How I Spent My Summer Vacation

Happy Labor Day, America! Hope you are all having a great and safe long end-of-summer holiday weekend.

Yesterday, in honor of the end-of-summer Labor Day weekend, good friends Stu and Sharon threw their annual pool party. I brought my parrot and a big bowl of fresh strawberries and a little bowl of yogurt dip to share. (The parrot was not for consumption.) What I didn't bring was my bathing suit. I'm not quite ready to share the sight of my body in a bathing suit.

Anyway, to get to the party, I had to drive about 70 miles each way on the freeway. Since I live a couple of blocks from my workplace and walk to work, I don't drive much anymore and had forgotten how very exhausting it is! I was going over the speed limit by about 15 mph, and cars were zipping past me (and around me) like I was standing still! It was great to see old friends, though. I don't get to see them much anymore, though we used to ride the commuter train together every day for a decade before I moved downtown and others got new jobs or retired. So it was well worth the drive! Once a year, anyway.

Earlier this summer, I flew to New York just for the weekend to see a show. I've never done anything so, you know, frivolous before. But my daughter wanted me to see her perform (the show was "Spelling Bee" and it was off-off-off-Broadway and really good ~ I never realized how funny my daughter actually is), so I went ahead and just did it. During the trip, I met my nephew whom I hadn't seen for about 15 years, which is why I say I "met" him, since he is completely different now from the little boy he'd been then. He's now a graduate student studying linguistics, and he has a lovely girlfriend whom I also met.

I also traveled to Colorado for a week to spend time with my sister and her four daughters. Now, family vacations can be stressful, but not this one! My four beautiful nieces were attentive and generally all-around fun to be with, and my sister ~ well, suffice it to say we are always ready to explore new places.

I'd never been to Colorado, so, besides the joy of seeing family, it was a real treat. Except for the difficult time I had breathing at the higher altitude, that is. But I got over that, or at least panted through it, and have wonderful memories of mountains, butterflies, mountain, waterfalls, mountains, blue skies with white clouds, mountains.










A special highlight of the trip was the Butterfly Pavilion just outside Denver. It was unbearably hot and humid inside, which is good for butterflies but not so good for humans. As I hope you will agree, the images I came away with were well worth the sweat dripping from my forehead into my eyes the damp (well, soaking) clothes.













We also went to the Mile-High Music Festival. It brought back foggy but fond memories of my wild days as a rocker, but the reality was that I am no longer comfortable sitting on a blanket on the grass but instead really really require some sort of chair, and being out in the hot sun all day requires a sun umbrella or at least a wide-brimmed hat.


So, now it's Labor Day and summer is at an end...except for the heat. Unlike summer, though, when white can be worn to reflect the heat, now we'll have to make do with off-white and beige. Unless you're a rebel like me. I don't care what Serial Mom (or the voice of my grandmother whispering in my head) says, until the temperature backs off from the 90s, Imma wear as much white as I want.

Nearly a Year Later ~ How Time Flies...

How odd to think it's been nearly a year since I posted on this blog. So much has happened in that year, and yet, when I try to think of any one thing I can share here, nothing of particularly earthshaking, or even interesting, interest comes to mind. Most of my busy-ness has been focused around work: my job was becoming more intense and less challenging, never a good combination. Recently, though, one of my attorneys (I'm what used to be known as a legal secretary; now the job title is practice assistant) was promoted to head of the business & finance department for a global law firm, so things are now REALLY intense and much more challenging, to the point where I walk around in a stupor, cry a lot from nerves, and when I get home at night can scarcely fix dinner for my parrot and myself before collapsing.

One thing I've been doing ~ which can be thought of as either good or stupid, depending on your outlook ~ is getting involved in politics. Last summer, after watching the ridiculous, disgusting and frightening antics of the Tea Party, and then last autumn and winter, after watching the equally ridiculous, disgusting and frightening obstructionism of the Republicans in Congress with respect to the Health Care Reform bill, I found myself becoming politicized. First I was drawn to learning more about what's going on in the political world. In the course of time, I became aware of so many disgusting, ridiculous and frightening things that are going on in this country and around the world that sometimes I just wanted to hide in my room and read light fiction. But the reality of the situation has dire consequences for everyone living today and our children's children to the point that, as a responsible citizen of the United States and resident of Planet Earth, I HAD to DO something.

So, I've resisted the urge to hide out and instead have become active. I have joined the Democratic Party and the Coffee Party USA. I've made phone calls and written emails and letters (yes, actual snailmail letters) to my and other Senators and Representatives, made donations to the campaign funds of certain politicians who have stood up to the bullying of the GOP and the corporate lobbyists, and even participated in a few protests. Not my usual style, and horribly uncomfortable for me, but something I think is necessary. BTW, the Coffee Party, for anyone who is interested, is NOT the opposite of the Tea Party, it is an antidote to the Tea Party ~ a place where anyone of any affiliation can go to debate the issues and find common ground without the rhetoric of hate, the violence or threat of violence, and the unbalanced fear of government that has characterized the Tea Party. It's an empowering thing, to be part of a true grassroots movement that espouses civil discourse and legal expressions of opinion, and responsible public involvement in our government. (Picture at right of a recent meeting of the Downtown LA chapter of the Coffee Party. I'm the dorky looking one in the middle.)

Beyond that, I've stopped reading as much as I had been. Perhaps I just don't have the energy to read late into the night anymore. I know I don't have as much time for reading, now that I've discovered Twitter. My parrot keeps me occupied too, as well as entertained. Even at the worst of times, Nickelbird is able to make me laugh. I'm so blessed to have her in my life (notwithstanding the constant mess she causes with her food flinging, shredding of anything shreddable she can get her beak on, and normal shedding of dust & feathers, not to mention the endless pooping). Here's a picture of Nickel peeking out from her favorite shelf in the linen-cupboard in the bathroom.

I'm going to try to post here more often, and promise not to be quite as long-winded as I seem to have been today. We'll see how that works out.

INDEPENDENCE DAY!

Happy Birthday, America!

I'm feeling all patriotic today, but I can't find my Stars & Stripes to hang out my apartment window. I know it's in one of the boxes stacked floor to ceiling in the walk-in closet of my very small apartment. Which one, though, is completely beyond me.

I moved out of my rather larger house over 2 years ago, and I've been meaning ever since to sort through all the detritus I threw into boxes and brought along with me ~ some to Goodwill, some to plastic bins and restorage, some to the trash. Somehow, though, it's never happened. Instead, my neatly stacked boxes have gotten all out of order as I've searched for things over the years. It would be meaningful to begin the cleanup/organizing today ~ Independence Day ~ because it would result in freedom from disorganization and clutter that has plagued me all my life, and then I can have my own personal Independence Day celebration every year along with the nation.

Before I can get started with that, though, I've gotta get off the damn computer first!

Okay, going now to work all day in the bedroom/closet. I should be able to get a good start on the job before going up to the roof tonight to watch the fireworks over at the Coliseum.

In closing, to all the servicemen who have given their lives to preserve our country and our freedom, and to all those now serving in the military, THANK YOU! And for everyone who is going to celebrate the day at backyard bbqs or picnics or the beach and/or watch the fireworks tonight, have a wonderful and safe Fourth of July!

Summer 2009

Happy First Day of Summer, Los Angeles! I've been away for awhile, mentally if not physically, but I've missed blogging here. I've been on Twitter a lot in the past week or so, reading all the posts from Iran that have gotten through. It's been a heady experience, reading the blow-by-blow descriptions of the protests by the protesters, but it's been scary too. I don't like to think of students being subjected to the brutality of the rulers of that place. Reminds me of Berkeley in the late 60s/early 70s, and of Kent State.

On a lighter note, I haven't been doing much photography lately, but I do have a couple of neat images to share with you. The first was taken in Pershing Square during the lunch hour a couple of weeks ago. The second is of the park that is just across the street from my apartment taken a month or so ago.

Ah, L.A. Gotta love it!

Let the Right One In

Last year, I read Let the Right One In, a really creepy novel by John Ajvide Lindqvist about Eli, a vampire, and Oskar, a lonely adolescent boy. Set in Sweden in 1981, it is part urban horror fantasy, part literary fiction about troubled youth. When Eli (along with her human protector ~ one of the creepier characters in the story) moves to a suburb of Stockholm and befriends Oskar, a geeky 12-year old boy who is the victim of school bullying, murder and mayhem ensue, but with a twist that I found utterly unexpected. In fact, I may really need therapy, because I found myself rooting for the vampire and a troubled and troublesome teenage boy who lives in the same housing project as Oskar. Though the story was uneven, and the tension never reached the almost painful tautness that King at his best can create, it was well-written, gritty, and undeniably worth reading.

Today I learned that the book has been made into a moviewith Kare Hedebrandt playing Oskar and Lina Leandersson playing Eli. I usually avoid films based on books that I've read, because nine times out of ten, they cruelly disappoint, but Robert Ebert really likes it, so I think I may just take a chance and see it.

Weekend Assignment #252: Book Connections

I just stumbled across this cool blog ~ Outpost Mâvarin ~ courtesy of Florinda (thanks for that!) when I was looking at her blog tonight. Apparently, every week Karen of Outpost Mavarin appoint a "guest professor" to pose a question to her readers. This week, Laura of YBTN, gave the Weekend Assignment. As Florinda said, "[b]oth the main question and the extra credit are hers, as we return to a favorite subject for some of us: books!"

Assignment #252: Where do you get books from?
Extra Credit: What was the last book you read, and why?

I had to respond to this one, because I love talking about books and everything to do with them almost as much as I enjoy reading them! Also, it gives me a chance to give a short, glowing review of the best book I've read so far in 2009.

So, without further ado, here is my response: I get the majority of my books from the library, because I just don't have enough room in my tiny apartment to keep a lot of books. I have over a thousand books in storage as it is, and I just can't bring myself to add more while leaving my old, well-loved books all alone in boxes in a storage unit. It just isn't fair. Still, sometimes I simply MUST have a book, and then I either buy it online from Amazon, go to a used book store, go to a Borders or Barnes & Noble, or go to an indie book store like Metropolis Books in downtown Los Angeles on Main between 4th and 5th Streets. I also like to shop at library sales and thrift shops, although I haven't done that in awhile.

The last book I finished (a couple of nights ago) is my favorite so far in 2009 ~ The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara. It won the Pulitzer, and for good reason! It simply blew me away. I even dreamed about it last night, about being at Gettysburg ~ not during the battle, but at the national monument. Though I have never been there before, in my dream I saw some of the old cannon still there, a few statues, and stood at the top of the ridge looking down the slope up which the Rebel army swarmed (and died) in an attempt to break the Union line.

Now, I'm not really much one for books about battles and war. I did read Caesar's The Civil War and Commentaries on the Gallic Wars, but those were different. However, Shaara did an amazing job of making the characters real (well, most of them actually were real people, though Shaara gave them personalities and dialogue while staying within the bounds of what we know about them historically), of making the battle scenes horribly real and the action completely comprehensible.

If I tell you that, toward the end, I wept, even though I knew how it was going to turn out & even though I seldom cry anymore, perhaps that will give an indication of just how impressive The Killer Angels is. In fact, just remembering that bit at the end ("It may be years, it may be forever...") brings an ache to my heart and a thickness in my throat. I want to read it all over again and plan to buy it so I have it on hand. It was that good!

THE KING'S ROSE

I gave this YA historical fiction novel a really good review over at Just One More Page...Or Two a few months ago when I finished the advance reader copy. It's about ready to be released, so I thought I'd just post a link to it for those who are interested in really good historical fiction. This is about Katherine Howard, one of Henry VIII's wives who lost her head over him. :)

Don't be afraid of the YA label. This is suitable for discerning adults too.

Happy New Year 2009!

Wishing each and every one a healthy and happy New Year filled with prosperity and great books to read!

New Writing Projects

I've been moping around since NaNoWriMo ended on November 30. This year's WriMo was, as always, both exhilarating and brutal, and I miss it. Yes, it's nice to be able to read again ~ in fact, I've already finished Fool, a truly bawdy but really entertaining new novel by Christopher Moore based on Shakespeare's King Lear (review coming soon to Just One More Page) and am halfway through Chasing Darkness by Robert Crais, one of my favorite mystery writers, and Wolfsbane and Mistletoe, an anthology of "hair-raising holiday tales," featuring Sookie Stackhouse in a really lovely short story about what starts out as a really lonely Christmas. And, compliments of Hachette Books, I just received a copy of Gods Behaving Badly, a debut by Marie Phillips, which I can't wait to start. (Actually, I've read the first chapter and already it's made me laugh out loud.) You can read more about Gods Behaving Badly and enter a giveaway contest on my blog at Just One More Page.

Anyway besides being able to read again, it's also nice to be able to socialize and relax and blog. But, still, I miss the frenzied madness that is NaNo.

So, to try and end my general mopiness, I have joined a critique group. We're going to meet once a week and critique portions of each other's writing. It's a little scary to think of sharing my fiction writing with others, but they are fellow WriMos, so I think I can trust them to be kind, though I hope they are also honest. Just not brutally so.

I have also signed up for Forward Motion's writing course, which takes two (yikes! two!) years to get through but which could result in a submittable (is that a word?) novel.

Maybe, between the two projects, I will actually manage to finish writing a novel or two. How amusing that would be!

NaNoWriMo November Has Begun!

Hi, Fellow Readers and Bloggers ~ For those who have not yet heard of it, November is NaNoWriMo month. NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month, and NaNoWriMo is a website dedicated to the thousands of people who take on the challenge of writing a 50,000 word novel during the thirty days of November. This year will be my third year of doing NaNo, and I won both previous years (2006 and 2007).

What do you win? you might well ask. Well, you win a virtual purple bar and the right to print a out a fancy certificate that says you are a NaNoWriMo winner. No publishing deal, no money, no prizes. Just the aforesaid purple bar, a .JPG of a winners' certificate, and the immense and priceless satisfaction that comes from having actually managed to write a 50,000+ word novel in one month.

Now, the reason I bring this up is two-fold. Firstly, I am, as I mentioned, doing NaNo again this November. Therefore, during every free moment of the entire month, I will be frenziedly typing my NaNoNovel on my lovely little AlphaSmart Dana word processor. Ergo, I will have no time to blog, much less read any novels about which to blog. Neither reading nor blogging for an entire month is a real hardship, but participating in NaNoWriMo is worth it.

Secondly, I will be doing a bit of writing about the NaNo experience at my Musings from the Dark Side blog, and I invite you to visit me there during November if you'd like to read about my crazy and wonderful experiences doing NaNo this year. When I emerge from my novel-writing frenzy in December, assuming I make it through NaNo alive (haha, just joking), I hope to resume blogging here at The Anything Blog, as well as on Just One More Page, where I will be reviewing my favorite mystery author Carol O'Connell's soon-to-be-released new novel "Bone by Bone." (I am sooo excited to have been given an ARC of it to read and review! It just arrived today, in fact, and it is going to be very very difficult to resist reading it until after November.)

So, to all those in the U.S., if I don't have a chance to blog here for awhile, don't forget to vote on Tuesday, be sure to honor our Veterans on November 11, and have a wonderful and blessed Thanksgiving! And to everyone here and in other parts of this great world, have a great month and please come back in December.

New! Hatchette Book's Blog Talk Radio

This afternoon was just tooling around the web, looking for some suggestions for good books, and I came across this cool site where Miriam Parker hosts Blog Talk Radio shows with various authors. The first interview (with Michael Connelly) aired on Wednesday last.

Turns out, I missed the one with Michael Connelly (who is one of my absolute favorite authors), but I was able to listen to it by going to her site and scrolling down to the blue Blog Talk Radio dial. He gave a wonderful interview ~ talked about how he writes, how he finds things to write about, and how he feels about blog reviews. He also talked about his latest novel coming out soon, THE BRASS VERDICT. I so want to read this sequel to THE LINCOLN LAWYER, which I really enjoyed when I read it earlier this year. You know, Harry's going to be featured in THE BRASS VERDICT too!



Then, next Wednesday 10/29 at 1PM ET, Miriam's going to be interviewing Kathleen Kent, author of THE HERETIC'S DAUGHTER. Anyone who wants to can post a question on Miriam's blog and she will put you on the agenda. You can either call into the show at (646) 378-0040 or just listen online here.

I know where I'm going to be next Wednesday! Hope you can join in!

Lists, Lists, Lists!

So I just Stumbled Upon a new website that contains nothing but lists, and, as I've written before, I just love lists. Two that I looked at were the 10 Most Disturbing Novels and the 5 Worst Presidential Candidates Who Lost. Both were eye opening and pretty funny, in a macabre kind of way (at least the one that listed the presidential candidates who lost).

BTW, I've found some interesting stuff through Stumble Upon, though I haven't had much time to explore the site.

Banned Book Week - Never Too Late!

Last week was Banned Books Week. I was a bit busy at work so didn't have time to get involved in the celebration, but in my view it's never too late.

From a post at the Book Therapy blog, here is a list of books that have been banned somewhere in the world at one time or another for one reason or another. I just love lists, don't you? This one is interesting because on most of them I have no idea for what misbegotten reason the book could possibly have been banned. But people who think it's their right to control how others think don't really need a reason, misbegotten or otherwise, I guess.

So, how many have you read?

1. The Bible
2. Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
3. Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes *
4. The Koran
5. Arabian Nights
6. Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
7. Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift
8. Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
9. The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
10. Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman *
11. The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli *
12. Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
13. Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
14. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
15. Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens *
16. Les Misérables by Victor Hugo *
17. Dracula by Bram Stoker
18. Autobiography by Benjamin Franklin
19. Tom Jones by Henry Fielding
20. Essays by Michel de Montaigne
21. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
22. History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon *
23. Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
24. Origin of Species by Charles Darwin
25. Ulysses by James Joyce
26. Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio
27. Animal Farm by George Orwell
28. Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
29. Candide by Voltaire
30. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
31. Analects by Confucius
32. Dubliners by James Joyce *
33. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
34. Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
35. Red and the Black by Stendhal
36. Das Capital by Karl Marx
37. Flowers of Evil by Charles Baudelaire
38. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
39. Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D. H. Lawrence
40. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
41. Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser
42. Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
43. The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
44. All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque ***
45. Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx
46. Lord of the Flies by William Golding
47. Diary by Samuel Pepys
48. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
49. Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
50. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury *
51. Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
52. Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant
53. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
54. Praise of Folly by Desiderius Erasmus
55. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
56. Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm X
57. The Color Purple by Alice Walker
58. Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger
59. Essay Concerning Human Understanding by John Locke
60. Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
61. Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe
62. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
63. East of Eden by John Steinbeck
64. Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
65. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
66. Confessions by Jean Jacques Rousseau
67. Gargantua and Pantagruel by François Rabelais
68. Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes
69. The Talmud
70. Social Contract by Jean Jacques Rousseau
71. Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson *
72. Women in Love by D. H. Lawrence
73. American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser
74. Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler
75. A Separate Peace by John Knowles *
76. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
77. Red Pony by John Steinbeck
78. Popol Vuh
79. Affluent Society by John Kenneth Galbraith
80. Satyricon by Petronius *
81. James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl *
82. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
83. Black Boy by Richard Wright
84. Spirit of the Laws by Charles de Secondat Baron de Montesquieu
85. Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut *
86. Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George
87. Metaphysics by Aristotle
88. Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder
89. Institutes of the Christian Religion by Jean Calvin
90. Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse
91. Power and the Glory by Graham Greene
92. Sanctuary by William Faulkner
93. As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
94. Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin
95. Sylvester and the Magic Pebble by William Steig
96. Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
97. General Introduction to Psychoanalysis by Sigmund Freud
98. Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
99. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Alexander Brown
100. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
101. Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman by Ernest J. Gaines
102. Émile Jean by Jacques Rousseau
103. Nana by Émile Zola
104. Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
105. Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin
106. Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn ***
107. Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein
108. Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Peck
109. Ox-Bow Incident by Walter Van Tilburg Clark
110. Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
111. Are You There God, It’s Me, Margaret by Judy Blume *
112. The Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling
113. The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare
114. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L’Engle
115. The Witches of Worm by Zilpha Keatly Snyder

I am sad to see that I have not read that many of these books (I bolded the ones I have read and italicised the ones I have partially read; *=books I want to read and ***=books I have in my library). Some are books I have long intended to read but just haven't gotten round to yet. Perhaps one goal for next year will be to read one banned book a month.

Let's all do our parts to combat the book banning control freaks of the world by reading a banned book today!

Devourer of Books Celebrates 100th Review Milestone!

Congratulations to Devourer of Books who has reviewed her 100th book on her blog! She is celebrating by giving away up to five great books from her stash. Be sure to check it out and enter her giveaway contest.

Around Downtown L.A.

I'm so excited to learn about a bookstore just a few blocks from where I live in Downtown Los Angeles called Metropolis Books! I'm thinking of walking over there this afternoon, depending on if it's open on Sunday. Anyway, apparently in honor of Halloween, they are having a book promotion of Ghost Files next Saturday that I definitely plan to attend. Here's the info:

Saturday, October 04, 2008 05:00 PM
Ghost Society, The, will be promoting Ghost Files
Appears on/at: METROPOLIS BOOKS, 440 S Main St., Los Angeles, CA 90013

Here's the website for Metropolis Books (http://www.metropolisbooksla.com/), and here's their blog: http://www.downtownbookblog.blogspot.com/.

Stayed tuned for more information about Metropolis Books and Ghost Files.

Book Group Expo 2008 -- October 25th and 26th in San Jose

The third annual Book Group Expo is being held in San Jose, California on October 25th and 26th.

More than 75 authors will be there, including Annie Barrows, author of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society; Andre Dubus III, author of The Garden of Last Days; Kate Jacobs, author of The Friday Night Knitting Club; Ann Packer, author of Songs Without Words; and Garth Stein, author of The Art of Racing in the Rain. For a complete list of authors, click here.

There will be Literary Salons that include authors and various panel discussions as well as a Marketplace featuring onsite vendors ready to introduce you to products available to enhance your book group's reading experience, including wine, tea, chocolate and other savory and sweet treats to try and buy. Coming from out of town? Check out the discounted hotel rates at the official Book Group Expo hotels website.

Click here to find out more about Book Group Expo and to get your tickets.

Adventures in Reading

What was the most unusual (for you) book you ever read? Either because the book itself was completely from out in left field somewhere, or was a genre you never read, or was the only book available on a long flight… whatever? What (not counting school textbooks, though literature read for classes counts) was furthest outside your usual comfort zone/familiar territory?
And, did you like it? Did it stretch your boundaries? Did you shut it with a shudder the instant you were done? Did it make you think? Have nightmares? Kick off a new obsession?

I am a pretty adventurous reader, so I am often surprised by a book that I know is outside my "comfort zone." Sometimes the surprise is good, and sometimes, well, shutting it with a shudder is the mildest reaction I've had to some.

One of the books that I was certain I'd hate but which I read anyway, only because it was given to me by the Dean of the English Dept. at a college I worked at part-time when I was a senior in high school, turned out to be the very best kind of surprise. The professor told me that The Story of San Michele by Axel Munthe was his favorite novel of all time, but I was certain I wouldn't like it. It was written in the early 1900s, was a partly fictional biography of some doctor who built a bird sanctuary at San Michele overlooking the Bay of Naples, and, on top of that, was really long. Uh-huh. I was so not happy to have to read that huge tome, but I did it out of respect for the prof and fell in love! It changed the way I thought about literary novels, and it engendered a lifelong love of Italy.

Okay, that was then (about a half century ago) and this is now, and recently someone on LT recommended Hotel du Lac by Anita Brookner. I only picked it up because of that and because this year I had made a pledge to myself to read more literary fiction, both contemporary and classic. I fell in love with Hotel du Lac, too, and definitely see why it won the Booker Prize! That was probably one of the latest examples of a good surprise.

The other kind of book? I tend to put them out of my mind straightaway when I finish them ~ if I even bother to finish them at all. Like Einstein, I don't believe in cluttering my mind with unnecessary information!

Exciting News on the Literacy Tutoring Front!

A couple of years ago, I started tutoring over at the Central Library's Adult Literacy Center. Considering how important reading is to me, it should come as no surprise how much it has meant to me to watch someone who has grown up without the ability to read discover the magic of books and reading. There is, literally (pun intended), nothing like it!

Unfortunately, I've been without a student since about May of this year when my then-student had to stop for awhile due to personal issues. Though it was nice to take a break over the summer, now that autumn is in the air, I'm eager to get back to it again.

Anyway, today on my lunch hour I went to the library to return a couple of books and, on the spur of the moment, thought I'd stop in at the Center to say hi and kind of remind them I'm still around and waiting to be paired with a student. It was one of those fortuitously fortunate decisions because sitting there looking somewhat downcast was a guy who, I learned, was hoping to be paired up with a tutor.

It turned out our schedules match, so we were paired up and will be starting our lessons on Wednesday, the day after tomorrow!

This isn't the first volunteer work I've done in my long life, but it is one of the most gratifying. The students in the program are highly motivated and very appreciative of the time and effort their tutors expend on preparing lessons and meeting with them. The Los Angeles Adult Literacy program requires that the tutor commit to meeting with the student 3 hours a week (1-1/2 hours twice a week) for at least six months. In addition to the 3 hours of class time, I usually spend at least one hour of prep time a week, but it could be more depending on how creative I feel like getting.

This is a wonderful program, and similar programs are in place in many other cities and towns across the United States. In case anyone has a few extra hours a week and would like to volunteer, I strongly encourage you to check out becoming an adult literacy tutor and give the gift of literacy to someone in your home town!

If you are interested and want more information, please be sure and leave a comment with your email address and I'll be happy to answer or find the answers to your questions.

Just One More Page

I had originally meant this blog to be mostly about books and reading, since that is my greatest pleasure in life (surpassing even dark chocolate, really!). Awhile back, I was reading over all I've written, and I realized that the blog has become cluttered with other subjects and issues, more or less hiding the posts about books amongst posts about goats grazing in downtown Los Angeles, personal musings about the meaning of 9/11, and other non-bookish subjects.

So, I decided to start a new blog that would be devoted to books ~ a place where I can share my views and reviews, have book giveaways and contests, and interact with others interested mainly in bookish things. So began Just One More Page.

I hope you will visit my new book blog and enter the drawing for Mr. White's Confession, and let me know what you think about the layout and content. So far I've only written two posts, but I plan to post at least two reviews a week, in addition to having contests and polls about books and authors, and other such diversions.

Literature Map Locates Authors For You!

Here's a neat little e-toy I learned about awhile back from BookCrossing: a "map" of authors which aligns authors you like with others, the theory being that, if you like the one, you will like the others that are closest in proximity. Try it ~ I'm not sure how accurate it is, but it's really fun!

Other information about the website:
the literature-map is a part of gnooks (check this out too!)
gnooks is apart of gnod (books, movies, music!)
gnod is a projectof marek gibney