that? Come to think of it, she thought North Carolina was Up North, so maybe nothing.), send their pictures, I actually miss all that snow.


Well, I miss looking out the window at it.

Remembering Snow in New Jersey

This is where I'm not today. And glad of it, truly. Though I do miss looking out the window, seeing my neighbor with the snowblower or the birds on the feeder. The kids sledding. Sigh.

Thought for the Day

Tossing out last year's Quaker Motto Calendar and realizing there are some thoughts that need remembering, especially this busy, holiday time of year-

Many people will walk in and out of your life. But only true friends will leave footprints in your heart.
Eleanor Roosevelt

Related post: Quaker Motto Calendar

A Good Thing for the Holidays

If you've sent your cards, decorated your tree, lit your candles, inflated the fat snowmen and reindeer, shopped till you dropped and enjoyed a drop of eggnog, here's one last thing some of my friends and I have done.

Click here to send a card to a veteran, compliments of Xerox. Simple to do. Takes 10 seconds. Worthwhile.

More Books for Giving

Lisa Von Drasek, Super Librarian, has penned this terrific list of kids' books, with commentary. Lots of great suggestions, including YUMMY and THE LITTLE DUMP TRUCK, which are already wrapped and under my tree waiting for my youngest family readers. I wish I had a teen to buy Libba Bray's Going Bovine for. Instead, I'll just read it myself.

Here's what Lisa has to say about what seems to be one of the most talked about Young Adult books of the year:

The most atypical young adult novel is Going Bovine by Libba Bray. Part Tom Robbins, part Fast Times at Ridgemont High and part Wizard of Oz. One would not expect a book about a slacker sixteen-year-old who is diagnosed with a fatal illness to be laugh-aloud funny. Go figure. At times surrealistic, other moments more real than real, this is one of the best of the year.

So what are you waiting for? Get thee to a bookstore!

A Christmas Carol

When my brother, sister and I were quite young, our grandmother started a Christmas tradition. Thinking about it now, I'm astounded at the number of years we continued this, not to mention how quietly we sat and listened. But each December, she read Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol aloud to us.

When I discovered that you can actually see the manuscript online, each page in Dickens' own handwriting or the typed version, I clicked right over. All 66 pages are right here for your viewing.

I've seen the actual manuscript at the Morgan Library in New York. To be more precise, I've seen one page. The Library puts just one page each year on public display. Of course, seeing the online version isn't quite the same as seeing the book, but still well worth the view if you love the story as I do.

All those ghosts, all those frightening people, appropriate for young children? But a grandmother reading a story with a happy ending? A perfect Christmas tradition!

"It is a fair, even-handed, noble adjustment of things, that while there is infection in disease and sorrow, there is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good-humour." - A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens

Last Minute Shopping? Give Books!

Recently I wrote about book-related gifts but admonished you all to check in at your local bookstore for the Real Deal (books, not teeshirts). Now here are my own personal favorites, with a link or two to what fellow bloggers and writers are recommending for gift-giving this season.
(Note: If some are less well-known than the average Best Seller variety, all the better.)

For my New York city kids and those who love a good story, with twists and turns, backwards and forward in time:
When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead

A really funny book, for that often hard to buy for older middle grader:
Al Capone Shines My Shoes

For the youngest lovers of fairy and folk tales (not for the faint of heart? But what true folk tale is!):
Yummy by Lucy Cousins

For you aunts and uncles who want a delightful story with a real Southern flavor, a gift in many ways to your younger friends, ages 8 and up, especially if you offer to read it together:
The Small Adventure of Popeye and Elvis by Barbara O'Connor

A grownup book even the most avid reader may not have heard of (and it's a trilogy!) Start with Case Histories and go in order to enjoy all of Kate Atkinson's mysteries.

Remember that Action Figure Librarian from my blog post the other day? She's a real, retired librarian and here are some of her choices.

And then there's the link to the New York Times Bests of the Year, fiction and non-fiction.
And if at all possible, shop at your local independent bookstore.

So what books are you gifting this holiday season?

Related post: Independent Bookstores

Collecting Data

Ever wonder where truly great writers get their ideas? Click here and then on the button on the left of the NPR site to listen to one of my favorite authors, Kate DiCamillo, talk about her notebooks. And her jottings from a visit to the National Gallery in Washington.

Yesterday I spent some time at an absolutely breathtaking, mind-expanding exhibit at the Museum of Fine Arts in downtown St. Petersburg, viewing the huge Lesley Dill installation and collecting painting titles. All inspirational. Dill's art leaves at the end of December so if you're in the Tampa Bay area, rush right over, quick.

(But the museum and the painting titles and the art are always there!)

Here's a virtual tour of the exhibit, for those of you too far away to see the real thing.





Related posts: The Magician's Elephant
And from my group blog: Watching for Birds

For Your Holiday Shopping Pleasure...

For the readers and writers on your list:

Book Related Athletic T-shirts (click and look at the pictures carefully to really get it)

Though personally, I'm rather fond of this one:


A thank-you note styled after the library cards we all knew and loved (which have mostly gone the way of library catalog cards...replaced by higher technology)-




The Book Lovers Calendar

All sorts of things from the Library of Congress bookstore, including the ever popular Librarian Action Figure. (Hmm. Note to friends and family. Don't get me this.)


And of course, all the best books, from your favorite bookstore.

Going Home Again

If you can just figure out exactly where Home is, you can definitely go home, despite what Thomas Wolfe famously said. And one of my favorite places to call home is the city of Baltimore. Baltimore seems to me a kind of Norm's Cheers Bar, where everybody knows your name. That is, everybody who ever knew it in the first place. An Old Friends kind of place. So I got to go back to my home turf recently to visit Bryn Mawr School, one of the most exciting, energizing, fun libraries and schools I've worked in (and there have been a few, let me tell you). The building was designed by Marcel Breuer in 1972, before I arrived. As you might expect, it was a wide open, sunny place, free of walls. But all that open space, though difficult to teach quietly in, had the end result of everybody getting along pretty well. A truly challenging and exciting place for a librarian. I loved it. Now the space has been rethought, in a very good way. And I got to go "home" again to see the school and the many old friends who reconvened there.

While in Baltimore, I also ate numerous Berger Cookies, one of my favorite foods.




If I ever were to write about that Charm City, this church in Hampden would for sure be a player...See that sign? Church times listed with a greeting: Peace be with you, Hon.


Photos courtesy of K.S. Marino


A fun trip down memory lane, with old friends. And lots of ideas percolating.
Thanks, Hons!

New (to me) Word Today

Not only do I get a French word-a-day (thanks, Julie), I still get Anu Garg's A.Word.A.Day emails. Today's word is ROPALIC, and there's even a contest! Oh, you don't use ropalic on a daily basis? Click on over there and find out about the contest- a poetry writing challenge. But hurry, the contest ends this Friday.

And if you're wondering? Ropalic=Having each successive word longer by a letter or syllable.

Here's an example from the New York Times:
"Soapy fired off a rhopalic sentence, that is, one in which each word is one letter longer than the word that precedes it: I am the only dummy player, perhaps, planning maneuvers calculated brilliantly, nevertheless outstandingly pachydermatous, notwithstanding unconstitutional unprofessionalism.'"
Alan Truscott; Talking About Behavior; The New York Times; Oct 26, 1986.


Related posts: Word a Day

Words Each Day

Get Me Re-Write!

Did anybody out there take part in NaNoWriMo- National Novel Writing Month? So, now what? After spending the month of November frantically writing a truly bad draft (AKA Zero Draft), you must figure out if it's worth spending/wasting time fiddling with.

If you've been struggling with rewriting, maybe you're focusing too much on line editing and not enough on STRUCTURE, the big picture. At least that's the advice in this great posting by Justine Larbalestier. You may know her from her newest YA novel, Liar, the one with the controversy surrounding the cover. I know her from her funny, helpful, interesting blog. I'm planning to read the book as soon as my reserve comes up at the library (popular book!). But during NaNoWriMo, she and Scott Westerfeld shared writing tips aimed at anybody foolish enough to think they could actually write a novel in a month. So if you've at least made headway and written that truly bad draft, check out her revision techniques on the link above.

Or put it in a drawer for a rainy day.

What is it about The Moon?

So this is a story I heard told by the piano player at Chez Josephine Tuesday night. May or may not be urban legend. He swears it's true. But he was telling it to a diner sitting a few tables away so I only heard snatches, not the entire story.

In the 1930s, Rodgers and Hart were writing the music for a movie. When they presented a song to the studio heads, they were told they needed to write a more romantic tune. The studio guy then threw out the words he thought were best for love songs. Rodgers and Hart, almost in defiant jest (according to the young piano player at our restaurant), took every one of the clichéd words and threw them together to make the lyrics and thus was born Blue Moon, that song we all learned to play by ear on the piano and knew every single word to sing along.

Still can:
Blue Moon, You Saw Me Standing Alone, Without a Dream in my Heart, Without a Love of My Own...

Yep. Every single word, made to rhyme, sappy as can be. Doncha just love it though?

I thought it was appropriate that as we walked from 42nd to 44th streets, there was a moon over Manhattan... (that's that completely round ball hanging in the sky. And it's not a streetlight.)



Related posts: Waterfalls and Food

A Day in the City: the Highline

Rejection, etc.

Do you ever get tired of hearing how many times Now Famous Writer (fill in the blank) was rejected before finally having a book published? The stories are legend. And I've heard them all. But somehow as I was driving in the grey rain just now and listening to the radio, this was nice to hear. Even though- true confessions- I wasn't a huge fan of Anne of Green Gables, I've always appreciated her popularity and love it when an author has a following of young fans like she does.

So, it's Lucy Maud Montgomery's birthday, and here's what I heard on the radio. (Click here to see what Garrison Keillor has to say about other writers today, especially Oscar Wilde. Now I'm curious about that Paris hotel...) :

It's the birthday of Canadian children's writer L.M. Montgomery, born Lucy Maud Montgomery in Clifton, Prince Edward Island, in 1874. Her mother died when she was a toddler, and her father sent her to live with her mother's parents. There were no other children around, just Lucy and her grandparents, and she spent a lot of time reading and writing poems. She left home for a few years to teach, but when her grandfather died, she came home to live with her grandmother, and she stayed with her for the next 13 years. And during that time, she wrote her first novel, about an orphan girl with bright red hair who gets sent to live with a couple from Prince Edward Island who were hoping for a boy instead. It got rejected over and over, so she put the manuscript away in a hatbox and turned to other things. But eventually, she got it back out, read it, decided it wasn't that bad after all, and sent it out again. This time it got accepted, and in 1908, Anne of Green Gables was published and became a classic children's book.

Turkey, the Last Words

Jury still out on the Cajun roasted turkey. But sometimes you do what you have to in the face of a small oven and lots of side dishes.




But the turkey on the apple pie was perfection!


Now, back to Reading and Writing Words. Enough with the cooking and eating chatter...

Quote for Turkey Day +1

This was on my Facebook friend and fabulous writer, Deborah Wiles' FB status just now and I'm enjoying the thought. Hope you are too. Not to mention the turkey sandwich...

She posted-
He forgot about the turkey sandwich:
"If you have a garden and a library you have everything you need." Cicero

Related Posts: Southerners Writing Books

Beautiful Libraries

Writing Quote for Today

No one has ever had an idea in a dress suit.
- Sir Frederick G. Banting

(Does that also work for dresses?)

So stay in your jammies whether you're cooking the turkey or catching up on your reading.
Happy Thanksgiving!

Story Structure

In my voyage to uncover whether I'm a pantster (write by the seat of your pants) or a plotter (self-explanatory), I discovered the Story Fix blog.

My friend Lee had already sent me the recent Wall Street Journal article, How To Write a Great Novel. (I'm not sure you can still read it online from that link, but all you need is this StoryFix blog entry to take you right there.) Then I found the Story Fix guy, Larry Brooks, who analyzes and takes apart the original article and tells us why it doesn't exactly work out that way.

Still, the WSJ had some good points. And when I read this quote, it reminded me to read the book that just won the National Book Award:

To research his 2009 novel "Let the Great World Spin," which is set in New York in the 1970s and is a finalist for the National Book Award, Mr. McCann went on rounds with homicide and housing cops, read oral histories of prostitutes from the era and watched archival film footage.

One thing always leads to another in this blogging world. Read the Wall Street Journal article just for fun. Then click on over to see Larry Brooks' opinion on why it's important to know the ending before we begin. And if all this talk of story structure sends you running in another direction, pick up one of the books mentioned in the article. Knowing a writer reads his characters' lines out loud, or tears up a million beginnings, just might make the book-- if it doesn't completely destroy the reading experience-- a lot more interesting.

Related posts: Beginnings
Great Writing Advice

The Dreaded Cliché.

Over at the Through the Tollbooth blog, there's a great posting about clichés. And you won't be surprised by the list, even though it's already a year old. I guess a cliché becomes a cliché when it's overused, over time. Right?

So here's the list. Take note, the source is Oxford University (the one in England) and they're not really calling them clichés, just overused phrases. But be sure to click on over to Carrie Jones' posting on The Tollbooth to see her thoughts about clichés in writing.

What do you think? Got any others that really bug you? (How about the verb forms of bug...)

Oh, and check out #8. And I always thought that was a Southern thing. Then again, we Southerners learned how to talk from our British/Scottish/Irish forebears, didn't we.

Top 10 Overused Phrases
1 - At the end of the day
2 - Fairly unique (oxymoron)
3 - I personally
4 - At this moment in time
5 - With all due respect
6 - Absolutely
7 - It's a nightmare
8 - Shouldn't of
9 - 24/7
10 - It's not rocket science

National Book Award

FYI-This year's National Book Award for Young People's Literature was just announced. The winner? A nonfiction book about Claudette Colvin, a young teen whose actions during a very important part of our country's history were largely unknown by contemporary young readers.

Potato Peel Pie Society

Am I the last reader on earth to pick up this book? And why did it take me so long? What a terrific story. And my goodness, hairbow ties? Is that really why they're called that? How could I not have know this.
My friend Julie tells me it's one of her favorite audio books to listen to also.

My former Book Group just read it and often I try to keep up with what they've chosen, so thanks Melissa for sending me on this journey, for telling me to google the book. I love this blog posting by writer Annie Barrows. I'd never thought about the concept of literary meandering, following one book as it leads to another. But it's true, isn't it. A clue in one book, a reference, a name, will send you off meandering to find connections. The whole Charles Lamb thing in this book sent me off to those college literature tomes gathering dust on the bookshelves.

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society is written as a series of letters, and here's a quote from one of Juliet's letters to Dawsey:
Have you ever noticed that when your mind is awakened or drawn to someone new, that person's name suddenly pops up everywhere you go? My friend Sophie calls it coincidence, and Mr. Simpless, my parson friend, calls it Grace. He thinks that if one cares deeply about someone or something new one throws a kind of energy out into the world, and "fruitfulness" is drawn in.

Oh, and just in case you wondered. Despite my love of book related food items and as much as I adore beets, I have no interest in making the potato pie recipe.

Related post: Indie Awards

What's Your Definiton of Children's Books?

In the current discussion over at the School Library Journal's Mock Newbery blog, the point is being raised about the whole definition of "childhood," as it pertains to books eligible for the award. This quote from E.L. Konigsburg's book of essays and speeches, TalkTalk, makes a lot of sense to someone who's been there for both worlds: the backyard neighborhood and the TV screen...

As I was growing up, I always had the feeling that I understood a lot more than I knew. When I listen to my grandchildren, I think they know a lot more than they understand. The difference is exposure. Even before starting school, they see more and hear more than I did as a high-school graduate. Perhaps, saying overseen more and overheard more is a better expression because they have been exposed to a great panorama on a very small scale. Their big world is a small place--the size of a television screen. My small world was a big place--my neighborhood.
E.L. Konigsburg

Today's Mock Newbery post is about one of my favorite books of this award season: The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate. While I didn't particularly agree with the analysis on the posting, she has a point and makes it well. Guess we'll just have to wait until January to see what the "real" Newbery committee comes up with.

Related post: Calpurnia Tate

Best Blogs for Kids, and Why Bother?

I'll bookmark this article for sure. Not just because Elizabeth Bird pulls together links to some of my favorite book bloggers (her Top Ten), but also because she says some important things about why blogging is important, whether it's making a difference, and who the heck reads blogs about kids' books anyhow.

Here's one of her questions, posed early in the article:
Sometimes I wonder if this is just a case of bloggers reading one another's posts, commenting on one another's blogs, contributing to an insular community that doesn't have much impact on the outside world. Do kids' lit bloggers influence publishing decisions? Are library systems basing their purchasing decisions on our recommendations? Should they? And to what extent is a blog about literature for youth a reliable source of information?

There's a happy ending to her posting, I'm glad to report. We blog about kids' books because we love the literature and love the connections our blogs give us to other like minds. If people who buy the books listen in, all the better.

Last Newspaper Boy in America

Such an appealing cover. And Sue Corbett really knows how to write for middle grade readers. But honestly, newspaper boys? Would kids care? Should they? Or is the whole newspaper thing something the next generation, the Youth of Today, finds totally beyond them. And while I'm at it, how many young readers still spread out the funnypapers (i.e. comics to you Yankees) all over the floor every afternoon to read?

So I put this one in the To Read pile. But the cover kept speaking to me.

Then I opened the book and got to know 12-year-old Wil David and his slightly oddball family. And I really really loved this book. There's adventure, mystery, even a budding love interest of sorts. A county fair with its own con artist. A mother who loves to read. The small town setting is the perfect venue. Just one good thing after another.

The Last Newspaper Boy in America is such a terrific read that it doesn't really matter whether kids have a clue what a newpaper boy/ girl is. Though they should. And after reading Sue Corbett's latest novel, they'll know for sure about delivering newspapers in America.