Constance Reader Writes Her Own Story

What I read: Week of 2/19/12

2012-02-24T14:19:00.003-08:00

Last week, I said that after plowing through nearly 2,000 pages of Herman Wouk's take on WWII and the Holocaust, I would need to focus on books in which people were not shot or gassed. I am pleased to say that nobody was gassed in the books I read this week. And while there was a shooting, it was not motivated by ideas of ethnic cleansing or eugenics, and therefore, I am calling this week a WIN.

I read:

-The Flight of Gemma Hardy by Margot Livesey (and reviewed it here).

-Into the Wildnerness by Sarah Donati

In my Books to Read if You Liked Outlander post, Zibilee and Laurie C. recommended the colonial-era Wilderness series. This is the story of Elizabeth Middleton, one mildly historically inaccurate female, newly arrived in the newly independent America. Elizabeth falls in love with Nathaniel Bonner, a white man raised by the Mahican Indians, and leaves her greedy father and goes to live with Nathaniel's family. There are land disputes, struggles over missing Tory gold, rumbles with the disapproving white folk, and tons and tons and TONS of bodice-ripping sex.

It is all, indeed, very Outlander-y. So Outlander-y, in fact, that Donati has made Diana Gabaldon's original characters, Clare and Jamie Fraser, into a sort-of tertiary (quaternary?) characters in her own work. There are also references to characters from Austen (Jane Bingley and Captain Frederick Wentworth make appearances in conversation), and I think the Viscount Durbeyfield, Elizabeth's childhood amour, is supposed to hearken back to Tess of the D'Urbervilles?

I understand liking a book a lot a LOT and wanting to pay homage to it in your own book, and it's a neat idea. But truthfully, I could have done without these little inside jokes and references, as every time I came across one, it jarred me from the narrative, but the story itself is gripping enough that I will probably continue on with book 2 anyway. (There's also the sex. That helps.)

And if I ever start an all girl band, I am going to make sure we are called The Historically Inaccurate Females.

-Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay by Nancy Milford

I finished Savage Beauty this week. It took me a while. I plowed through the first third in about an hour, then read the second third over the course of a week or so, but the final third took almost two months. It's not Milford's fault, as Savage Beauty is one of the best-written and most meticulously researched bios I've ever come across--the story of her struggles with Millay's sister Norma over the poet's personal letters and effects could have inspired a book all on its own.

The issue is more that I've realized that I have a problem with biographies; namely, that they I know what's coming at the end of one. The denouement in a biography is always the same: old age and/or sickness, then death. If I love the person I'm reading about--and I always do, because who reads a biography about someone they don't respect/love/esteem?--then their death hurts me as much as the death of somebody I know would hurt me, and troubles my thoughts for days afterward. I don't like seeing them sick, worn down, dying. In many cases, the death doesn't have much to do with the way the person I'm reading about lived their life, and only serves to bum me out at the end of the story and overshadow their stunning career/reign/achievements. Or maybe I'm just a fairweather biography friend, deserting my heroes at the time they need me most?

-The Leftovers by Tom Perrotta

-Today, after storytime, while I was waiting in the library parking lot for AAA to come jump my dead battery, I started The Leftovers. I had to wait a while, so I got a good way in, but I haven't finished it or come close to finishing it. I'm writing about it this week because I'm not sure I will finish it. Perrotta is a brilliant satirist, but the problem for me with satire is that sometimes you have to turn the characters into devices, and it can end up feeling kind of stupid and empty and mean. But the premise of the novel, of the people left behind after the Rapture, is amusing and interesting, so who knows? Maybe I will finish--check back next week.

Happy Friday, everybody! What are you reading this weekend?

If you like "Smash"...

2012-02-23T18:31:00.008-08:00

My latest TV obsession is the new NBC show "Smash," which (if you haven't seen it) gives a behind-the-scenes look at a new Broadway musical about the life of Marilyn Monroe, from the perspective of the writers, producers, and actors. This week, J. and I plowed through the first three episodes, and I was struck by how engrossing the show is, almost like a theater-based version of "The West Wing." I was really left wanting more. I can't wait for the new episode on Monday, and I'm turning to some of my favorite books (fiction and non) about the theater to fill the gap until then.

You're looking for: a behind-the-scenes look at the world of professional (musical) theater.

You might like: Bethel Merriday by Sinclair Lewis (review); Sing Out, Louise!: 150 Stars of the Musical Theatre Remember 50 Years on Broadway by Dennis McGovern and Deborah Grace Winer; The Confessions of Edward Day by Valerie Martin; Next Season by Michael Blakemore; The Show Makers: Great Directors of the American Musical Theater by Lawrence Thelen; The Season: A Candid Look at Broadway by William Goldman.

Can you think of any favorites to add to the list? Are you enjoying "Smash" as much as I am?

And have you seen the documentary Every Little Step, about the casting and production process for the revival of A Chorus Line? It's one of my favorite musicals, and I'm saving this to watch this weekend.

Book review: The Flight of Gemma Hardy

2012-02-21T12:52:00.000-08:00

The Flight of Gemma Hardy is meant to be a modern retelling of Jane Eyre. Gemma is an Icelandic orphan, brought to Scotland by her uncle after her parents' deaths. She is mistreated by his family after he also dies. She is sent away to boarding school. Upon leaving the school, she accepts a position as a governess in the bleak Orkney Islands, where she falls in love with Mr. Sinclair, the mysterious guardian of her charge.

Margot Livesey recalls that she first read Jane Eyre as a lonely 9-year-old and was struck by the similarities between her life and the famous orphan's. Both were poor. Both were bullied cruelly by the girls at school. Gemma's story is set in the 1950s and '60s, around the time of Livesey's own adolescence; there are supposed to be at least some details of Livesey's childhood in Gemma's, but they are hard to find, as the story so closely mirrors that of the original novel. Indeed, if you took every plot point of Jane Eyre and plotted it on a graph and then did the same for Gemma Hardy, the two would mirror each other almost exactly. The characters, their motivations, even their physical descriptions, are, most of the time, the same.

Because the stories are so similar, there is almost zero dramatic tension throughout. It's hard to care about the evolution of Jane's schoolgirl friendship with the asthmatic Miriam Goodall; the moment she comes on the scene, you know that she is destined for the same fate as Jane Eyre's pal Helen Burns. (Sucks to your ass-mar, Miriam.) Later in the story, after Gemma has been deceived and betrayed by Mr. Sinclair, it's hard to become invested in her burgeoning relationship with the conscientious Archie. He's the St. John Rivers character, and by this late in the novel, it's become apparent that there will be absolutely no diverging from the original text. And Jane doesn't end up with St. John Rivers. So neither will Gemma. The pages began to slip by, placeholders until Mr. Sinclair can appear on the scene with the resolution to his feeble mystery (a crazy wife in the attic might have been lamely redundant, but it would have at least been interesting).

The thing that kept me turning the pages was Livesey's writing, which I found to be refreshingly clear compared to Bronte's turgid prose. At the very least, the gothic nature of the story allows Livesey to delve into the magical realism that she does so well and that I fell in love with in Eva Moves the Furniture. And then there was the starkly beautiful, isolated landscape of the Orkneys, with the Stone Age relics and hidden causeways, and the mystery of Iceland's volcanoes and Viking sagas. Setting Gemma's story against this backdrop, and against the burgeoning feminist movement, was the one brilliant note in an otherwise flat tale. Because these things highlight how Gemma's story--and Jane's--is really, first and foremost, a saga of self-discovery, something that often swallowed up by the dark and passionate romance of the original text.

But it's not enough to justify a novel like this, so close to the original. So the question remains: Why, exactly, did this "modern retelling" need to be told?

Perpetual motion

2012-02-20T20:09:00.000-08:00

Lately, all of my photos of Lulu look like this. The iPhone really isn't equipped to deal with the speed of a newly mobile infant amped up on caffeine-laced breastmilk.

Please to note that these pictures were taken by me from the vantage point of the bathtub. HI WERE YOU REQUIRING PRIVACY? WELL LETS PLAY INSTEAD OK?

What I Read: Week of 2/12/12

2012-02-18T18:10:00.000-08:00

"What I read this week" should actually be called "What I read in the last two weeks," because that's how long it took me to plow through all 1,900 pages of The Winds of War and War and Remembrance, Part the First and Part the Second of Herman Wouk's WWII mega-saga. Even with my speedy reading skills, I had to shirk a lot of housework to get them read in that time frame, and I am not ashamed to admit I parked Lulu in front of Lazy Town on Friday so that I could plow through the last 50 pages over a long breakfast.

My readapalooza was totally worth the multiple-days backlog of piled-up laundry because Winds and Remembrance together provide one of the most comprehensive views of WWII that I have ever read in fiction or nonfiction. Wouk takes the reader from prewar Berlin to the siege of Moscow to the Battle for Britain to the Pacific campaign to the horrors of Auschwitz and Theresienstadt to wartime Washington to the days of the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos and he does it smoothly. It sounds like a lot of ground for even two books to cover, but spanned over 1,900 pages, it works.

The vehicle for this globe-trotting journey is Navy captain Pug Henry, who becomes FDR's confidant after penning a prescient memo detailing the Nazi-Soviet nonaggression pact in 1939. Pug spends the wartime years going wherever the President needs him, serving as his eyes and ears. His son Warren is an aviator stationed at Pearl Harbor. His son Byron falls in love with an American Jewish girl who is trapped in Italy by the war. His wife is a Washingtonian socialite, hobnobbing with journalists, scientists, and Foreign Service officials, and in this way, Wouk assembles a wide cast of characters and viewpoints. Interspersed throughout the narrative are interludes from the memoirs of fictitious German general Armin von Roon, which gives the historical context necessary to understand the little, life-changing details of each battle, each shifting alliance.

Winds and Remembrance have been called "the American War and Peace," and I think it's fitting. Henry Kissinger called Wouk's novels "the war itself," but there is no way that you could mistake them for books about war (just as you wouldn't say that about W&P). They are books about people, how people relate to other people, how they grow and change and discover their worth and their courage when under fire. Herman Wouk called his novels "a love story," and they are. They just happen to be set against the backdrop of war.

Things I especially loved:

-Wouk's description of Pug Henry's appearance, which sums up his whole character very neatly: "Possibly from long years of peering out to sea, Henry's eyes were permanently marked with what looked like laugh lines. People mistook him for a genial man."

-Pug's response to hard times: "Sometimes I tell myself I didn't volunteer to be born... I got drafted." (I plan on stealing this retort).

-The story arc of Leslie Slote, a young diplomat who makes up for an act of cowardice during the fall of Poland by committing himself to exposing the Nazis' extermination of the Jewish people. His redemption gave a note of optimism to a part of this story that was very hard to read.

-The way that reading these books made me feel close to my grandfather, who, like Byron Henry, was a submariner during the war. I went with Grandpa to sub-vet events as a little girl, and I think he knew how proud I was of him. But after reading Wouk's chilling descriptions of battle hundreds of feet under the sea, I wish I could tell him all over again how proud I am.

Grandpa F., in the original gangsta Instagram shot.

On deck for next week: something light and fluffy, where people are not shot at and gassed.

Love in the time of color-blocking

2012-02-17T08:20:00.001-08:00

I might have had to miss Project Runway last night (DON'T SPOIL ME!), but I can get my fashion fix this morning all the same. With a bookish twist! Because menswear designer Carlos Campos has based his Fall 2012 collection on Gabriel García Márquez's Love in the Time of Cholera.

Campos says, "García Márquez's book is a very romantic love story of a man who waits 50 years to tell a woman he loves her. We wanted to take that and mix romanticism with realism within the fantasy writing of García Márquez."

I definitely see the connection, in the old-fashioned silhouettes of the coats and the dreamy ombre effect on the shirts, the whimsy of the colorblocked suits. (I kind of want the jacket up there on the left, in a feminine cut. Anthropologie, get thee on it posthaste!)

This isn't the first time Campos has been inspired by literature; last year he looked to Pablo Neruda when designing his Fall line.

How cool is this idea, though, fashion inspired by literature? Speaking of South American magical realism, I would love to own a dress or coat inspired by Isabel Allende's The House of the Spirits. Something floaty and dreamy, with shocking colors (to compliment green hair and blue skin).

What books do you think would make great fashion inspirations?

A day to spend

2012-02-16T13:59:00.000-08:00

Every other Thursday, James goes into the office for meetings, and Lu and I are on our own for the day. J. tends to act as the responsible adult in our house, and so of course, when he's gone, everything goes to shit real fast. I eat glorified junk food for breakfast. I blast music. (Here's what we're listening to today, some bright Big Band to combat outside rainy/gloominess). Lulu and I break the cardinal rule of WAH/SAH living and lounge around in our pajamas ALL. DAY. LONG.

And while we make a pretense of doing grown-up things like baking...

And laundry...

Don't let it fool you. We're really just goofing around as hard as we can.

Getting to have James at home every day? Is the best thing in the world. Hurrah for telecommuting! But sometimes it's nice to spend a day with my girl, just the two of us. It will mean staying up late tonight to get my own work done and missing Project Runway and eating a hurried dinner at my desk as I upload manuscripts.

But it is TOTALLY worth it.

_____

Pat loved the sound of "a day to spend." It sounded so gloriously lavish to "spend" a whole day, letting its moments slip one by one through your fingers like beads of gold.

-L.M. Montgomery, Pat of Silver Bush

Books = Love

2012-02-14T16:57:00.000-08:00

[photo]

Happy Valentine's Day, everybody! Since today is all about sharing the love, I thought it would be the perfect opportunity to share a link I recently stumbled across.

Every year, the Center for the Book in the Library of Congress (along with Target), sponsors a contest inviting readers in grades 4 through 12 to submit a letter to their favorite author, telling them how their books have changed their lives.

The winning letters are posted online, and there's not a one of them that didn't make me smiley and teary at the same time.

As if by fate, I read the book The Cricket in Times Square at the beginning of fourth grade, right before I got sick. My diagnosis in the middle of one scary Saturday night whisked me away from everything familiar to me without warning. Thoughts of Chester surviving in his new world inspired me to fight with all my strength and to keep fighting through the long haul. Chester and I not only survived, but thrived, despite the terrible odds against us. And, along the way, we both made some incredible new friends. Mine included a brave little cricket, and for that, I thank you.

With gratitude,

Christian Lusardi (grade 8)

You can read the other winning letters here. (The one from 6th grader Maryam is an especially terrific read).

Have you ever written to an author to tell them what their books meant to you?

Gross National Happiness

2012-02-13T08:21:00.000-08:00

This weekend, between birthday parties (we went to two, a 1st and a 32nd and had a great time at both), I finally had the chance to read Lisa Napoli's travel memoir, Radio Shangri-La. Napoli is a broadcast journalist who traveled to the isolated Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan to help establish the country's historic first radio station.

Bhutan is often referred to as "The Happiest Place on Earth," and the Bhutanese government has long taken steps to preserve its citizens' culture and a simple, peaceful, uncomplicated way of life, which resulted in its long being closed off from modern methods of technology and travel. A large part of Napoli's story is devoted to examining how the old and new ways of life are being balanced to achieve the greatest Gross National Happiness. But an even larger theme is how this culture of happiness infiltrated and changed Napoli's own life.

Ever since finishing the book, I've had my head in the clouds, and my mind turning over these new words and images and ideas, trying to find a way to fit them into my day-to-day.

(East or West, this lady is fierce. Can't you just see her on Advanced Style?)

"The Himalayan air, the very notion of Gross National Happiness, the exercise of [writing down] three good things--the cocktail of them had convinced me to embrace the moment before me, now, to appreciate it for what it was, but not to hold it so tight that I never let it go. For another moment would occur, and then another." -Lisa Napoli, Radio Shangri-La

If you liked Outlander...

2012-02-10T01:02:00.000-08:00

I like to check, from time to time, the search terms that lead people to Constance Reader. Sometimes they're funny ("Jon Hamm's naked butt") and sometimes nonsensical ("shave fu Halloween?") Most of the time, though, they're book related, and lately I've been getting a lot of the same search phrases, over and over. "Books like Outlander," "What to read after Outlander series," "Outlander recommendations." I don't know what exactly I did to become a Google hotspot for Gabaldon's time-traveling romance series--besides read it, and poke goodnatured fun at it--but much like Jon Hamm's naked butt, I'll take it.

And my heart goes out to these anonymous searchers, because I have been there, too: finished with a good book and looking to read more like it. The frustration of not knowing where to turn next is almost like a physical pain. And so it gave me the idea for a new feature.

You're looking for: big, fat historical fiction with a sexy and/or sci-fi twist.

You might like: Blindspot by Jane Kamensky and Jill Lepore (review), Blackout by Connie Willis (review), Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin, The Sunne in Splendour by Sharon Kay Penman, Revolution by Jennifer Donnelly, and Green Darkness by Anya Seton.

Can you think of any other suggestions? Feel free to post them in the comments. (Pictures of Jon Hamm's naked anatomy also accepted!) If you're looking for suggestions based on a book you loved, drop me a line at constance.reader@gmail.com.

EAT ALL THE THINGS

2012-02-09T08:35:00.000-08:00

Lulu has hit that phase where she wants to eat everything. Whether or not it is intentionally designated as food. We've had to get really vigilant about babyproofing, we perform sweeps of the living room carpet several times a day. And she still finds things to gnaw on. The TiVo remote has short-circuited from excessive drool. When I slip my feet into my shoes, I find the toes waterlogged with saliva. Basically, if it's on the floor, she will eat it.

You know what we keep on the floor? The cat food dish.

You can see where this is going.

Today, I heard Lulu laughing like crazy and went to see what she was doing. I found her in the kitchen by the food dish. The cats were swarming around her, peevishly. Lu's cheeks were bulging like a baby squirrel's. And then she smiled, and little pieces of cat food tumbled out of her mouth down the front of her onesie (which had a dog on it) (which is ironic, like rain on your wedding day) (which is not actually ironic, but is terribly unfortunate) (like your child eating cat food by the handful).

Apparently, we are not that good at babyproofing. And Lu keeps trying to kiss me, and it's yucky because she has cat food breath, you guys.

And I am not joking about when I say that she will eat ANYTHING.

At least we don't have a picky eater on our hands? There's that, I guess.

Has your baby ever eaten anything excessively gross? Or are you a good parent, and more attentive and forward-thinking than I? My little sister ate a cricket, once, which makes me feel slightly better. (Even if she is going to kill me for posting that. Sorry, Kris!)

Junior Elf

2012-02-08T11:43:00.000-08:00

I love these vintage Rand McNally Junior Elf books, from their supersaturated Technicolor illustrations to their bright frontispieces to the 1950s and '60s slang scattered throughout the pages ("Gee golly, Ma!") They were favorites of my mom, growing up, and she found a handful in an antique store a few weeks ago and bought them for Baby Lulu.

We've got a few birthday parties coming up, so I poked around online with the idea that a bundle of these books tied up with some baker's twine would make a sweet present. Imagine my surprise when I found that some of the older books (originally about $0.29) can go for as much as $20 or even $30! Even adjusted for inflation, that's some return on investment! Kinda makes you wish you'd collected them instead of Beanie Babies, right?

Click here for a complete list of Junior Elf titles.

Hammy's lament

2012-02-07T20:08:00.000-08:00

So a few months ago, my cousin Caitlin got a hamster. And oh, she loved that hamster. And so did her mom, my aunt. They called to update us on every twitch of the little fellow's whiskers. "He stood up on his hind legs! He washed his little hands and then he used them to clean his face!" They got him a deluxe cage and one of those free-range hamster balls. They named him Hammy. They loved him so.

And then, this weekend, the night before my great-uncle's funeral, they showed up at a family dinner bleary eyed. It appeared Hammy had taken a sudden turn for the worst. He was lying on his side, his eyes closed. His breathing was irregular. He wasn't looking good.

Of course. Because the death of a real, live family member was not enough for one twelve-year-old in one weekend. The hamster had to go, too, just so she could understand the shittiness and finality of death on a micro/macro scale. A sucker punch of pure ass direct straight from the Universe.

We held out hope. Perhaps Hammy had partaken too liberally of his salt block and had a digestive upset that would pass? But the next day, my aunt L. called to tell us Hammy had died. You could hear Caitlin weeping in the background. My aunt is a single mom, and couldn't bear the thought of disposing of her beloved furry friend by herself.

So James volunteered.

He drove over to their house and returned a little while later. "Where is the hamster?" we asked. "In my pocket," he said. When we looked at him, aghast, he said, "In a TUPPERWARE, OH MY GOD." Then he went out back with his headphones on, and dug a grave in a patch of ivy near the lake. During the Super Bowl. In a misting rain (of course).

He worked neatly and efficiently. I know, because I watched from the deck. And while I was watching, I thought about how, when I was a little girl, I used to stand in front of my bedroom mirror and pretend to smoke cigarettes (O, the glamour!) and imagine I was 30 and married. I would tell my reflection, a stand-in for my sophisticated, grown-up friends, in a deep throaty voice, interesting facts about the man who was my husband. "My husband is a millionaire," I'd say. "My husband is in Russia working for the CIA." (Obvs I was not very discreet.) "My husband is Joshua Jackson. You might remember him from such films as The Mighty Ducks and D2: The Mighty Ducks."

"My husband is burying a hamster," I said to myself just then.

Then I went inside because, DUH, raining.

Later, Caitlin came over to view the resting place and was in better spirits. She was already talking about her campaign to convince her mom to get a replacement hamster. She had a bag of dark-chocolate covered pretzels, which she gave to James.

"These are for you," she said.

"Thank you for burying my hamster is what I mean to say," she clarified.

You're the best kind of husband, James. That's what I mean to say.

Giveaway winners

2012-02-07T17:27:00.001-08:00

With everything going on this weekend, I forgot to do the drawing for the winners of The Discovery of Jeanne Baret until today--my apologies!

Congrats to Lindsey of Literary Lindsey and Bess of Alala Mamas! Two supercool ladies who I am sure can relate to the awesomeness of Ms. Baret herself.

Hope you guys enjoy the book as much as I did.

Mr. Norfolk

2012-02-06T17:22:00.000-08:00

My great-uncle died this past Friday. This weekend, James and Lulu and I drove down to my hometown to be with family.

It was a shock to be there and to know my uncle was gone. In a lot of ways, he personified my hometown to me. He was a lawyer, a philanthropist, a local judge. He invested in blighted parts of the city and revitalized them. He did so much for the place that one of his nicknames was "Mr. Norfolk." Another thing that people called him was "Uncle Pete"--all people, whether or not they were actually related to him. Because he treated everybody he met like family.

As we drove around on Saturday and Sunday, meeting up with old friends and flitting from place to place, I took a series of pictures out of the car window, trying to see with fresh eyes the city where I was born, the city my uncle loved so much. It was ugly, blustery, and cold for most of the day, but all of the colors seemed to pop so much more against that gray sky. The dull slate of the battleships in the harbor, the faded brick of the art-deco buildings downtown, the bold primary colors of the flags, the bright blue of the bay.

We'll miss you, Uncle Pete. And so will this city that you loved so much.

Best books for copyeditors

2012-02-02T08:37:00.000-08:00

I still remember the first day of my first copyediting job, for my college newspaper. I had to take a test. I sat in a cramped cubicle with the paperback copy of the Webster's dictionary that I had brought with me, and I sweated. When I was finished, I brought my sheet, with three printed paragraphs on it, back to my boss and I felt buoyed up by the number of proofreading marks scattered across the page. There were about a million of them, so surely I'd done a great job.

And then I watched in horror as her red pen slashed through the text, ferreting out all the mistakes I'd missed.

"Don't worry," she said, seeing my face. "Being an editor doesn't mean knowing everything. It means knowing enough to identify a problem. And then knowing how to find the fix for it."

She gave me a copy of the Chicago Manual of Style and told me to go home and read. And I haven't stopped since. Over the past ten years, I've amassed a library of books about the theory and practice of editing. The comprehensive list could stretch on for pages; the list below consists of my picks for best of the best.

Chicago Manual of Style, 16th Edition: Every organization has its own style guide but Chicago is by far the gold standard. I like it because it allows for a lot of flexibility and common sense. The goal of Chicago is not so much to give you a list of rules of what to do and what not to do but to help you think about editing in a way that allows you to make the right decision for the manuscript. James (who is also an editor!) and I jokingly refer to it as "the Bible." (Bonus: it's purty. I love the little splash of Tangerine Tango we talked about a few weeks ago.)

The Elements of Style by William Strunk, Jr. and E.B. White: "Omit needless words." One day, I'm going to cross-stitch it onto a pillow. Though it does provide rules of usage and lists of "words commonly misspelled," Elements is less of a day-to-day editing reference and more of an overview of the craft of writing. It's a short, quick read, full of a kind of dry humor. After a hard day of wrangling with a pesky author over an ungrammatical phrase that simply must stay in his article, I sometimes retire to my bubblebath with Messrs. Strunk and White to reassure me of what I already knew: that I WAS RIGHT and THAT DAMN AUTHOR was wrong.

The Subversive Copyeditor by Carol Fisher Saller. Speaking of dealing with THOSE DAMN AUTHORS, Saller's guide suggests strategies that editors can use to build an atmosphere of trust and cooperation with their authors. She emphasizes that sometimes, doing what's best for the reader doesn't always mean being strictly grammatically correct, provides tips for dealing with workflow and freelancing issues, and is refreshingly honest about her own fallability ("Sometimes I mess up.")

Words into Type, 3rd Edition by Marjorie E. Skillin: This book has a little bit of everything, from copyediting to proofreading to typesetting. Words is in its third decade in print, and is in desperate need of an update for the internet age, but it's still an indispensable resource, especially as a companion to Chicago, for those times when you don't feel like thinking and just want an answer as to whether something acquiesces with or to something else. (Hint: can be pricey, so buy a used copy!)

Technical Editing by Judith Tarutz: Technical editors demand higher rates than regular old copyeditors, and so it's a skill worth building. Tarutz's book gives advice on how to edit highly technical, specialized subject matter and provides case studies to help you build confidence in your new skill.

Line by Line by Claire Kehwald Cook: It is nigh upon impossible to edit your own writing, especially when you are paid to eviscerate other peoples'. I know this firsthand. Cook's book gives you the heart to take up your pen against yourself, and then alerts you to the bad transitions and overwritten sentences that ARE lurking in your prose.

Like I said: definitely not a comprehensive list, but a good, broad collection in my mind.

To my fellow wordsmiths out there in blogland: Any greats you want to add?

Decorating with words

2012-02-01T13:24:00.000-08:00

I've always loved the idea of turning a quotation from a beloved book into wall art, hanging it somewhere where I can see it and draw inspiration from it all through the day. Yesterday, my Pinterest addiction won out over sickness, and I mustered the energy to finally make the project a reality.

Also pictured: the beautiful quilt handmade by Auntie E. Louise Bates!

The quote is from Anne of Green Gables (natch); I was inspired by this print, but needed more of a pop of color to liven up the bare cream walls in Lu's nursery. I used a light hand with the paint because I wanted a kind of antique-y, weathered look, but I think something bolder (maybe an ombre effect or a chevron print?) would look nice, too.

Here's how it worked: I bought two identical canvases. I stuck peel-and-stick letters on them. (This kind--I ran out of Os and had to modify a Q, which is why it looks kind of wonky but I'm OK with that). I took the canvases outside and sprayed them (and a hefty portion of the lawn) with satin-finish spray paint. I let them dry and peeled off the letters, which was more satisfying than it should have been and probably speaks to a deep-seated mental illness of the compulsive variety. (I came home from the grocery store a few hours later and realized that I had a pink-painted W stuck square in the middle of my ass the whole time).

Ta-da! The whole thing cost $17.

By the way, here's what the rest of Lu's room looks like right now:

Wouldn't it be great if, when babies learned to crawl, they were all, "Thank you for wiping my butt while I flail my legs, let me shove some of this shit in the closet for you?" But no. Noooooo. Quite the opposite, in fact.

Have you ever decorated with words? Which did you pick? If you haven't yet, but you'd like to try this, which quote would you choose?

Waiting on Wednesday: Arcadia

2012-02-01T06:25:00.000-08:00

Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly event, hosted here, that spotlights upcoming releases that we're eagerly anticipating. This week's pre-publication, can't-wait-to-read selection is:

In the fields of western New York State in the 1970s, a few dozen idealists set out to live off the land, founding what would become a commune centered on the grounds of a decaying mansion called Arcadia House. Arcadia follows this romantic, rollicking, and tragic utopian dream from its hopeful start through its heyday and after.

Arcadia’s inhabitants include Handy, a musician and the group’s charismatic leader; Astrid, a midwife; Abe, a master carpenter; Hannah, a baker and historian; and Abe and Hannah’s only child, the book’s protagonist, Bit, who is born soon after the commune is created.

While Arcadia rises and falls, Bit, too, ages and changes. If he remains in love with the peaceful agrarian life in Arcadia and deeply attached to its residents—including Handy and Astrid’s lithe and deeply troubled daughter, Helle—how can Bit become his own man? How will he make his way through life and the world outside of Arcadia where he must eventually live?

Available March 13, 2012.

(That cover!)

Typhoid Lulu

2012-01-31T15:50:00.000-08:00

I'm sick. MotherFUCKING again. There was that strange flu-y thing week before last and then Lu had a respiratory infection, but that finally cleared itself up last Wednesdayish. And we had a glorious 72 HOUR period in which everybody felt fine. We reveled, danced, ate a Mexican feast, went to shows, went out with friends. Then at some point on Saturday night James turned to me and said, "My throat feels weird," and I fell to my knees and screamed. "KHAAAAAAAAAAAN!"

And then I ate fish oil capsules by the handful and pushed my vitamin intake to the limit of what is probably healthy. And I drank tons of water and even braved a few sips of the gross fizzy Emergen-C drink because no. Not again, please not again. And then I sneezed 500 times in a row and realized that my throat felt weird, too. And then I laid down in the middle of the floor and died.

I just did a rough tally, and by my estimate, SOMEONE in my house has had some horrible winterish crud EVERY WEEK since the end of November. Stomach grossness or sinus bullshit or just a general asshole of a common cold. Every week for EIGHT weeks. We get over one thing, we delight in a false sense of security for like a day, and then we are plunged into another. We have spent a ridiculous amount of money on Sudafed. And ibuprofen. We own four baby snot suckers, which are treated as instruments of the most hostile torture. A nebulizer and four boxes of Albuterol sit on Lulu's bookcase. The humidifier has become a permanent fixture in our bedroom, and has leaked an ugly water ring on my wood floors.

And I am not used to this. James and I? This is new for us. Normally, we have the immune systems of young, herring-fed Vikings. We never get sick. And now we are sick all of the time. And so I racked my brain to try and figure out what had changed to bring about this current state of misery.

SINE QUA NON.

We have a baby, and she is a bucket o' gnarly germs for real. And I feel like such a wussy for complaining. I know that there are people going through so much more than a little cold or two (or four). But I'm so worn down, so tired, so tired of being sick. I want to CRY. But I can't, because my eyes are already leaking, coldishly, of their own accord.

Someone, please tell me this will get better soon. At some point, my kid will get less infectious, right?

Is this forever?

Dot dash

2012-01-31T00:56:00.000-08:00

Have I told you guys about my weird obsession with Morse Code? I think it's SO COOL. Once, years ago, I spent a long, pointless summer learning it for no reason at all except that I thought it was cool. I guess now if I am ever trapped in a cave or destroyed building, I can tap on things to send messages and be rescued, as long as the person rescuing me happens to be a World War II veteran or another Morse-Code enthusiast freak like me. (A long shot, but if it ever happens...you KNOW I'm going to be all, "I told you so!")

It used to be my greatest dream that someone would send me a very dramatic telegram like

THEY HAVE FOUND WHERE I HID THE BODIES STOP
WILL YOU HELP ME ESCAPE THE LAW QUESTION MARK

But alas, my beloved interwebs made my beloved telegraph obsolete. Western Union delivered its final telegram in 2006, and now it's not going to happen for me.

But I can still enjoy drooling over this Morse Code swag. You can't take that away from me, progress!

i miss you notecard by Russell and Salguero

Your name here by Rebecca Coagan Scharlatt

Vintage Morse Code dress by SallyJaneVintage

Linocut block print by CoffeeinBed

There's something so graphic, so charming and fun, about the dots and dashes. Right? Or am I just a little strange?

Probably the latter. At least we can all agree that Wire rules.

Giveaway: The Discovery of Jeanne Baret by Glynis Ridley

2012-01-30T14:03:00.000-08:00

One of my favorite things about having a daughter is the renewed interest I am taking in women being badassed throughout history. I've got to start brushing up if I'm going to teach her all of the lessons that can be learned from these mothers who have gone before.

The Discovery of Jeanne Baret was one I'm definitely going to tell Lu about one day. (I reviewed it briefly here).

An 18th-century peasant expert in countryside herb lore, Jeanne Baret posed as a young man to gain the post of assistant to the naturalist aboard France's first global seafaring expedition in the 1760s. Ridley quickly crushes modern romantic ideas of the golden age of exploration: there were rat-scrounging days of starvation and crowded quarters, and significant abuse suffered by Baret at the hands of crew members who at first suspected, and eventually learned, her sex. Baret's harrowing journey also included scientific discoveries, such as of a plant--named bougainvillea in honor of the expedition's commander--which she believed would cure gangrene, and a Patagonian shrub to help treat the crew's rampant venereal disease. Ridley captures both the optimism that inspired Baret's groundbreaking and courageous trip and the sordid reality she encountered.

I have two copies of The Discovery of Jeanne Baret to give away so you can read about the badassery for yourself. Enter to win by leaving a comment on this blog--and telling me about a phenomenal women I might not have heard of before (I need to add her to my list!)

Winners will be announced at 2 PM EST Friday, February 3.

Good luck!

Dragons, Dragons

2012-01-30T06:00:00.000-08:00

This weekend, James, Lulu and I met with friends to make good on a playgroup date for our little ones. While we were out, we stumbled across an event celebrating Lantern Night, the last night of the Chinese New Year celebrations, which happens this Saturday. The red and gold decorations, the pounding drums, the spinning dancers, all put me in a very festive mood. Here are some of my favorite dragonish links to start off the week and to celebrate the upcoming Year of the Dragon:

Gourmet editor and cookbook author Nina Simonds tells us the best way to celebrate the Lunar New Year, and what to eat while doing it.
A fun link about what kind of luck we can expect the Water Dragon to bring us.
I've been obsessed with dragon fruit since I saw it used on Chopped. TasteSpotting has a bunch of serving ideas, recipes, and shopping tips for buying and cooking this fruit.
Kane and Cameron (and their mama!) made some adorable lanterns for Lantern Night.
Almost 10 years after his death, Stieg Larsson's partner talks to Vanity Fair about the man behind The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.
I'm going to get a copy of Eric Carle's Dragons, Dragons (and Other Creatures that Never Were) for Baby Lu's library!
I cry every time I read Emily Rapp's take on what it means to be a dragon mom.

Overheard at the festival: two little girls talking about how they would prefer the Year of the Kitty Cat because dragons were scary. It made me think of what animal I'd celebrate if I could pick my own Year of the... I think I finally settled on otter: I'd like to spend a year celebrating playfulness. What would you pick?

I can get behind any holiday that celebrates in this beautiful way:

When poets write novels

2012-01-27T20:54:00.001-08:00

Philip Larkin is one of my favorite poets, but up until I came across A Girl in Winter on the shelf at my local thrift store/bargain book extravaganza, I hadn't known he was also a novelist. I know that some poets write books and some novelists write poems, but I am apt to look at this cross-writing endeavor kind of skeptically. I've taken enough creative writing classes to know that writing poems and writing fiction are two different things, and being awesome at one does not necessarily mean you will be awesome at the other. And I like things neatly compartmentalized--I was the kind of kid that didn't let her food touch--so this kind of genre-hopping is something I tend to shy away from.

But like I said, I love Larkin. And I tend to think that Larkin's brilliance as a poet comes from the way he manages to jam-pack so much feeling into the pithy, rigid forms of his poems, and so I was interested to see what he would do with a whole book's worth of words. A Girl in Winter, his second novel, was written in 1947, at the beginning of his career, when Larkin hadn't really established himself one way or the other as a novelist or poet. Which I think makes the book extra interesting, in that he could have gone either way. At the point of writing it, he was still standing at the crossroads.

The story is of a young German expat living in England during the Second World War. Katherine Lind works at a glum job in a library. It isn't her first time in England; six years before, she was a guest of the Fennels, the family of her pen-pal, Robin. Robin and Katherine fell out of touch after that visit, and now Katherine is planning to meet him again before he ships out with the army. Will they reconnect? Or will the coldness that sprung up between them over the years have subsumed their old friendship?

It's a quiet little novel. There are no big plot hits. The characters are real and complicated, even if they aren't great personalities that you'll remember. But A Girl in Winter is valuable in that it does provide an interesting window into themes Larkin would explore later in his career as a poet. That strange mix of cynicism and naivete, the way he refuses to be moved by sentimentality and cliche. His post-war poems provide a realistic, untempered look at the failings of modern society, the dying sense of empire and the idea of being British. A Girl in Winter is similar, in that Larkin refuses to buy into the stiff-upper-lippedness that permeates so much fiction about the war years. He focuses on the ugly scar left behind by the ripped-up streetcar tracks with nary a word about how they've found new life as scrap for the war effort. His characters struggle with cold and boredom and fear and deprivation that comes from war. It's a realistic view, often grim, sometimes unpleasant, but it's so much more illuminating because of these things.

After writing A Girl in Winter, Larkin made the jump to writing poetry, and never went back. And that's the most curious part, to me. Because the fact that he never wrote another novel would insinuate that Girl isn't a very good book or that it wasn't very well-received. But actually, I found it beautifully written, and reviews indicate that though it might not have been fully recognized at the time, it has at least earned its fair share of accolades over the years. The New Yorker called it "one of the best embodiments of pre-Second World War manners and turns of speech." The New York Review of Books writes that with this novel, Larkin proves that "his novelistic gifts are as impressive as his abilities as a poet." And while I don't find that exactly true, in my opinion, I did think it was good enough that I find myself wondering why A Girl in Winter was Larkin's last novel. Did he find it too hard, to fill 300+ pages instead of three stanzas? Or could he have found it too easy, the simple act of dumping dialogue and description into pages upon pages. Did he miss the honing and sculpting and the sly little cleverness that poems require? I'd like to know more. I wish I could know more. Because I keep wondering: why?

I want to read his first novel, Jill, now to try and find out. I also want to read more novels by poets. Any recommendations?

January 26, 2012

2012-01-25T20:43:00.000-08:00

Dear Lulu,

Yesterday, you learned to crawl.

You'd been working on it for about a month, scooting around and rolling wherever you needed to go. It wasn't crawling exactly--we'd set you on the floor somewhere and look up a few minutes later, and you'd be inexplicably across the room. For a while you worked on a move where you dragged yourself around on your forearms, like a baby commando in the field in 'Nam.

But this is definitive crawling. You're up on all fours, with one of your little legs tucked foot-flat on the ground at all times.

You're fast. And you have this thing for electrical cords. And destruction. We had to break out the baby jail to keep you from doing harm to yourself and our knickknacks. You hate it and cry passionately the whole time you're incarcerated...until dad or I climb in with you. Yesterday, I checked myself in and you crawled over and bit my nose and laughed. Biting noses is like the world's best joke for you. It's all the lolcats and Hyperbole and a Half cartoons rolled up into one gigantic good time.

I miss the days of being able to sit on the couch and turn my attention to the internets for TEN FREAKING MINUTES without having to worry about you crawling away to your doom. But I have to admit that there's something very cool about the fact that you can go places, now. If we lived in caveman times, you could at least make a pretense of escaping from the lions before they devoured you! I keep thinking about all the places you'll go in your life. Right now, I'm reading a book about Bhutan. Maybe you'll go there, one day. I hope you do.

Many of these places you'll go, you'll go without me.

But I was there the first time you ever set your eyes on something and then decided to go and get it for yourself. I was there at the very beginning. And that makes me feel like I'll be with you every step of the way, even when I'm not.

The cats want me to give you a message from them. It is OMG WTF HALP!!!!!!!!!!!!

Wherever you go, little girl, I've got your back.

Lots of love to my Lulu-pants,

MAMA

Waiting on Wednesday: The Hypnotist's Love Story

2012-01-25T07:59:00.000-08:00

“Waiting On” Wednesday is a weekly event, hosted here, that spotlights upcoming releases that we're eagerly anticipating. This week's pre-publication “can't-wait-to-read” selection is:

Ellen O’Farrell is an expert when it comes to human frailties. She’s a hypnotherapist who helps her clients deal with everything from addictions to life-long phobias. So when she falls in love with a man who is being stalked by his ex-girlfriend she’s more intrigued than frightened. What makes a supposedly smart, professional woman behave this way? She’d love to meet her! What she doesn’t know is that she already has. Saskia has been masquerading as a client, and their lives are set to collide in ways Ellen could never have predicted. This wonderfully perceptive new novel from Liane Moriarty is about the lines we’ll cross for love. It’s about the murky areas between right and wrong, and the complexities of modern relationships. As Ellen is about to discover, we’re all a little crazy – even her.

I love Liane Moriarty--I just devoured all of her previous books. A year or so ago, I reviewed Three Wishes, and in my review, I implored her to get writing POST HASTE so that I could have more of her books to read. And she wrote back:

"By some miracle I am reading this! I am procrastinating by googling reviews of my books when I should be writing. I was so happy to read such a lovely review of Three Wishes - thank you so much. It's VERY motivational and I will now stop surfing the net and get back to my writing."

I wondered then what she was working on, and now I know! I can't wait until June, so I can devour it, too.

This title will be released on June 14, 2012.