Book Sandwich

Terry Pratchett Creates Sword with Meteorites

2010-09-21T18:27:00.000-07:00

Okay. You've probably all heard about this by now. Our favorite fantasy/humor writer, Terry Pratchett, has decided to make himself a sword out of meteorites.

I announced this to my husband in astonishment, and he replied, "Well, what else are you going to do with meteorites? Keep them on a shelf?" -- Mrs. Hall

A Mad Rejection

2010-09-20T08:20:00.000-07:00

A Mad Rejection
Check out this link above... Glad I'm not the only one who receives these! (Rejection letters, I mean. Not specifically ones from MAD Magazine... I don't think I've ever actually submitted something to them... -- Mrs Hall

Kurt Vonnegut on Short Story Rules

2010-09-10T09:47:00.000-07:00

Kurt Vonnegut had some interesting things to say about the "rules" for writing a great short story. I find it interesting that he went on to say "that Flannery O'Connor broke all these rules except the first, and that great writers tend to do that." Nice bit of praise for a wholly Catholic author from someone who considered himself an Atheist! -- Mrs. Hall

CROSS SYMBOL Using Computer Keyboard †

2010-08-23T11:00:00.000-07:00

A Review: The Reluctant Entertainer by Sandy Coughlin

2010-08-23T10:50:00.000-07:00

I suppose I was expecting something different from this book, The Reluctant Entertainer by Sandy Coughlin. I guess I could say I was expecting practical advice on things to do for entertaining a group of friends: you know, "this is what a place setting is supposed to look like" or "this is when this kind of wine should be served".

As it turns out, this is more of a book of affirmations to bolster the confidence of the inexpert entertainer. Basically, she says this: "Don't worry about making things perfect. Just be yourself." And it IS good advice! I have much more fun entertaining when I just shrug my shoulders and say, "My guests have doubtlessly seen a few unwashed dishes before. I'm not going to freak out about it."

And I won't say that she doesn't give ANY practical advice. She does have recipes and a few recommendations for when to serve them or how to give a nice party.

But I was hoping for more practical advice and less affirmation. I can't give this book a bad review because I'm sure it would be useful to someone whose main entertaining problems are nerves and worrying about "perfection"... I generally don't, though. So I wanted some of that practical stuff -- "what to serve on a midsummer's evening" -- "what to do to keep your guests entertained" and such. Oh well. -- Mrs. Hall

Nathan Bransford - Literary Agent: The One Question Writers Should Never Ask Themselv...

2010-07-28T07:18:00.000-07:00

This gentleman makes some very good points. You should click on and read the whole thing...!

Nathan Bransford - Literary Agent: The One Question Writers Should Never Ask Themselv...: "Over the course of writing and maintaining this blog, I've found that there is one sure-fire way a commenter can set my teeth on edge and ma..."

The pope is writing a book about the infancy of Jesus

2010-07-27T08:13:00.000-07:00

So the Pope writes a huge, scholarly book, longhand -- and has, several times -- during a three-week vacation.*sigh* Makes me feel like a slacker, taking a year plus to write just one lousy fiction novel, but I guess that's why he's the Pope. -- Mrs. Hall †

Jane Austen's Fight Club - Mildly Amusing

2010-07-25T11:18:00.000-07:00

Marply

2010-07-18T17:22:00.000-07:00

I'm getting close to having read all of the Miss Marple novels; no incredibly great feat, since there are only about thirteen of them -- but still a milestone. They span Agatha Christie's career -- being fairly evenly spaced throughout -- so one gets a sense of how her writing style changed and progressed. In all honesty, I think I prefer her earlier novels... but the one I just finished, The Mirror Crack'd, was still pretty good despite being placed in the latter half of her career.

I think one of the problems with books written by the older Christie (at least, as I've experienced them so far) is that the characters in her novels lost something of their vibrancy as she got older. And her plots got a bit less creative. In the earlier novels, there was something of a quality of striving for originality -- but as time went on, one gets to the point where one picks up on certain clues and is able to say, "Oh, this is going to be like that other one..."

But since Christie wrote fifty-zillion books, she is probably justified in their being a little samey at times. One runs into the same thing with Wodehouse.

As I said, The Mirror Crack'd did a fairly decent job of avoiding the problems of some of the earlier ones. Oh, it had the issue that many of the others had (the fact that there wasn't very much Miss Marple in this Miss Marple novel) -- and although I did guess the correct murderer in chapter two, I didn't guess the motive until the ending, so it completely succeeded as a mystery novel. It kept me guessing all along and kept me reading -- which is all that one can ask out of this sort of thing. -- Mrs. Hall

R.I.P. Harvey Pekar

2010-07-13T08:56:00.000-07:00

I became aware of Harvey Pekar about five years ago through the auspices of a film about his life (or a film about the comic book about his life), American Splendor. The film is really good: a sterling performance by Paul Giamatti, and I wholly recommend it as both an interesting character study and a look at an interesting field of writing -- autobiographical underground comics.

Here's some information on Mr. Pekar from Wikipedia...

And here's an article on his passing from the Huffington Post.

My condolences to his family. -- Mrs. Hall

Review: The God of the Hive by Laurie R. King

2010-07-12T08:28:00.000-07:00

The God of the Hive: Well, it began much more promisingly than the last couple Mary Russel novels that I read. In fact, I was so discouraged by the last one I tried to read (The Moor) that I actually just put it down and never finished it -- putting me some three or four novels behind when reading this one.

That gap didn't make a huge difference. There are some fairly new characters who might have appeared in earlier, in-between novels that I haven't read -- or might not. It didn't effect my read. But what DID effect it is the fact that this one, as I said, began much more promisingly. It starts out with Mary on the run from the police with a mysterious child -- Sherlock also on the run with a wounded young man -- while the untouchable Mycroft has been taken in for questioning. Sounds great? It is great. It is a great beginning. It made me want to keep reading... which I did.

Like the other Mary Russell novels, there are some mystical underpinnings to this novel. Didn't bother me. But the one thing that DID bother me was that the author switches back and forth almost constantly between first person and third person. I've mentioned before that this is one of my pet-peeves with modern authors -- and that the last four or five new mysteries I tried used this device. It makes the book hard to follow and uneven. Oh, it's not unreadable by any means... but I simply prefer an author to pick ONE PERSON, be it first or third, and stick to it. I mean, it doesn't even work with the premise that we've accepted up until this point -- that Laurie King found a trunk full of manuscripts written by Mary Russel. So Mary decided to write half of this book as if she didn't actually write it?

That's enough of sounding like I'm complaining about the book, even though I'm really not. It was all right. One of the better Mary Russel novels that I've read in a while, because it started right in the middle of the action -- and normally that's my issue with the books (i.e. that it takes a while for things to start happening... Oh, and Mary's endless "How dare you hold the door open for me, I Am A Strong Woman and can open doors for myself" type comments. But that's a whole other issue, besides being not quite as big a thing in this novel... because there was another character created to do that).

So, in the end, what I have to say is this: give it a try. If you enjoyed the other Mary Russel novels, you're BOUND to like this one. -- Mrs. Hall

Lasagna Cat Video on Reading

2010-07-12T08:09:00.000-07:00

The End of 750 Words

2010-07-01T08:11:00.000-07:00

Well, I think I've given up on the 750 words thing. I did it more or less faithfully for two weeks... and found that I was writing my 750 "exercise" words in the morning at the expense of my REAL writing (exempli gratia... I sit down, write my 750 words, and then have excised my writing urge for the day... New book project sits idle. Blog sits idle. All the people who leave spam comments on my blog cry bitter tears...)

So much for that. Ah well -- it probably works for some people! It was kind of nice having a private diary, in a way, but I can never REALLY cut loose in even a private diary because why does one write anything except to have someone else read it? Plus, I was told at an early age, "Never write down something that you don't want someone else to read" -- and believe me, the one or two times that I broke that rule, I wound up sincerely regretting it.

And I did like the "stats" page that would tell things like how long it took me to write 750 words (on average, 19 minutes!! I'm impressed with me!), how many of a particular word I used, and how that particular entry was rated. (I'm not certain that aspect of it was entirely accurate. It almost always rated my entries "PG-13: For Sexuality, Violence and Swearing"... ??? Violence maybe, but sex and swearing? There was about as much sex and swearing in my private 750 word entries as there is in this entry.) -- Mrs. Hall

Stephen Fry & Hugh Laurie: The Subject of Language

2010-06-11T11:13:00.000-07:00

750words.com

2010-06-04T09:04:00.000-07:00

Browsing the facebook page of one of my old English professors (Dr. Smith), I came across the mention of a website called 750words.com.

Apparently, there was an once a writing exercise where you attempt to write three pages (long-hand, on paper) of just random, stream-of-consciousness stuff, every morning; with the idea that it would get your creative mind working and make it easier for you to do your proper writing.

Well, the guy who designed the 750words.com website says that he's reviving this exercise, with a difference: it's all online. You type the equivalent of three pages (750 words) of stream-of-consciousness blarg. It's not a blog, because it's not public. Only you can go back and read it. The only thing that's public (as far as I can tell) are the "statistics" pages, showing how much you used particular words, gathering what your mood and thoughts are from the particular words you used -- and I'm not even quite clear if that's open to the public. You get "badges" for writing fast, for writing frequently, and such.

I glanced over the page and was a bit skeptical. For one thing -- writing "exercises" never work for me, which seems to be the problem with me and most books about writing: they always have you doing these little exercises (write a page about your first kiss! write fifty words about your favorite food!) It's not good writing, it serves no good purpose, no one will ever want to read it, it makes me self-conscious about my writing -- and all I can think while I'm writing it is that I could be working on something worthwhile, but NO, I'm sitting here writing a freakin' theme.

But, I don't know, it sounded like an interesting experiment... To see if it actually did free up my subconscious so I could write. Could I manage to write 750 words a day, even just of random nonsense? So I sat back, and in about twenty minutes, I'd hammered out 750 words of stream-of-consciousness blurf.

Well... I didn't feel particularly different. But I did go home and start writing on another actual writing project of mine that I've been stalled-out on. So maybe it did help!

I went back again this morning and wrote another 800-something words. We'll see if this really works... Mrs. Hall

The Evening After the Submission of the Book

2010-05-18T20:14:00.000-07:00

I haven't posted on here (or anywhere else, really) in over a week... Mainly due to the fact that, a week ago, I got a request from a publisher to see my book... and I've been solidly getting it ready for submission since then. Well, except for several hours of gut-wrenching writer's block. But I just now sent it off to them. Fingers crossed, etc etc.

So, with no book to work on, I was sitting here having a perfect "home alone female" night: Mr. Hall is at a ball game, so I was sitting on the couch watching Serendipity and eating chocolate hazlenut spread on pretzels... and then the cat lost a bloody tooth in the center of the living room floor. And then he looked at me like it was MY fault!

(Don't worry. Banjo is just months old and is still losing his kitten-teeth... But it ruined the mood, nonetheless.) -- Mrs. Hall

The 50 best author vs. author put-downs of all time

2010-05-11T09:59:00.001-07:00

The 50 best author vs. author put-downs of all time
Click on the link above for the full article. It is delightful. I particularly liked Noel Coward on Oscar Wilde.

Brontë Sisters Power Dolls

2010-05-11T09:46:00.000-07:00

Giving in to Peer Pressure

2010-05-07T10:04:00.000-07:00

Okay, I resisted it, and resisted it... and then gave in. I put a hold on Neil Gaiman's American Gods. I was going to ignore this whole "One Book, One Twitter" thing... and I personally feel like Neil Gaiman's work is a bit of a mixed bag (fabulous ideas that simply fail to deliver in the execution)... but somebody I know was just saying, via facebook, that they're reading it and it's really good... and I've only tried reading one other of his books. Well, two. But maybe this one is really good.

So I went ahead and placed a hold on it at the library. Not surprisingly, (no doubt thanks to this program), there were already eight holds on that book. There are three copies in our library system, so that really isn't too bad... Three people to a copy... Assuming fairly fast readers go ahead of me, I imagine I'll finally get one sometime next month. - Mrs. Hall

Reader's Resources: Google Books

2010-05-04T13:33:00.000-07:00

I just found out (thanks, Why I Am Catholic blog) about a reading resource that Google offers -- Google Books. You are able to view book excerpts and full-texts of books for free. Now, full-texts of books have been available online forever, thanks to Project Gutenberg and whatnot... But Google Books is unique in the way it organizes, allows you to "save" books and create libraries, and so on. The only problem with this system, if there is one, is that you're not going to find the latest best-sellers on here (at least, not for free)... and by "latest best sellers" I mean most books printed during the last fifty years. You're much more likely to find the full-texts of obscure, unpopular and "classic" (i.e. obscure and unpopular in most people's opinions) books.

I've killed a little time this afternoon creating my own online shelf of books -- enjoy. It has a few things that I've read, a few things that I am reading, and a few things that I'd like to read -- all in full-text, available for you to read this instant. Although reading things online isn't entirely delightful, it's a faster way to get a free book than to go to the library... Right now, I'm reading an interesting article from G.K. Chesterton's Heretics on H.G. Wells, of all things.

A far better and more complete shelf is the one that the Why I Am Catholic blog has created. For a great resource of Catholic readings, check that out as well. -- Mrs. Hall

How the Sale Disappointed and a Book Uplifted

2010-04-30T09:48:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, while looking at random things on the public library website, I realized that the Spring Book Sale was underway. The Springfield Library system has a twice-yearly huge book sale... and in spite of living in Springfield on and off for about eight years, I have never once managed to make it to the thing. I always pick up the flyers ahead of time, think, "Oh, I'll go this year. I really will." and then... somehow... it always seems to pass before I realize what's going on. "Wait... it was last week? I thought it was this week..."

But not this year!! I was determined to finally go. Therefore, when I was on the library website yesterday and saw that the sale was underway and would be so until Saturday, I was like, "I should go tonight!" But the real tie-breaker came when I called my husband to chat (about totally unrelated topics) during the afternoon, to my utter shock and surprise he was like, "Hey, I heard the library was having that big book sale. You should go tonight."

So I went! I braved hideous rush-hour traffic on the highways and one of the worst intersections in town to make it to "Remington's", the inexplicably named, big, warehouse-like building where they were having the sale. I took twenty dollars out of the ATM, sure it wouldn't be enough -- I mean, when is that ever enough where books are concerned? -- and as I got closer and closer, anticipation mounted... I imagined a book sale bigger than anything I've ever seen... Couldn't wait to positively review it on my blog...

And I was kind of let down.

I suppose it was okay. The prices were all right, and the volunteer staff seemed fairly friendly and attentive. But for one thing... the assortment wasn't that great. For another thing, the sheer number of books wasn't that huge. For another thing -- I walked through the religion, fiction, non-fiction and "English language" sections without finding a single book I wanted, which is really saying something.

I didn't understand the organization of the books. There were books on one side, and then "better books" on the other side... and besides the fact that the "better books" were individually priced (rather than being $1 as on the plain old books side) I wasn't sure what made them "better"... whether it was a qualitative call on the condition of the said books, or an abstract call on the quality of the writing itself. Still not sure.

Granted, this is... what, three or four days into the sale? The best books were doubtlessly snatched up on day one. However, it must be said -- I have pretty varied interests. Usually, if you put a random assortment of books in front of me, I can find several of interest. I walked around one half of the sale and then the other, and I was simply not impressed -- I saw maybe three books that I was interested in enough to pick up and set back down again, and that's it. Perhaps I just wasn't in the mood to book-shop... I was feeling a little down yesterday afternoon. But seriously -- only three?

In the end, I did find one book to actually purchase. Just when I was about to leave, after giving up hope, I spotted a Fulton J. Sheen book that I don't have -- Lift Up Your Heart. It was amongst the $1 books, so I picked it up and broke my twenty on that. (I spent the other $19 on groceries on the way home.) Then I got home and found I had a "thanks for applying - but no thanks" letter from the library, which also didn't help my mood or my opinion of the library. Although I suppose I can't blame the book sale for that.

So I was feeling pretty crummy when I finally sat down yesterday evening. The book sale was a wash, I'd received a job rejection letter, and then my husband informed me of some bad political news... and politics have just been so horrendously depressing lately. It just seems like bad people are getting free reign and that there's nothing good people can do to fight back. While I'm sitting there thinking about all this depressing stuff, I idly flipped open the Fulton Sheen book to see what I'd purchased, not really even paying attention to it, and read the dedication, penned in 1950:

"As hammers beat and sickles cut
as atoms burst and warfare blusters
at red Lucifer's and Hell's command
Lift Up Your Heart!
God promised that a Virgin's foot
would crush these cobras of the night."

It was obviously written during a different time of unsettling anxiety in this country... (and not at all about job rejection letters or disappointing library sales) but somehow, last night, I found it very encouraging. -- Mrs. Hall

One Book, One Twitter, One Day Too Late

2010-04-29T13:06:00.000-07:00

Apparently, I have found out one day too late: until April 28th (i.e. yesterday) they were taking votes on what should be the first book for "One Book, One Twitter" -- a project to get everyone on Twitter to read the same book.

Front runners included: George Orwell's 1984, Ray Bradbury's Farenheit 451, and Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. I was thrilled. Everyone in the world should read those books... Profoundly disturbing, all of them, especially when you look at the country we live in and draw certain conclusions...I was all set to go and vote for Farenheit 451 (also a favorite movie) until I saw that I'd missed the deadline by one day.

And what won? Neil Gaiman's American Gods.

Not to bad-mouth Neil Gaiman, but - really? -- Mrs. Hall

The Pursuit of Sleep

2010-04-22T08:50:00.000-07:00

I'm tired again this morning, but it isn't because I stayed up late last night reading. I did read (I've started reading a book I've had on my shelf for about ten years and tried to read twice before -- The Pursuit of Love by Nancy Mitford. It's been a fairly decent book, but one of a particular variety which I seem to have been reading a lot lately and am not altogether that fond of -- I'll explain later. Incidentally, the cover displayed to the left makes it look more funny-ha-ha than it really is), but in point of fact, stayed up significantly less late than I did the past two nights in a row.

But I still couldn't sleep. I had one of those "in spite of being perfectly comfortable, can't turn off mind to get to sleep" kind of trying-to-sleep experiences. And then, even after I got to sleep, I didn't sleep well. Just kept tossing and turning, and waking up and being wide awake... The one saving grace is that I seem to be fairly alert today, despite lack of sleep.

I think part of the problem is actually a good thing that happened: last night we finally rehearsed part of a play that I've been writing with three other people for the past year... And the scene went really well, and promises to be pretty amusing. (And I was excited and enthusiastic about that: hence, not being able to key-down for sleep.) It's going to be filmed, so I'll post it here after it's up on YouTube... --Mrs. Hall

The Great Lack of Sleep

2010-04-20T10:15:00.000-07:00

I was up late again last night. However, this time I wasn't arguing with my husband about what constitutes a "time paradox". I made the mistake of putting down the book I was reading (the beginning of the book was more or less a combination of a treatise on what constitutes a "moor"and the main character making grumpy, obnoxious, unnecessary feminist claims. In short, it failed to amuse or capture my interest) and picking up a different one... One that I'd tried to read before and hadn't gotten through, thinking I'd read for a couple minutes and then go to sleep...

And accidentally read until one o'clock in the morning. I'm over half-finished.

Of all the things that I could get hooked on reading, it's one of C.S. Lewis's more abstract, allegorical books -- The Great Divorce. Basically, it's about a guy who makes a trip from hell to heaven, learning on the way what what constitutes purgatory and gets some folks damned.

According to the positioning of the bookmark, I apparently made it about half-way through this book the last time I tried to read it -- although I have absolutely no memory of doing so. But since this book has a "Book Nook" stamp inside the front cover ("The Book Nook" being West Plains' premier used-bookstore) and I haven't lived in West Plains for... oh... about eight years, it could be anywhere between eight and fifteen years since I last attempted to read it, which JUST MIGHT EXPLAIN why I don't remember it.

(But not entirely. Oddly, I did remember reading the preface, where he discusses a sci-fi story that was partly the inspiration for this tale. That part was familiar -- but not the book itself. So perhaps, as a fifteen-to-twenty-two-year-old the book itself didn't resonate with me... but as a thirty-year-old, it does. Very interesting...)

Well, that's all on that, as I'm far too exhausted to explain why it appeals to older me but not younger me, or write anything else coherent. Please accept as a substitute a thoughtful quote from the preface that more or less sums up the book, and then perhaps you can tell me why it captured my imagination so:

"I do not think that all who choose wrong roads perish; but their rescue consists in being put back on the right road. A wrong sum can be put right: but only by going back till you find the error and working it afresh from that point, never by simply going on. Evil can be undone, but it cannot 'develop' into good. Times does not heal it. The spell must be unwound, bit by bit, with 'backward mutters of dissevering power' -- or else not. It is still 'either-or'. If we insist on keeping Hell (or even earth) we shall not see Heaven." -- C.S. Lewis

"Weird Al" Yankovic - grammar lesson

2010-04-15T18:38:00.000-07:00